This past May, after eighteen months of research, study, analysis, and deliberation, the National Commission on Civic Investment in Public Education, convened by Public Education Network (PEN), presented its report – along with recommendations regarding increased civic investment in the nation’s schools – to President Obama, Education Secretary Arne Duncan, the U.S. Congress, and the American people.

It was a privilege to serve on the Commission along with its cochairs, Stanford University School of Education Professor Linda Darling-Hammond and former U.S. Secretary of Education Richard W. Riley, and its fifteen distinguished members. PEN charged the Commission with making the renewed case for civic investment, highlighting organizations that build and channel that investment, and developing standards for those organizations.

When asked to serve, it was more than an honor; it was my duty. Discussions with my fellow Commission members only underscored my own belief that the need for a redoubled civic investment in public education is urgent.

Today, students arrive at school with more unmet needs than their predecessors; schools and districts face intense financial pressures not experienced in the past sixty years; and despite these remarkable challenges, public schools are expected to meet higher standards and better prepare their students than those of the previous generation. The case for civic investment in public education is abundantly clear: U.S. public schools – particularly those in urban areas – face far greater challenges than ever before with far fewer resources.

As the Commission’s report noted, “The challenge of meeting the goal of improving student outcomes and closing gaps in opportunity and achievement is particularly acute.” At its core, the Commission’s report asked the nation to increase its civic investment in public schools so that every American student receives an excellent education.

As states and cities face draconian budget reductions, or pursue innovative approaches to improve the quality of public schools, the number of local community organizations focused on public education assistance has rapidly increased. Over the past thirty years, locally driven organizations have been formed in more than 2,000 communities to engage citizens in support of public education. These nonprofit groups are striving to restore and build the capacity of the nation’s public education system; however, in far too many school districts, the traditional policies that created and perpetuate the inequities in American education remain in force.

The call for a deeper level of civic engagement is necessary to bring community resources to bear that benefit public schools and ensure that the interests of communities that have been ill served are represented at the education policymaking table.

To quote the Commission’s report, “This deeper level of engagement focuses on three areas: creating a demand for excellence for all schools, holding public officials accountable for achieving equity and excellence, and ensuring that educational resources and assets are allocated equitably.”

The Annenberg Institute shares with the Commission its commitment to support avenues that ensure equal opportunities and outcomes for every student, regardless of his or her circumstances. Hence, through this redesigned issue of VUE (our first redesign since VUE’s inception in 2002), we are “hosting” many of the National Commission members’ views on civic investment in public education and sharing this critically important discussion with our readers and website visitors.

Wendy Puriefoy, president of PEN, opens the issue with the charge of the Commission
and its findings: the growing number of public education funds demonstrates the power of communities coming together to support their schools, but the need is urgent to redouble civic investment in public education.
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Commission co-chairs Richard Riley and Linda Darling-Hammond argue that by adopting and implementing high standards of accountability such as those developed by the Commission, public education funds can help galvanize public will to achieve equity and excellence in the nation’s schools. Commission member and Massachusetts secretary of education Paul Reville offers his perspective on how public education funds can lead the way toward a twenty-first-century education system.
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Susan Berresford, Commission member and former president of the Ford Foundation, describes how “patient philanthropy” in support of public education funds has provided the means for community members to invest in their schools and led to dramatic reforms and a renewed civic commitment to democratic values. Jim Collogan shares his perspective as executive director of the National School Foundation Association, which has around 1,000 PEFs as members, on the benefits of clear standards of accountability and transparency for PEFs.
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Erwin de Leon, lead author of an Urban Institute report for the Commission, recognizes that current economic and social realities make it hard for public education to thrive and succeed, but emphasizes that public education support organizations are helping more and more communities reinvest in our shared future. Commission member Barbara Bartle, president of the Lincoln [Nebraska] Community Foundation, and Margaret Hiller, executive director of the Bridgeport [Connecticut] Public Education Fund, offer on-the-ground perspectives from public education funds.
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We close with Commission member Rob Reich’s article on equity issues and the over-reliance on private philanthropy. He cautions us that philanthropic support of public education in itself is insufficient; public policy must change to ensure that charitable gifts remedy existing inequities rather than reinforcing them. My sidebar adds the Annenberg Institute’s perspective of a “smart education system” in which all education stakeholders – including districts, communities, policymakers, the philanthropic community, civic leaders, educators, researchers, and young people – collaborate to provide a network of supports and opportunities that ensures an excellent education for all young people.
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A growing number of education stakeholders share the vision outlined in these pages of a renewed civic movement to invest effort and resources in public education. We hope that the stories and perspectives emerging from the work of the Commission will inspire readers to build on this urgently important work that is so crucial to the future of our nation.

