State mandates as political cover
Today we’ll head straight to reader responses to Tuesday’s newsletter because they were so good and so important to ed reform writ large. This is exactly the kind of conversation I was hoping SCHOOLED would spur.
After praising phone bans, I asked:
Are phones so terrible that, like cigarettes, they should be treated as contraband in our schools? And prohibited at the state level? Is that also how you would treat, say, balanced literacy and three-queuing? What is the defining principle we should embrace so that we don’t try to micromanage everything from the state level but also encourage (or even require) schools to adopt evidence-based practices?
And boy did you have opinions!
Most tellingly, several respondents hit on the same theme: that local leaders often need the political cover of state mandates (or bans) in order to do the right thing.
That’s the take from Elliot Regenstein:
One of the arguments for the statewide ban is that there are some number of district administrators who want to ban cellphones but fear that, if they do so, there will be a backlash and their board won’t stand behind them. For those folks, the statewide ban is insulation; it’s the same kind of “cover” that states talked about providing on issues relating to accountability during the Bush–Obama years. Reasonable people can differ on whether this rationale is sufficient, of course, but I do think it’s a legitimate reason to consider a statewide ban.
Talia Milgrom-Elcott thinks principals need political cover, too:
Quick thought from the vantage point of having worked (20 years ago now!) for Joel Klein when he was Chancellor in NYC: One of the reasons you do the banning at the state or district level is because of the political heat you take for it. It can be too much for a school principal to shoulder, but if they can point to the Chancellor (or even better yet, the nameless bureaucrats in the state capital) and apologetically shrug their shoulders and say, “I didn’t have a choice,” and then do what’s right for kids, it makes it a lot easier. A school superintendent or state legislator can absorb and diffuse that heat much more easily than a principal, who could easily get ousted over it.
Todd Truitt opined on X that:
Virginia has done many good things recently in education via state laws without exemptions (science of reading, advanced math auto-enrollment, cellphone ban). Virginia public schools are better because our state legislature stepped in.
Another (anonymous) Virginian concurred:
I am typically an advocate for federalism and delegating authority to the entity closest to the issue. That said, there are district leaders who have (depending on your perspective) either grown up in the system and so are unwilling to change, or who have allegiances to teachers unions and others who may not always put academic excellence first on their priority list. And the school boards are either toothless or actually share the priorities of the superintendent.
So there’s a lot of support for strong state action across a wide range of education issues. (That was also the case at a panel I moderated yesterday at the Reagan Institute Summit on Education, featuring current or former state chiefs Cade Brumley, Eric Mackey, and Penny Schwinn.) But what’s the limiting principle? Should we just micromanage everything from the state level? Michael Horn doesn’t think so—and not just with phone policy, but issues like the science of reading, too:
Bans on teaching [balanced literacy] could unintentionally cut out, say, writers workshops, which can be valuable after a student is able to read and write (not before, as it's sadly often done); that’s my read of the research. But a ban could cut out that curriculum, for example, in a crude way.
But it naturally raises the question of what to do. I think lean harder into outcomes-based policymaking that creates a real penalty for teaching reading incorrectly (through such things as education choice/parent empowerment, test-based accountability, etc.) and lean more into teaching teachers what the evidence says about teaching reading both through the training that Mississippi and elsewhere have done to get “science of reading” implemented, but also to put pressure on ed schools to get it right. With a stick there if they don’t (also focused on outcomes whereby, over time, students have an incentive to enroll in ed programs that teach them the real evidence and therefore help them get jobs at schools that are incentivized to focus on outcomes).
I think Michael’s onto something. Whenever possible, we should rely on the old reform adage of “tight on results, loose on means.” If that doesn’t cut it—if we really need to provide political cover via state (or federal) mandates—fine, but there’s a caveat: as Rick Hess and I often say, you can force states or districts to do things they don’t want to do, but you can’t force them do those things well. So unless it’s something very straightforward—like “test all kids annually in grades 3–8 using the same assessment”—we’re going to have to sweat the details and provide a lot of “capacity” from on high, too.
