PILOTed

Is this how presidential education policy should be made?

Any candidate for the presidency of the US must be able to sound knowledgeable on every important issue. How did Barak Obama go about doing that?

 

Cathy Toohey worked as a volunteer on the Barak Obama campaign to help with the education platform.

 

Cathy was one of 200 field workers (correction from Cathy: there were 2000 volunteers for education.  Those 2000 were subdivided into state groups to report to the education policy group member with certain state responsibilities and they in turn reported into the campaign.) reporting to the central committee on education. Each field worker was responsible for an area. They checked local media, schools, websites, and organizations for educational issues in their region. Cathy’s region was rural Iowa. Her job was to find out:

·         What were the education issues

·         What was working

·         Where were the problems

·         What did rural Iowans want to do about them

·         What was being reported about education locally

·         What were the differences between their issues and national, suburban, or urban issues

·         Which of their issues were being addressed and which exacerbated by state and national policies

·         Which of Obama’s ten education principles resonate with the local population

 

Here are some of the things she found about rural issues, and Iowa’s in particular:

·         In Iowa, 40% of students are in rural schools, but rural schools only receive 22% of federal funding; nationally, rural enrollments are about 20% of the school population and 40% of the schools.

·         Most of national education funds and policy are geared toward urban schools; that’s where the money is, and that is where most of the Title I funds go.

·         Schools are much more a part of the community in rural settings; many members of the community attend and root for school teams, and go to school events like plays and concerts.

·         Teachers live, are known, and participate in the community, differently from urban and suburban schools, where the teachers usually are not part of the community they teach in.

·         AYP (Adequate Yearly Progress) is an issue in rural schools, but not nearly as big an issue as in urban schools.

·         The biggest issues are a) finding teachers in hard-to-staff areas like math and science, especially given the lower pay scales that they can offer, and b) closing the achievement gap for students with disabilities and students from low income families.

·         Having the resources to help children who need help is a key concern; if there are three children in a small, rural district that need help, that is both an economic hardship and a difficult area to staff.

·         About half of young children in rural areas are in center-based day care, which is not that different from the 57% nationwide, so investing in early education, a key element of Obama’s education platform, is a concern in rural areas, too.

·         Teacher turnover is less an issue in rural areas; probably because teachers are not as meticulously controlled, teaching is less stressful, and teachers are part of the community they teach in.

·         Diversity (racial, language, and cultural) issues are not as major as in urban schools, but are a growing concern. Caucasians are just over 80% of the rural school population, but minority enrollment has grown by over 50% over the last five years.

·         The average rural school in Iowa has 200 students.

·         With small schools and large distances between schools, professional development is an issue; how are you going to get a group of elementary teachers together for training if there are only three within 100 miles.

·         Curriculum alignment to standards is considered a key solution, and is perceived as a reason districts have been able to meet NCLB goals.

·         Access to AP classes is difficult.

 

Cathy took her information, just as the other 200 education volunteers did, and regularly reported to the central education committee, who compiled all of the reports and communicated with Obama.

 

So, rather than relying primarily on a few hand-picked experts, the Obama campaign mobilized field researchers, analyzed data from a variety of sources, used the data to make communications and decisions, and then verified those policies and decisions with more data from the field.

 

Sounds like a sensible, rationale approach to making decisions and carrying out policy.

Education and and the Democratic National Convention

This post is not about the Democratic platform, or the role of education within that platform.

To what extent can the Democratic Convention itself be incorporated into education? Wouldn't this give students a chance to better understand the US political process and explore views on the more important political agendas of our day?

One person leading the way is our friend, Rita Ferrandino.

Rita is working with Metro State College of Denver to offer a free course on the convention that can be used in high school or college classes. This course offers students the ability to examine the events of the convention from different perspectives, including education, election issues, healthcare, and the Iraq war. Students are assigned readings and multimedia, and then participate in discussions on any or all of those issues. Teachers can offer closed sites for just their classes, or they can join the larger community.

It will be interesting to see the results from this course:

• How many classes used the course?

• Did the course help students learn more about the political process and issues?

• What did we learn so that we can construct other topical course materials even more effectively?

Do any readers know of other examples of materials from current events being structured for effective use in the classroom? What's worked well?

Rita is also keeping a blog on the convention, at dnceducation.wordpress.com. Among her entries is a video of her discussing the role of science initiatives in the Obama education planks.

Rita is at the convention as a delegate from Florida, and is one of three delegates being featured by the NY Times in their Meet the Delegates series (after a 30 second commercial).

In real life, Rita is a co-founder and principal of ARC  Capital Development and a sponsor of the first Congressional Briefing on Science Education as Executive Director of the Elementary Science Coalition.

We hope the course proves to be a success.

One more thing. People often ask me if they can see pictures of trips I go on. My wife and I just got back from a fantastic trip to Chile. If you are interested, here are the pictures and commentary.

