Showing posts with label education. Show all posts
Showing posts with label education. Show all posts

Friday, April 10, 2009

The Beautiful Tree: A Personal Journey Into How the World's Poorest People Are Educating Themselves

The Beautiful Tree: A Personal Journey Into How the World's Poorest People Are Educating Themselves. By James Tooley
Cato, Apr 09, 2009

Everyone from Bono to UNESCO is looking for a silver bullet to bring schooling within reach of the poorest children on Earth. James Tooley may have found one.

While researching private schools in India for the World Bank, and worrying that he was doing little to help the poor, Professor Tooley wandered into the slums of Hyderabad’s Old City. Shocked to find it overflowing with small, parent-funded schools, he set out to discover if they could help achieve universal education. So began the adventure lyrically told in The Beautiful Tree—the story of Tooley’s travels from the largest shanty town in Africa to the mountains of Gansu, China, and of the children, parents, teachers and entrepreneurs who taught him that the poor are not waiting for educational handouts. They are building their own schools and learning to save themselves.

Named after Mahatma Gandhi’s phrase for the schools of pre-colonial India, The Beautiful Tree is not another book lamenting what has gone wrong in the Third World. It is a book about what is going right, and it offers a simple lesson: both the entrepreneurial spirit and the love of parents for their children can be found in every corner of the globe.

India Defies Slump, Powered by Growth in Poor Rural States

India Defies Slump, Powered by Growth in Poor Rural States. By PETER WONACOTT
WSJ, Apr 10. 200

DEV KULI VILLAGE, India -- This country's path out of the global economic turmoil may start here, among a community of outcastes who dine on rats.

In Bihar, India's poorest and least literate major state, the Mushahar are the poorest and least literate. Most are farm laborers. About one in 10 can read. So impoverished is this group that they hunt field rats to supplement a deprived diet. Mushahar is Hindi for "rat eater."

But the outlook for the state's two million Mushahar has brightened in the past year. Thanks to government aid programs, more Mushahar children are attending school. Increased state investment in roads and local factories has put their parents to work. Demand for laborers has pushed up wages for field work.


Bouncing Up From the Bottom Rung

View Slideshow
The one-room primary school for Mushahar children at Bihar's Dev Kuli village, where several hundred of the low-caste Mushahar families live.

In a sign of the times, a government proposal to promote rat farming was ridiculed by the Mushahar, the very group of untouchables, or Dalits, it was supposed to benefit. They worried it would pull their children out of school and extend a social stigma to the next generation. Some protested on the streets of Bihar's capital, Patna, shouting: "We want to learn to use a computer mouse, not catch mice."

The Mushahar in Bihar are part of a political and economic shift that is building across the Indian countryside. The transformation, largely driven by development spending by national and state policy makers, will be put to a test starting next week. The world's largest democracy kicks off a month of polling April 16 in which many of the leaders behind these experiments are seeking re-election.

Growth has slowed in the new India of technology outsourcing, property development and securities trade. But old India -- the rural sector that is home to 700 million of the country's billion-plus people -- shows signs it can pick up the slack. The rural awakening helps explain why India continues to grow even as the U.S. recession drags on the world economy.

The change is largely political. In years past, many state leaders rode to power with vows to give voice to lower-caste voters. But after failing for the most part to lift living standards, these officials have been replaced in many cases by leaders who have. In poor and largely rural states from Orissa in the east to Rajasthan in the west, many new leaders have invested in health, education and infrastructure. That has set the stage for the creation of industry and consumer markets and enabled upward mobility.

It's unclear whether development spending in rural India will spark longer-term expansion. "Up till now, a lot of our growth has been bubble growth," says Nandan Nilekani, co-chairman of Infosys Technologies Ltd., a software and outsourcing company. "That makes the internal reforms even more important now, so we create momentum for future growth."

Video: Teaching India's Untouchables 3:18
India's lowest castes, the Dalits, are known for their illiteracy and deep poverty. But in rural India, something remarkable is happening: Dalit children are attending elementary school.

The rural economic rise is recent, with few figures yet available for 2008. In the five-year period ending in 2007, rural Indians' consumer spending grew faster than that of city dwellers, according to Indian brokerage IIFL. Rural India has surpassed urban centers in the number of households earning $2,000 a year, above which families begin to have disposable income.

Companies from Coca-Cola Co. to telecom provider Reliance Communications India Ltd. say rising sales in once-spurned rural areas are driving their India growth. The Indian unit of LG Electronics, which sells low-voltage appliances for power-deprived areas, expects rural areas to account for 45% of its Indian sales this year, up from 35% last year. Mahindra & Mahindra Ltd., a car and tractor maker, says it couldn't keep up with orders for its new Xylo, a cross between a minivan and SUV, in part because of surprising rural demand.

"If any one part of the economy is decoupled from the global crisis, it is India's rural sector," says Anand Mahindra, vice chairman of auto maker's parent company, Mahindra Group.


Tariff Barriers

The countryside's strength comes in part from a trade policy that free-market economists say may hurt India in the long run. Tariffs on agricultural imports are among the world's highest and may have deterred investment in rural India. But these tariffs have also sheltered swaths of the country. An estimated 88% of India's rural incomes are tied to activities inside those markets, according to IIFL.

Even slight improvements here are significant, economists say, because they build on a base of practically zero. "For so long, these states were a drag on our economy," says Surjit Bhalla, head of Oxus Research & Investments, an advisory firm in New Delhi. "Now larger rural populations can become a fillip to growth."

India's economy has held up better than most, in spite of slowing tech sales and falling real-estate and stock markets. The International Monetary Fund projects India will grow 5.1% in 2009, faster than Brazil (1.8%) and Russia (-0.7%). India is also closing the gap on China, whose 6.7% projected growth for 2009 marks a sharp decline from recent double-digit gains.

Bihar, which borders Nepal, was once a breadbasket of eastern India. But it largely missed out on the economic miracle of the last decade. In the 1990s, as India's economy expanded about 5% a year, Bihar barely grew.

Infrastructure was poor. Farm goods often rotted before reaching the market. Amid corruption and rampant crime, the state was branded India's "kidnap capital." The young left to seek education and jobs.

More than half Bihar's 83 million residents live below the international poverty line of about $1 dollar a day. Fewer than half are literate. The state attracted $167 million in foreign direct investment between 1994 and 2004, a period when India as a whole attracted $29 billion.


Government Open House

In recent years, political candidates won elections with promises to empower to lower-caste voters. But education, health and infrastructure projects were often neglected, presenting opportunity for opponents. In late 2005, a former railways minister from a low-caste background, Nitish Kumar, became chief minister, the leader of Bihar state.

Breaking from the torpid bureaucracy of his predecessors, the 58-year-old Mr. Kumar has tried to prod the government machinery into action. He hosts Monday open houses at his residence, where ministers and department secretaries are required to field public complaints. Bureaucrats must also accompany him to town-hall meetings in far corners of the state, where they pitch tents in fields. His critics say the exercises simply aim to drum up votes; Mr. Kumar says an open government serves the people and the economy.

