An Obama Administration education official wants school safety measurements – ”a data system so parents know what kind of environment a kid will encounter in a school” — included in the Common Core State Standards. And that has one prominent ed watcher asking if there’s a social agenda bait-and-switch in the works.
In an interview in Phi Delta Kappan magazine, Kevin Jennings, Assistant Deputy Secretary for Safe and Drug-Free Schools, says, “just as we have standards around academic goals, we need standards around school climate because what gets measured is what gets done.” The interviewer for the Kappan asks Jennings if he wants school climate standards included in the Common Core Standards, and Jennings says yes.
If we don’t get this one right, the other ones don’t matter. Right now, they’re really focused on the academic standards. This one is much newer…We’re still fighting over the definition of school climate. But I can promise you it does not include air conditioning. Once we have standards and a scientific way of measuring school climate, state and local authorities will be able to pinpoint which schools need improvement and implement policies and programs to drive that process.
At his new blog, the American Enterprise Institute’s Rick Hess reads Jennings remarks and says, “Seriously? A high-ranking administration official is telling us that the common standards being financed by $350 million in Race to the Top funds “start” with academics but will eventually encompass “school climate” standards too?” To Hess, Jennings desire to codify and measure whether kids feeling emotionally safe “sounds like a summons to social agendas, culture clashes, and political fisticuffs. In other words, the stuff that sinks standards.” Hess writes:
Mr. Jennings’ remarks raise concerns about the old bait-and-switch. If he is speaking for Secretary Duncan and the President, they seem to have been less than truthful so far when discussing their vision for common standards. If not, a President seeking bipartisan comity might want to encourage Mr. Jennings not to suggest that the Department is covertly planning to drive a massive 48-state effort into a familiar ditch…or to turn it into a Trojan Horse.
I agree that school climate is enormously important, but schemes that try to codify such conditions are fraught with problems. For a time, New York City principals were judged in part on school discipline–the fewer suspensions, the tighter your ship was perceived to be. Thus principals had every incentive not to suspend students, regardless of the infraction. No consequences meant no discipline, and some of the worst climates were the schools with the best numbers on paper.
Jennings was something of a lightning rod to political conservatives even before this interview. Now that Hess has asked if the Common Core standards are a social agenda Trojan Horse, I suspect we’ll be seeing a lot more chatter about Jennings’ remarks, a clarification from DOE, or both.
Update: At Eduwonk, Sara Mead thinks Hess has strayed into “tinfoil hat” territory. But two paragraphs later she worries that school climate surveys accountability “could water down accountability for academic outcomes.”
Update II: “We do not believe in national standards for school climate,” DOE’s Justin Hamilton tells me in a phone call. “Kevin Jennings was taken out of context.”
Whether or not there’s a “social agenda”, I don’t know….but I agree that standards for school climate are very slippery.
I’ve worked at a school where administrators deliberately cooked the books on the number of suspensions so as not to be labelled “persistently dangerous”, so I know that imposing hard number goals around such things is ridiculous.
I do, however, think that schools should be given some kind of descriptive analysis. Parents have a right to know what really goes on in a school.
I’m convinced that if parents knew even half of the stuff that goes on, they’d be motivated to become more involved.
Comment by MBW — February 19, 2010 @ 11:41 am
I recently read that an AZ school district was mandating that suspensions/expulsions to match the percentages of various racial/ethnic groups in the district. There have been similar assumptions among kids/parents in various districts where I’ve lived over the last few decades; that there was a big difference in threshold for disciplinary action depending on race/ethnicity.
Comment by momof4 — February 19, 2010 @ 2:18 pm
This is insanity. When will politicians realize that you cannot legislate everything.
Government should focus on things that can be influenced by legislation – content rich curricula, high standards for teacher certification, etc. Doing so will do more for improving school climate than any “climate standard” ever could.
Comment by AJGuzzaldo — February 19, 2010 @ 2:30 pm
He’s right aboutone thing: if it doesn’t get measured it doesn’t get done. The mischief of course is in choosing what to measure, how, and what your definition of “to standard” becomes.
Comment by Robert Pondiscio — February 19, 2010 @ 2:37 pm
Jennings’s effort could definitely backfire: schools will lighten up on detentions and suspensions to look peachy on paper, but this easing up on punishments will breed increased bullying, disrespect and disruption.
That said, I am increasingly outraged by how bullies seem to rule the roost in middle schools. Nice kids live in terror, stay home “sick” and sometimes even withdraw from school, while bullies take a few detentions, an occasional suspension, and carry on with their sadistic sport. They make cruel sport of tormenting many teachers as well –reminds me of bear-baiting.
Comment by Ben F — February 19, 2010 @ 10:26 pm
Can we all please back this rumor out through some basic understanding of federalism and the balance of power within our government?
The federal role on the core standards is this: states that promise to adopt them get added points toward winning a Race to the Top grant. However, they’ve already filed their applications, and they only had to make promises on reading and mathematics. USED can’t add more requirements to that competition, and they won’t get enough money to offer a similar incentive ever again. So Mr. Jennings has no leverage to get the requirement put into state standards.
Meanwhile, the design of the core standards is being done by and for states, by organizations controlled by state officials. If the draft imported a major social agenda beyond literacy, numeracy and a small helping of civics, conservative states would bolt. The coalition is only possible because it is not loaded down with things that cannot get support from the full range of American political settings.
Finally, there is no possibility of the federal government itself setting standards. That’s been discussed for years, and it’s a nonstarter as a legislative issue. Mr. Jennings has no chance at all of getting the votes to force states to add the sort of requirement he has described.
The very real bullying problem will have to be solved by teachers and educators, not by anyone working in a D.C. office building.
Comment by Susan Weston — February 20, 2010 @ 12:22 am
USED can make ESEA and other federal funding in the future contingent upon fulfilling the commitments detailed in those applications. They can also make the funding contingent on additional mandates such as school climate.
Also CCSSO is itself the recipient of federal NSF MSP grant funding so its relationship to the federal government is not exactly that of independent co-levels of government in a federal system.
Also given Kevin Jennings past history of using local schools to impose certain social views whether parents like it or not, it’s not like we can rely on his innate good sense about what’s really appropriate in the schoolplace, even elementary schools.
Comment by Student of History — February 20, 2010 @ 11:07 am
Update 3 per EdWeek-
Arne Duncan told the nation’s governors yesterday that Title 1 funding going forward would be contingent on adopting the Common Core standards. The feds seem to be mandating a one size fits all program that will be called “College and Career Ready”. Georgia has already done this and it fits no student’s needs well.
It appears that ESEA will be the federal government’s weapon to drive what goes on in the K-12 classroom even though the vast majority of funding will remain state and local.
Maybe Kevin Jennings will be able to impose his vision if he is patient.
Comment by Student of History — February 22, 2010 @ 1:01 pm