8 Questions for Stan Collender

Early this month, at the AESA conference in Tampa, Florida, I heard Stan Collender speak. Stan made the US budget seem interesting and relevant to all of us in education. It was scary.

Stan has been called “the one-stop shopping center for budget-process analysis,” and amazingly, he follows the federal budget as a hobby. While he writes for The National Journal, and is often used as an expert by practically every large news organization, Stan is Managing Director at the DC office of Qorvis, one of the leading PR firms in the nation, www.qorvis.com.

My conclusions from listening to Stan’s presentation and talking with him on the phone:

• Don’t look for any new education initiatives to be funded in this coming election year.

• Expect that there will be no agreement on any education bills that need reauthorization this year.

• Look for moderate decreases in federal funding for education over the following year or two, no matter who wins the election or how much they say that education matters.

• Find ways to motivate parents to talk to and visit the local offices of their senators and representatives; it’s the best hope for education funding to improve our education system.

Stan, you gave a great talk at the AESA conference, why educators should care about the federal budget, and how it is likely that funding is going to be reduced. Can we start out by you giving us 4 reasons why the federal government is likely to decrease the amount they spend for education over the next three years?

Deficit: the deficit is rising, there aren’t too many places to look for saving; education is always an area that gets looked at for savings.

Other needs being perceived as higher priority: military, Iraq, Afghanistan, veteran’s health, energy. When you have troops being fired at, that takes about the highest priority.

Inertia: it is possible that in the 2008 elections that there will be a big enough Democratic win that Republicans can’t filibuster, but it is likely not enough to be big enough to stop filibusters. It is more likely that Republicans will have enough to filibuster, which will continue the lack of movement we are seeing today.

Economic slowdown: related to the deficit. If there is an economic slowdown, and congress needs a stimulus package, money for education does not provide immediate stimulus, like a tax cut, or a job bill.

Are there any countervailing arguments that the federal government might increase funding?

The big one is a Democratic takeover in 2008. There may be push from a Democratic White House for more dollars. But, Democrats can push back on an increase for education because they can get away with it more than Republicans can.

Currently the federal government is spending about 9% of total K12 education expenditures, a total of about $38 billion. Historically, it’s been somewhat between 4 and 6 percent. What do you think this 9% will be reduced to?

A flat percentage doesn’t relate to the need, and it doesn’t say where the money is going.

Why is education such a political football? Everyone has been educated. No one wants to see the US fall down on education. Business is a big proponent of education. But relative to everything else it is easiest to cut; education is 1/5 of everything in the budget after entitlements and military.

I’ve heard the president say that the budget deficit will be eliminated by 2011, why can’t we just continue doing what we are doing until then?

The deficit will not be eliminated by 2012 and President Bush won’t care because he won’t be in office anyhow. He won’t be around to see it. Even if he is right, the national debt is the real problem, it reached $9 trillion for the first time; interest payments are hitting records, and that puts pressure on all other spending, particularly education.

That statement about the budget being eliminated is just wrong. It is already going up. The statement is based on assumptions that are not true; none of the assumptions are based on us having a presence in Iraq. That’s about $250 billion a year to fight the war. And the president is saying there is likely to be a permanent presence in Iraq, that’s going to be around $10 billion a year.

One more example, this assumes that there is no fix to the AMT tax (Alternative Minimum Tax). After this year, it will be fixed, because 30 million Americans will be affected and they are going to demand that it be fixed. That’s another $50-60 billion a year.

Those are just two of many examples.

All politicians say they value education, but you’ve made the case that, despite all trends pointing to US education lagging other nations, they will be reducing, not increasing spending. Are they lying?

Value education relative to what? In a perfect world with unlimited resources they would be spending a whole lot more than they are now. But this is an imperfect world and always will be.

Educators and companies in education are not making the type of money that financial, pharmaceutical, defense, and telecom companies are, so they don’t have the resources to influence politicians the same way. What can they do, and how effective can they be in advocating for education?

It’s not the educators; it’s the parents. Parents are the best grass roots in the world; every district has kids in school. Get the parents out. They cannot match the lobbying dollars, they need to use their votes. The problem is that they do not take advantage of what they’ve got. Organize at PTA meetings. No one has to come to DC, they just can go to town meetings, or the local offices of their representatives.

They don’t even need to organize, if tomorrow 10 parents show up at congressional local office that would have a substantial impact. If a congressman knows constituents are watching how he votes on education, he will be watching ed too.

What organizations do you see making the greatest impact on increasing, or at least holding the line on decreases, for federal support of education?

The ed community in DC is a strong lobbying presence; ASEA, SIIA, to whatever, they have the ability to get to members of congress, they have to get to the congress people.

Are there particular areas, either geographically or by type of aid, that you think will be likely less hit than others, or even likely to increase?

One group that tends to suffer are career colleges. They are not as appreciated. Also, there will be changes in student loans.