"My message is that democracy should provide solutions to the problems," he said in an interview at his residence, where he wore traditional white linen trousers and shirt.
With an alliance led by his ruling Janata Dal (United) party, Mr. Kumar has built thousands of miles of roads. He has hired 200,000 schoolteachers and is recruiting 100,000 more. He has lured private-clinic doctors back to public hospitals.

Development projects and strong harvests have helped Bihar's economy close the gap with the national average. The state is growing at an annual rate of about 5.5%, and that is expected to accelerate, according to the Asian Development Research Institute. The number of people migrating out dropped 27% in the 2006-08 period compared with 2001-03, according to the Bihar Institute of Economic Studies, a local think tank.


Homes in a Gully

One of Mr. Kumar's toughest challenges is improving the lot of the Mushahar in places like Dev Kuli village.

Home to about 10,000 people, Dev Kuli is surrounded by farming hamlets and abuts a two-lane highway where long-haul trucks blast their air horns as they rumble toward New Delhi. The lives of all residents, from low caste to high, have long revolved around the rice and wheat harvests.

Several hundred village families are outcaste Mushahar, who live among goats, pigs and swarms of flies in a dried-out gully. The government began to build brick houses but left them without windows or doors.

As a caste the government has identified as "extremely backward," the Mushahar will be eligible for a $57 million government program that will provide families with a water supply, toilets, radios and educational support, according to Vijoy Prakash, the principal secretary for two government departments dedicated to low-caste assistance.

On Mr. Prakash's desk sits a stuffed rat, a reminder of who such programs aim to help. Yet he says past efforts have failed in part because only 9% of the Mushahar can read. "This is the group that has remained excluded from India's growth," he says.

As the sun came up on a recent day, a group of Mushahar gathered round a water pump to wash clothes. Later in the morning a long line of Mushahar children made their way up a mud embankment and, in a profound departure from community tradition, headed to primary school.

Parents complain that their children face discrimination even at Dev Kuli's one-room school for Mushahar children, the name of which translates as "Slum People's Primary School." Children from other castes attend a school nearby.

The government has repaired the school's roof in recent months, hired a new teacher and added an extra bathroom to provide privacy for girls. Even so, the school doesn't have chairs or desks, so students sit on empty grain bags and write on a cement floor covered with dirt.

Each day, a group of government-hired Mushahar, known as "motivators," roust children from their homes and escort them to class. Motivator Phulwanti Devi, a recent and rare Mushahar college graduate, says she battles parents almost every morning to release their children from farm work.

"We tell them, 'It will improve their future,'" says Ms. Devi, 25 years old.

"They reply, 'We don't see that you have such a good job.' I tell them: 'I have a diploma, and so I can get a better job. What about you?'"

Still, Ms. Devi and other motivators say attendance at the school has grown. Teachers say about 150 children are enrolled. On a recent day, the motivators rounded up about half that many.

There are other challenges. Some motivators say they haven't been paid their salaries of 2,000 rupees a month, about $40. Local officials occasionally tell teachers to skip class to conduct government work, such as counting votes at election time.

Mr. Prakash, the secretary for lower castes, says the motivators will soon be paid from funds his department has set aside. Bihar's education secretary, Anjani Kumar Singh, says a Bihar court has ruled that teachers can't skip class for government work, but admitted the order could be hard to enforce at election time.


Spicy Masala

Generating genuine business activity among a largely illiterate community hasn't been easy, either, judging by Mr. Prakash's rat-farming initiative. He estimated that three million people in the state would welcome a stable supply of the protein-rich meat.

Many Mushahar say they enjoy the meat, typically barbecued or cooked with a spicy masala, and believe it keeps their hair dark. But many resented being pushed into farming them. "If we get involved in rat farming, our children will also get involved," says Ms. Devi.

After some Mushahar protested in Patna late last summer, Mr. Kumar, the chief minister, shelved the proposal.

Yet Dev Kuli's economy has improved. The infrastructure push has created jobs building and repairing roads. That has helped bring factories to the area, say locals, including a steel mill and a cola-bottling plant. Those jobs have boosted farm wages to the point where the Mushahar won't work in the fields for less than about $2 a day, says Raj Ballabh Raji, a local farmer from a different caste.

Mr. Raji, who now works his six acres with a new tractor, notes one more sign of prosperity. "You can now find a petrol pump within a mile of here," he says in a tone of pleasant surprise. "The economy is changing."

—Manoj Chaurasia in Patna and Vibhuti Agarwal in New Delhi contributed to this article.

Monday, April 6, 2009

Sitting on evidence of voucher success, and the battle of New York

Democrats and Poor Kids. WSJ Editorial
Sitting on evidence of voucher success, and the battle of New York.
WSJ, Apr 06, 2009

Education Secretary Arne Duncan did a public service last week when he visited New York City and spoke up for charter schools and mayoral control of education. That was the reformer talking. The status quo Mr. Duncan was on display last month when he let Congress kill a District of Columbia voucher program even as he was sitting on evidence of its success.

In New York City with its 1.1 million students, mayoral control has resulted in better test scores and graduation rates, while expanding charter schools, which means more and better education choices for low-income families. But mayoral control expires in June unless state lawmakers renew it, and the United Federation of Teachers is working with Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver to weaken or kill it.

President Obama's stimulus is sending some $100 billion to the nation's school districts. What will he demand in return? The state budget passed by the New York legislature last week freezes funding for charters but increases it by more that $400 million for other public schools. Perhaps a visit to a charter school in Harlem would help Mr. Obama honor his reform pledge. "I'm looking at the data here in front of me," Mr. Duncan told the New York Post. "Graduation rates are up. Test scores are up. Teacher salaries are up. Social promotion was eliminated. Dramatically increasing parental choice. That's real progress."

Mr. Duncan's help in New York is in stark contrast to his department's decision to sit on a performance review of the D.C. voucher program while Congress debated its future in March. The latest annual evaluation was finally released Friday, and it shows measurable academic gains. The Opportunity Scholarship Program provides $7,500 vouchers to 1,700 low-income families in D.C. to send their children to private schools. Ninety-nine percent of the children are black or Hispanic, and there are more than four applicants for each scholarship.

The 2008 report demonstrated progress among certain subgroups of children but not everyone. This year's report shows statistically significant academic gains for the entire voucher-receiving population. Children attending private schools with the aid of the scholarships are reading nearly a half-grade ahead of their peers who did not receive vouchers. Voucher recipients are doing no better in math but they're doing no worse. Which means that no voucher participant is in worse academic shape than before, and many students are much better off.

"There are transition difficulties, a culture shock upon entering a school where you're expected to pay attention, learn, do homework," says Jay Greene, an education scholar at the Manhattan Institute. "But these results fit a pattern that we've seen in other evaluations of vouchers. Benefits compound over time."

