Chad: Government can force state and local governments to do things, but they
can't force them to do those things well.
Andy: Chad Aldeman, thank you so much for being here with us.
Chad: Thank for having me.
Andy: Principal at Bellwether Education Partners, we are former colleagues, I hope we're longtime
friends, you can decide after this interview if that's actually true.
So, you are the perfect person if you don't mind my saying so, to continue this conversation
I've been having about this ongoing discussion of what is the right balance of power between
the federal government and state governments when it comes to K12 Education?
So, for our viewers, you worked at the US Department of Education under the Obama administration
but you also just recently finished authoring, editing a big study of state plans under this
new federal law, ESSA.
So, you can speak both from, like, the perspective of Washington DC but also what states are
doing.
And we're gonna get there in a minute.
But to, sort of, begin the level setting here is we're actually at AEI today on the same
day that there was an event on the Bush-Obama era of education.
So, for folks who don't follow this very closely, the idea is that although President Bush and
President Obama are very different, there's an argument that they both wanted a more muscular
role for Uncle Sam in our schools and they did so for 16 years.
So, let's actually just start there.
As you look back on the Bush-Obama era, what do you think of the federal government's role?
How do we describe it?
Chad: There was definitely a concentration of power, and there is a much more federal
government role in education policy writ large than there had been prior.
I think, one of my biggest takeaways from this morning was the power and effectiveness
of some of the competitive grants that we saw, like the Teacher Incentive Fund was designed
under the Bush administration to give essentially performance pay to teachers and bonuses the
way it was originally designed.
The Obama administration was, sort of, political but the Obama administration still took that
up and pushed it forward and got some good results out of it.
Similarly, the Charter School Program.
I think if those are some of the bigger successes of this era of Competitive Grants, people
who, and organizations that actually wanted to do something, did good things with it.
I think some of the federal requirements that we might talk about had less positive effects.
Andy: Well, it's actually, like, just a drill in for a second on this nature of competitive
grants, because in the broadest terms the US Department of Education have what we call
Formula Grants, wouldn't just hand out money to states and districts based on the number
of students you have essentially.
Competitive Grants are a little bit different, and during the Bush-Obama era, there was a
view...
Okay.
The Federal government will put some money on the table and say we think that this ought
to get done, we're not going to force you to do it, but if you want some money you can
try it out.
So, TIF, the Teacher Incentive Fund was one Charter School Grant program but also Race
to the Tops.
Some people would argue, some people would say it pushed too hard or it was a push instead
of just a nudge but also it was money on the table.
So, what do you think of Race to the Top, now in hindsight?
Chad: In hindsight, so I wrote this piece looking back at the teacher eval[SP], focused
on the teacher evaluation context.
And in that sense, like teacher evaluation was one big part of Race to the Top.
They got a lot of the outsize attention on it.
I, sort of, feel like Race to the Top was a little too muddy like it tried to do too
many things, there were 19 different priorities ranging from everything from standards to
teacher evaluation to school turnarounds to data.
And I think, like, I think it was a good opportunity.
I think the money was a good idea at the time.
It was during the recession.
It was a chance to leverage what was a good amount of money from the federal government
but not a lot from the states and districts to get them to do new things they hadn't been
doing.
I just think it was probably too muddy, too comprehensive.
I think it would've been better if it had been split up and say here's a pot for teachers,
here's a pot for standards, and think about those things differently.
Andy: Okay, well, let's come at the teacher eval in just one second, but just your interpretation
of the positives, so competitive grant programs, the federal government setting a goal providing
money to incentivize states to do things.
Do you think that that probably worked out well?
One thing we heard today, and that I think a lot of people on the left and the right
would say one of the benefits of NCLB, the No Child Left Behind Act, the Bush administration
0102 was that it forced states and then forced districts to test in grades three through
eight in reading and math, and then not only provide the data but disaggregate the data.
