The High Frustration of Higher Education

You know that high performance sports car that you have sitting in the garage?  No, not the Mustang; I'm talking about the Jaguar.  Sure, Jaguar is a mark of excellence and fine British engineering, but let's face it--Jaguar's are forever needing service and finding parts is a real pain.  So what do you do?  You can't exactly put Ford Focus parts into a Jaguar.

I imagine working in the admissions department at the University of Phoenix must be a lot like owning a Jaguar.   You have this elite university, but where can you get students who are capable of taking advantage of the world class education you can provide?  The public schools have failed.  That's been clear already by the less than stellar record that University of Phoenix graduates have in the job market.  The problem rests with our nation's public schools.

One thing that education reformers and advocates for the status quo both fail to see is the harm that poor public schools do cause for institutions of higher learning like University of Phoenix.  Even statistics showing what percentage of students are college ready fail to show what percentage of students are ready for elite schools like UP.

I believe that UP realized this as well and that's why they've spent a lot of money advocating for reform.  Programs like Education Nation have been sponsored very heavily by UP because they know quality education doesn't only prepare quality students, it prepares Phoenixes.

Congressman Jack Kimble on Empowering Parents Through Quality Charter Schools Act

Earlier today, I came off the campaign trail to sign important providing education choice for millions of parents across the country.  Charter schools are the wave of the future in this country by providing the selectivity of private schools, but doing it at tax payer expense.  Charter schools are freed up of the bureaucratic nightmare of environmental and fiscal regulation and aren't required to grant their teachers due process as a result fully 17% of charter schools perform better than public schools and some of them have become multi-million job creators.

One of the greatest things about charter school supporters like hedge fund operator Whitney Tilson is that they don't limit their contributions to one political party.  It's not unusual to be at a pro-charter cocktail party and find liberals like Jared Polis socializing with strict conservatives like myself.   It's this spirit of putting children first across party boundaries is one of the reasons that this bill had such huge bipartisan support.  Of course, a lot of wining and dining on vintage wine and one and a half pound lobsters stuffed with one pound lobsters didn't hurt.

Charters have been under an increasing microscope lately after test scores in Chicago and Los Angeles both showed them as doing considerably worse than the neighborhood schools so hopefully this extra cash will help them to put the nasty press behind them.  Above all, this act was for the kids.  It isn't so much choosing a better alternative as much as it is providing a choice and isn't that really what we all want.  While charters will take money away from neighborhood schools, that may enable 20 or even 25% of charter schools to start outperforming neighborhood students and isn't that something we can all get behind, even if we're not getting a large check to cover our campaign expenses?

The New Target for Greedy Teachers? Baseball

The teachers of Chicago have it pretty easy.   They have those luxurious Summers off for their European vacations, they're done with work by 3:00, and they have the relatively easy job of educating and monitoring 35 children at a time.  Unfortunately, in Chicago this year, it is going down as the year of the greedy teacher.

With a new go get 'em mayor in office who isn't going to waste his time in office getting along with people, the Chicago Teachers Union has been up in arms.  Recently, the President of the Teachers Union was so rude during discussions with the mayor had no choice but to get in her face and drop a coupe of f-bombs on her.  It's no wonder that Alderman Ed Burke is so embarrassed by the Chicago Teachers Union.

The latest target of the Chicago Teachers Union is the Chicago Cubs, whose owners find themselves with a dilapidated old ballpark called Wrigley Field.  I don't know a lot about baseball, but I do know fans aren't going to pay good money to sit in an old eye sore of a ballpark and if fans won't go out to see ballgames, then bars and restaurants in the area around Wrigley will resemble a ghost town, and the Cubs will move to another city like Indianapolis or Charlotte.  If the city of Chicago doesn't step up this could happen as soon as next season.  It seems unreasonable to expect the billionaire Ricketts Family that owns the Cubs and their ballpark to be expected to pay for such a large burden themselves.

What the Cubs are asking for is $200 million to rehabilitate the stadium and to make it  a place worthy of stars like Alfonso Soriano and Kerry Wood to call home.  Unfortunately, the greedy teachers also want money.  First, they want the 4% raise that the city agreed to pay them in their current contract which would cost the city abut $70 million.    The city has said that it expects teachers to work about 300 extra hours next year and it would like them to start working 90 minutes longer this year.  In exchange for working 300 extra hours, the city would be willing to give them $1200, but the greedy teachers won't budge.  They want to be made more and they want to actually get to have a say in how the extra time is used.