It's bad enough that Democrats are killing a program that parents love and is closing the achievement gap between poor minorities and whites. But as scandalous is that the Education Department almost certainly knew the results of this evaluation for months.

Voucher recipients were tested last spring. The scores were analyzed in the late summer and early fall, and in November preliminary results were presented to a team of advisers who work with the Education Department to produce the annual evaluation. Since Education officials are intimately involved in this process, they had to know what was in this evaluation even as Democrats passed (and Mr. Obama signed) language that ends the program after next year.

Opponents of school choice for poor children have long claimed they'd support vouchers if there was evidence that they work. While running for President last year, Mr. Obama told the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel that if he saw more proof that they were successful, he would "not allow my predisposition to stand in the way of making sure that our kids can learn . . . You do what works for the kids." Except, apparently, when what works is opposed by unions.

Mr. Duncan's office spurned our repeated calls and emails asking what and when he and his aides knew about these results. We do know the Administration prohibited anyone involved with the evaluation from discussing it publicly. You'd think we were talking about nuclear secrets, not about a taxpayer-funded pilot program. A reasonable conclusion is that Mr. Duncan's department didn't want proof of voucher success to interfere with Senator Dick Durbin's campaign to kill vouchers at the behest of the teachers unions.

The decision to let 1,700 poor kids get tossed from private schools is a moral disgrace. It also exposes the ugly politics that lies beneath union and liberal efforts across the country to undermine mayoral control, charter schools, vouchers or any reform that threatens their monopoly over public education dollars and jobs. The Sheldon Silver-Dick Durbin Democrats aren't worried that school choice doesn't work. They're worried that it does, and if Messrs. Obama and Duncan want to succeed as reformers they need to say so consistently.

Wednesday, April 1, 2009

Conservatives, Public Schools, and Pedagogy

Conservatives, Public Schools, and Pedagogy. By Andrew J. Coulson
Cato at Liberty, Apr 01, 2009

I’ve received a fair bit of e-mail in response to my commentary yesterday on the recent defunding of the Bush administration’s Reading First program. Several people questioned my assertion that the program failed to yield a significant nationwide improvement in literacy. I cited a 2008 federal government report in support of that assertion, but questions were raised as to the validity of that study and other research seeming to contradict it was presented.

Taking the latter point first, it was pointed out that an EDS study of California found a positive impact to the program, as did an NWREL study of 5 other Western states. Note that there is not necessarily any contradiction between the federal study and the California and Western states studies. It’s possible that, nationwide, Reading First was associated with academic improvements in some schools, no effect in others, and lower performance in still others, resulting in the overall lack of impact reported by the federal government study. If so, it could be that schools in which Reading First proved effective are unevenly distributed around the country, and happen to be concentrated in the West.

Another possibility is that the federal study was so flawed that it failed to find a significant positive effect to Reading First when there actually was one. For the sake of argument, let’s say that this is true and that Reading First is actually working, overall, at improving student literacy nationwide. If so, what confidence should we have that it would continue to be effectively implemented in the long term, and not displaced by something else, or altered so as to become ineffective?

The answer is: not much. As I’ve noted in the case of the Follow Through experiment of the 60s and 70s, which is typical, even when a proven method is adopted in public school classrooms and yields great success it tends to be discarded for one reason or another. Since nothing fundamental has changed in the incentive structure of public schooling since the 1970s, there is no reason to believe that Reading First would buck the trend and somehow survive in perpetutity.

But all of this is of course academic, because Congress has already defunded the program. Democrats were not interested in continuing to evaluate the program to make absolutely sure of its impact. They killed it almost immediately because it is a traditionalist pedgaogical program that appeals to conservatives rather than “progressives.”

And that was the second point of my commentary: even when effective methods are implemented in public schools they remain subject to the inconstant winds of politics. If you want to find fields where better methods roiutinely displace worse ones rather than vice versa, you have to look to the free enterprise sector of the economy. Without the freedoms and incentives of the marketplace, stagnation and declining productivity are the norm. Education is no different in this regard from any other field.

And just to be clear, I am convinced by the earlier research that the pedagogical ideas behind Reading First are sound, and that when properly implemented its systematic use of phonics is superior to most of what it would have displaced. I’m simply pointing out that there was never good reason to expect a government-protected monopoly consistently implement it effecitvely, and that even if it did for some period of time Reading First would eventually have fallen victim to shifting political winds. While some may choose to disagree on the first point, the second has already come to pass.

If we want schools around the country to continually adopt and refine the best methods available, we must create the freedoms and incentives that will cause that to happen… or get used to disappointment.

Monday, March 30, 2009

Libertarian: Teacher Unions vs. Poor Kids

Teacher Unions vs. Poor Kids. By Nat Hentoff
Cato, Mar 28, 2009

The "education president" remained silent when his congressional Democrats essentially killed the Opportunity Scholarship Program (OSP) in the city where he now lives and works.
Of the 1,700 students, starting in kindergarten, in this private-school voucher program, 90 percent are black and 9 percent are Hispanic.

First the House and then the Senate inserted into the $410-billion omnibus spending bill language to eliminate the $7,500 annual scholarships for these poor children after the next school year.

A key executioner in the Senate of the OSP was Sen. Dick Durbin, Illinois Democrat. I have written admiringly of Durbin's concern for human rights abroad. But what about education rights for minority children in the nation's capital?

Andrew J. Coulson, director of the Cato Institute (where I am a senior fellow) supplied the answer when he wrote: "Because they saw it as a threat to their political power, Democrats in Washington appear willing to extinguish the dreams of a few thousand poor kids to protect their political base."

Teachers unions are a major part of that base. Among those demanding that Congress kill the voucher scholarship program was the largest teachers union, the National Education Association.

Two of the kids affected by the action, Sarah and James Parker, attend Washington's prestigious Sidwell Friends School. Their scholarships will end with the next school year. The classmates they'll be leaving will include Sasha and Malia Obama. The Obama children, of course, do not need voucher money to avoid Washington D.C.'s failing and sometimes dangerous public schools.

As New York Times columnist David Brooks noted, the congressional Democrats even refused to grandfather in the kids already in the voucher program, "so those children will be ripped away from their mentors and friends ... ." President Obama, he added, "has, in fact, been shamefully quiet about this."

Doesn't Obama at least have something to say publicly to those children and their parents when his own Secretary of Education Arne Duncan opposed the congressional shutdown of Opportunity Scholarships?

Said Duncan (New York Post, March 6): "I don't think it makes sense to take kids out of a school where they're happy and safe and satisfied and learning. I think those kids need to stay in their school."

Duncan suggests that donors provide financial assistance through graduation to those kids stripped of their Opportunity Scholarships. Perhaps our "education president," from his continuing royalties from the sale of his books such as "The Audacity of Hope," might help out.

