How to fix our public schools (details)

How to fix our public schools

This document is a description of the a plan to fix our public schools. If you like to read the 1 page summary, see Education Reform Proposal (Executive Summary).

Note: this document is in the process of being edited to combine the top and bottom halves.

To fix America's schools, the safest and most reliable approach is to adopt international "best practices." We have no more time to spend time trying to invent new paradigms and technologies. We've been there, done that. The quickest and surest way to get to international parity is to use the same technique you'd use in business, namely "copy what works," i.e., "adopt best practices." For example, NCEE (a non-profit funded by Carnegie and Pew) studied schools all over the world for 11 years to determine what separates the successful schools from those the unsuccessful schools. Using the results of that research, they created a program (America's Choice) to prove that these international "best practices" can be successfully brought together into a single program that was designed to work in US public schools. NCEE's America's Choice program is but one example. The important point is this: adopting international best practices is feasible in US public schools: these practices can replicated on a mass scale (for example, there are now over 400 US public schools that have chosen to convert to America's Choice), and produce reliable, repeatable statistically significant positive gains.

We are not advocating for a specific program (such as America's Choice).

Our proposal is simple: the US government should provide monetary incentives (and technical assistance) to any school that commits to a Chinese-menu checklist of proven reforms that both collectively and individually meet the following criteria:

have been proven to be replicable on at least a modest scale in the US,
have proven (in the US or other countries) to be both necessary and sufficient to ensure an extremely high likelihood of statistically significant gains.

The challenging part is coming up with a relatively small set of reforms which, when properly implemented, can ensure that our schools maximize the potential of our kids. There is no one answer to this problem... many different approaches are possible; our task is to select a promising set of reforms that is practical to start with today, and then modify that list over time so that we are constantly getting better and better.

We are working with education experts to determine a balanced initial set of reforms which should be required for a school to be eligible for the incentive funding. For example, the set of reforms might be to (a) require that a school adopt one of a small number of highly-qualified whole school design programs (a statistically "tighter" version of Obey-Porter), (b) require that the school have aligned standards, curriculum, and assessments, and (c) require that all teachers in the school be qualified to teach the subjects that they have been assigned to teach.

The list we will actually propose will be more comprehensive than this and will be practical to implement on a large scale. We will focus on a small set of reforms that have been proven to achieve the greatest impact. The goal is that the list of reforms is both necessary and sufficient to ensure a successful positive outcome and ideally, necessary and sufficient to raise our schools to be among the best in the world.

This set of reforms will not necessarily be easy. In some cases, for a school to qualify, they may require concessions from federal and state governments, local school boards, state school boards, and labor unions. It will probably require new legislation to be written. Our objective is to look hard at what is truly required to bring our schools up to snuff, then use those requirements to drive positive change.

It is totally unreasonable for us to expect to see dramatic positive change in the quality of our educational system without dramatic change in the way we do things. However, we do not expect or require massive change to happen "overnight." We need to carefully weigh what is practical and possible to do successfully today from both a political and program point of view, and what can and should be done later. For example, "adopting national standards" is a reform that we need to think very carefully about since on the one hand it will greatly accelerate progress if done properly, but on the other hand, may be politically very difficult and could be extremely damaging if the standards adoption process is driven by politics and philosophies rather than by objective quantitative data.

The purpose of the incentive is primarily to provide funds to enable a school to: (a) adopt the reforms, (b) implement the reforms, and (c) continue to demonstrate that the reforms produce superior results on assessments. The incentive would stop if the school discontinues the program. The incentive is not to "bribe" the school to adopt the program. We believe that the success of the kids who attend schools which participate in the program will be sufficient to motivate other schools to adopt the reforms.

There is no question that we can and will be successful. We have too many examples of schools in the US that prove that dramatic change is possible; US public schools that were formerly the worst in the state can and have become the best in the state. It can be done. We just need to change some of our policies so that these success examples are the rule, not the exception. The "trick" is figuring out which knobs to turn, and how far to turn each knob. We need to think carefully about this and give it our "best shot" and continue to refine our policies over time.

Since this is an incentive program, local choice is preserved. The government mandates nothing. It is our expectation that if this pilot program is successful, that more and more local school districts will make the free choice to adopt the reforms proven by this program.

Lastly, there are those who believe that the federal government should stay out of education because it is a "state" problem. No longer. Education has become an issue of national importance. On average, our country is performing unacceptably on international and national assessments and the high school dropout rate in large urban school districts often exceeds 50% (our national goal was to decrease the dropout rate to under 10% by 2000). During his campaign, President Bush called education the #1 most important problem in America today. The states have had over 200 years to "solve" the problem on their own and they have failed. It's time for the federal government to step up and provide more assistance to the states to help them solve the problem. Indeed, research shows that if we are to fix education, leadership must come from both state and federal governments.

