A Decade of Learning: Education Reform in Massachusetts
Accomplishments, Challenges & Strategies

May 1, 2003

Keynote Speaker
Chester Finn, President, The Fordham Foundation

Panelists
Jeff Howard, Founder & Chair of the Board, The Efficacy Institute, Inc.
Larry Myatt, Director & Co-Founder, The Fenway Institute
Michael Ronan, Chief Operating Officer, School Works

The following is a summary, not a verbatim transcript, of the opening plenary, "The Future of Education Reform: Standards, Markets and Professional Reforms. What Have We Accomplished? Where Are We Headed?" The forum was co-sponsored by MassINC's Center for Education Research & Policy and New Skills for a New Economy Campaign and hosted by FleetBoston Financial.

Event Transcript

MassINC, Acting Director, John Schneider: Welcome. Next month marks the 10th anniversary of the passage of education reform. The idea was simple: more money should lead to higher performance and more accountability. Implementing the law has been hard work, with no shortage of controversy. Our goal is to look at what we have achieved and to think about new strategies. We look to make sure every citizen has the tools to succeed. That's what our new skills campaign is about. [Mr. Schneider thanked corporate sponsors]

FleetBoston Financial Foundation, President, Gail Snowden: It's a pleasure to welcome you to Fleet. This is a much-needed discussion and is sure to yield some ideas. Massachusetts is emerging as a strong national model for public education reform. We are seeing progress in terms of academic achievement. Fleet's commitment to education has always been strong. Our relationship with MassINC spans many years. We are committed to making a real difference. As a community partner, we understand how far public education has come. Now let's begin the next decade of learning.

Center for Education Research & Policy, Executive Director, Paul Reville: These conversations are designed to be thoughtful and stimulating. It's gratifying to see so many people out today. Ten years after the act was passed it can still draw a crowd of this size. It is a testimony to our success and how important the subject is. The reason we put the meeting together is straightforward. It has been ten years. This is the boldest set of changes maybe in the 20th century. Brown v. Board of Education set a standard for education nationally. The education reform act sets a vision of excellence for every child. We need to celebrate our successes and identify and tackle the future challenges. This session will go until 9:20 am. We have three workshops: finance, accountability and strategies for secondary education. They will conclude at 10:30. At 10:45 am, Governor Mitt Romney will address us. The plenary session begins at 11 am. So let's look at the future of education reform and what we have accomplished. There are three schools of education reform - standards, markets and professional requirements. The panel will consider where we are and what we have learned. Our keynote speaker will address the national context.

Fordham Foundation, President, Chester Finn: Happy anniversary Massachusetts. It's a season of anniversaries. On Saturday, we hit the 20th anniversary of the nation at risk report. It's not bad to treat those anniversaries as brackets for the reform we look back on and as perhaps launching pads. Accountability is the hottest word in education. In historic terms, it's a rather recent development. The demand for it rose when people were discontented. We demanded to know who's in charge here and who will fix the problems. The commission that issued the risk report got the country's attention and re-oriented our thinking from inputs to results and performance. When education entered the 80s, it was largely occupied with resources and discrimination. The commission said, hold on, kids are not learning enough and let's look at results. We asked where the buck stops. If this were a restaurant review, we would now be focusing on whether the food is delicious. If the food is no good, we ask whose job is it? Mainly we focus on what's going on in the kitchen. We have tried a thousand different things. There are three ideas. Some people favor a fourth: trusting the system to fix itself with more resources. That approach violates a central truth about education - there is no direct connection between resources coming in and results going out. That's not to say we can have results with no resources. I won't pursue the fourth approach.

Chester Finn addresses the audience.

The first is professional norms and expertise. Think of it as trusting the experts. The main force comes from deference to leaders in the field and peer approval. Several versions of this are at work in Boston. Embracing professional accountability is not unlike joining a religious sect and holding oneself to its tenets. Corridor conversations talk about surmounting hurdles placed by bureaucrats. The second strategy is standards based. Think of it as trust but verified. It commands the spotlight at national summits and legislative corridors. It can be fairly termed the law of the land, and the law in Massachusetts. It's a top down externally mandated system with consequences. It's meant to alter individual actions. It comes from outside the system and mostly outside the profession. The third idea is the marketplace. Call it trust the customers. It's the most controversial. Schools answer to clients through market dynamics. What could better concentrate the mind than doing a good job? It remains the most controversial because it employs a flexible definition of public education.
The theories often co-exist in the real world. All three often operate at the same time. All three strategies are difficult. None is a slam-dunk. Standards-based reform is getting a workout. It's difficult to reach agreement on standards and tricky to establish tests and consequences. You see this in Massachusetts in relation to MCAS. Even Massachusetts has been loath to impose real consequences on educators and schools. The tough part is focused on kids. Standards-based reform does tend to boost achievement. It's really painful though. Some standards are easing and delaying standards. Even after the standards are set, huge problems derive from establishing tests with high stakes. Kids tend not to have lobbyists. Imposing consequences on them is easier to do.