What the teachers don't realize is with the money it would cost the city just to pay the teachers $20 an hour for the extra 300 hours would be enough to put a dome over Wrigley Field and probably with enough change left over to honor former Cub greats like Rick Reuschel and Steve Swisher with their own statues.  Rahm Emanuel put it best when he said that for too long, the children of this city have gotten the shaft.  Long time failure cannot be rewarded when there are important civic concerns like the Cubs in need of money. 

Meet Tim Graye--Our Newest Transformation Academy Associate

It was 2008 and I was vaulting through the air in the middle of my back flip at the Nationals.   I realized at that very moment how fortunate I was to be part of a dynasty.  At Hawaii Pacific, we didn't just win cheerleading championships, we revolutionized cheerleading at the college level.

I just joined another team that I believe will revolutionize education.  That team is Last Stand for Children First and they've already been doing some great work.  I know, because I spent two years as a teaching fellow where I taught high school chemistry and was head cheerleading coach in the Chicago Public Schools. 

I look at my role with LS4C as still being a cheerleader.   No matter what we get accused of or the disagreements we might have individually with our organization, it's important that remain overwhelmingly positive.  This is a long hard struggle that we face as education change agents and the only way to excel is to keep a positive attitude.  Who better to do that, then a former college cheerleader.  At nearly 26 years old, I am the second oldest person in our entire office and even though I'm new, I'm sort of the old man around here, but it's important this this reform be led by people of all ages under 35.

In Chicago, I've had the chance to see the greedy face of the teachers union and it saddened me.   Just this year, they turned down a raise of 2% this school year to teach only 29% more hours.   This extra time is necessary.  Chicago already has scandalously short school hours and the city is adding a new core standards test that will have to be administered 4 times this year.  The schools will never have time for the increased testing, yet alone the increased test preparation time until we lengthen the school day.

Give me an E
Give me a D
Give me an R
Give me an E
Give me an F
Give me an O
Give me an R
Give me an M
What does it spell Ed Reform...and it's about time.

Extending School Day is The Answer to All Our Problems

Last Stand for Children First has been involved in the education reform movement in Chicago since last winter when we were asked by Mayor elect Rahm Emanuel and business leaders in the Civic Federation to help with their grassroots efforts to fundamentally change education in the city.  This effort came to fruition with the passage of SB7 and now with Mayor Emanuel's attempts to impose a longer school day.

The teachers are being most uncooperative really.  After having their 4% raise voted down because the schools didn't have enough money, we promised to find a way to give them half their raise if they would only work another 327 1/2 hours.  That's a tidy little $3.08 per hour for a beginning teacher.   When Jimmy Carter signed the law in 1977 to raise the federal minimum wage to $2.90 an hour in 1979 and $3.10 an hour in 1980, I don't think he realized he was insulting teachers with this paltry raise.  Throughout the early 1980s beginning fast food workers and dishwashers lived on $3.10 an hour and were happy to get it.  However, teachers with their fancy degrees somehow think a 2% pay increase for 29% more work is beneath them.

In 1982, my father was working at Burger King making barely over $3.10 an hour, but he didn't complain.  He worked hard and after he graduated from Dartmouth, he became a very successful Hedge Fund Manager.   Surely, teachers can step up their effort just a little as well.

Many babysitters get only $5 or $10 an hour to watch one child.  It doesn't seem unfair to me to ask a teacher to supervise a room full of students.  After all, when you get to 35 or 40 students, they mostly just supervise themselves or at least the bigger students are able to impose their will on the smaller ones.

Even more insulting is that Chicago Teachers Union President Karen Lewis refused to sit on the board to discuss how the extra 90 minutes would be imposed.  Is it too much to ask that she provide a little political cover by making it appear that the teachers were consulted?   After all, in exchange she would be on the panel giving the teachers in the city just much say in how the extra time would be spent as Father Michael Pfleger of St. Sabina’s Church or Robin Steans of Advance Illinois.

The value of a longer school day should be obvious.  Chicago grammar schools have 946 hours instruction in a year.  Houston grammar schools have 1305 hours of instruction per year and New York has 930.  Once our students are given that extra time, they will have 4 years more instruction than students in other big cities like New York and Los Angeles by the time they graduate.  Only then will Chicago students be able to rise to the level of education juggernauts like the Houston Public Schools.