Preface PDF [4 pages]

Note: This article originally appeared in Voices in Urban Education 32 (Winter 2012), “Civic Investment in Public Education,” produced collaboratively by the Annenberg Institute for School Reform and Public Education Network (PEN) and based on the work of PEN’s National Commission on Civic Investment in Public Education Commission’s work and on its 2011 report An Appeal to All Americans.

The work of a growing number of public education funds shows the power of public will and commitment, but the need is urgent to redouble civic investment in public education.

EXCERPT

On behalf of the members of the National Commission on Civic Investment in Public Education, the board of directors of Public Education Network (PEN), and the 19,000 public education support organizations across America, I thank Warren Simmons and the Annenberg Institute for School Reform (AISR) for the opportunity to present PEN’s decade-long pursuit to build a field and set standards for a group of nonprofit organizations working to improve their public schools. We also thank the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and the Prudential Corporation for their support of this work.

Introduction

The fifteen members of the National Commission for Civic Investment in Public Education have performed an extraordinary service for this nation and for America’s schoolchildren. The Commission’s work was ably led by co-chairs Richard W. Riley, former U.S. Secretary of Education (1993–2001) and Linda Darling-Hammond, world-renowned education scholar and professor of education at Stanford University. Other members included leaders from the corporate, philanthropic, and nonprofit sectors; educators; researchers; and public education support organization leaders from around the country. Together they shared a commitment to expand civic knowledge and support of public education through citizen involvement.

The technical problem that PEN established the National Commission to address was a lack of consistent standards for the growing number of nonprofit, tax-exempt organizations – typically local education funds (LEFs), comprising PEN’s own network, and a larger array of public education funds (PEFs), independent foundations, or “school foundations” (see sidebar on nomenclature) comprising what may fairly be described as a new national field. The field is distinct from older public education support organizations, like PTAs, in that its members’ primary purpose is to increase public and financial support for public schools. Now, some twenty-five years into the field’s development, it was time to make sure that these organizations were more fully accountable for their work.

At the time of the National Commission’s creation, PEN was concerned (and remains so) that inequality of household wealth and income in the country was increasingly replicated within our public school systems as schools in wealthy communities started PEFs to provide amenities that were not available in less-affluent schools. Given the power of persistent economic,
social, and political trends, the growth of these groups is only likely to accelerate in number and exacerbate inequalities between students from affluent families and those from poor families. An analysis conducted by Rob Reich, associate professor of political science and ethics in society at Stanford University, appearing in this issue of VUE, illustrates this problem.

Article PDF [6 pages]

Note: This article originally appeared in Voices in Urban Education 32 (Winter 2012), “Civic Investment in Public Education,” produced collaboratively by the Annenberg Institute for School Reform and Public Education Network (PEN) and based on the work of PEN’s National Commission on Civic Investment in Public Education Commission’s work and on its 2011 report An Appeal to All Americans.

By adopting and implementing high standards of accountability, public education funds can help galvanize public will to achieve equity and excellence in the nation’s schools.

EXCERPT

AAmericans have long committed themselves to civic investment in education, recognizing that equal educational opportunity is a bedrock of democratic society. Indeed, one of the earliest laws enacted by the federal government – the Northwest Ordinance of 1787, which predated the ratification of the U.S. Constitution – required that land in new territories be set aside for schools and stated: “Religion, morality, and knowledge being necessary to good government and the happiness of mankind, schools and the means of education shall forever be encouraged.”