So, it was definitely a heavy hand here, but a lot of people now are saying thank goodness
for that because 15, 16, 17 years later we have lots of data on how all of our kids are
doing, so would you agree with that?
Chad: Yeah, I think that's one of the clear wins for me from No Child Left Behind, and
that sort of era is the data that we have, and both the availability of the data, the
data linkages to other, sorts of, systems not just assessments but now linking it to
teachers, linking it to long-term outcomes piqué are higher at all those types of things,
and then being able to disaggregate looking at different populations of students.
Andy: Okay.
So, if I'm constructing a narrative here, we could say all right generally a benefit
is of this era is the federal government incentivize states, states could do some things if they
wanted to do it and get some money for it, they were nudged to provide more data, so
the public knew more so they would be incentivized to reform all good stuff.
Then we get to some things like teacher evaluation, where it wasn't so much encouragement anymore.
It felt like the federal government was saying here's how you need to evaluate your teachers
using data in this way, and here's how your laws and regulations need to change.
So, how do you start to draw the line between some of these things that are good and when
this starts to get too heavy-handed?
Chad: I guess, so we're in a... and the person that has changed my thinking on this and both
before and after my term in government service was Rick Haas who talks about how government
can force state and local governments to do things but they can't force them to do those
things well.
And I attribute that to Rick Haas and repetition and all the stuff that he's written over time.
And also, my time in government services showing this.
Andy: There's wisdom in that or...
Chad: There is wisdom in that.
And so, I take it the same, like NCLB there are some things that were worth doing just
to do to like raise the floor of some things, and so that there are some places where that's
still necessary but to try to leverage systemwide improvements like that just can't happen from
the federal government.
And so, I think it's about finding ways to incentivize people who wanna do good things
to do those things.
And that's where I'm headed at this point.
Andy: So, where then do you put something like Common Core on that?
Is it on the boundary, is it more the forcing?
Chad: Yeah, it's a good question.
I think even more is in investment as an incentive to encourage it, and so there are some national
benefits if more places use common standards because then curriculum makers can have a
better market than just going after 50 states.
So there's some national incentives, but I don't think it should be forced or mandated,
I think, sort of, in the Every Student Succeeds Act requires that states have high-quality
standards and leaves it up to the states to determine what that means, working with their
own higher education institutions.
Andy: Okay.
So, whether we like all of, part of, none of the Bush-Obama era, I think all of us have
to recognize that it caused maybe or at least nudged us towards the Every Student Succeeds
Act which was Congress in 2015, at the very end 2015 passing a reauthorization of the
Elementary Secondary Education Act which is a reauthorization of No Child Left Behind,
essentially saying, Uncle Sam, thanks for your work, but back up a little bit, we're
gonna give states a whole lot more authority in the years ahead.
And that was a reaction to states being frustrated, being told what to do across all of these
domains, so let's just pause there for a second.
You had some misgivings about ESSA when it was passed.
So, if we can think about the 2015-2016 child, what were your concerns about it then?
Chad: So, my concerns were that it gave probably too much flexibility to the states.
It didn't leave much federal role to ensure that states were putting forth high-quality
plans.
Andy: Okay.
Pause there, because someone might say wait if we know that the Bush-Obama era was too
much federal pushing, why would we not trust states?
Aren't they gonna do the right thing?
Chad: So, even under No Child Left Behind there was a wide variance in how states got
outcomes, and so some states did pretty well, some states did not do very well, and that
was even under No Child Left Behind which was more of a rules-based national system.
There are still lots of choices within that, and states did other things that produce different
results.
So, my hunch was that we would see that under ESSA as well only magnified even more.
So, some states would take that flexibility and do good things with it.
Some states would take that flexibility and not do much with it.
So, the question for me was always, it's still federal dollars, the federal government still
thinks there's some value in sending that money out to states particularly for low-income
kids.
And so, I still think the federal government has some oversight role in making sure that
those plans are high-quality.