One of the recipients of the Opportunity Scholarships, teenager Carlos Battle (VoicesOfSchoolChoice.org) said that in a D.C. public school she'd "have to think more about protecting myself than about learning."

As for the Sidwell Friends School, its headmaster, Bruce Stewart, told the Wall Street Journal that the school has welcomed the OSP students. He said that when parents get more educational choices for their children, their kids and the whole community benefit.

Virginia Walden-Ford, executive director of D.C. Parents for School Choice, offered an excellent suggestion for members of the White House press corps:

"I'd like to see a reporter stand up at one of those nationally televised press conferences and ask President Obama what he thinks about what his own party is doing to keep two innocent kids from attending the same school where he sends his?"

I wish Jay Leno had thought to ask Obama that question.

In a March 2 editorial, the Washington Post — not a conservative newspaper —summed up the Congressional Democrats' scholarship shutdown in these words: "It's about politics and the stranglehold the teachers unions have on the Democratic Party. Why else has so much time and effort gone into trying to kill off what, in the grand scheme of government spending, is a tiny program?"

The Progressive: We should stop treating our schools as businesses

Schools are not businesses. By Wayne Au, Bill Bigelow, and David Levine
We should stop treating our schools as businesses.
The Progressive, March 24, 2009

Since the early 20th century, prominent business leaders have acted on the belief that since they are good at making money, they are the most qualified people to decide how to best educate the country’s young.

Entranced by the power and efficiency of American industry, many educational leaders have looked to these businessmen for leadership and for models of operation. They have tried to govern school systems as if they were corporations, organize schools as if they were something akin to factories and orient education toward testing and tracking students toward presumed “real world” destinies.

Today’s mantra is to allow the much-ballyhooed magic of the market to solve educational problems. Thus the emphasis on consumer choice among schools through vouchers or charters or plans to pay teachers based on test-score improvements.

There are many flaws inherent in imagining that schools will work well once they adopt factory or free-market models. Perhaps most fundamental is the presumption that schools work best when they emulate business.

But schools are not businesses.

When they flourish, they are living communities defined by powerful and caring collaboration.

Students are not things to be produced. They are human beings who are learning and growing in ways that are too complex for any standardized scores to truly measure.

Nor are teachers mere robots that drill students in how to take a test. The most talented and dedicated teacher is better nourished by a supportive work culture than by narrow appeals to individual self-interest, which pit teacher against teacher.

The purposes of schooling should not be degraded into privatized preparation toward the fattest paycheck.

Clearly, schools should prepare students to earn decent livelihoods. But just as importantly, they should prepare students to look toward — and even demand — jobs that are a major source of fulfillment and creative expression.

Schools should go far beyond preparing students for work. There are many non-market (perhaps even anti-market) lessons that schools impart: They inculcate an appreciation of the arts, establish healthy habits of exercise, teach cooperation, promote citizenship and show our children how to live together peacefully.

If schools do these tasks well, students when they become adults are much more likely to participate in socially positive ways, such as creating art and music, preventing domestic violence, working for racial equality, promoting clean energy and opposing war.

We have to remember, education is a humane and human process with social values beyond the bottom line. Business leaders have no expertise in this quest, and business models do not apply.
For that matter, now that casino capitalism has imploded, isn’t it time to stop looking to the corporate elite for advice on how to run the schools? These “experts”— the bankers and corporate CEOs — couldn’t even manage the one thing they are supposed to be good at: running their own businesses.

Educators should shed their subordinate status and sense of inferiority. Schools work best when teachers — in dialogue with parents and other citizens — design the educational experience, not corporate officials.

Wayne Au, Bill Bigelow and David Levine are editors of Rethinking Schools (www.rethinkingschools.org), a quarterly magazine based in Milwaukee.

Friday, March 27, 2009

DLC: On behalf of the nation’s children, Obama is prepared to take on members of his own party and the special interests

Education reform is a defining issue. By Harold Ford Jr
Politico, Mar 26, 2009 @4:36 AM ED

President Barack Obama’s recent speech on education reform demonstrates that he is willing to put the full weight of his office behind fixing our failing schools. He called for higher standards, more charter schools, merit pay and eliminating bad teachers. When many of our urban school districts are graduating only 25 percent to 50 percent of their students, he knows that the failed methods and orthodoxies must be jettisoned for what will work.

The brave new world of the 21st century demands much more from our children. Obama’s ambitious and sweeping agenda will help educate and equip them to make the most of the opportunities created by an integrated global economy.

While there is a broad national consensus for education reform in the country, Obama expects that special interests will oppose his reform agenda. Those who do will fight vigilantly to hold onto the failed schools that shame us as a nation.

But their actions will put them against the best interests of our children and on the wrong side of history. Teachers unions and education groups have expressed opposition in the past to ideas like merit pay and charter schools. They are strongly opposed to a successful voucher program in Washington, D.C., which tragically was killed by Senate Democrats in the omnibus spending bill that passed the Senate last week.

On behalf of the nation’s children, Obama is prepared to take on members of his own party and the special interests. Along with turning around the economy, education reform could become the defining issue of his presidency.

Toward that end, the president and Secretary of Education Arne Duncan should consider hosting an education reform summit at the White House. The focus could be on what is working in public schools around the country. This list of “best practices” should be studied, evaluated and shared with principals and teachers — especially in schools that are underperforming.

He could invite education groups, teachers unions, principals, teachers and education leaders who have a proven record of reform and inform them how they could qualify for federal funding for programs that comply with the policy ideas of the Obama administration.

The genius of America is that we have always been able to overcome the challenges we face. Acknowledging our failures and focusing on methods and programs that have succeeded in educating our children are the best place to start.

It is also time we wake the sleeping giant: the parents who have children attending public schools. Alexis de Tocqueville said that people in a democracy “reign supreme.” The parents of public schoolchildren have never fully realized the power they have to bring change to underperforming schools.

With the financial support of the nation’s leading charitable foundations, Parent Teacher Associations around the country could be transformed into a national grass-roots effort to advocate for reform of our schools. Patterned after the missionary zeal and political sophistication of the Children’s Defense Fund, PTAs could be organized in school districts nationwide. Parents — motivated by wanting a world-class education for their children and being highly informed and organized — could bring persistent pressure to members of Congress to adopt an agenda of change to fix our failing schools.

What is at stake is nothing less than the American dream. To pass it on to our children and generations to come, we must restore quality and innovation to all our schools. President Obama knows that our legacy of excellence in education must be redeemed and, with his speech a couple of weeks ago, he has set us on a course to give our children the knowledge and skills they need to compete in this new and changing world.

As Americans, it’s time we think of our obligations to each other. It’s time we take seriously our collective responsibility for future generations. Providing our children — regardless of race, class or religion — with a world-class education is what binds us together and will make our country stronger.

President Obama’s plan to reform our schools will help our children live up to their God-given potential. We don’t have a moment to lose. Congress should enact his education reform proposal this year.

