MADAM SECRETARY, as you well know, American education suffers from more than its share of posturing, invective, hype, and spin. All that noise too often drowns out lessons that experience might otherwise teach. When we look at the George W. Bush or Barack Obama education legacies, for instance, it鈥檚 all too easy to find glossy PR or ad hominem critiques. Much harder to find are analyses that tease out practical lessons. In our new book, Bush-Obama School Reform: Lessons Learned, we tried to identify those, with the aid of a double handful of thoughtful analysts more interested in seeking insights than in scoring points. In this memo, we鈥檝e sketched four key takeaways that might help inform the Education Department鈥檚 efforts today.
1. Uncle Sam is good at making schools give tests and at promoting research and reporting, but lousy at making schools improve. Your rhetoric sometimes suggests that there鈥檚 nothing Washington does well when it comes to K-12 schooling. That鈥檚 not the case. Indeed, your critique is most compelling when it recognizes that there are some areas where Washington has a useful role to play. The legacy of No Child Left Behind is instructive. NCLB yielded a wealth of data on how students were faring in reading and math. NCLB created a uniform, consistent national framework for testing鈥攜ielding a boom in transparency, research, and data-informed practice. It was NCLB鈥檚 鈥渁dequate yearly progress鈥� measure, its remedies for 鈥渓ow performing鈥� schools, and its legacy of top-down compliance that were defective, requiring unwieldy standardization and putting an undue faith in bureaucratic routine.
Takeaway: When it comes to federal guidelines governing school discipline or addressing state plans under the Every Student Succeeds Act, don鈥檛 simply denounce the federal role or grudgingly bow to procedural requirements. Rather, move forward with the recognition that federal efforts can be a boon for transparency and research. At the same time, keep explaining, over and over, that Washington may be good at making schools perform simple tasks, like giving tests鈥攂ut is poorly equipped to steer more complicated improvement processes.
While it may be tempting to pursue a big win, such a path would exact a huge cost."
2. Nationalizing a policy can make things tougher for state-level coalitions. When the Common Core State Standards or Race to the Top-style teacher evaluation took on the veneer of 鈥渘ational鈥� initiatives, backed by directives from the U.S. Department of Education, these became fixed in the public mind as Washington鈥檚 handiwork. This made it tougher for local leaders to credibly argue that their approach was sensitive to the local context鈥攏o matter how true that might be. Given that the educational and political dynamics are different in New Jersey and Nebraska, and that Washington is disliked almost everywhere, this invited blowback鈥攅specially in places where the president was unpopular.
Takeaway: America doesn鈥檛 need a 50-state effort on school choice. The lack of federal leadership has allowed school choice advocates in places as different as California, Arizona, Louisiana, and Indiana to build powerful, broad-based coalitions that don鈥檛 suffer from the need to rally around a dictate cooked up in President Donald Trump鈥檚 Washington. While it may be tempting to pursue a big win, such a path would exact a huge cost鈥攖arring the issue, making coalitions more fragile, and potentially doing more to stymie school choice than to stimulate it.
3. Public officials are forced to operate on political timelines, but those timelines can undermine reforms. Rebooting policies, training 糖心动漫vlog, revising instructional materials, and changing what happens in classrooms is a slow, frustrating process, especially when the goal is competence and not merely compliance. Yet, political realities lead officials to think in terms of expedited timelines. Elected officials want results in time for re-election. Appointees to the Education Department know that they have only a few years to make their mark. NCLB and President Bush鈥檚 Reading First program sprinted out of the gate, only to be hobbled by myriad design flaws that weren鈥檛 immediately apparent. The Obama administration pursued teacher accountability even as new standards and tests were being rolled out and value-added assessment was still being pioneered鈥攍eaving little opportunity to work out the kinks.
Takeaway: This is one place where your distrust of Washington serves you especially well. The Bush and Obama teams were racing to implement a raft of new federal initiatives, and those wound up tripping over one another. As you look to move forward on higher education reform and your efforts to promote 鈥渞ethinking鈥� in K-12, you鈥檒l do well if that deliberate and measured impulse continues to guide you.
4. It鈥檚 politically potent to wrap education advocacy in the garb of 鈥渃ivil rights,鈥� but doing so carries costs. Casting school reform as a civil rights issue, a hallmark of both the Bush and Obama years, has lent the cause heft and urgency. It also, however, has made it harder to accommodate practical concerns about how reforms were working. After all, civil rights enforcement is a moral absolute. Once that flag is planted, any perceived softening on testing, accountability, or school improvement鈥攅ven when necessary and appropriate鈥攔isks being depicted as a 鈥渞etreat鈥� on civil rights. This rigidity magnified NCLB鈥檚 impact in the early years, but it also ensured that the law鈥檚 provisions would eventually become less tenable, and thus less sustainable.
Takeaway: The power of framing school reform in terms of civil rights cuts both ways. More importantly, it is at odds with the kind of bureaucratic humility that you have sought to bring to the department. Try to resist the temptation to use claims that your stance is the only one consistent with a respect for civil rights. Avoid using that as a cudgel with which to promote school choice or higher education reform.
Madam Secretary, we know that your job looks a lot easier from the outside. But it鈥檚 also the case that there are lessons which it may be easier to see from outside than from within. So, if you鈥檒l permit, we鈥檒l close with a final thought. There鈥檚 great pressure for those in your position to say: 鈥淲e have to do something!鈥� But the hard lesson is that clumsy action in Washington can poison the well for promising ideas and undermine ongoing efforts, and that restraint is sometimes the wisest course.
