A conversation with … Ted Mitchell

Ted Mitchell’s experience in education issues began long before he became president of the California State Board of Education earlier this year. He holds a doctorate in the history of American education at Stanford University, where he also was deputy to the president and a member of the university’s board of trustees. He’s been dean of the School of Education and Information Studies at the University of California, Los Angeles, and president of Occidental College, a private school in Los Angeles. He co-chaired the Emerging Modes of Delivery, Certification, and Planning Working Group that contributed to the 2002 California Master Plan for Education.

In addition to his current service on the State Board of Education, Mitchell chairs the Governor’s Committee on Educational Excellence, which issued a report earlier this year (“Students First: Renewing Hope for California’s Future,” available at www.everychildprepared.org). Mitchell is also president and CEO of NewSchools Venture Fund, “a national nonprofit venture philanthropy firm that seeks to transform public education—particularly for underserved students—by supporting education entrepreneurs and connecting their work to systems change,” according to the organization’s mission statement.

“Our progress in American education is based on experimentation and continuous learning. When you think back to the history of our schools, I think there’s a tendency to say, ‘Well, it’s always been this way, so we probably should keep things the way they are.’ My view as a historian is slightly different than that,” Mitchell says. “The structure of the education system did not come down on tablets.”

You were appointed to the State Board in March of 2007, and you became president this year. What are your goals for your tenure?

They are evolving… in just the right way. The board is planning a retreat for this summer, at which time we will begin to identify and then lay out a three- to four-year agenda for ourselves. When we did a number of public hearings with the 96 Program Improvement districts, one of the things that became very clear is that the board needs to do a far better job than it has done in the recent past in reaching out to the field. I think sometimes [local] board members—your membership—has to get out a Ouija board to figure out what is going on at the State Board, and that is not right. We are engaged in important policy work at the State Board level, but it pales in comparison to the week-to-week work that your boards do on the ground, and we need to be visible and we need to be transparent; more than that, I hope that we can be helpful. I want to create more opportunities for board members and superintendents and teachers and principals and parents to engage with the State Board. That’s going to mean us being out of Sacramento. That’s one of the topics we will address at our upcoming retreat.

In that vein, and regarding the Program Improvement districts, I was at the State Board meeting when [the issue of interventions] was initially on the agenda; it got pulled so the State Board could organize three regional meetings, which I believe you organized, to meet with districts and talk about the plans. Did they then have an influence on what resulted with the Program Improvement districts?

Very much so, and in a couple of ways. First, in those conversations, what we had believed as an intellectual and abstract construct, which was that one size did not fit all, was really driven home by the very different circumstances, the very different stories that we heard from superintendents and board members in those meetings.

Second, a couple of themes became absolutely clear. One is that the state needs to do a far better job than we have done in supporting the dissemination of best practices regarding the improvement of educational [outcomes] for English learners. Even in some cases where districts were doing okay with English learners—and there are many very successful districts—we were hearing about the struggle to find the right combination of programs and professional development.

Also, we heard from board members a clear concern that any intervention that was a part of the Program Improvement process needed to be sensitive to what was already going on in the district. Whether [District Assistance and Improvement Teams] or technical assistance providers, folks need to understand that they are not coming in to a blank slate, that … boards had been working hard with superintendents and with their staffs to create [effective] programs, and the worst thing that could happen would be to throw out that baby with the bathwater in whatever we did.

With these DAITs, what power will they have in the Program Improvement districts, and what authority will the school boards and the superintendents retain?

It is certainly the board’s intent that the DAIT teams work collaboratively with the boards and with the superintendents to identify, as we called it in shorthand at the board meeting, the need to “do no harm.” First, the DAIT teams need to understand all of those things that are working well at the district, and then the mirror image of that—the things that do need improvement—and then [they need] to work collaboratively with the board and superintendent to create a plan that will come back to the State Board for review over the course of the next year. It is certainly our hope that the recommendations that are made by the DAIT teams are made in such a fashion that there will be buy-in and support and affirmation by the local school boards.