Today, however, that civic commitment to equal educational opportunity is in peril. Schools face two significant challenges. On the one hand, the population of students that schools have traditionally underserved is growing rapidly. At the same time, there is greater and greater pressure for improving outcomes for all students, so that all young people will be equipped with the knowledge and skills they need to succeed in the twenty-first century. Thus, schools must do better than they ever did before, with a student population made up of a large proportion of students who have a wide range of needs and have often been ill served by schools in the past.

Meeting these challenges will require a redoubling of the civic investment in education. Yet in too many places the bonds of civic commitment to education appear to be fraying. Our public schools increasingly resemble sports stadiums, in which more advantaged patrons sit in skyboxes and enjoy well-appointed accommodations – in the case of schools, state-of-the-art facilities, access to high-level coursework and out-of-school support, and well-qualified teachers, among other benefits. Meanwhile, students from less-advantaged backgrounds sit in the equivalent of the bleachers, lacking basic amenities and straining to see the field.

The good news is that community members in a number of places, such as Bridgeport, Connecticut, and Mobile, Alabama, have been able to mobilize civic support through local education funds. They have built public will for policies and the resources necessary for equitable educational opportunities and have held political leaders and school officials at all levels accountable for ensuring equal opportunity and outcomes for all public school children. And they have achieved dramatic improvements in outcomes for youths.

Article PDF [13 pages]

Note: This article originally appeared in Voices in Urban Education 32 (Winter 2012), “Civic Investment in Public Education,” produced collaboratively by the Annenberg Institute for School Reform and Public Education Network (PEN) and based on the work of PEN’s National Commission on Civic Investment in Public Education Commission’s work and on its 2011 report An Appeal to All Americans.

“ Patient philanthropy” in support of public education funds provides the means for community members to invest in their schools and has led to dramatic reforms and a renewed civic commitment to democratic values.

EXCERPT

Nearly thirty-five years ago, a woman in San Francisco named Gladys Thatcher had an idea. She knew that teachers had creative ideas to improve classroom teaching and learning, but to implement them they had to reach into their own pockets. So she created a small fund to provide grants to teachers with worthwhile ideas, believing that others would soon see the value of this mechanism. She recruited more and more people, including civic leaders, to contribute to the fund and, most importantly, she asked them to read teachers’ applications, so they could see the creativity and energy in the San Francisco schools. Word spread, and the number of teachers who submitted proposals for mini-grants grew so much that Gladys transformed her idea into the San Francisco Public Education Fund.

Across the country in Pennsylvania, David Bergholz had a similar idea. David led the Allegheny Conference, a business group in Pittsburgh. He knew that a strong education system was essential for a thriving democracy and a vibrant economy. Like Gladys, he knew that teachers had ideas for improving schools, so he also created a fund to provide grants for innovative instructional projects. And just as the Public Education Fund of San Francisco had done, the Allegheny Conference Education Fund attracted contributions for school improvement and strengthened the ties between civic leaders and the public schools.

At around the same time, I was working at the Ford Foundation and looking for ways to restore positive connections between communities and schools. We saw that in too many places civic leaders had lost confidence in public schools and that this disconnect put the schools at risk for civic underinvestment. Ford had always seen good public schools as central to a diverse democracy and as crucial components of healthy communities. Independent school foundations like the ones created by Bergholz and Thatcher represented a concept we found appealing. Although we did not know exactly what we could accomplish, we wanted to support the innovation and its leaders. So we began giving money to strengthen several new funds like these that could serve as examples for the rest of the country.

Article PDF [9 pages]

Note: This article originally appeared in Voices in Urban Education 32 (Winter 2012), “Civic Investment in Public Education,” produced collaboratively by the Annenberg Institute for School Reform and Public Education Network (PEN) and based on the work of PEN’s National Commission on Civic Investment in Public Education Commission’s work and on its 2011 report An Appeal to All Americans.

Current economic and social realities make it hard for public education to thrive and succeed, but organizations that support public education are helping many communities reinvest in our shared future.