Former Rep. Harold Ford Jr. (D-Tenn.) is chairman of the Democratic Leadership Council.

Thursday, March 26, 2009

WaPo's Jay Mathews now calls for the end of the DC Opportunity Scholarship program

Women’s Suffrage Abandoned. “Too Unpopular,” says Anthony. By Andrew J. Coulson
Cato at Liberty, Mar 25, 2009

Reversing his earlier support for private school choice in the District of Columbia, Washington Post columnist Jay Mathews now calls for the end of the DC Opportunity Scholarship program. Why? “Vouchers help [low income] kids, but not enough of them. The vouchers are too at odds with the general public view of education. They don’t have much of a future.”

So private school choice programs work, but because they are not growing quite fast enough for Mr. Mathews’ taste we should abandon the entire enterprise? Why keep striving for total victory when can seize defeat today!

The thing is, major social changes are usually, what’s the word… oh yes: hard. Susan B. Anthony co-founded the National Women’s Suffrage Association in 1869. She died in 1906 – 14 years, 5 months and five days before passage of the 19th Amendment. If a social reform is right and just, it will inspire reformers who will fight for it every bit as long as it takes.

And even those who decide what social reforms to support based on their popularity should take note that school choice programs are proliferating all over the country. And newer tax credit programs, such as Florida’s, Pennsylvania’s, and Arizona’s, are all growing at a faster rate than older voucher programs like the one in Milwaukee. More than that, the politics of school choice have already begun to change at the state level. While Democrats in Congress had no qualms slipping a shiv into the futures of 1,700 poor kids, more and more of their fellow party members at the state level are deciding to back educational freedom.

Thursday, March 19, 2009

Instituting national standards will not solve the problems facing our schools

Let's Not Play Standards Roulette, by Neal McCluskey
Cleveland Plain Dealer, March 18, 2009

Whether it's blind hope that Washington can fix anything, a lack of ideas for reforming our crummy schools, or some other reason entirely, calls for national academic standards are increasingly loud and frequent. And while President Barack Obama stopped short of explicitly advocating for them in his first major education address, there have been several high—profile calls recently by American Federation of Teachers president Randi Weingarten, the National Governor's Association and Obama's education secretary, Arne Duncan.

But instituting national standards will not solve the problems facing our schools. Indeed, it would be like playing Russian roulette with our kids — with only one empty chamber.

What's driving this bandwagon?

The No Child Left Behind Act is a big part of it. NCLB requires schools to bring all students to math and reading "proficiency" by 2014, but leaves it to states to define what that means. This practically begs states to set weak standards in order to stay out of trouble, and has led to standards that vary markedly from state to state but are almost always very low.

Of course, NCLB isn't designed like this because it yields the best educational results. It's optimal politically. The law is structured to make federal politicians appear both tough on failing schools and dedicated to cherished local control.

But NCLB isn't the only problem. Many people simply don't trust the states, and reasonably so. As the Thomas B. Fordham Institute, a longtime national standards supporter, has repeatedly documented, even before NCLB, state standards were all too often light and fluffy, not meaty and rigorous. In 2000, the Institute gave state standards an average grade of C minus, and concluded that only five states combined solid standards with strong accountability.

Like NCLB, politics explains this pitiful performance. As Fordham wrote, "Some people seem quite content to let it [establishing strong standards] take forever. ... That will allow all the standards setters, enforcers, testers, monitors and analysts to maintain full employment, and will enable elected officials to continue to claim that they and their states are fully engaged in standards—based reform."

In light of dismal state and federal track records, why should anyone expect national standards to miraculously avoid crippling politics and end up with anything better than what we've seen so far? No one should. Knowing that only a few states have occasionally gotten standards right, trying to nationalize them would be at best a high—risk game of Russian roulette.

Just think about how education politics works. Because their very livelihoods come from the public schools, the teachers, principals and bureaucrats who are to be held to performance standards exert outsized influence over them, and strongly resist being subjected to tough accountability. Meanwhile, politicians do whatever is easiest for them, trying to be all things to all people while keeping on the good sides of powerful interests such as teacher unions and administrator associations.

Political reality simply offers no support for national standards. Likewise, national standards supporters offer no convincing arguments for their proposal.

Randi Weingarten claims that "the countries that consistently outperform the United States on international assessments all have national standards." But most of the countries that do worse than we do also have national standards, making the correlation between national standards and academic success at best pretty weak.

How about the unreasonableness of states having "50 different goal posts," as was cited by Secretary Duncan?

Certainly no child should be legally condemned to a bad school, but the fundamental problem isn't that standards differ. Indeed, since all children are unique, differentiation at the individual level is critical to success. No, the fundamental problem is the "legally condemned" part. Unless their parents can afford private schools on top of taxes, children are forced to attend government schools that, by their very one—size—fits—all nature, stifle specialization and are powerfully inclined to low standards.

The last thing we need are government—driven national standards. We must not play Russian roulette with our kids. Indeed, we need to take the political revolver out of education completely. We need to let parents control education dollars, let autonomous schools freely set their own standards, and allow competition to continuously drive standards higher. We need universal school choice.

Neal McCluskey is associate director of the Cato Institute's Center for Educational Freedom and author of Feds in the Classroom: How Big Government Corrupts, Cripples, and Compromises American Education.

Tuesday, March 10, 2009

Fact Sheet on the President's Education Proposals

THE WHITE HOUSE
Office of the Press Secretary
________________________________________________________
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
March 10, 2009

"In a global economy where the most valuable skill you can sell is your knowledge, a good education is no longer just a pathway to opportunity, it is a pre-requisite. That is why it will be the goal of this Administration to ensure that every child has access to a complete and competitive education – from the day they are born to the day they begin a career."
- President Barack Obama
Address to Joint Session of Congress, February 24, 2009

Providing a high-quality education for all children is critical to America’s economic future. Education has always been the foundation for achieving the American dream, providing opportunity to millions of American families, newcomers, and immigrants. Our nation’s economic competitiveness depends on providing every child with an education that will enable them to compete in a global economy that is predicated on knowledge and innovation.

Progress toward this goal requires a race to the top to reform our nation’s schools. It requires holding schools accountable for helping all students meet world-class standards aligned to the demands of the 21st century workforce. It requires solutions for schools to close the achievement gap, and strategies to accelerate the learning of those that are the furthest behind. It requires new reforms to promote effective teaching and attract the best and brightest into the profession. It requires a national strategy to confront America’s persistent dropout crisis, and strengthen transitions to college and career.

President Obama’s agenda will improve outcomes for students at every point along the educational pipeline.


Early Education: A Strong Foundation for Success

Research demonstrates that the years before kindergarten comprise the most critical time in a child’s life to influence educational outcomes. It’s time that our nation make the early investments that will transform lives, create opportunity and save money in the long term

· President Obama is committed to helping states develop seamless, comprehensive, and coordinated "Zero to Five" systems to improve developmental outcomes and early learning for all children.