And there has been some concern, I know, about the state’s fiscal crisis and what impact that will have. Certainly, some revisions will be moving resources from one program to another and, insofar as that is possible, it is our hope that that reallocation of funding will put the money where it is needed. But, in sending the DAIT teams out, the board also made sure that a part of their consideration was the sufficiency of resources to do the job.

There is a considerable pool of money, $45 million total, that certainly would leverage the ability of these districts to make some significant changes.

Right. It is the board’s hope, and I know the department’s hope as well, that the $45 million will be used to constructively plan for a future that will, as you say, leverage the base dollars the districts receive through the state.

The 18-member Governor’s Committee on Education Excellence included representatives of groups ranging from the ACLU to the Hoover Institution. I’m curious what tone those meetings took, as more than two years of research and outreach turned to the task of making recommendations.

I have never worked with a more talented and committed group of people as I have [had] the privilege of doing on the governor’s committee. I think we just had terrific expertise and wonderful perspective on the issues that we were charged to address. The tone was from the beginning enormously respectful. You know, these are all people who have been hard at work in different parts of the vineyard in California education. And [they] came in really ready to listen to each other. I think, in the end, that tone and that mutual respect became the reason that we could come up [with] and all agree to a rather bold, wide-ranging agenda for the state. And I hope that, as not only the Legislature and the governor but also school boards… professional organizations and citizens come into contact with our report, and begin to take a look at it, that the diversity of opinion behind it and the diversity of expertise that bolsters it is part of what gives it credibility.

How would you summarize the report?

I think that there are a number of very clear themes, and one of them is that the system that we have currently in California hobbles the efforts of local school boards and local educators to make the decisions that they deem appropriate for the kids they know best. The system is too complex. There are interlocking, sometimes contradictory governance systems. Our finance system makes it very difficult for local school boards to deploy resources efficiently to meet the needs of their community. And so, in the face of this system that hobbles the very, very best professionals and community leaders, we think an underlying theme of the report is to move more decision making—about staffing, budgets, the structure of the school day and the school year, about the deployment of special professionals or special programs—into the hands of local school boards, and then to hold those community leaders accountable at the end for the results that they achieve through the decisions that they make. The state’s interest is in tracking the outcome, not the input.

Another theme of the report, in addition to more local control, is information. It is a weird paradox—we have a plethora of data and a lack of information in education today. The data we have does not readily provide good information to teachers or to principals or to district superintendents—to school boards or to policymakers—about what is working and what is not working. Critical to a system that is not so much compliance-based but outcome-based is the ability to learn from what you are doing and create a cycle of continuous improvement based on information that tells you from year to year what worked and what did not.

So our foremost recommendation—although we argue again and again in the report that these [recommendations] are holistic and that they cannot be done piecemeal, and that no one of our recommendations is a silver bullet—is the creation of a robust, timely and accurate data system. Such a system is foundational to creating a kind of education system that is based on outcomes, not inputs, and a system that is able to continuously learn, whether that is learning about which instructional strategies work in the classroom or understanding what works in terms of different programs to reach English learners.

The third big theme for us —as our colleague on the committee, [Sacramento County Superintendent of Education] Dave Gordon, put it again and again—is that teaching is the heart of the matter. And, so, much in our report is focused on ways to reprofessionalize teaching and to help school boards reward good performance and highlight best practices in a way that will make all school districts places where continuous improvement occurs. Critical to that is effective professional development for teachers and administrators.

Are you aware of any other models that we can borrow from, in other states or other countries, where they do have a mechanism and a strategy for using data wisely?

The state of Florida is the gold standard within the U.S. now for the use of data. There is much that we can learn from Florida, and there are several different efforts now under way, even in this hard budget year, to identify a targeted investment in data, in a data system that would bolt us from where we are—which is behind the pack—into the front of the pack, and the committee very strongly supports those efforts, as I do personally. Recognizing that even if we were to make those investments in data systems today, we would not be able to really get into that learning mode from those data for a period of years, [that’s] all the more reason, in my mind, for us to get to that work right now.

Back to your initial theme about shifting more authority from the state to the local level: It is interesting how legislators begin to talk about flexibility when there are financial problems and they begin to talk about categorical programs when there is money to spread around. How can we ensure more flexibility at the local level to protect the autonomy and the authority of local school boards and governance teams?

