Monthly Archives: January 2016

Returning to Blogging: 6 Thoughts

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My father passed away over MLK weekend. He was a great father and for reasons I can’t quite articulate his death reduced my interest in writing, save for honoring him with a eulogy.

But this blog has been a source of immense learning for me, and it’s not something I want to give up on, so onwards.

While I haven’t been writing, here’s things that have been on mind but I haven’t yet had time to research or flesh out:

I. When does campaign money really matter? 

I’m sure there’s a vast literature on this, but I’ve been struck by how in large scale races money doesn’t always matter (Jeb) and in small scale races money doesn’t always matter (because people personally know the candidates). So perhaps money matters the most in midsize races where people don’t know the candidates *and* major media outlets don’t provide a lot of coverage; i.e., state legislative races.

II. Could you offer college for free and make money through non-academic purchases?

In some free iPhone games, you can purchase add-ons that help you win. This would be unfair in academic setting. In other free games, you can purchase things that give you status but don’t help you win (a nice avatar); this appeals to gamers sense of fairness. Could you build a university where the core product was free and money was made through non academic add-ons (gym, travel abroad, sports, merchandise, etc)?

III. What other Democrats for Education Reform orgs do we need?

I think parties often change through internal pressure.

So how about: Republicans for Solar / EITC / Evolution / etc?

How about: Democrats for GMOs / Free Trade / etc?

The power of Democrats for Education Reform is that it built a well funded operational infrastructure within the party elite. Could this be replicated for other issues in each party?

IV. Should we run a RTC on ending child poverty in USA? 

I’ve been thinking about this a lot and may try to put together a strategy and model out costs. I think the ROI would be high in terms of what we’d learn.

V. Is the ed-tech VC market missing anything?

Are there sectors of the market that will never provide 10X return but need to be invested in order to achieve maturity in important issues? What is role of philanthropy here?

VI. Alignment vs. Entrepreneurship 

Collective action efforts are about aligning actors. Entrepreneurship is about creating and scaling new actors.

The first feels better but my bet is that the latter is more important.

I worry that philanthropy will gravitate toward alignment and over fund it. Alignment can be useful, but it’s important to understand its limits (squeezing the most out of what we have) and its implicit assumptions (things aren’t working because of a lack of coordination).

Is Education Philanthropy Undermining Democracy?

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There is a tension between philanthropy and democracy, and one can imagine a world where wealthy philanthropists attempt to scale public policy solutions that do not have public support.

Now that I work in philanthropy, this is something I think about a lot.

Michael Massing raised this subject in his recent piece, How to Cover the 1%. Specifically, Michael called for information transparency that would allow the public to track “hedge fund managers’ backing of charter schools.”

Michael is not alone in worrying about this issue. The education reform movement, which is supported by philanthropy, is often accused of undermining democracy.

I think this accusation is mostly false when it comes to charter school expansion.

Charters have Broad Government Support 

In 1994, Bill Clinton ushered in the federal government’s charters school program.

21 years later, a bipartisan rewrite of No Child Left Behind increased funding for charter schools by 32% to $333 million. This was less money for charter schools than the Obama administration had requested.

Additionally, 43 states and Washington D.C. provide public funding for charter schools. Charter schools operate in both extremely conservative and liberal states.

Yes, this could all be some massive corporate reform conspiracy that has infiltrated all levels of government.

But I doubt it.

In year seven of his presidency, I’m skeptical that Obama is pushing charter schools in order to please his corporate overlords.

I suspect he’s pushing charter schools because he believes they can expand educational opportunity.

Since the passage of the first charter school law in 1991, charter schools have been supported through the democratic process with bipartisan support time and time again.

Charter Schools have Broad Public Support

Polling on charter schools has generally found public support. Here is historical data from the PDK poll:

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The 2015 data showed a drop to 64% support, while an Ed Next poll with different phrasing showed support around 50%.

It is possible that wealthy people are funding propaganda that is fooling the public into supporting charter schools, but I’m skeptical that this is true given how broad and long-standing this support is.

That being said, there is evidence that the public doesn’t really understand what charter schools are, so I’m open to the notion that we should be wary from drawing too much from polls.

But to the extent you trust polls, there is a lot of evidence that the public support charter schools.

There is one sector of the public that most deviates from overall public opinion: teachers.

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Charter Schools Increase Educational Opportunity for At-Risk Youth 

Overall, charter school quality is mixed. However, in urban areas, where charter schools often serve at-risk students, the results are robust and positive.

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Very few education interventions deliver positive results as this scale.

Urban charter schools are expanding educational opportunity across the country.

In Sum 

Over the past twenty-five years, charter schools have built broad public support across the federal government, state governments, and the public as a whole.

Philanthropic support for charter school expansion is accelerating a public policy that already receives significant public financial support and is generally viewed favorably by the public.

Additionally, rigorous evidence demonstrates that charter schools in urban areas are raising student achievement for poor and minority youth.