There are a zillion efforts to make sure charter schools do not become too numerous. If Fox were constrained as to how many people watched it, CNN would not have to do a better job to maintain market share. This is not a field where experts get a lot of respect. Parents and taxpayers don't have huge trust in education experts. Some are wedded to notions that rely more on hope. What all this says is none of the three strategies has so proven itself as to be ready for universal adoption. The versions tried so far have been limited in scope and duration. Professionalism has had the longest run. The experts influence decisions. Consider the rule that only certified teachers may be employed, but are not held accountable for performance.

Standards-based reform is a favorite of policy makers. Only a few states have done a good job and much dispute still surrounds its effectiveness. No Child Left Behind relies on all states doing what Texas did. No Child Left Behind needs to be taken seriously. But whether it's going to work depends on a lot of assumptions. We have to treat it as an important and bold experiment. As for market-based reform, experiments have been small and short lived. The average charter school is three years old. Private vouchers have served to fill empty seats in private schools. The research is still unclear on the effects of school choice on student achievement. The right measure is academic gains, happy or not. We don't know which approach works best. The entire education accountability edifice is not strongly built. It is precarious.

Education experts sometimes know what they are doing, but we see many promoting dubious ideas. All three accountability systems can misfire badly. Each hinges on the integrity of those in charge and on ground rules that create a fair system. We are in a naturally occurring experiment with accountability. The combinations vary a lot from state to state and school to school. The most interesting will turn out to be blends and hybrids. From afar it's messy and unsettled. It's less risky to live with the messiness than to impose a single system. The hybrids we may have barely seen in action. It's too large and the country is too varied for any one theory to gain universal support. Washington will do its damnedest for standards-based reform. So long as the nation remains at risk, reforming the education system must remain atop our domestic agenda. The surest way to keep it there is to make everyone feel accountable.

The Efficacy Institute, Inc., Founder & Chair, Jeff Howard: Standards and accountability are not always popular with all crowds. Just because conservatives support it, it's not wrong. I found I agreed with much of what Chester said. I have always been a results-oriented guy. If you couldn't measure it, it didn't count. I look for ways of measuring. I found 20 years ago there were none. I started talking about outcomes and results, but it was abstract. I moved to focus on improvement. That was a little better. I moved to relentless focus on improvement and then grade level performance, which was a function of standardized tests, which I think are an abomination.

Finally I came across the term proficiency. Standards-based reform put out this term. It meant knowledge of the subject area plus application skills. I discovered late in life that I was a standards-based reformer. I believe it is the way to go. Trust in experts has not been shown to get results. There are boutique results but not large-scale results. The approach opposes the demand for results. I have heard prominent people say the push for results will take away from the teacher to teach as he sees fit. It would undercut autonomy. The approach has absorbed a huge proportion of foundation funding, with little to show for it. It has undercut other approaches.

(Left to right): Ed Moscovitch, Mark Roosevelt, and Blenda WIlson listen to the panel

Trust in the market has a great danger of leaving the present social structure in tact. People who have been led to believe they don't deserve much will not get very much. The United States does not believe in pure Jeffersonian democracy. Given the political realities, the market approach could have won if it had shown results. It just had shown results for poor kids, except in isolated cases. We need clear focuses on targeted outcomes, in this case proficiency. It ought to be the target for kids. Set a target and build consensus for it. Build belief that the target can be hit, that the mission can be accomplished. In poor communities, there is little belief that kids can reach the high targets.
And third, use data to draw changes and strategies. You can build a movement within communities. Having a proficiency standard as a target is a very important piece. Accountability provides leverage for communities to put real pressure for change on dysfunctional cultures. We have schools that have really gone awry. I hear teachers say I taught the material, they just didn't learn it. The accountability piece gets rid of that and allows parents to actually demand learning from kids and adults.

Fenway Institute, Director & Co-Founder, Larry Myatt: How much can we trust the improvement of our schools to the very people drawn to them? Inspiring kids are drawn to inspiring teachers. I agree with the contention that educators do not command respect or enjoy clout. Parents generally like teachers and schools, but frown on wastes of taxpayer's money. They have an insatiable curiosity about children but accept four report cards and a lineup of scores in the Boston Globe. Test scores are not viewed as partial measures, but ultimate indicators. It's a hierarchical system and teachers are at the bottom.

There are teachers who believe we can improve the schools as they are, and others that believe schools are anachronistic and in need of a deconstruct to reconstruct. Teaching to the test - in history I have seen it four ways. History shows scores climb upward but it's a matter of time before the scores are recalibrated. We as teachers know we are not getting at the real issue - what we are offering and what inspires kids to real learning. The silver bullet approach - mastery learning, site-based management, block scheduling, writing across the curriculum -all are good ideas.