EXCERPT

President John Adams, a former teacher, wrote in a letter to John Jebb in 1785: The whole people must take upon themselves the education of the whole people and be willing to bear the expenses of it. There should not be a district of one mile square, without a school in it, not founded by a charitable individual, but maintained at the public expense of the people themselves. (Adams 1856)

Sadly, we have not collectively taken on the responsibility of educating all our children. There is a lack of political will to compel people to pay enough taxes to support public schools (Kober 2007). Public education has therefore failed to meet its mission of advancing the common good.

Nonetheless, communities can still band together and support public schools and school districts. Kober (2007) reminds us that in the 1830s, “little by little, public schools took hold in communities, often because the local people, rather than politicians, demanded them.” It is contingent upon communities now, as it was then, to ensure and sustain public education for all its members. Public schools will continue to flounder unless we all pitch in. In this article, I describe the growing number of local nonprofit organizations that are mobilizing their communities to do just that.

Chronic Funding Shortages

These are trying times for public schools. As many Americans remain unemployed or underemployed and most of us live in constant anxiety about our financial future, state and local coffers remain bare. Programs and services have been cut across the board in most municipalities, and public education has not been spared.

Article PDF [13 pages]

Note: This article is excerpted with permission from the Stanford Social Innovation Review from the article “A Failure of Philanthropy: American Charity Shortchanges the Poor, and Public Policy is Partly to Blame,” Stanford Social Innovation Review, Winter 2005, pp. 24–33. The excerpt was reprinted in Voices in Urban Education 32 (Winter 2012), “Civic Investment in Public Education,” produced collaboratively by the Annenberg Institute for School Reform and Public Education Network (PEN) and based on the work of PEN’s National Commission on Civic Investment in Public Education Commission’s work and on its 2011 report An Appeal to All Americans.

Public policy must change to ensure that philanthropic support of public education helps remedy existing inequities rather than reinforcing them.

EXCERPT

The Woodside School Foundation in Woodside, California, is a fantastically successful local education foundation (LEF).¹ Since 1983, it has been raising money for the Woodside School District, which is made up of a single public elementary school that enrolls fewer than 500 students. Between 1998 and 2003, the last year for which data are available, the foundation collected more than $10 million, adding several thousand dollars per student per year to public funds for the school. Woodside Elementary uses that money for programs in music, art, physical education, and technology, says Superintendent Dr. Daniel A. Vinson. The school has won the top rating on California’s Academic Performance Index (API) for the past six years. Less than ten miles away in East Palo Alto is the Ravenswood City School District. Ravenswood does not have its own school foundation, although it could use more funding. The district, which serves 4,500 students in grades K–8, regularly struggles to provide such basics as textbooks, classroom supplies, and building maintenance, says interim Superintendent Mariade la Cruz. Families are not in a position to help, since 94 percent of Ravenswood students currently qualify for free or reduced lunches, as compared to fewer than 10 percent in Woodside. (Median household income in East Palo Alto was $45,000 in 2000, as compared to $171,000 in Woodside.) Ravenswood schools are among the lowest performing in the Bay Area, with half of them earning the lowest rating on California’s API.

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¹Editor’s note: The term local education fund, or LEF, in this article, in contrast to the other articles in this issue of VUE, does not refer only to members of the Public Education Network; rather, it is used synonymously with the broader term public education fund (PEF).

Article PDF [8 pages]

Note: Excerpted and adapted, with permission, from the research brief Closing the Revolving Door: Understanding the Nature and Causes of Disparities in Access to Effective Teaching, published by the Chief Justice Earl Warren Insti-tute on Law and Social Policy, University of California Berkeley School of Law. The full research brief contains a comprehensive literature review and more detail about the research studies and statistical methods 
mentioned in this article.

Significant race- and income-based disparities in access to effective teaching persist and have been continually reinforced over time, but well-crafted state and federal policies could help end them.

EXCERPT

Over the past three years, a new focus on teachers as the critical unit of change has become a clamor for dramatic movement at all levels of policy, with substantial support by the Obama administration, state governors, and leaders of several major school districts. The current set of policy proposals are focused on universal reforms designed to increase all students’ achievement levels in an effort to ensure the nation remains economically competitive internationally.