This is not to say that there is nothing to worry about. National polls could hide local variance. There are certainly cases when philanthropist support for charter school exceeds public desire. Unchecked charter support could also lead to regulatory capture that results in a lot of fraud and waste.

None of this is simple. And it is not to say that charter schools are the end all be all of education transformation. Issues like teacher recruitment and development, child poverty, career preparation, and college access – to name a few – are also extremely important.

But, at the very least, the strongest claims of education philanthropy critics appear to be false when it comes to charter schools.

Core Values

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Whenever you start a new endeavor, you need values to guide you.

When I first led NSNO, I struggled with this.

Fortunately, NSNO’s leadership team, in addition to coaches like Nancy Euske, helped me get better. Maggie Runyan-Shefa and Jenny Katz were invaluable.

In case you too struggle with this, here’s some of what I’ve learned:

Creating Core Values

Core values should be created *after* you have a mission and strategy.

Why?

Because core values should be a guide for how you need to think and act in order to execute a strategy that will help you accomplish your mission.

If you get this sequence wrong, your core values will probably be nice things that have nothing to do with how you need to behave in order to accomplish your specific mission.

After the values are named, associated behaviors that are specific to the organization should be detailed. People should know what it means to live your values out at your organization.

For a start-up, core values should be iterative. Set them at the outset, but revisit them often, and solidify them around a year in (or when you nail down your strategy).

Living Core Values

Modeling: This is the most important thing. Humans learn by watching the behavior of others. If you are a leader, everyone will be watching you all the time and they will learn how to behave.

Induction: The CEO (or someone in leadership) should meet with all new hires to discuss values. The leader should discuss why the specific values were chosen; tell stories of individuals who have exemplified the values; give specific examples of where organizational decisions have seen values in tension; and talk about specific instances the organization (and the leader) failed to live out the values.

Feedback: Managers should give informal (most important) and formal (scheduled and specific) feedback on whether or not team members are living out values.

Promotion and Firing: People who consistently violate values should never be promoted. If a person cannot change, the person should be fired. No one person is ever more important than the values. If this is the case, you don’t have values. You have suggestions.

The Constitution and The Bill of Right apply to every citizen. The values are more important than any individual.

An organization should be no different. It is a society in and of itself.

Project Management: Leadership owns the modeling of the values. But someone else should own the process, and this person must be someone who gets it. This person should create a calendar of events (check-ins, weekly meeting, annual meetings, celebrations, performance reviews, etc.) that are layered upon value activities (examples of historical people who have modeled values, shout-outs for recent modeling, articles that get to the heart of a value, etc.) and objectives (deepening understanding of values, modeling of values, feedback on values, debates on values in tension, open vulnerability on value failures, explaining major organizational decisions based on values).

Changing Core Values 

Core values should be reviewed when a strategy is changed, when there is a crisis in culture, or when there is new leadership.

It’s About Balancing Control and Empowerment

Core values are so important because they control how people behave when no one is watching (which is most of the time!) and they empower people to change the organization (and the world!) for the better by guiding their risk-taking, initiative, and ownership of the organization.

It’s Hard

I went from and “F” to maybe a “B-” in terms of leading through core values. It’s crazy hard. There are so many leaders that I admire that are better than me at this.

I’m better at design than project management, which makes it difficult for me to execute with a small team.

And the above is surely flawed.

It’s just my best explanation of my current understanding of core values.

Lastly, the truism is true: a culture will form whether you create it or not so you better create it.

Professional Update

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Today, Reed Hastings is launching a $100m educational fund, which I will manage.

The website for the fund is here.

The first two gifts are to United Negro College Fund and to Hispanic Foundation of Silicon Valley to support college education of Black and Latino youth, totalling $1.5m. The goal of these investments is to provide students of color with exceptional post-secondary educational experiences.

I will continue to work with the Laura and John Arnold Foundation as well.

I feel very grateful to be working with such extremely thoughtful philanthropists.

There are a lot students in this country who don’t have access to amazing schools.

Hopefully, this can change.

The Big Short, David Kirp, Newark, Union City, New Orleans

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I saw The Big Short last night. It is an excellent movie and I agreed with much of its implicit and explicit critique of banks, government, and consumers.

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David Kirp has a piece on Newark in the New York Time today. He argues that Union City (district reform) is a better path than Newark reforms (including expanding Newark’s charter schools).

He did not mention New Orleans in his piece.

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I’ve written a lot on Newark.

You can read the shortest and most direct version here.

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As with most great movies, in The Big Short the audience feels connected to the protagonists.

In The Big Short, the protagonists are those betting against the big banks by shorting the housing market.

Here is how I personally related to the protagonists: I feel like I hold an opinion that most people view as wrong (that charter districts will outperform traditional districts); that I have data to support this case (New Orleans + CREDO analysis of urban charter markets); and that many people are either ignoring or misinterpreting this data.

Of course, this is a fairly self-serving way of looking at the world (and watching a movie). And the world is surely more complicated than this. As such, I try to check myself as often as I can.