· In the 2010 budget, Early Learning Challenge Grants will encourage states to raise the bar on the quality of early education, upgrade workforce quality, and drive improvements across multiple federal, state, and local funding streams.

· Incentive grants to states will support data collection across programs (Head Start, child care, Pre-kindergarten, and other early learning settings), push for uniform quality standards, and step-up efforts for the most disadvantaged children.


K-12: Fostering a Race to the Top

To excel in the global economy, we must adopt world-class standards, assessments, and accountability systems to upgrade the quality of teaching and learning in America’s classrooms.

· The President encourages an end to the practice of low-balling state reading and math standards, and will promote efforts to enhance the rigor of state-level curriculum to better foster critical thinking, problem solving, and the innovative use of knowledge needed to meet 21st century demands.

· He will push to end the use of ineffective "off-the-shelf" tests, and promote the development of new, state-of-the-art data and assessment systems that provide timely and useful information about the learning and progress of individual students.

· With funding provided through the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, the U.S. Department of Education will work with states to upgrade data systems to track students progress and measure the effectiveness of teachers.

Teachers are the single most important resource to a child’s learning. America must re-invest in the teaching profession by recruiting mid-career professional and ensuring that teachers have the world’s best training and preparation. We must take action to improve teaching in classrooms that need it most, while demanding accountability and performance.

· The President will teacher quality by dramatically expanding successful performance pay models and rewards for effective teachers, scaling up federal support for such programs in up to an additional 150 school districts nationwide.

· He supports improved professional development and mentoring for new and less effective teachers, and will insist on shaping new processes to remove ineffective teachers.

· The President supports a new, national investment in recruiting the best and brightest to the field of teaching, and will invest in scaling-up innovative teacher preparation and induction models.


Driving Innovation and Expecting Excellence

America’s schools must be incubators of innovation and success. Where charter schools are successful, states should be challenged to lift arbitrary caps and make use of successful lessons to drive reform throughout other schools.

· President Obama will encourage the growth of successful, high-quality charter schools, and challenge states to reform their charter rules and lift limits that stifle growth and success among excellent schools.

· The President supports rigorous accountability for all charter schools, and will encourage higher-quality processes for the approval and review of charter schools, as well as plans to shut-down charters if schools are failing to serve students well.

America’s competitiveness demands a focus on the needs of our lowest-performing students and schools. Our middle- and high- schools must identify students at-risk of dropping out, and we must scale-up models that keep students on a path toward graduation. Reform in America’s lowest-performing schools must be systemic and transformational. For some, partnerships and additional support can bring about change and drive improvement. Others may need to move beyond the late 19th century and expand the school day.

· The President supports a national strategy to address the dropout crisis in America’s communities, and efforts to transform the nation’s lowest-performing schools. 2,000 of the nation’s struggling high schools produce over half of America’s dropouts. The President will invest in re-engaging and recovering at-risk students, including those enrolled in the middle school grades.

· The FY 2010 budget will support the development and scaling of effective dropout prevention and recovery models – such as transfer schools that combine education and job training for high school students that are far behind.

· President Obama supports the acceleration of America’s lowest-performing schools, and will make a robust investment toward recovery for schools failing standards under the No Child Left Behind Act.


Restoring America’s Leadership in Higher Education

Our competitiveness abroad depends on opening the doors of higher education for more of America’s students. The U.S. ranks seventh in terms of the percentage of 18-24 year olds enrolled in college, but only 15th in terms of the number of certificates and degrees awarded. A lack of financial resources should never obstruct the promise of college opportunity. And it’s America’s shared responsibility to ensure that more of our students not only reach the doors of college, but also persist, succeed, and obtain their degree.

· President Obama’s FY 2010 budget makes a historic commitment to increasing college access and success by restructuring and dramatically expanding financial aid, while making federal programs simpler, more reliable, and more efficient.

· The President will restore the buying power of the Pell Grant for America’s neediest students and guarantee an annual increase tied to inflation. His plan will end wasteful subsidies to banks under the Federal Family Education Loan (FFEL) program, and re-direct billions in savings toward student aid.

· And it will dramatically simplify the Federal Application for Student Aid (FAFSA), making it easier to complete and more effective for students.

· The President supports strengthening the higher education pipeline to ensure that more students succeed and complete their college education. His plan will invest in community colleges to conduct an analysis of high-demand skills and technical education, and shape new degree programs for emerging industries.

Sunday, March 1, 2009

WaPo: Ending D.C. school vouchers would dash the best hopes of hundreds of children

'Potential' Disruption? WaPo Editorial
Ending D.C. school vouchers would dash the best hopes of hundreds of children.
WaPo, Monday, March 2, 2009; Page A16

REP. DAVID R. Obey (Wis.) and other congressional Democrats should spare us their phony concern about the children participating in the District's school voucher program. If they cared for the future of these students, they wouldn't be so quick as to try to kill the program that affords low-income, minority children a chance at a better education. Their refusal to even give the program a fair hearing makes it critical that D.C. Mayor Adrian M. Fenty (D) seek help from voucher supporters in the Senate and, if need be, President Obama.

Last week, the Democrat-controlled House passed a spending bill that spells the end, after the 2009-10 school year, of the federally funded program that enables poor students to attend private schools with scholarships of up to $7,500. A statement signed by Mr. Obey as Appropriations Committee chairman that accompanied the $410 billion spending package directs D.C. Schools Chancellor Michelle A. Rhee to "promptly take steps to minimize potential disruption and ensure smooth transition" for students forced back into the public schools.

We would like Mr. Obey and his colleagues to talk about possible "disruption" with Deborah Parker, mother of two children who attend Sidwell Friends School because of the D.C. Opportunity Scholarship Program. "The mere thought of returning to public school frightens me," Ms. Parker told us as she related the opportunities -- such as a trip to China for her son -- made possible by the program. Tell her, as critics claim, that vouchers don't work, and she'll list her children's improved test scores, feeling of safety and improved motivation.

But the debate unfolding on Capitol Hill isn't about facts. It's about politics and the stranglehold the teachers unions have on the Democratic Party. Why else has so much time and effort gone into trying to kill off what, in the grand scheme of government spending, is a tiny program? Why wouldn't Congress want to get the results of a carefully calibrated scientific study before pulling the plug on a program that has proved to be enormously popular? Could the real fear be that school vouchers might actually be shown to be effective in leveling the academic playing field?

This week, the Senate takes up the omnibus spending bill, and we hope that, with the help of supporters such as Sen. Joseph I. Lieberman (I-Conn.), the program gets the reprieve it deserves. If it doesn't, someone needs to tell Ms. Parker why a bunch of elected officials who can send their children to any school they choose are taking that option from her.