Meaning: Don’t just mandate that districts ban phones—also help them do it, via extra money, expertise, maybe new technology. Don’t just mandate the science of reading—also help them do it via state-hired literacy coaches, state-vetted instructional materials, and PD.
In other words, if we’re going to micromanage from the state level, don’t just give orders, but offer capacity, too.
How’s that sound? Does ANYONE still believe in local control? Please weigh in!
More NAEP takes
The Center on Reinventing Public Education is out with its annual “state of the American student” study, which focuses on lagging NAEP scores in math. To blame, says CRPE: the math wars, grade inflation (for students and schools), a broken teacher pipeline, and inequitable access to advanced coursework.
Tom Kane appeared on the PBS Newshour to discuss record-low reading scores, which he blamed on the end of NCLB-style accountability, smartphones, and chronic absenteeism.
Mark Schneider, meanwhile, bemoaned American students’ “all time low” aptitude in STEM.
More bad news came via Chad Aldeman, who pointed out that “student achievement is down overall, but kids at the bottom are sinking faster.”
But that doesn’t mean the highest achievers are doing hunky dory. So writes my Fordham colleague Brandon Wright in his Advance Substack.
Speaking of Fordham, yours truly took to the Education Gadfly Weekly to ask how the same generation of kids who scored at record-high levels in the fourth grade managed to score at record-low levels in the twelfth grade. As everyone keeps saying (but it’s true): It wasn’t just the pandemic.
Comprehensive (and depressing) roundups of the results also came out this week from Jennifer Weber, David Winston, and Alli Aldis.
The Ed Next debate continues on regulating the federal education tax credit
Breaking with his debating partners (but agreeing with me!), Jorge Elorza calls on the Treasury Department to allow for “flexible program design” at the state level—which is smart on substance and on the politics of getting blue states to opt in.
Siding with Jim Blew (and using a few too many baseball analogies), Robert Enlow disagrees and says that Treasury should “prohibit states from adding their own regulations or creating their own new rules for the program.” He’d also refuse to let states opt in just for tutoring programs and such for public and public charter school kids.
Robert Luebke is pro-state flexibility, but for him it’s so that (red and purple) states like his own North Carolina can combine state and federal dollars for scholarships without messing up existing programs.
It’s not in Ed Next, but Maryland’s Kalman Hettleman digs into the decision Governor Wes Moore is facing about whether to opt in.
Takes on other topics
Andy Rotherham is disappointed that schools can’t compete with smartphones for students’ attention. That’s a nice sentiment but a tad naïve, as I discuss during my solo podcast this week. School has always, and will always, involve a certain degree of boredom and drudgery. Get over it! (And get off my lawn!)
American education faces four crises, argues the other Andy, Andy Smarick: student achievement; chronic absenteeism; AI; and public inattention.
Rick Hess is often asked to explain what conservatives are thinking; he tackles (paywall) a tough assignment this week with the shooting of Charlie Kirk and handles it beautifully.
Also on the topic of the terrible assassination, Ian Rowe (a Fordham trustee and charter school founder) calls on high schools to teach their students to disagree better.
Finally, on a happier note: Bruno Manno (the Fordham board chair!) calls for schools to teach young people hope rather than doom and gloom—echoing a similar argument Robert Pondiscio made a few weeks ago.
As literacy skills reach all-time lows among American students, could cellphone bans help kids return to reading? Jessica Grose thinks so. —The New York Times
California unanimously passed a (pretty good) Science of Reading bill. —KATV
The Trump Department of Education announced a “partnership” with dozens of conservative groups to promote patriotic education. As Rick Hess told Laura Meckler, “if a Democratic administration had done this, with an unapologetically progressive organization leading an unapologetically progressive coalition in concert with the Department, Republicans would be livid.”—Washington Post (paywall)
The U.S. Army’s Future Soldier Preparatory Course provides remedial athletic and academic support for potential recruits who don’t quite meet standards but boast the will to serve. —USA Today
See ya!
Mike