But most of us who takes sides on an issue, except in moments of deeply honest reflection, are the heroes of our own story – and I’m no different, especially when caught up in watching a great movie.

I’m sure that David Kirp views his tribe as the protagonists who are fighting against the corporate reformers who have all the power and money.

There is some truth in this.

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Another way to say all this: strong opinions are inherently egoistic, as such, it is often best that they are weakly held.

I sometimes worry that my strong opinions are no longer weakly held.

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What I loved about The Big Short – and financial markets as a whole – is that there is a way to call bullshit.

You can short the people who are wrong.

I wish there was an accepted way to do this in public policy that actually worked.

First, I want there to be a way to more quickly correct policy beliefs that I believe are harming children.

Second, I want to hold people (including myself) accountable for our beliefs.

Third, as with most competitive people, I want to win.

I try to keep the first reason, rather than third reason, at the forefront.

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Last year, when Doug Harris’ study came out and demonstrated that New Orleans had achieved greater academic gains than any other urban school district that the researchers knew of, I thought this would change people’s opinions on whether the reforms worked.

I’m not sure that it did.

Instead, the argument shifted to the gains coming at too high of a cost. And to the gains not being replicable in other cities.

In short, the goal posts were moved.

If you have not made a bet, you can move the goal posts all day long.

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Of course, I might be wrong about my beliefs.

If I end up being wrong, I hope that I am honest enough to close down this blog with a post that says: I was wrong.

Most of all, I’ll be saddened that I devoted a good bit of my working years to something that did not help anyone.

The Folly of Voucher Advocates?

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A new study just came out showing that the Louisiana voucher program had negative effects on student achievement.

It’s one year of data on a new program, so I would caution against any grand proclamations on the usefulness of vouchers. There’s a much richer literature from which one can draw conclusions.

Perhaps more interesting is how voucher advocates reacted.

Jason Bedrick’s piece – The Folly of Overregulating Vouchers – criticized the Louisiana program for:

  • Not allowing tuition in excess of the vouchers.
  • Not allowing private schools to use selection criteria for admitting students.

I feel like I’m missing something.

The logical extension of Jason’s argument is that an all voucher education system would lead to a public education system where all schools would be allowed to reject students based on wealth, academic performance, and behavior.

Is this right?

Either voucher proponents have very different views of equity than most citizens, or they don’t really view vouchers as a replacement model for the current public education.

I’m curious – which is it?

Overall, I’m sympathetic to lowering barriers to entry (you have a crazy idea that parents will sign up for, go for it) and to reducing test based accountability (you and families think there’s a better way to measure school performance, go for it).

I understand the risks involved with this type of deregulation, but I think it’s worth trying and seeing what we learn. I don’t know if it would work, but it might, and the potential the upside seems high.

I also think there are things you can do to solve for equity (significantly weighting vouchers for at-risk students), that will lead to higher performing private schools enrolling hard to serve kids.

But, ultimately, I’m not ok with taking the public out of public education.

A system where every school can systematically discriminate based on wealth is not one that I want to be a part of.

Is this is where the voucher movement is heading, count me out.

If, on the other hand, the voucher movement is really about innovation, entrepreneurship, and family empowerment – then count me in.

Lastly, I have a ton of respect for people on all sides of this debate, so if I’m mischaracterizing anyone’s views, I’ll update the post.

But, admittedly, I found some of my voucher friends making arguments that, to me at least, were pretty unconvincing.

 

1st Post of 2016: The Best Case Against Relinquishment

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ravitch

It is always worth pressure testing your own beliefs, preferably in a manner that can pass an ideological Turing test.

Beginning of the year seems as good of a time as any; so here’s the case against relinquishment, which I define as:

(1) Educators operate schools, mostly through non-profits.

(2) Families choose amongst these schools.

(3) Government regulates for performance and equity.

Relinquishment Ignores Key Lessons from Other Nations

Many of the world’s most successful education systems are driven by some combination of the following: (1) government operated schools (2) a national culture that stresses learning (3) the professionalization of teaching force through training, status, and pay.

Relinquishment does not directly move our educational system in this direction, as it promotes non-government operation of schools; does not really impact national culture; and is silent on teacher pay.

In short, relinquishment ignores much of what the world has to teach us about great public schooling.

Relinquishment Fails to Address the Root Cause of Child Poverty 

The United States is home to high relative child poverty. Given the extremely high degree of correlation (and likely causation) between relative poverty and poor education outcomes, the most direct route to raising achievement is to reduce child poverty.

In short, relinquishment does not impact the greatest barrier to student learning.

Relinquishment Can’t Scale

Even if relinquishment did lead to positive outcomes, even the most bullish projections show that it will take 30+ years to achieve even close to 50% non-profit enrollment in the United States.

In short, multiple generations of students will be lost to poor academic outcomes because the strategy cannot be adopted with speed.

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I’ll leave it to you to determine whether or not I passed the ideological Turing test.

For whatever it’s worth, I’m most sympathetic to the argument re: child poverty.