Much less emphasis has been placed on how these proposed reforms might impact the persistent gap in academic outcomes between low-income students and students of color and their more-privileged peers. If new reforms do not address race- and income-based gaps in achievement and in access to effective teaching, they risk perpetrating or exacerbating historic inequities that stand in stark contradiction to our nation’s values of justice, democracy, and opportunity.

This article examines the nature and magnitude of disparities in access, the ways in which these disparities are created and reinforced over time, and the potential for state and federal policy to play a role in providing greater access to effective teaching among students of color and low-income students.

What Are the Disparities in Access?

If there were little variation in teaching effectiveness, it wouldn’t matter much whether a student were assigned to Mrs. Gonzales’s class or Mr. Anderson’s class for third grade – the growth in their academic achievement that year would look similar in either case. Unfortunately, there is a good deal of variation in teaching effectiveness, raising the stakes associated with the assignment of students to teachers, especially for those students who need the most support.

Given this variation, the question arises of whether there is a pattern to the distribution of effective teaching. If there were no systematic disparities in access, there would be no correlation 
between a student’s racial/ethnic or class status and their likelihood of receiving effective (or ineffective) teaching. Unsurprisingly, research suggests this not to be the case. Disparities in access to effective teaching both between and within schools systematically disadvantage students of color, low-income students, and those students who are furthest behind academically.¹ The magnitude of these disparities, however, varies substantially depending on the measure used and the context in which it is applied.

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¹ For a full statistical explanation and citations regarding variation in teacher effectiveness and disparities in access, see the research brief.

Article PDF [9 pages]

A full human capital management strategy is needed to select, train, retain, and reward teachers.

EXCERPT

TWhat is the best way to achieve equitable access to high-quality instruction?
jane hannaway: We need to think about a full human capital management strategy. This would begin with selection. The entry bar into teaching is currently low, considerably lower than that of many other countries where it often occurs at the point of highly selective entry into a teacher training program. The next step is the training itself. Teacher training is highly decentralized in the United States with different teacher training institutions doing very different things. Some programs may do a much better job than others, and we have very little understanding of the training dimensions that make a difference. Even with the same training, evidence shows that there is still considerable variation in the effectiveness of teachers. This calls for a second point of selection – tenure. Here evidence on actual effectiveness can be taken into account to determine who is retained. Rewards for the high performers can be used to ensure good rates of retention of strong teachers. Using the full set of human capital management instruments would greatly help ensure that all students have access to high-quality instruction.

What is the best way to achieve equitable access to high-quality instruction?

JANE HANAWAY: We need to think about a full human capital management strategy. This would begin with selection. The entry bar into teaching is currently low, considerably lower than that of many other countries where it often occurs at the point of highly selective entry into a teacher training program. The next step is the training itself. Teacher training is highly decentralized in the United States with different teacher training institutions doing very different things. Some programs may do a much better job than others, and we have very little understanding of the training dimensions that make a difference. Even with the same training, evidence shows that there is still considerable variation in the effectiveness of teachers. This calls for a second point of selection – tenure. Here evidence on actual effectiveness can be taken into account to determine who is retained. Rewards for the high performers can be used to ensure good rates of retention of strong teachers. Using the full set of human capital management instruments would greatly help ensure that all students have access to high-quality instruction.

Value-added models have become increasingly popular as a way to evaluate, reward, and dismiss teachers. Some researchers argue that these models are not precise enough for high-stakes decisions. What are your views?

JANE HANNAWAY: Every researcher I know who has conducted research using value-added understands its limitations and its virtues. The fact is that it is the best measure we currently have to predict future teacher performance. It does not make sense not to include this information when making personnel decisions about needed training and retention. At the same time, there is common agreement that it should not be used alone to make high-stakes decisions. Value-added should be used in conjunction with other information – for example, principal ratings or expert classroom observations – to help ensure that good teachers are not penalized by the limitations of value-added measures.