Wednesday, February 11, 2009

Libertarians on stimulus bill and reduction on education spending

No Cut-astrophe, by Neal McCluskey
Cato at Liberty, Feb 11, 2009

The Obama administration is shaping up to be little more than the Office of Doomsayer in Chief, at least in the early going, and it is being obediently assisted by the media. In education, USA Today gave the office a nice boost this morning by reporting on a Center for Reinventing Public Education projection that without a stimulus, states might have to cut their education spending by 18.5 percent over the next three years. And CRPE did not include a projection for local cuts, which researcher Marguerite Roza said were impossible to make.

U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan seized the moment, stating in the article that the analysis “obviously confirms what we have feared: that there is so much at stake now and we’re really trying to stave off catastrophe.”

Here we go again…

For one thing, predicting budget shortfalls is hardly an exact science. Moreover, unreported by USA Today, the CRPE analysis is based on the assumption that states will cut spending in all areas equally in response to revenue shortfalls. But in few states does anyone wield the kind of political power that the education establishment brings to bear.

Suppose, though, that total per-pupil expenditures – consisting of local, state, and federal dough – were to decrease by 18.5 percent. (Obviously, the feds aren’t going to cut funding, but let’s pretend that some sense somehow wafted into Washington and caught the pols by surprise.) Where would that put us? On par with Depression era funding? Modern day Sri Lanka or Zimbabwe?

Try again.

Unfortunately, the latest per-pupil funding data the federal government has is from the 2004-05 school year, which is likely lower than what was spent this year. But let’s use it anyway, if for no other reason than to give the Chicken Littles every benefit of the doubt. In 2004-05, the average per-pupil expenditure in the United States was $11,470. Reduce that by 18.5 percent, and you’re spending $9,348.

At what year does that put us? Adjusted for inflation, right about at 1996-97 — hardly major time travel! And compared to other industrialized nations? Still in the top six, nearly tied with Denmark, and that is comparing our average for elementary and secondary schooling with just secondary schooling –- the more expensive level — for everyone else.

Considering all of this along with the evidence that I have laid out previously showing the almost complete disconnect between spending and performance, as well as the massive bloat in the system, and such a cut shouldn’t be called a “catastrophe.” It should be called “why the hell didn’t we make such a cut years ago?”

Tuesday, February 3, 2009

Commentary on US News and World Report on Vouchers

US News and World Report Gets it Wrong, by Andrew J. Coulson
Cato at Liberty, Feb 02, 2009

US News and World Report contributing editor Bonnie Erbe writes that “school vouchers… have already drained federal tax coffers of hundreds of millions of dollars.” With all due respect, this is not true.

There is only one federal school voucher program, in Washington, DC. That program is serving fewer than 2,000 children with an average voucher amount below $6,000, for an annual price tag under $12 million. It is in its fifth year of operation. Perhaps Ms. Erbe can explain to her readers how 5 * $12 million can be made to exceed $100 million?

Of course, even if the value of the vouchers to date did exceed $100 million, that wouldn’t mean it had “drained federal coffers” as Erbe claims. That’s because, as I wrote in the Washington Post and on this website, DC’s public schools spent $24,600 per pupil in 2007-08 — more than four times the average voucher cost. Much of the DC school system’s budget comes from the federal government, and the DC voucher program is saving taxpayers a great deal of money for every child it serves in place of the exorbitant district schools.

Ms. Erbe’s misrepresentation of the cost of federal vouchers calls into question the reliability of the US News and World Report. A correction is in order.

Thursday, January 15, 2009

Progressive Policy Institute: Memos to the New President

Memos to the New President, by Progressive Policy Institute
January 15, 2009

Mr. President, your election was a testament to our country's amazing capacities for self-correction and reinvention. Those national qualities have manifested themselves not a moment too soon. With our country mired in war and a worsening economic crisis, Americans across the political spectrum sense that hyperpartisan grandstanding is a luxury they can no longer afford. They seek a new era of competence and comity, in which our people reach across old divides to find new solutions to the urgent challenges of our time.

The purpose of this book is to offer you and our fellow citizens some constructive ideas on how we can meet those challenges. It is a collection of short policy pieces the Progressive Policy Institute (PPI) published as Memos to the Next President starting last September, before we could be sure who our next president would be. Our work continued through the transition, and this book -- with the updated title of Memos to the New President -- collects all 25 memos in a volume that we respectfully commend to your attention.

Taken together, these ideas constitute a new progressive agenda, one that we believe is entirely consistent with your vision for transcending outdated boundaries, forging new coalitions, and governing in a spirit of radical pragmatism.

This is a "big ideas" book in the tradition of PPI's Mandate for Change (1992) and Building the Bridge (1996). Those earlier volumes spelled out the policy innovations that defined President Clinton's modernizing agenda during the 1990s. This new collection features the creative contributions of a wide array of analysts and policy experts. It reflects PPI's belief in the power of ideas to overcome the forces of inertia, stasis, and partisan orthodoxy that hold our country back.

We do not seek merely to advance ideas for the sake of novelty. This book rests on the same core tenets that have always undergirded PPI's work: equal opportunity for all -- and special privilege for none; a social compact based on mutual responsibility and civic reciprocity; and the vigorous defense of individual liberty at home and abroad.

We see the progressive tradition in American politics as the continual struggle to apply and modify such classically liberal ideals in the light of changing economic and social conditions. At a time when uncertainty haunts our financial markets, our Main Streets, and the international landscape, the need for modernized approaches to policy and governance is as great as it has ever been. You have called for transformative change, and this book is intended as a source of ideas for making it happen.

Memos to the New President is organized into six main parts, each of which pertains to a broad challenge facing your administration and our country. We start where any serious project for fundamental change must start -- a candid assessment of our broken political system. Americans' confidence in Washington has reached low ebb. Restoring trust in the basic integrity and problem-solving capacity of our federal government is the indispensible prerequisite for sweeping reform. In his memo, Ed Kilgore offers creative proposals for reducing the power of special interests in Washington and restoring genuine political competition in congressional elections.

Part II of the book grapples with what may be the most urgent substantive challenge you face: saving America's free-enterprise system from the greed and myopia lately exhibited by far too many financiers and corporate leaders. You will find here sage advice from Gene Ludwig, former Comptroller of the Currency, for building a new regulatory framework to stabilize U.S. financial markets. Other memos offer novel ideas for stimulating our ailing economy; rebuilding the nation's aging transportation infrastructure; overhauling our regressive tax code; and rebalancing the intergenerational compact embedded in Social Security. All of these prescriptions share an emphasis on reviving a dynamic, entrepreneurial economy that can once again deliver broad-based national prosperity.

While addressing the concerns of the middle class must be central to our economic policy, we must also redouble our efforts to help low-income Americans enter the middle class in the first place. Part III focuses on reviving our nation's promise of upward social mobility for all. This section of the book offers a set of highly specific prescriptions for closing persistent gaps in educational attainment. It also explores ideas for bringing low-income men into the workforce, and for ending the scourge of childhood hunger in the wealthiest nation on Earth.

