[PIANO MUSIC PLAYING]
PROFESSOR: I'm very pleased that John White has agreed to talk with me today
about our accountability system in the United States and the various efforts
to raise standards through Common Core and through many other actions taken
at state levels.
John White is the state superintendent for education
for the state of Louisiana and was also deputy chancellor in New York City.
So he has a breadth of knowledge about how the inter-governmental system needs
to work.
And it's very especially interesting to talk
with somebody who has been so successful in Louisiana at raising student
performance from what was second to the bottom to the most
rapidly improving state in the United States under his leadership.
So John, it's great to have you with me today.
JOHN WHITE: Great to be here.
PROFESSOR: And I would like to ask you, is testing
an important part of your thinking?
Is holding schools accountable an important part
of your thinking about how you get gains in student performance and a more
effective educational system?
JOHN WHITE: It is.
And no question that measurement has to be an important component
of any plan for success.
There's a lot of ways that we can improve testing, a lot of ways
that we can improve our accountability systems.
Every Student Succeeds Act, I think, at least
calls us to can seriously consider those questions in the States.
There are some serious risks involved in all of this, too.
But no question, if you--
the step to begin to measure learning is an important one.
It can be done better.
It can be done more efficiently.
But it's a critical component as a starting point of any plan for change.
PROFESSOR: Well, just a lot of people were on board with this idea
back in 2002 when No Child Left Behind was introduced into Congress
in a bipartisan coalition.
Democrats and Republicans alike supported this by overwhelming margin.
But as time went on, a lot of opposition developed
to the testing and the holding schools accountable that
was required by No Child Left Behind.
What did they do wrong or why did that political opposition develop?
JOHN WHITE: Well, I think there's a difference between what was done wrong
and why the political opposition developed.
But I think that in terms of what was done wrong,
the president has talked about this.
It has spawned an industry.
No question about that.
And I'm not sure if every element of that industry is what we want.
We don't need our kids taking tests every day,
multiple times over the course of a day.
It should be a checkup.
And that's what it is.
And it's fair to say that we or the establishment or industry
have not effectively communicated to parents, this is how this benefits you.
This is not just a crusade to benefit the disenfranchised.
This is for everybody.
This is beneficial.
And we haven't done as much as we needed to communicate that.
PROFESSOR: Well, one of the mistakes that I
thought was made by No Child Left Behind was the adequate yearly progress
way of defining what was a good school, instead of looking at how much kids are
learning in the course of one year, how much more do they know
this year than they did one year ago, which I would have thought
would have been the logical way of trying to find out
if a school was effective or not.
JOHN WHITE: The good news is people I think
discovered that quickly, years into No Child Left Behind,
that the idea of just how many students are
at a certain level in a certain school is not really an effective way
of measuring the effect of that school.
In our state for example, if you look at the A schools or the schools that
are rated A, 30% of, in some schools 90% of struggling students,
in those schools are hitting the mark.
In some state, in some of those a-rated schools, only 30%
of the struggling students are hitting the mark.
So you've got wide, wide differences when you really
dig into the data behind what is an A school.
PROFESSOR: So you will give an A to a school
where the students are performing at a fairly low level, if they're
showing substantial improvement from one year to the next.
JOHN WHITE: Well, I think we should do that.
I think right now what we do, and I probably didn't explain it
as well as I should have.
But what we do is we give A's to schools that
are making great strides with kids.
We also give A's to some schools that aren't making great strides,
but just have high performing kids to begin with.
And there's obviously a distinction there.
An A school can be one where kids are just performing at a high level.
But it can also be one where kids came performing at a deplorably low level,
and then really made gains.
That's an A also.
And we need to redefine our state, and in many states,
what constitutes an A school.
PROFESSOR: Now the state school chief officers, I've
forgotten exactly how that name goes.
And the governors, the National Governors Association,
agreed to put into place Common Core State Standards.
That was backed by the Obama administration,
with its race to the top initiative and its waiver policies,
so that states didn't have to abide by some of those NCLB requirements,
if, in fact, they would adopt the Common Core State Standards
and make other reforms, as well.
So once again, this at the beginning had widespread support.
And well, let's first of all talk about that widespread support.
Do you agree that it was there at the beginning?
JOHN WHITE: I do.
And you know, the most simple way that I can rationalize it in my mind
and for those that I work with is, we have historically
been the 48 or 49th rank state in the country in academics.
We have historically been in the top five in football.
The reason we're in the top five in football
is because we're willing to go to any state, and we're willing to compete.
But in academics, it's always just been, well, how did one town in Louisiana
do against another town?
We can't get to the top in a valid way unless we're willing to go to any state
and put our education system up against it.
That's how you grow.
That's how you progress is you're willing to open your doors
and to compete.
So the principles of success on the football field
are principles of success in our academic system.
If we don't have something that we share with other states, the ability
to measure ourselves against everybody else,
there's not really a valid platform for how we need to progress.
PROFESSOR: But a lot of people feel like, OK, the history of education
in the South, in general, Louisiana included, is very different
than the history of education in the Northeast, where you've had,
back to the days of the pilgrims, a real commitment
to teaching children early on.
