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Claus,

Great post. I love your concept of the "same shrinking rolodex." There is also a need for outside the Beltway perspectives on ed reform stories, especially in the national, DC-based media. Some of your superintendent ideas would fit the bill. So would the voices of actual teachers. Imagine that!

"Principals who don't eschew conflict won't do very well unless they know how to build support for their reforms." The same applies to everyone in schools. Some things you have to fight for. And you can't be afraid to stand up for your principles. But mostly, life's too short. You've got to go around problems.

Also, if I recall, the percentage of Blacks who strongly disapprove of Rhee is 44%. That's the big story. You can't run a system that is overwhelmingly Black after you've lost the confidence of Black parents.

Which gets back to the gullibility of the press accepting D.C.'s claims on test scores. The recent NAEP gains, if I recall, were all in the top ten percentile. The Achievement Gap continues to grow. Rhee has been more successful in riding the wave of gentrification than addressing the much tougher challenges of poor schools - especially poor secondary neighborhood schools. To take on those challenges, you really have to have a knack for building coalitions.

We need to get back to the first rule of politics. Its better to have people in the tent urinating out than outside the tent urinating in.

The shrinking Rolodex also mandates that when interviewing conservative Christians, that it must mean it's time to call Fred Phelps. :)

Thanks, Liam. Teachers would indeed make some good interview candidates in a piece like that. And I'm always surprised that some of the other superintendents out there--like Beverly Hall--aren't in the news a bit more.

Thank you, as well, John. I agree that the knack for coalitions and collaboration is critical, though it can be tough in cities with the longest and deepest histories of strife. You're right that white students experienced most of the NAEP gains in DC--though I'm not sure that's a result of gentrification--so achievement gaps did increase. But students of color also made gains. Loved the tent image--A lot of people in Washington are on the receiving end these days, for better and worse.

Hi, Mrs. C--No one's rolodex has to be THAT big.... 

I was mesmerized by the CBS piece. This is what everyone in the national media now thinks about public schools? If so, our core beliefs about free, quality schooling in America have been eroded to the point where we think we're going to be saved by taking experienced educators out of leadership roles and substituting business-style economic management models.

Am I getting that correct? The less experience in actual schools, the more oppositional, skeptical and dogmatic, the better?

Jack Jennings would be an excellent alternative spokesperson on education policy issues--or perhaps he's already been labeled "Minister for Rationality and Optimism" or some such. Sheesh.

Nancy, I had a similar reaction to the business model approach, though I think that was more a function of the CBS interpretation than the Harvard model. As I understand it, the Harvard program blends biz-school and ed-school wisdom. Given who's on the faculty, I can imagine that students are fed a business-only diet. Yes, we can learn real lessons from the business community--I used to work for a nonprofit that revolved around that very issue--but ultimately we have to draw real distinctions between businesses and schools.

Many of the business reps I've dealt with over the years have understood that, but that message doesn't get filtered through new stories like the CBS segment. (That said, the CBS piece did include interesting tidbits it let fall by the wayside as it pursued its rather narrow thesis.) I wonder how we can avoid the all-or-nothing thinking that makes it into the soundbites.

I also think that schools can learn a great deal from the (vaguely defined) business model--its failure/rebuild cycle, sticking to a core mission, investment in R & D and human capital, honestly looking at data and so on. What bothered me was the impression left at the end of the CBS piece: thank goodness that the Harvard Business school is now taking on this national failure of educational leadership.

There have been plenty of higher ed initiatives to improve ed leadership, especially in challenging urban public schools--and what they've largely come up with is using scripted curricula to raise test scores, their benchmark for success, and getting rid of veteran teachers in favor of cheap, manageable newbies. When you see a comprehensive, long-term plan to improve urban schools (like Harlem Children's Zone) the business folks tell us that it's "too expensive" for the results gained,(something they never say about incarcerating youthful criminals, as Geoffrey Canada points out).

What I found so depressing about the CBS piece being watched by millions who assumed it was the whole truth.

My first time participating. :-) How do we get CBS to run pieces that have the other voice represented? Did anyone watch John Stewart when he had Bill Gates on? I was disappointed to hear John say that we may have to fire some good teachers to get a good educational system. He was basically saying unions need to change. Or at least that's what I understood him to be saying.

Did anyone watch CNN's session when DL Hughley was honoring his teacher that made a difference? It was a public school educator, and once the educator started talking about public schools getting a bad rap, they cut him off. The session was on Black America.

How do we get the press to do their job correctly?

Nancy, I think the CBS piece's handling of the Harvard program was typical of news stories in just about any field: Find an interesting approach to a problem, and recast it as a silver bullet. For years, we've all seen the stories about miracle cancer breakthroughs--the answer lies in sharks, we learn, or metal filings--where each of these discoveries is a relatively small piece of a much larger puzzle. Still, I'm hopeful about the Harvard program, because it seems to balance the business and education voices--and it's free, which is a nice change from typical practice.

Welcome, Stefanie! I don't know how we can get the media to be more thoughtful and balanced. It's fair for journalists to be critical of public schools and frustrated with sclerosis in the system, but I do get the sense that many have bought into a single reform narrative these days. While that might lift public spirits for a time, the end effect of overpromising might be to create even greater public disaffection if the reform movements on their own don't deliver all the promised goods.

As far as I can tell, no faculty member at the Harvard School of Education has any interest in the actual academic work of high school students. Isn't this worth a story, to see if it is the case? Will Fitzhugh; fitzhugh@tcr.org; www.tcr.org/blog

You are missing the point. The main problem with this story is the main problem in nearly all mainstream media stories: they don't want to do any work so they report on the future. Nobody can correct them about the future. They don't have to know anything to report about the future. So this story started with what the Harvard project will do in the future then they put in all the other stuff for window dressing. It didn't matter if anything was true. In fact, I usually assume if I saw it on television it most likely is not true. Watch the rest of the news and it's usually the same problem. When was the last time you saw any television story about something real, other than the History channel?

Michael, I'm not sure it's so terrible to report on the future. Policies, initiatives and innovations are all about the future, after all--the potential effects of our actions. That's surely important territory for reporters, isn't it? The CBS story just made the future seem a bit more pat than it should have been--and I say this as someone who believes deeply in the need to prepare effective leaders.

I spent 20 plus years in a business setting before I went back into education. I see a lot of things that are used in the business model that should be implemented in public schools. Cooperation is a big one. A business can not be effectively managed without cooperation of all employees. This means a complete change in education. Teacher leaders have to come foward. The problem with that is that some more tenured teachers don't want a new commer to shape policy. They ignore directives unless they are forced to adhere to them. Many adminstrators will not put younger or newer teachers in positions where they can make a difference in the process even when they volunteer. They keep going back to the ones they have always relied on in the past. We need to create a new culture in our schools that breeds "community". The reform of our schools should have input from all the participants, teachers, parents, students, and the community at large. Everyone has to buy in to make it effective. The model we use must be flexible so that the fluidity can cuse needed changes to be made as the needs for change arise. Teachers should not be isolated. Morning meetings with rotating gruops of teachers would be great. All stakeholders need to take a part.

Amen, Mike. There are schools out there that have done a wonderful job of fostering collaboration among staff of all ages, where younger and more experienced teachers learn from each other. It's worrisome that the culture of collaboration is so low on the nation's list of priorities.