Article PDF [3 pages]

Those seeking to improve teaching effectiveness must recognize that the components of effective teaching are complex and depend on school environment as well as individual teacher characteristics.

EXCERPT

Evidence abounds that public education in the United States has not yet become the great equalizer many had hoped it would be. The Black-White achievement gap persists within districts and schools. Students in high-poverty districts lag behind their peers in affluent districts. And results from the international PISA examinations (OECD 2010) show that the United States has a far lower proportion of “resilient” students – those who succeed at school despite a disadvantaged background – than most other developed countries. In part, these inequities result from forces beyond the control of the public schools, such as racially segregated housing or school funding based on the local property tax. Still, public schools in the United States can and should do much more to ensure success for all students.

For many years, those intent on equalizing the opportunities and success of underserved students focused on the inequitable distribution of resources, such as libraries, textbooks, or science equipment, to communities and to individual schools. They introduced federally and state-funded programs, such as Title I, to provide specialized instructional opportunities for low-income students. Although such initiatives all depended on teachers for their delivery, reformers did little to distinguish among those teachers. Anyone with the right license was assumed capable of doing the job.

Within the past decade, however, policymakers and practitioners increasingly have focused on individual teachers as resources, recognizing that some are more effective than others in equalizing both opportunity and success for disadvantaged students (e.g., Boyd et al. 2008). At the recent Warren Institute Civil Rights Research Roundtable on Education, in which I participated along with others writing in this issue of VUE, Andy Baxter of the Charlotte-Mecklenburg Schools posed a question that reflected this new perspective: “How is measuring the distribution of effective teachers to schools different from measuring the distribution of computers to schools?”

Parents and teachers have long known that some teachers are more effective than others – not simply by a bit, but by a lot. Within any school, savvy parents use their personal influence to see that their children are assigned to certain teachers, but not others. Teachers, themselves, are well aware that many of their colleagues serve students effectively, while others contribute little to students’ learning and a few may even cause harm. Yet it was not until about 2000 that scholars clearly established that teachers are the single most important school-level factor in students’ achievement, as measured by standardized tests and that within schools, there is wide variation from classroom to classroom in teachers’ effectiveness (Rivkin, Hanushek & Kain 2005; Rowan, Correnti & Miller 2002; McCaffrey et al. 2003).

Article PDF [8 pages]

Robust, transparent feedback and evaluation systems are needed that recognize the inevitability of classification errors but work to reduce them as much as possible.

EXCERPT

A t the heart of the student achievement gap lies a credibility gap. Our school systems are based on a premise we all know not to be true: that students are equally well served by whoever teaches their classes. The consequences – to students and to teachers – are great. The good news is that this open secret is no longer so; teachers and school leaders are talking about it and grappling with it. Few teachers now assert that teaching cannot be measured (Scholastic & Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation 2010). Design teams made up of courageous educators in numerous districts are engaged in the hard work of honestly rethinking their support and evaluation systems for teachers.

But amid this promise, there is also peril. If we’re not careful about how we go about this work, we could replace one credibility gap with another. If teachers have reason not to trust the systems put into place to support and evaluate them, then these systems cannot achieve their aims of improving teaching effectiveness. If so, we will have lost a rare opportunity.

As states and school districts adopt systems to measure effective teaching, there is a growing concern about accuracy. Nobody wants a system that routinely misclassifies teachers. Some even assert that teaching cannot be measured: that teaching is an art, not a science, and dedicated teachers should not be subject to additional accountability pressures. But how do we balance those concerns with the needs of students? We cannot pretend that students are equally well served by whoever teaches them. Forgetting to balance students’ concerns with those of teachers has dire consequences – ones that accrue disproportionately to young people already struggling to succeed.

Having the courage to walk this fault line between potentially misclassifying some teachers and not classifying teachers at all requires constant attention to the consequences for both teachers and students. It’s a balancing act, to be sure; but if we cannot avoid error, we should err in favor of students. When building robust feedback and evaluation systems, perhaps it is best for us to admit that error is always present and be transparent about where it exists. In this way we build trust and limit misuse of feedback and evaluation systems.

Article PDF [7 pages]