And you and I have written a paper, we have grappled on this.
Andy: I was about to make a joke about this!
What the right lever is, I think no one...
Well, I shouldn't say this.
Lots of people agree that we can't have a rules-based system like No Child Left Behind,
like, setting the rules for everybody.
But is there a way to say there's some discretion at the federal government level to set some
parameters for quality whether that's through an informal peer review process some, sort
of, secretarial authority.
I think the secretary authority under ESSA is very limited, and I worry that it's not
giving the current administration enough, the tool to say no you need some more thinking
on this plan, you need to keep working on this if you want to get federal dollars.
Andy: So, if anyone is interested, I think it is 2014 or 2015, we wrote this pretty long
paper, "Pax Americana."
I think that, let's just say, it wasn't a widely read or it wasn't widely adopted yet.
Chad: Our timing was terrible.
Andy: Our timing was bad, but what we were doing was in real time trying to wrestle with
this fundamental question, if we know that the No Child Left Behind era happened for
a reason.
But we also know that we were pushing towards ESSA for a reason that means that we have
to somehow find this area between nudging states given the billions of dollars the federal
government sends them, nudging them to make sure that we're getting the results we want
but without being too heavy-handed.
So, that leads to this next question which is, okay, so you conceptually had some questions
about ESSA back in 2015-2016, but now we don't have to speculate as much anymore.
We're two years into it and states have produced these plans, which states had to create accountability
plan systems underneath the new federal law meeting some criteria but free largely to
go their own ways in a couple of different areas.
And so, you and some colleagues took a look at all of these plans and you assessed them,
and so like I said it's not speculation anymore you can actually render some let's just say
initial judgment.
So, what did you guys find?
Chad: So, looking across all the plans, we said they were uncreative, largely unfinished,
unambitious.
We felt like a lot of things were recycled from prior efforts, prior plans, or a lot
of it was incomplete.
So, either on the indicator level states haven't fully defined how they're gonna measure something.
They haven't defined how they're gonna take the indicators and roll them up to a system
for identification purposes, and then they haven't always explicitly said what they're
gonna do for low performing schools both like the interventions that those schools might
have to pursue as well as any funding or resources that might be directed to them.
There's a big pot of money in ESSA that says, "Every state sets aside 7% of their Title
1 funds."
Which nationally is about $1 billion.
We looked and said, "Oh, and states have lots of discretion about how they spend that money,
whether it's a formula or a competition, whether they wanna embed some initiatives or other,
sorts of, priorities within that.
We counted in this last round there were 34 state plans, only 12 states mentioned that
money and most of them were in a very small paragraph to say, you know, it's gonna be
a formula.
It's gonna be competition.
But not much depth or detail about what that's going to look like."
Andy: So, I don't wanna put words in your mouth but do you feel, like, some of your
concerns from 2015 are being realized, that we might be seeing some regression that Uncle
Sam backed up and now states might not be taking some of these things as seriously?
Chad: I think that's fair at this point.
I mean, it's still early.
It's been two years, and you could say that's a long time, you can say it's a short time
in federal bureau... or state bureaucracy plan, it's probably not that much time but
I think it was concerning for us.
We had a panel of peers to look at the plans.
I think they came away generally concerned that the states, the plans were not that specific
about what they were gonna do.
Andy: Okay.
So, as you know, I've been moonlighting on AEI, and I hope no one watches us, so people
don't know that I've been moonlighting, working on the side on the Maryland State Board of
Education, I'm still in full disclosure, I've been actually worked on these issues at the
state level.
And so, what I've seen over the past two years is just how difficult it is for states to
work through these plans.
So when Uncle Sam backs up, that means all of the things that he had been dictating the
states on are now up for grabs again.
So, from the seat where I have been sitting for the past couple of years, what I realize
is when a state is given power again to debate what it means to be a great school, how you
measure it, how you intervene, do you value college going, or career and technical education?