In the short run, I do believe that it is going to require some kind of self-denying ordinance for Sacramento to pull back on existing categorical[s]. And my hope is that, in this budget environment, that will indeed happen. At the same time, your question about how to secure flexible funding in the long run is highly germane and my hope, and the committee’s hope, is that that could be one of the outcomes of a discussion about school finance that we ought to have and are having during these hard times. Ultimately, it may take a ballot initiative to achieve the kind of flexible system we describe in the report. Alternately, I think it could also be accomplished by legislation.

Whether it is through legislation or through an initiative, I do think that that is one of the most important recommendations that the committee has made, and one that has resonated well in the field. Let me say in the same breath, though, that flexibility really only does work if there is transparency to those very same communities about how the resources are spent and accountability for what kinds of outcomes are achieved for different subsets of students.

Right—in fact, a frequent objection we hear is that it is so difficult for board members to explain to their local communities where the money comes from and where it goes.

That’s right. And hopefully we can take care of one half of that problem by making it much easier for board members to explain to their communities where the money comes from and why. And then I think at the other end, the more that the boards can work to create budgets and financial statements that are understandable for the community, the sooner we will begin to have much better conversations about local education decisions So, the other recommendation that the committee makes in terms of simplifying the funding stream, in addition to making funding more flexible, is to recognize that the California student has different educational needs, and we ought to accommodate that in a student-based financing system.

Ours is a very simple [proposal]: We recommend additional funding for students in poverty, and we recommend a time-limited increase in funding for English learners. But important in that is holding all districts harmless at current spending levels, so that those additional resources would come from additional money and would not be a redistribution point.

What would that look like—how would that work with holding districts harmless and ensuring that, for students who have these specific needs, the schools would have the resources to serve them?

The proposal to move to a student-centered funding formula is one that cannot be achieved overnight, and it is something that the state will need to grow into. We should not take resources from districts with few students living in poverty, for example, and move those dollars into districts with higher concentrations of poverty. We know that all districts are struggling to offer a robust education program with the funds that they have. So what the committee is proposing is the establishment of an end state that we can all agree to, and then a transition plan that would work us towards that end state in a stepwise fashion over a number of years.

What would allow the state to go up a step in that transition process would be incremental increases in resources. When we started our inquiry, we were quite hopeful that the state’s economy and the budget would remain as robust as it was in 2006, and looking at enrollments, we were also estimating that the Prop 98 resources available to schools would increase as a result of a switch to Test 1. We now see, and the Legislative Analyst’s Office has been quite clear about this, that although the shift to Test 1 is still expected to occur, the likelihood of new resources coming through that mechanism will be delayed for a number of years.

We still think that we should engage in the debate now about what the end state is, and think realistically about a transition plan to that end state. So while we are discouraged that the funding will not be available sooner, we still remain quite sanguine about the possibility of developing consensus around a student-based budgeting system for the state.

The state’s fiscal outlook when the governor’s committee was appointed in 2006 was quite different than it is today and, as you pointed out, the recommendations of the committee are interrelated and interdependent. How can any of these recommendations go forward in the current fiscal situation?

I think it is a good question, and it is certainly the first question that we are asked when we are out in the field talking about the report. Our general position is that it is especially important to move ahead to create a more rational and effective system now so that when revenues do pick up they will not simply go back into an old, dysfunctional apparatus. More specifically, we have done a couple things as we look at the puzzle pieces of our report and the way they fit together. First, I do think that my fellow committee members would agree that, even independent of other actions that the state would take on our recommendations, the establishment of a robust and accurate, timely data system is essential. And so we think that in the inevitable world of tradeoffs, that is one that should survive. And we ought to take steps today to create the data system that we need, because it is the essential foundation for the system of continuous improvement that we talk about.

Second, we think that there are some conceptual issues that we can resolve—perhaps even better than we might have been able to if we were simultaneously arguing about allocating additional dollars. And the example that you raised earlier about categorical reform and making funding flexible is the prime case. I think that we are ready for that conversation now, and we are having it. And the more that we can do to lock that kind of flexibility in place into the future, the better off we will be.

