Voices from the Campaign

A Proposal for Teacher Pay in Ohio

2008-09-23T10:00:00-04:00

With Ohio getting more and more attention these days, I wanted to highlight the recent policy brief from the Buckeye Institute on teacher pay.

The detailed report addresses one of the top challenges for schools in Ohio and the nation: recruiting and retaining quality teachers.

The report proposes bonuses ranging from $4,000 to $10,000 for teachers, including special education teachers, who improve student achievement or teach in at-risk schools or hard-to-fill subjects. An outline of the plan is below.

My experience at the Los Angeles Unified Schools District taught me that across the board pay raises are not the best way to incentivize teacher performance and encourage student success. I applaud the Buckeye Institute for exploring other options.

I leave you with this, from the report’s conclusion: “In the short term Ohio can build the positive incentives of merit pat into compensation plans through the use of bonuses. The prototype of such a plan elaborated in this report provides a guide for the creation of merit pay plans. Years of simply increasing teacher salaries have brought little in return. It is time for Ohio’s policymakers to consider changes to the way the state pays its teachers.”

Arrival in Denver

2008-08-24T11:58:11-04:00

After a mere three hour flight from DC, we arrived last night in Denver for the start of the Democratic convention. Over the course of this week we'll be hosting multiple events in the "Mile High City" highlighting the need for education reform. For those of you who couldn't make it to Denver with us, we'll be posting videos and pictures from the events here.

In just a few hours, the team will be heading to the Denver Art Museum for our ED Challenge for Change Event. The event will bring together some of the leaders in education reform including Gov. Roy Romer and Chancellors Joel Klein and Michelle Rhee, to name a few. Read more about our events here in Denver at EDin08.com

Check back later for pictures. For now, test your knowledge in math and science against 8th graders throughout the world.

Posting from RAGBRAI -- Day One

2008-07-20T10:10:00-04:00

As a part of ED in '08's field efforts in Iowa, the campaign sponsored a team for RAGBRAI, the [Des Moines] Register's Annual Great Bike Race Across Iowa. Throughout the race, we'll have postings from our riders and field team members.

Today's post comes from Kyle Hewitt, an elementary school teacher and rider in the ED in '08 RAGBRAI team.

Day 1
Missouri Valley, Iowa to Harlan, Iowa
59 miles, climb 3,797 feet

Known for its rolling hills, Missouri Valley was the starting point of our ED in ’08 team’s journey across the state of Iowa. Our first night before the ride we engaged in great conversations and shared the ED in ’08 pillars with riders from around the world. Everyone always asks us, “Who is Ed?”

This provides our team the perfect segue into telling everyone who we are and we’re doing! The setting turned out to be a real challenge when talking to other riders. The town is on the mainline of the Union Pacific Railroad, and with four crossings in town and a Union Pacific Train coming through every few minutes. Train whistles are a part of life in Missouri Valley -- although residents don't seem to notice the whistles, the riders sure do -- especially when we’re trying to sleep! Time to get some sweet corn rolled in butter before bed.

Until tomorrow – Kyle

Gov. Romer Gets Press in Los Angeles

2008-05-01T14:30:11-04:00

Our chairman, Gov. Roy Romer, sat down with one of our funders, Eli Broad, on the KPCC show "Air Talk with Larry Mantle" to talk about why education needs to be discussed more in the 2008 election. Listen to the segment below.

Below, another clip of Gov. Romer on the radio, this time on KFWB

Lastly, here is the segment from KTLA that reported on the ED in '08 campaign.

Question of the Week 2: Impact of Blogs

2008-04-29T10:06:20-04:00

Question of the Week: What impact have blogs had on the education debate?

Guest Answer from Joanne Jacobs, author of "Our School: The Inspiring Story of Two Teachers, One Big Idea and the Charter School That Beat the Odds," blogs on education at joannejacobs.com:

This election was supposed to be about Iraq. It's turning out to be about who's more in touch with working-class Americans. In touch, but not clingy.

Education hasn't claimed much serious attention. Everyone's for it but nobody has articulated a clear sense of how they'd change or continue federal education policy, now built around No Child Left Behind, to help students succeed. Barack Obama has been telling black audiences that parents have to push their children to work hard in school. But that's not a federal policy.

