Straight Up ... Or On The Rocks?

In his Education Week blog "Straight Up", Rick Hess comes to the defense of fellow traveler Naomi Schaefer Riley following her dismissal as a Chronicle of Higher Education blogger. The boom was lowered as a result of NSR's hatchet job, published on the Chronicle's "Brainstorm" blog, of three up-and-coming black-studies scholars. She paints their unpublished dissertations broadly as "left-wing victimization claptrap."

Hess's mounting of the barricades is no surprise as the Right is framing this as a crucifixion driven by political correctness. Ms. Riley's husband, Wall Street Journal editorial writer Jason Riley, is quoted by Hess as saying of his wife's sacking, "The mob rules." Well, there's an independent source. (Also see Mona Charen and Checker Finn for similar takes.)

Sara, my wife, a former Chronicle blogger herself, called for NSR's firing on this very blog. She described NSR's piece as "emotion-laden spewing, a venomous disdainful piece directed at young women scholars of color." Indeed. As a non-higher education expert and non-journalist, but amateur blogger, I perceived NSR's blog post as a screed better suited for a stream-of-consciousness, verbal diatribe on right-wing talk radio or the Sean Hannity show than the virtual pages of The Chronicle.

Hess's defense of NSR is wobbly, or "on the rocks," if you will. First, Hess equates NSR's attacks on junior academics with political protests against an elected official -- Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker. Second, Hess conflates NSR's blog post with scholarly work protected by academic freedom. There is a critical difference between rhetorical flourishes directed at public figures and similar ones directed at private citizens. Such instances are, in fact, treated differently in libel case law, with public figures having a greater burden of proof. "Scholarly concerns for academic freedom" are not incompatible, as Hess suggests, with an opinion that a scathing, personal critique such as NSR's doesn't belong on the pages of a respected media-sponsored blog. Agreeing or disagreeing with her isn't relevant. As the Chronicle editors noted, her post simply did not conform to "journalistic standards and civil tone." Academic freedom, freedom of speech, and the right or privilege to publish a blog or column on a given web site or publication are each very different things.

Conservative blogger and UW-Madison law school professor Ann Althouse offers a refreshingly nuanced take on the NSR affair. She points out that NSR "mocked individual graduate students.... [C]ombining that blogging style with an attack on named, individual students, where you are speaking from a high platform in the established media... that's the problem, and I don't see Riley stepping up and acknowledging it."

That's right. This dust-up isn't much about ideas at all, or freedom of speech, as some have contended. The dispute is fundamentally about journalistic standards in the realm of social media and about the specific personal attacks lobbed by NSR through the Brainstorm blog. The Chronicle and other media outlets should have a higher standard for such blogs -- and if commentators like NSR can't or refuse to meet that standard, they should be replaced by someone that can. If political or philosophic balance is of concern, there are plenty of conservative scholars and thinkers, Hess included, that even on a bad day could more than fill the vacancy created by NSR.

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What Happens When You Remake Academia? Rick Hess Looks Your Way

Rick Hess is an amusing guy-- witty banter, fun to have drinks with-- and always pushing buttons. I dig that, even though we rarely agree on policy issues.

What I like most about him is that he takes seriously the idea that academics should bring their research to the public, and in an effort to prod that along, last year he began ranking us. He uses a set of metrics that even he admits are pretty darned flawed, but are at least an ATTEMPT in the right direction. I like it not because I'm ranked (ok, I like that too) but rather because Hess is a prominent guy doing whatever he can to provide incentives to professors to do more than what tenure requires of them. He wants us to use all 5 tools in our work--"disciplinary scholarship, policy analysis and popular writing, convening and quarterbacking collaborations, providing incisive media commentary, and speaking in the public square." And that I can appreciate.

So here are the rankings this year. And here's the methodology.

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Busy As a Bee

You may have noticed the recent near radio silence from Sara on our blog. No, she isn't on a secret mission and hasn't left academia to join the NSA. She, however, has been busy as a bee this past year, starting with giving birth to our daughter, being named a W.T. Grant Scholar, and engaging in important academic research.