Third, I think that we can have a good and honest and straightforward conversation about both a student-based funding system and about the transition plan to get us there. And again, doing that now will lay the track for good policymaking when new resources are available.

And then, finally, I think that there are a number of things that we propose in the report that are great subjects for pilot programs … pilots that might be funded with private philanthropic resources. I’ll give you two examples. One is the whole area of strengthening teaching, where we may very well be able to recruit several districts to experiment with some of the models that we propose in our report and to work with those districts to secure foundation funding for those pilots. We certainly can learn through those pilots and be better able to make good policy as a result, since we’ll be able to speak about those recommendations from a base of experience that we do not have today.

The other example is something that we have not talked about yet, which are some of the recommendations that we make about governance changes. The committee does feel that much of California’s accountability system has become a “gotcha” system. NCLB has only reinforced that. In the committee’s mind, accountability is not about, “Look, I caught you doing something bad.” It is also about catching people doing something great, and being able to reward and highlight and honor great practices and breakthroughs. Accountability should be developmental: supporting continuous improvement and preventing failure. Piloting some of our recommendations in this area, especially school inspections that can provide insight into what is going on in a school in low-pressure ways that can support local program improvement, can show us how to make accountability a mechanism for success.

I enjoyed your reference to Dave Gordon’s “teaching is the heart of the matter” bywords. Certainly the State Board is in a unique position to influence the quality of the teachers that go into the classrooms in California through the credentialing process and controlling how credentials are issued. Do you see any way that the State Board would be able to increase the number of teachers through changes in credentialing?

Well, you know, here is a place where the State Board and the Legislature need to work much more closely together than they have over the last several years. When I talked earlier about the importance of the board being able to reach out and learn from the field, I also think that it is very important for the board and the Legislature to work more collaboratively on issues that require the Legislature to take the lead in policymaking, [with] the board then to follow up with policy implementation. This area of teacher certification is a prime example.

Over the last year, legislative leadership, notably Jack Scott in the Senate, has begun to tackle the question of alternative routes to certification. And, speaking first from the committee’s point of view, we applaud that and see one of the key ways of increasing the flow of talented young people and mature people into critical-need areas—math, science, special ed, and schools serving traditionally underserved kids—is broadening the pathways by which people can become certified, so we support that and applaud that. And I think that the board also is very interested in supporting those efforts.

This is a place where I know the Legislature this session is taking up issues of differential compensation for math and science teachers. I know that the Legislature is searching for ways to not only improve the flow of the number of teachers into these critical areas, but to ensure the continuing high quality of those teachers.

Of course, overlaying everything that we do here in California, or in any of the states, is the federal government’s No Child Left Behind Act, which has its own definition of highly qualified teachers. What is your perception of NCLB, and how would you change it if you could?

That’s a small question, isn’t it? [Laughter] Let me focus on one particular area, which is not the teaching area, but the assessment of students. I think that California continues to lead the nation in terms of the quality and the depth [of] its standards. We ought to be proud of that, even when it makes our life difficult. The combination of our high standards and No Child Left Behind measurement technology makes it hard going for us. I hope that the state will continue to reject any effort to resolve the problems that we have with No Child Left Behind by reducing our own standards, making it easier for kids to appear proficient.

That said, I also hope that we, in California, can help persuade Congress to accommodate several measures of student achievement, and by that I mean growth. I think that we are hampered in California in not being able to assign more credit to school districts that are making year-on-year growth with sometimes the most challenging student populations. It is a problem that legislators in Washington know well. Superintendent O’Connell and the California Department of Education know these problems well, too, and to their credit, I think everyone is looking for a solution. My hope is that in the next several years, accelerated by the change in the federal administration, that we will be able to reconcile California’s accountability system with No Child Left Behind in a way that will make it possible for local school boards to convey in much clearer ways to their community how well they are doing compared to each other, but also compared to our very high state standards.

Finally, I guess I do want to applaud No Child Left Behind for unambiguously stating a proficiency goal for us to all shoot at. For too long, I think all of us have been too willing to allow an achievement gap to persist, whether that is at the local levels or the state level or the national level. And what I like best about No Child Left Behind is a completely unambiguous statement that all Americans, by implication, all Californians—regardless of their race, their ethnicity, their socioeconomic background—ought to achieve at a high level, and we all ought to be held accountable for that goal—not just our progress toward it.