Our school system is vastly inferior to those in other countries
Our K-12 education needs a major overhaul, not a facelift. All the evidence is consistent and compelling that American schools are way behind other countries and way below our potential. For example, in TIMSS (an international math and science test), our top students (top 10%) were at international mean...the same as Singapore's worst 15%! By the time our kids graduate from high school, they rank virtually dead last in TIMSS. European students who come to America on high school exchange programs think our schools are a lark. Foreign students entering our state college systems don't need any remediation at all in core subjects. Contrast that with the fact that 50% of the kids from California entering the Cal State system (which attracts the top 33% of our kids) need remediation and in the UC system (which attracts the top 12% of our kids), 25% need remediation. Since 70% of our kids can be brought "up to speed" in one semester (and 80% in two semesters), the fault is clearly with our public schools, not with the parents, their culture, or the kids themselves. And it means that the problem is "fixable." It's even openly acknowledged, as this quote from a Associated Press story about the NAEP math scores in August 2001, "American students have consistently performed at lower levels in math than their counterparts in Asia and elsewhere. Calling the achievement gap unacceptable, U.S. education officials have long searched for ways to close it." Even in our own national exams, we can confirm the underperformance of our schools. The 2000 NAEP math results show that a third of 4th, 8th, and 12th graders don't have even basic math skills and only 17% of 12th graders score at the "proficient" and above levels in math. In California (which educates 1 out of every 8 kids in the US), it's even worse: 48% of both 4th and 8th graders test at the "below basic" level in math in NAEP 2000.

No one is now advocating a credible plan to fix the situation. While there are a number of lawmakers who have tried to pass legislation to address the larger problem, they have been shot down and there does not seem to be the political will to pass a fix. Even well meaning legislation is "watered down" to be virtually ineffective before it passes. In addition, we waste an enormous amount of political time and capital moving the ball an inch at a time when what we need is a touchdown. For example, no legislator can point to any facts or even a pilot study that shows that the major thrust of Bush's education bill (mandated testing) will make a positive difference. Because even if perfectly executed as intended, all the focus on accountability would show is what we already know: that our schools are failing. We don't need more indicators of this. We know half the kids in California are below "basic level" in math. The problem is not in the assessments. The problem is that there is no fix and there is no alternative that will suddenly pop out of nowhere that will work any better (charters are a mixed bag so they aren't a solution and hoping a solution will emerge is like believing in the "tooth fairy"). There is simply no place to turn and the education bill doesn't change that fact. We need to change the rules so that schools can succeed, not hold them accountable when we've never given the responsibility and authority to make the changes they need to make (for example, in California, incompetent teachers cannot be fired so if you have a school with incompetent teachers, the education bill won't help you one bit). We've never tried a major overhaul of education because superficial facelifts are easier. I have found nobody who is advocating a plan for how we can really do a major overhaul that would actually work (and could be passed in Congress). There are simply no groups in Washington advocating for a comprehensive solution that has any basis in fact that it would work if it is passed. Zero. No credible proposals. There are people with proposals that are based on speculation. There are people saying "I have the answer." Ted Forstmann thinks free enterprise is the answer. Yet when I asked him to tell me a country where that works, he was unable to name one. So he wants us to try a mass experiment on our kids?!?! Annenberg thought giving schools $500M and full control over that money for use in innovative projects would work. It ended up being a big boondoggle. The good news is that if we want to fix our schools, it's not that hard at all. In fact, the solution is so simple, that it has escaped most people. The problem with the innovative approaches of Forstmann and Annenberg is that there is no proof, no case study that their approach will work. We just need to adopt an approach where there is already a case study that proves that it works. We can't continue to experiment on our kids.

