A coda to my long post from Denver (below)... Here’s Slate's Micky Kaus, who seems to have read my notes from the Ed Challenge for Change, garbling only a few. (It was Romer, not Groff, who talked about the “adult agenda.”)  A lot of media pickup on this event, encouragingly so.

NS 

Standards, accountability, choice, calling out the teacher unions … no, I’m not filing ahead of next weeks’ GOP convention, just reporting on what Dem ed reformers were saying in the runup to Obama’s nomination. The big event was Ed Challenge for Change, sponsored by Dems for Ed Reform (with the Alliance as a co-sponsor), and one panelist in the overflowing auditorium said if they’d held it a few years ago there would be about four people in the room.
Three quick  observations, followed by some notes on the forum conversations:

• Every discussion included the recitation of numbing statistics about how the US is falling behind our international competitors  (we’re 13th in this, 25th in that, and so on). It’s a problem, a crisis, a watershed, all of the above, no question.  But I fear that people are starting to nod off because they’ve been hearing this since A Nation at Risk 25 years ago and we’ve continued to do pretty well in the actual world economy.  Is the 2008 crisis different?  I think so, and different speakers ventured opinions (the world is flat, our competitors are making explicit national plans to eat our lunch, the demographics in our schools are changing……), but to the average Joe, do the warnings sound like the boy crying wolf?
• The sessions and receptions and panels were engrossing and even fun - -but will they matter? It’s a major milestone that the progressive agenda attracted hundreds of people to Denver, but most were folks like me and not delegates. Jon Schnur has 2 minutes at the podium tonight (and I believe it when he says that Obama’s own heart is pure), but a lot of the folks inside the convention hall represent other interests with a whole lot more cash. The crowd that convened on Sunday and Monday  is still an insurgency, and if Obama wins there will be a real fight for those corner offices at DOE.
• In this group at least, there was remarkably little Bush-bashing. In fact, despite some mild criticism of NCLB for its reliance on tests, and a certain amount of ritual partisanship, most of this crowd seems genuinely behind the law’s basic architecture. Oddly, it’ll probably face a tougher challenge next week in Minneapolis.
  

OK, with apologies for the stream-of-consciousness (not enuf editing time before I head to the airport), here are some specifics from the wonkfest itself, starting with Sunday’s Ed Challenge event.

Ed in 08’s Roy Romer – who at 79 is still the hardest puncher on any panel – framed the “international competition” argument but also took after the unions saying “the adult agenda” too often wins in their negotiations. DC’s mayor Adrian Fenty, asked what the feds should do in the next term, essentially said “get out of the way” -- that national politicians were lagging behind the local leaders like Bloomberg and Daley who’ve made themselves accountable for schools. There was a lot of talk about national standards, with Alliance board member Joel Klein making acerbic comments about the pointlessness of treating math differently from one state to another.  CO Senate president Peter Groff suggested that some “flexibility” might be  needed (for example, in terms of time a rural district might need to meet a given standard), provoking a loud and surprising groan from the room. (This is a roomful of Dems absolutely unyielding on standards…?) Klein suggested putting federal  money behind success – allow great teachers, great chafter networks, great school systems to grow their scope and influence. The  NewsHour’s  John Merrow recounted DC union leader George Parker’s comment that Michelle Rhee was forcing the union to realize that student achievement matters – which had never been a “union” issue as such.  Iin a nice extrapolation, Merrow said “learning HAD to be a bread-and-butter issue everyone in the system.)

A panel of “practitioners” followed. Denver superintendent Michael Bennet, having just wrapped exhausting but successful negotiations to save his Pro Comp teacher pay program, said he had finally realized that “winning” in a union negotiation, has usually meant “getting more words into the contract.” High Tech High’s Larry Rosenstock, himself a former union leader, asserted the unsustainability of current union practices – paying for long-termers’ benefits by shortchanging younger teachers (or in the case of San Diego, firing those with less than 8 years’ seniority). (If you’re wondering, yes there was a LOT of focus on unions.)

John King of Uncommon Schools  was a ray of light, saying they’ve got 80-100 applicants for every teaching spot available, mostly district teachers, to join a system with a one-page at-will agreement because they want to work in effective, gap-closing schools, and they want to work with others as committed as they are. Aspire’s Don Shalvey termed his educators “teachers in professional practice,” whose compensation is based partly on student achievement – and by being “outrageous” in the eyes of the system, Aspire helps accelerate progress toward the kind of “thin” system contract that would leave most control at the school level.

This morning’s Rocky Mountain Roundtable also hit on Human Capital themes, but with some twists: Paula Prahl, an executive with Best Buy, said the company looks for 3 things in employees – math skills (cause they need to know how to figure return on investment); understanding of scientific process (cause they have to problem-solve on the fly); and “human engagement skills” – i.e., how to deal with customers.  Eli Broad stressed system change (mayoral control, competition from charters, and shifting away from property tax funding of schools) as needed to make the rest of the goals happen. John Wilson of the NEA surprised some in the room by talking about “teacher accountability”…. but later refined that to say that teachers should be “accountable for their practice” rather than directly for student outcomes. Asked about the difficulty of staffing  KIPP’s rapid growth,  Mike Feinberg said the problem isn’t having enough bodies, but bodies “great enough to live up to the promises we’ve made to the children” (nice phrase, and he means it). Chris Gabrieli, who now runs MASS2020 and is working to extend learning time in the state, said the reason we still have the same school calendar as 100 years ago is because we had it last year – “so it’s too difficult to change the bus schedule…” (Never heard a better definition of school-system inertia.)

And OUTBURST! TOO!!
Finally, OUTBURST burst out of the gate Sunday afternoon at the University of Denver, just before the above-reported events.  Students, parents, and teachers gathered for some political discussion and high-tech voting/commentary on campaign issues, all ably moderated by Sen. Peter Groff (who aside from leading the CO Senate, also teaches at DU).  The Alliance is co-sponsor, and we’ll be holding an event next weekend in St. Paul at the Higher Ground Academy Charter School, and then at each of the Presidential and Vice-Presidential debates. Tell all your friends!