New York Judge's Ruling Throws Fantasy Season Into Disarray

At the Last Stand for Children First offices this afternoon, things were going crazy.  Staffers were on their computers and phones trying to get the latest on a state court ruling in New York that ordered the New York city school draft to release the test data on all it's public school teachers.

This announcement immediately threw our Fantasy School Draft into disarray.  For the last few months we've all been scouting the Los Angeles school district statistics trying to put together our dream faculties for this season.  We always hold the draft on the weekend after Labor Day when classroom rosters have settled in a bit.  After all, one low achiever being transferred into your teacher's class can cost you valuable points.  Our season was very competitive last season and I believe I only lost because two different teachers were saddled with less than perfect students who were counseled out of Green Dot schools.

It’s just as exciting as other fantasy sports and gives you a rooting interest in standardized tests that you don’t normally care about.  The advantage of starting the league now, is the schools are fairly settled and you are less likely to have a student transfer or a surprise pregnancy spoiling your fantasy season.


The rules are rather simple.   You must select a faculty consisting of the following teachers:

• Two for each of the 8 primary grades
• Two substitute teachers taken from any grade
• One ESL teacher
• One Special Ed Teacher
• We are looking forward to President’s Physical Fitness results being online soon so that we can draft gym teachers.
• One Principal 
• One Assistant Principal

The draft can last for 4 or 5 hours before 24 schools in our fantasy school district are filled.  I was let down by my 6th and 3rd grade faculty.   Fortunately, there is no such thing as tenure in Fantasy School and they have been let go.   There are several scoring options, but we go by student improvement.   I have been pouring through newspapers and websites looking for  the teachers who I think will be on the top of their games.   I found out one of my early favorites is pregnant and another one who is from Teach for America is hedging her bets on staying in the classroom for the entire year.  It's always dicey when you select TFAers in their second year.

Because we go by the amount of improvement, taking the best students isn’t enough.  If some teacher out in the wealthy suburbs takes on  a homeroom where 95% of the students are meeting or exceeding standards, they can only get you 5 points and in fact they’ll probably go down.   On the other hand, a teacher at an inner city school who brings up students from 30% meeting standards to 52% meeting standards is going to win you the pot at the end of the year.  I try and look for young teachers who are still worried about their job and more likely to teach to the test.

With New York city teachers included, we now have very little time to scout a whole new group of teachers.  I have a few friends in New York that I hope I can hit up for scouting reports.  

1997 Studey Reveals the Power of Mediocrity in the classroom

As the new school year starts, millions of parents across this country are hoping their child will have an excellent teacher to help guide them through their new classes. However, never research into the data from a 1997 study of Dallas schoolchildren by Last Stand for Children First shows that a mediocre teacher may be better.


The 1997 study "Teacher Effects on Longitudinal Student Achievement" was not only a real page turner, this landmark Dallas study by Jordan, Mendro, and Weerasinghe has been frequently cited in the media by education reformers as evidence that a student who has 2 superior teachers in a row will probably go on to greatness, while a student will two poor teachers in a row, will probably be going through parks with a pointy stick looking for soda cans to sell to recyclers. Michelle Rhee in particular enjoys using this quote to show just how important great teachers are.


In a recent study funded by Last Stand for Children First and conducted at the Ponds Institute of Statistical Research has concluded that in the 1997 study who had 2 excellent teachers and one mediocre teacher in consecutive years showed a median score 8% higher than a student who had 3 excellent teachers in a row. This is groundbreaking research conducted on thousands of children, but little is known as to why mediocrity has such power.


Researchers conjecture that a mediocre teacher gives students a chance to relax, nap and generally catch a breath or possibly that mediocre teachers enhance the ability of students to develop filters to figure out what their teachers are saying that is actually important enough to listen to.


For more information on this landmark study, please see the following blog post, which while written from an anti-reform perspective summarizes the methodology very well and provides a link to the raw data itself.

What the data does show is that elevating the teaching profession and attracting excellent candidates and nurturing them to  become excellent teachers may not be the best strategy in increasing student learning.  Further study is needed to examine the negative impact of further excellent pedagogy on a student who has already had too many excellent teachers.  It also seems clear in layoff decisions, mediocre teachers need to be preserved as a priority, especially in a school that already has an issue with too many excellent ones.