Is it fair to put them on the same platform
and say, well, you've got to be compared to those people
in other parts of the country, not just your own state?
JOHN WHITE: Well, you know, there's a difference
between what's fair to the adults and what's fair to the students.
And you need to be fair to both.
We have 300 years of subjugation of African-American people in our state.
We are an agrarian state that is coming into a 21st century economy
and natural resources state.
I'm not going to argue that that's a different, that that's
the same conditions in which Massachusetts or New York,
or a state in the Northeast operates in.
And clearly we come into this from a different perspective.
But what is fair to the kids who are inheriting in the year
2016, a multinational, seriously competitive economy,
is to have expectations that are those that the workforce will
have for them, which is you should be able to work and live and succeed
anywhere.
What's fair to the adults is not to demoralize everybody
just because you have those high expectations.
And you can do both of those things.
You can have a system that has the highest
expectations possible for children, while having
a rational system of improvement for the adults who operate the system.
PROFESSOR: So the Common Core standards principle is one that you endorse,
you continue to endorse, despite the political opposition
that developed on both the right and the left of the political spectrum.
The Tea Party opposed it, a lot of teacher unions opposed it,
a lot of teachers have opposed Common Core.
So why-- I want to ask, especially about the teachers.
Why did opposition to Common Core State Standards develop among teachers?
JOHN WHITE: Well, I support the principle
of what those standards embody which is interstate competition.
You know, we have our own standards in Louisiana called, the Louisiana
students standards that allow us to remain comparable
with states across the country.
And I support those standards.
With respect to teachers first, there is no one teacher voice.
And I am sick and tired of people saying that teachers view this,
or teachers believe it that way.
You know, every year I get in a room with 5,000
or 6,000 teachers in New Orleans for a group, a gathering called,
Our Teacher Leaders.
There are 5,000 or 6,000 different views about a lot
of different stuff in there.
But there is no one in that room who's just against progress.
And I actually think that, when you engage teachers in a conversation,
you empower them with a curriculum that they actually
know is aligned to the standards.
They get fired up about the state standards,
in our case, Louisiana students standards.
There may have been, I think, some steps along the way that
didn't give teachers the tools they needed to be confident
when they were doing it.
And when you're not confident, you're fearful.
And when you're fearful, you say it.
And that happened a lot in some states, including our own, occasionally.
But I think we've bridge that gap.
We've gotten beyond it.
And I'll tell you.
I don't feel any more support for high expectations from any group more
than I do from teachers.
PROFESSOR: What I think I'm hearing, John,
is that you're saying there's been a lot of political conflict
over Common Core State Standards, but this movement
toward setting standards that are closer to being the same across the states
is not going to go away if there's more and deeper support.
But we've seen this with our Education Next poll
that, in fact, there is a lot of support for similar standards
across the country.
And I don't know if that's just what people
say in response to questions that--
but I think I hear you're saying that there is support for that.
JOHN WHITE: I believe that, in a state that has historically been rated low,
that our kids are born just as smart and just as capable
as any kids in this country.
I believe they have gifts and talents that
are no lesser than those of the children in any other state.
And I believe the people of Louisiana want control over the education system
there.
But they also support the idea that our kids can compete and deserve
a level playing field.
And they shouldn't have to wait until the ACT in 11th grade to get it.
PROFESSOR: Well, we have a new law called the Education--
oh, I can't remember how it goes.
JOHN WHITE: Every Student Succeeds Act.
PROFESSOR: Every Student Succeeds Act.
So how is this affecting the whole setting of standards
and the setting of accountability.
JOHN WHITE: That's a big question.
I mean, I think it's a big if.
States have a lot more control.
Even districts have a lot more control over these questions
than they did under--
not just No Child Left Behind--
but the waivers to No Child Left Behind.
And I think whether states make a decision that, on some elements,
they're going to compete, that's still left up in the air.
States also now have the requirement to use measures in their system
that aren't just about tests and how innovative those things will be,
how much of a free pass those things will be.
I think there's a lot up in the air on those questions.
PROFESSOR: So we don't know exactly where we're
going in our educational system as we enter
the latter part of the second decade of the 21st century.
There's a lot of questions yet to be answered.
But if we don't improve our schools, how are
we going to be a continually prosperous country
as we move into the 21st century?
JOHN WHITE: It would be impossible for us to be.
And you know, my hope--
and I do believe that in many states this will happen--
is that we'll go back to the record, and we'll
see that the following formula is a good formula for success.
One, high expectations that are measured in a way where they
can be validated across state lines.
Two, an acceptance that our accountability system does
need to evolve.
There are higher achieving systems around the world
that have non-testing measures.
Look at New Zealand, for example.
And look at what they've done with their system, to great effect.
And three, when schools go off the rails--
and we all in every state have these issues--
you need to be able to intervene.
But we've got a decade of research now to show what works and what doesn't.
So if you are willing to embrace change, willing to embrace high expectations,
and follow the research when there's problems, that's a formula for success.
I don't see why a state would go in a different direction from that.
And if we do, it'll work.
PROFESSOR: Thank you, John.
This has been a great opportunity to get to understand your philosophy
and your strategy for school reform.
Thank you for joining us.
JOHN WHITE: Thanks, Paul.