Part IV presents strategies for building a clean-energy economy and restoring America's leadership in green technology innovation. By now, there is a broad consensus on the need for energy policies that can heal our natural environment, rebuild our job base, and wean us from dependence on foreign oil. These memos offer specific plans for accelerating development of clean cars; unleashing the economic benefits of energy efficiency; contending with the problem of nuclear waste; and creating a new international body to foster cooperation on climate change and other threats to the global commons.

Part V addresses a longstanding challenge for progressives: spelling out clear, credible principles on national security and foreign policy. Sen. Evan Bayh proposes a Nuclear Fuel Bank to curb the spread of nuclear materials and technology. Other memos call for spurring economic growth and opportunity in the Greater Middle East; modernizing the concept of collective security; reforming the military acquisitions process; striking a better balance between military and civilian power; and establishing a legitimate legal framework for trying terrorist suspects.

Finally, in Part VI, we delve into one of our most vexing domestic challenges: a health-care system that absorbs about one-seventh of our national wealth; imposes onerous financial burdens on the public and private sectors; and leaves more than 45 million of us uninsured. These memos elaborate a broad argument for reducing costs by raising quality. They affirm PPI's longstanding support for covering all Americans, while suggesting ways that reform can pay for itself. The book ends with an in-depth analysis by David Osborne of how the nation's governors can join forces with you and the federal government to break the back of medical inflation -- an essential step toward creating a distinctly American approach to universal health care.

We would like to conclude by thanking our PPI colleagues, particularly Debbie Boylan, Beth Kennedy, Tyler Stone, Maria Bello, Alice McKeon, and Moira Vahey. We also thank the writers who contributed to this collection. These memos are offered in the hope that they may reinforce the call for transformative change at a time when our country faces daunting challenges. The last election was an expression of this nation's keen desire to meet those challenges in a new spirit -- a constructive spirit that transcends the tired ideological distinctions of the past, and seeks to renew the finest elements of our national character.

The book is downloadable here

Monday, January 12, 2009

Joel I Klein and Al Sharpton: Charter Schools Can Close the Education Gap

Charter Schools Can Close the Education Gap. By Joel I Klein and Al Sharpton
It is not acceptable for minority students to be four grade levels behind.

Dear President-elect Barack Obama,

In the afterglow of your election, Americans today run the risk of forgetting that the nation still faces one last great civil-rights battle: closing the insidious achievement gap between minority and white students. Public education is supposed to be the great equalizer in America. Yet today the average 12th-grade black or Hispanic student has the reading, writing and math skills of an eighth-grade white student.

That appalling four-year gap is even worse in high-poverty high schools, which often are dropout factories. In Detroit, just 34% of black males manage to graduate. In the nation's capital -- home to one of the worst public-school systems in America -- only 9% of ninth-grade students go on to graduate and finish college within five years. Can this really be the shameful civil-rights legacy that we bequeath to poor black and Hispanic children in today's global economy?

This achievement gap cannot be narrowed by a series of half-steps from the usual suspects. As you observed when naming Chicago superintendent Arne Duncan to be the next secretary of education, "We have talked our education problems to death in Washington." Genuine school reform, you stated during the campaign, "will require leaders in Washington who are willing to learn from students and teachers . . . about what actually works."

We, too, believe that true education reform can only be brought about by a bipartisan coalition that challenges the entrenched education establishment. And we second your belief that school reformers must demonstrate an unflagging commitment to "what works" to dramatically boost academic achievement -- rather than clinging to reforms that we "wish would work."

Those beliefs led us to form a nonpartisan coalition last year, the Education Equality Project (EEP), which seeks to greatly narrow, if not eliminate, the achievement gap. Mr. Duncan has signed on to the EEP, as have most of the nation's leading big-city school superintendents, such as Paul Vallas in New Orleans, Michelle Rhee in Washington, D.C., and Colorado's new U.S. senator, former Denver superintendent Michael Bennet. Mayors Richard M. Daley in Chicago, Michael Bloomberg in New York City, Adrian Fenty in Washington, D.C., and Cory Booker in Newark, N.J., are on board, too. Several prominent Republicans, including John McCain and Newt Gingrich, have joined our coalition as well.

EEP seeks to ensure that America's schools provide equal educational opportunity, judged by one measuring stick: Does a policy advance student learning? It's an obvious litmus test. Yet the current K-12 school system is designed to serve the interests of adults, not children.

EEP's mission thus turns out to be unexpectedly radical -- and we have run afoul at times of longtime Democratic allies. While we recognize that the No Child Left Behind law has numerous flaws that need correcting, we staunchly support NCLB's core concept that schools should be held accountable for boosting student performance. Dismissing the potential of schools to substantially boost minority achievement, as is now fashionable in some Democratic circles, is ultimately little more than a recipe for defeatism. Like you, we also support expanding parental choice. High-performing urban charter schools such as the KIPP (Knowledge Is Power Program) schools are showing that minority students can close the achievement gap if given access to high-quality instruction.

Finally, our coalition also promotes the development and placement of effective teachers in underserved schools and supports paying them higher salaries. By contrast, we oppose rigid union-tenure protections, burdensome work rules, and antiquated pay structures that shield a small minority of incompetent teachers from scrutiny yet stop good teachers from earning substantial, performance-based pay raises.

What can you and your administration do to close the achievement gap? Although the funding and oversight of public schools is chiefly a state and local responsibility, you still retain the power of the bully pulpit. Beyond expanding federal support for charter schools, as you have proposed, we would urge you to press forward with two other, far-reaching policy reforms.

First, the federal government, working with the governors, should develop national standards and assessments for student achievement. Our current state-by-state approach has spawned a race to the bottom, with many states dumbing down standards to make it easier for students to pass achievement tests. Even when students manage to graduate from today's inner-city high schools, they all too frequently are still wholly unprepared for college or gainful employment.

Second, the federal government should take most of the more than $30 billion it now spends on K-12 education and reposition the funding to support the recruitment and retention of the best teachers in underserved urban schools. High-poverty urban schools have many teachers who make heroic efforts to educate their students. But there is no reward for excellence in inner-city schools when an outstanding science teacher earns the same salary as a mediocre phys-ed instructor.

Study after study shows that good teachers have, by far, the highest impact on student learning. "The single most important factor in determining [student] achievement is not the color of [a student's] skin or where they come from," you stated on the campaign trail. "It's not who their parents are or how much money they have -- it's who their teacher is." We couldn't agree more. To close the achievement gap, start with a three-word solution: Teachers, teachers, teachers. The fierce urgency of now cannot be allowed to dissipate into the sleepy status quo of tomorrow.

Mr. Klein, chancellor of the New York City Department of Education, and Rev. Sharpton, president of the National Action Network, are co-chairmen of the Education Equality Project.