So the effect of education blogs has been . . . let's say subtle. There are dozens of wonk blogs discussing national education policy, as well as thousands of blogs by teachers and parents (homeschoolers and public schoolers) looking at education from the classroom and home perspective.

Principals and superintendents are blogging. Students are blogging. I just hope someone's reading.

All these conversations about local, state and national education issues are healthy. Concerned citizens are becoming informed citizens. Certainly, Americans don't want to delegate education to the experts. Everybody has an opinion.

However, I see no consensus on the major issues: testing, teacher pay, maintaining order, federal vs. local control, etc. Education bloggers and blog readers support different ideas about how to improve our schools. A candidate who was reading the blogs wouldn't get much of a sense of where “the people” are. Except for zero tolerance, which almost everyone thinks is idiotic, they're all over the place.

Perhaps the most we can hope is that politicians will come to believe that a lot more people care about education than they've listened to in the past. Education doesn't belong to the teachers' unions, the school board association or even the PTA. A much wider range of voices are being heard.

But I don't expect education bloggers to reach the hallowed status of Soccer Moms or Debt-ridden Dads. Not this year, at any rate.

Gov. Romer on CNN Radio

2008-04-23T13:49:26-04:00

Our chairman, Gov. Roy Romer, appeared on CNN Radio to talk about the 25th anniversary of A Nation at Risk and the ED in '08 report we released identifying the distressing lack of progress in the education reform movement.

Listen to the clip below.

Question of the Week 1: Obstacles

2008-04-17T13:46:11-04:00

Question of the Week: What obstacles will the next administration face in education reform?

Guest Answer from Dan Brown, author of The Great Expectations School: A Rookie Year in the New Blackboard Jungle.

With the bipartisan passing of No Child Left Behind in 2002, Washington granted itself unprecedented power over American public schools. Something needed to be done to address the country’s widening achievement gap, and in the bleary wake of 9/11, the egalitarian talking points of NCLB hit all the right political notes.

But the devil was in the details and execution, as the law delivered unfunded mandates and unprecedented emphasis on high-stakes testing. Rep. George Miller, Democratic chairman of the House Education Committee, has said, "No Child Left Behind may be the most negative brand in America."

A scheduled reauthorization in fall 2007 never got out of draft form in committee. Now the 44th president will inherit a fracas of competing ideas on how to provide leadership for fixing this broken law.

Washington can not— and should not— administer all schools by satellite control. However, the president can— and must— use the bully pulpit to push for legislation and initiatives that attend to the root, on-the-ground issues in schools.

Here are three big ones where the president must jump in the fray:

Strengthening teacher recruitment and retention.
- Half of teachers leave the profession within their first five years on the job, and the stats are even worse in urban settings. This rate of turnover is costly in dollars and student achievement. The president can push to make teaching a more attractive and sustainable profession by supporting teacher salary raises, student loan forgiveness, and the establishment of more first-rate teacher preparation programs. When our country values teachers more, we will see the fruits in our students’ achievement.
Expanding student assessment beyond high-stakes testing.
- Our kids are getting tested to death (or apathy), with many students beginning rigid test prep curricula as early as kindergarten. There are myriad ways to measure student achievement that are far more accurate and far less reductive than one be-all, end-all test. Implementing a range of progressive assessments would involve trusting schools and teachers more, a trust that should be regularly earned via local oversight and independent quality reviews.
Providing for students’ needs in order to meet standards and soar beyond them.
- Many students need more from their schools than several hours of daily classes. As budget cuts sweep the country, after-school programs, arts education, and smaller classes are on the chopping block. The president can address the importance of making schools inclusive places by funding a range of extracurricular expenses. This would include early childhood education (taught by certified teachers), school-based healthcare, lower student-to-teacher ratios, athletics, student mentoring, and academic tutoring. Students need these things, and are too often forced to go without them. This investment can stem other problems like the dropout epidemic, teen pregnancy, child obesity, juvenile delinquency, and the cradle-to-prison pipeline.

Addressing these needs will require a lot of will; the status quo isn’t cutting it. The next president needs to face these challenges head-on in order to help make the promise of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness a reality—not a political illusion— in every American school.

Dan Brown can be reached at danbrownteacher@gmail.com.