To fix America's schools, the safest and most reliable approach is to start by copying what works in other countries. We don't need rocket science to fix our problem. No new technological breakthroughs are necessary. No new paradigms for instruction need be invented. We don't have to wire our schools for the Internet. We don't have to buy all our kids computers. We don't have to spend a lot more money. It's simpler than that. The solution is straightforward: you study other countries to find out why they succeed and then you implement those techniques (with those changes which are necessary due to cultural differences) in the US. We've already done the first part: NCEE (a non-profit funded by Carnegie and Pew) studied the educational system in the most successful countries for 11 years so they know the answer. Others have figured it out too, such as the state of Minnesota (see below for a hyperlink). But (with the exception of the 200 public schools in the US that have adopted the NCEE program) we haven't done the implementation part. It's no harder than this: You copy what woks. That's how you get to at least parity with other countries. That would be a spectacular accomplishment! This is is exactly what we propose to do here: incentivize schools to adopt a small set of reforms that have been proven to work in other countries, tested and are replicable on a modest scale in the US, and have proven to ensure an extremely high likelihood of significant gains. It can be done in the US. NCEE's America's Choice program is one example that copying other countries can be imported into the US, replicated on a mass scale, and produce reliable, repeatable statistically significant positive gains. Copying what works can be done on a piece-part basis (which can be problematic) or it can be done on a whole system basis. For example, if there are different methods used in different countries that all work, you choose the system which yields the superior results (by a reasonable objective metric instead of a philosophical debate). For example, if they teach math via concept in Country A and math via memorization in Country B, and kids in Country A do better on TIMMS and have higher SAT-Math scores, etc, then you pick the method of Country A. The other way is to select one of the countries that did the best in TIMSS and mimic their entire structure, as completely as possible. A third way is to try to determine what the top performing countries had in common, and be sure to at least do that part. For example, Minnesota ran the TIMSS test on their state and wrote a short report summarizing why we fail and what the top performing countries had in common (see points #3 and #4 on the last page). There is no reason (other than political will) that we can't mimic this in the US. It's already working in the public schools that have adopted the NCEE program and there's no reason other public schools can't get on board this program or a similar program that incorporates the key ingredients of success. A common observation: everyone (including former President George Bush!) has figured out that high national standards is one of the key required ingredients if we ever hope to improve our schools. Unfortunately, neither our current President nor Republicans support this today.

Based on input received to date, it appears that to educate students effectively beyond what we are already doing today, you need 5 ingredients:

(1) a aligned system of high standards, curriculum, and assessments (which has only been successfully accomplished via national standards because it's economically and politically infeasible to work on a smaller scale -- the US has proven that over the past 200 years)
(2) qualified and effective principals and teachers who are compensated highly enough to attract the best talent and who have the necessary responsibility and authority to carry out their jobs and who participate in on-going professional development, and
(3) an effective learning environment (adequate facilities, materials, small class size, PreK program)
(4) stable funding (must be a guaranteed minimum $ per student per year) and
(5) a "business plan" that brings it all together in a predictable and replicable structure that results in statistically significant positive improvement (the America's Choice program from NCEE is one such example of a program that works; there are others).

Only Connecticut has done a good job addressing (2) for teachers. Obey-Porter (CSRD) attempted to address (5) but the legislation had to be watered-down to be virtually useless (any program would qualify) in order to pass through Congress.

The legislation I propose would provide significant on-going cash incentives to schools who commit to and are successfully adopting programs that can be shown or proven to address all five ingredients.

The most successful and proven system for education reform is NCEE's America's Choice program; it is a common-sense approach based on 11 years of studying the best practices of other countries; the data on the first 12 months of implementation in the US has just become available and as far as I've been able to tell, no program has shown to achieve better results. Yet few people have ever heard of it because NCEE deliberately keeps a low-profile (they have more business than they can manage right now)

A national incentive program that only rewards schools who are committed to (and go on to implement) the 5 key ingredients is the fastest and easiest way to get to international parity

Lastly, we should to bite the bullet now and select a set of national standards from any of the many standards that exist in the US or abroad. There is no need for a new standard...there are already plenty of excellent standards to choose from. We just need to pick the best one. States and local districts can add to these, but we must have national standards. This doesn't need to be mandated, but national incentives should only be available to those schools that adopt the national curriculum. While national curriculum, standards, and assessments are not strictly required to improve, they make the job much easier and much more efficient so that teachers can focus on teaching. Also, teaching materials and textbooks can be written which can be sold in all states, not a single state, making it far most cost effective to produce effective instructional material. In addition, more focus and attention can be made on evolving and improving curricula than if we have 50 separate standards. In fact, because even today, textbooks are only written for the standards in 3 states due to economic considerations. That means that 47 states must either adopt the standards of another state to achieve alignment. Creating a national standard would actually increase choice of these 47 states. In fact, for all states, having national standards gives the states a choice to adopt them. Our government says they are for local control, yet our government denies our states the option to make the "national standards choice." Our federal government denies our states the option to choose the most effective system for our kids by their refusal to select a set of high national standards that are comparable to other top performing countries.

Why maryland

proximity to Washington DC (can "bus" legislators to get a tour of control schools vs. schools on the program)
an enlightened governor and lt. governor who have a track record of meaningful and effective education reforms
democratic control of all 3 branches of state government

Background education research

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