Is there anything else about the committee report that you would like to talk about?

I guess one other comment: In addition to the committee’s independent work, we worked very closely over the two years with Superintendent O’Connell’s P-16 Council, chaired by Barry Munitz. I can say without hesitation that our committee’s work really was much better because of the collaboration with the P-16 [Council], and I am especially encouraged at the number of common or complementary recommendations that our two groups have made … in relation to strengthening teaching, which also was a critical element of the P-16 report. Also, this notion that we absolutely must create better pathways for communicating best practices across the state and the congruence of opinion on the importance of early childhood education, preschool education. Both the P-16 Council and the governor’s committee feel quite strongly that the state needs to invest new resources in preschool education, particularly targeted at traditionally underserved communities. It is our hope that the Legislature and the governor can work together to identify resources and—perhaps not in this budget year, but over time—help give all kids a good start to their K–12 education.

If we could return to your role with the State Board then for a moment: Many districts protest that the new regulations for Proposition 39 charter facilities are unduly burdensome, because they will force districts to spend scarce money out of their general funds to furnish charter classrooms, possibly at the expense of the vast majority of students, who after all do attend regular public schools. Are those concerns justified?

There is no doubt that the Prop 39 regulations are quite complicated and there is similarly no doubt that the board will need to work with districts over time to get it right. The first regulations did not anticipate some real problems that made it impossible for some charters to realistically operate at all. For example, a charter seeking to operate on the intersection of three districts might have been given three or four classrooms by each district—but at the far boundaries of each district. And so we have a new set of regulations in place, and I think that as we live with those for the next several years, we will learn more about where we got it right and where we did not. The board is very open to that information.

I think more generally, the board’s position and the state’s position—the people’s position, as expressed in Prop 39—is that charter school students, to the extent possible, ought to be accommodated in district facilities. And, I think that ballot initiatives do not often open themselves to clear expressions of motive, but it is certainly the board’s reading of the Prop 39 election that the people of California regard charter school students as public school students, which is totally in keeping with the original charter school law. And, in the same way that districts are responsible for authorizing charter schools, districts bear some responsibility for providing facilities for those students. Certainly the board hopes that the accommodations that are made by districts for charter schools take advantage of facilities that are open in one way or another, or that require only a modest reorganization or dislocation of students who are currently in a facility. That could mean consolidation of small classes, and other things that we know districts are already doing.

Districts in declining enrollment certainly face challenges to their operating budgets through the growth of charter schools, but on the other hand, they have a surplus of facilities that they can then use. It is certainly the board’s interest, and I believe it is the Legislature’s interest, to make it possible for a district to accommodate the needs of their charter school students in such ways. If there are other ways that we can make that easier for districts, I know we would like to do it, but there is a bottom line that the people have determined, and that bottom line is that districts will be responsible for helping to provide facilities for charters.

There is this perception that the State Board is predisposed to favor the interests of charter schools, both locally and the new statewide charters, over traditional schools. Is there anything that the State Board can do to demonstrate that it is listening to local boards’ concerns about charters?

Let me step back a step and challenge the premise a bit. You know, I think that the board, as a whole, has one objective, and that is to help schools in local communities achieve the high standards that the state has set. And I think the board actually is quite ecumenical about whether that goal is achieved through charter schools or traditional district schools. And in my experience on the board, I think that the board has spent far more time and far more attention on supporting traditional schools than charter schools. The charter work that we do occupies a very, very small corner of our world. And so I’m not sure that I buy the premise of the question.

You do not believe there is a perception out there that …

I believe that there is a perception, but I do not believe that it is borne out substantively in the work of the board, which is very heavily focused on the work of traditional districts in delivering and managing education at the local level, and in maintaining state standards. But I do understand that the perception is there. And I think that that perception might be altered if folks took a look at, I think, the pretty hard edge that we hold to when it comes to charter school performance. And I think we have been very clear and our record has been clear about requiring charters to have not just high standards, but high outcomes. Charters that fail to meet those outcomes get closed down.

Brian Taylor (btaylor@csba.org) is the managing editor of California Schools.