Or how much weight do you put on whether English language learners are gaining or whether gifted
kids are gaining?
These are fundamental philosophical questions and they don't always lend themselves to being
answered simply in a document.
So, an argument that I've been making is, maybe the process that states have gone through
it's been valuable, maybe not neat and tidy but it's effectively states taking ownership
of their K12 Education System again.
Am I off base?
You can say yes.
Chad: I mean, I don't wanna say yes or no at this point.
I would say based on what we've said, like, we felt, like, the plans were important enough
to review, the states never have to go back in and get new approval, these approvals are
permanent and they are for a fairly large chunk of money, maybe not from a state budget
perspective but from the federal government, it's the federal government's investment in
low-income kids.
Andy: So, we got billions of dollars, and to your point, it's the one time the feds
will review this until presumably the law gets reauthorized which could be 7 years,
8 years, 10 years, 12 years.
Chad: Yeah.
And so, there could be some of what you're saying that states are still either figuring
out or they didn't wanna put it in their formal plans for whatever reason, maybe they have
political realities in their states, maybe they just didn't want to be held accountable,
they wanted some flexibility in the back end.
All those are legit.
I would say that like the opposite interpretation is that like as scrutiny goes down if the
federal government's no longer looking, if groups like ours aren't looking anymore, are
they gonna have the ability to make tough decisions going forward.
And I am concerned that some states won't have that capacity or willingness to make,
like, hard decisions.
Andy: Okay.
We'll try to wrap things up with like a two-part question, one is simply looking back and one
looking forward.
So, as you now take stock, we're sitting at the beginning of 2018, over the past, almost
two decades of increasingly forward leaning Uncle Sam's behavior.
What kind of lessons should people take away from that as we start to think about the ESSA
era?
What were the good things and what were the bad things in some?
Chad: Yeah, I think, I would go back to this conversation about how to use the federal
government's tools for good, and what are the potential ramifications for different
policies.
I hope we don't go back to it like a formal rules-based system like No Child Left Behind
but I'm worried about what states don't do with their flexibility, and so, like what
happens next?
I think it's useful for the states.
I think it's useful for all of us to think about how that can work.
I hope people would go back and reread our old paper, and maybe we didn't have the right
balance but...
Andy: Maybe not.
Chad: ...that sort of idea.
I think we weren't wrong.
I think we were early if you will.
Andy: We should do like a vinyl reissue of this maybe it like become hot later on.
So, just looking forward, last question, if you and you should be a state chief someday
if you get to be in charge of a...
If you were in charge of a state right now with this new ESSA opportunity where we have
these lessons from the past decade, decade and a half or more, and this new opportunity
for states to do even more, based on what you've seen over the past two years what states
are doing so far, how would you nudge, encourage, incentivize the state to do more?
And what are those things that you would encourage them to do?
Chad: The biggest thing for me is not using the data-driven accountability as the end
all be all.
So, I think it should be, sort of, like a flag and investigation for a further look
at those schools say this school has low performing outcomes, let's go take a look at it, let's
go review it.
Have some external parties go look at it as opposed to this is, like, below our set threshold
and automatically something happens.
I'd rather have more of a fuzzy process to say here's a rough identification of, here
are some schools we think need some help, and then what happens to them afterward.
Andy: That's great.
Well, thank you for your work for the federal government.
Now, on the nonprofit sector in this herculean effort of reviewing these 50, 51 state plans.
I can only imagine how many hours are those.
Chad: It was long.
I'm glad to be done with it, I think, yeah.
Andy: Well, you did a public service which had all of it.
Thank you so much.
Chad: Thanks for having me.
Andy: Hey, everyone.
That's the end of our discussion with Chad Aldeman.
Thanks so much for watching.
As always, let us know what other topics you'd like EAS to cover on "Viewpoint."
And to learn more about the balance between federal and state power in schools, check
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