Most approaches have been conducted as compliance style initiatives that fail to earn the hearts and minds of those who implement them. They end up in the recesses of our minds. I am kind of a school is broken person. We have to get it back on track. I was involved with three charter school efforts. I had high hopes, but for the most part the dream has yet to be realized. The bloom seems to be off the rose. Where are the spectacular innovations? They have been the victims of difficult laws. Leaders are distracted by the search for profits. They face the dilemma of paying teachers what they are worth or buying computers or paying the rent. Most of the charters resemble small traditional high schools. How do we stand? We have raised the sense of urgency about our schools. We have mobilized the business community. Teachers are focused and on point and are working harder than ever. What's not positive?
We are reaching the point of a compliance holding pattern. We are bumping up against the need to make fundamental changes and many don't see it happening. People are looking at new curriculum alignments. It's harder to innovate in a time when we need it most. For teachers, there is too much to teach. Last but not least, we recommend creating more small schools, convert more large high schools to smaller ones. Scale is important. It lends itself to professional conversation and accountability. Let's implement the multiple assessments that education reform called for. Free the charters. Get the content standards leaner. Offer more autonomy for more accountability. It's time to use the focus we have with reform to develop stronger constructs for schooling.

SchoolWorks, Chief Operating Officer, Michael Ronan: The notion of restaurants and eating and providing fuel to your body and fuel to your life, the restaurant business however, though you have many choices, restaurants are a highly regulated business. A market is any system that enables buyers and sellers to bargain. In Massachusetts, the market is a combination of the three aspects that Chester Finn spoke of. We have created, within constraints, choices for consumers.

I will speak about the Massachusetts market. In terms of dollars, it's a huge market. Day program expenditures exceed $6 billion. The choices break down into three. First school choice, allowing students to move between districts that accept students. There are constraints - 2 percent of total enrollment. Thirty percent of districts participate and last year 7,000 students participated and $40 million followed. There are two types of charter schools, Commonwealth and Horace Mann. They expect to enroll 18,000 students. There is a wait list of 12,000 students. Students in Malden, Springfield and Boston are on those waiting lists. This year $121 million is following charter school students. Between school choice and Commonwealth charter, we are in excess of $160 million of the $6 billion. Horace Mann has 2,100 students and 300 on wait lists. The notion of supplementary services to students is intriguing. The parent is supposed to make the choice of provider. Government has constructed a framework to qualify providers. In the end, parents and providers strike a bargain and the money follows from the government.

Companies are highly invested in this niche. Where are we after ten years? It looks like 4 or 5 percent of students will make some choice to access something different with public funds. There are still great opportunities for choices that have not yet been fulfilled. There is room for students to move in school choice. Horace Mann schools are a great promise. Supplementary services are well capitalized and have sophisticated providers. Looking ahead, there are three things to focus on. First what do children need to know to be successful? Who can best provide the products and services? How can we ensure that all children have equal access?

Paul Reville: This was intended to look at the macro picture. The rest of the program looks at specifics. We are committed to a civil discourse. The idea of hybridized combinations was mentioned. What's an ideal balance? How do we maintain a peaceful coexistence of these strategies? How do you envision these camps with devout followers working together?

Chester Finn: I am not sure you want to try the United Nations again. We have genuine honest to God differences at the adult level. There is a lot of lobbying going on. I don't know if the Legislature in this state is a forum for civil discourse or not. In some states, it's not. You need to keep the ground rules that allow the three ideas to have some traction and show their stuff and develop hybrids. The choice options rattled off amount to 4 percent of the kids. This is pretty small potatoes still. The professional options are also pretty constrained and small. Everybody has this tough balancing act. If we can keep an experimental mindset and look at evidence rather than just the interests, we will know a whole lot more in ten years than we know today.

Jeff Howard: My crystal ball tells me that when all is said and done, public education is going to win. Unions will play an important role working with members and bringing them around to realities. The country is going to give public education another big chance.

Michael Ronan: Every child only has one year as a first grader or second grader. We cannot experiment with that. On the other hand, the genius of America is to experiment along the way. When the dot-com boom was booming the bricks and mortars was doing its best every day.

Larry Myatt: We really need innovation. The unions need to be on board. They are getting there. Small schools, opportunities, and choice. We need focused experiments.

Paul Reville: Do the policy makers have the attention span to stick with us for more experimentation?

Chester Finn: No one is in office 12 years after taking office. They won't be governors or commissioners when things become binding. I worry a little about timelines interacting in an unhelpful way. I worry about the propensity to let things stretch out ad infinitum with consequences that never quite arrive. On the other hand, 20 years is a long run for a domestic concern to stay atop the public priorities. There's plenty of attention being paid.