My pride in her commitment to, excellence in and passion for issues of educational and social inequality is coupled with a recognition of her unwillingness to see academic research relegated to dusty and sometimes impenetrable academic journals. Sara has been aggressive and public with her research and committed to engaging in and communicating her work in a policy relevant manner. That fits a critical need in public policy conversations.

That's why I was quite pleased to see Sara's name mentioned among the ranks of the most prominent academics in the nation in the "EduScholar" rankings issued by the American Enterprise Institute's Rick Hess. And Sara isn't even yet a senior scholar nor is she an economist (who are overrepresented). Hess says:

The academy today does a passable job of recognizing good disciplinary scholarship but a pretty mediocre job of recognizing scholars with the full range of skills that enables them to really contribute to the policy debate. Today, there are substantial professional rewards for scholars who do hyper-sophisticated, narrowly conceived research, but little institutional recognition, acknowledgment, or support for scholars who carry their efforts into the public discourse. One result is that the public square is filled by impassioned advocates, while silence reigns among those who may be more versed on the research or more likely to recognize complexities and hard truths.

I think these kinds of metrics are relevant because I believe it's the scholars who do these kinds of things "who can cross boundaries, foster crucial collaborations, and bring research into the world of policy in smart and useful ways."

Jay Greene -- seeking to give credit to more junior scholars who have had a great impact on contemporary public policy conversations and to move beyond rankings based on a single year (2010) of performance -- perfected the Hess rubric, causing Sara's ranking to increase by about 30 points to #39.

Hotshot researchers like Roland Fryer, Jacob Vigdor, Susanna Loeb, Matthew Springer, Brian Jacob, Jonah Rockoff, and Sara Goldrick-Rab are having a large impact on current education policy discussions even though their careers have not been long enough to accumulate a longer list of books and articles. The original ranking shortchanged these scholars in measuring their current “public presence.”

I agree. As I mentioned in this recent post, advocates who too often simply echo one another's opinions are too influential in policy debates. There is an important void to be filled by the likes of academic researchers as well as classroom teachers.

Congrats, Sara! Keep up the great work!

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School Vouchers Are No Silver Bullet

Here is a compelling article by the American Enterprise Institute's Rick Hess about school choice in light of Milwaukee's experience with vouchers over the last two decades. His analysis is not as rosy as you might initially expect from a center/right researcher. But he does continue to see the potential in market-based reforms as long as they are envisioned more expansively and are accompanied with a focus on program growth, provider quality, professionalism, innovation, and accountability.

Many of Hess's proposed elements are exactly the kinds of reform that the Milwaukee voucher community fought tooth and nail over the years -- a fight led by politicized organizations such as School Choice Wisconsin, the Alliance for School Choice, and Advocates for School Choice. All of these organizations are interconnected and are bankrolled by national right-wing foundations, including Milwaukee's own Bradley Foundation. These groups have seemed to care little about the quality of education provided to Milwaukee's largely low-income and minority students -- but have willingly used these kids as political props at pro-voucher rallies during the school day -- and have made their sole focus the preservation of an unregulated and unfettered school voucher system in the city of Milwaukee. That changed a little bit a few years ago when media stories about graft, incompetence, and the utter absence of teaching and learning emerged at a number of Milwaukee voucher schools.

As education policy advisor to Wisconsin Governor Jim Doyle from 2004 to 2006, I was involved in some of these skirmishes with the voucher leadership. Doyle was always clearly on the side of public education and generally steered a wise course through choppy political waters on this issue. However, I continue to believe that a 2006 compromise [2005 Wisconsin Act 125 summary] that injected some of the first ever accountability and quality control into Milwaukee's voucher program still gave away too much. As examples, I'd offer up the evaluation currently being conducted by the privately-funded, voucher-friendly School Choice Demonstration Project, the trouble that state officials are having in getting data from that entity, and the lack of a requirement that voucher schools (funded with more than $100 million in state monies) administer a standardized assessment that would provide parents, policymakers and researchers with comparable student achievement data.

Hopefully, moving forward, all involved will take some of Hess's recommendations under advisement. For now, the Milwaukee voucher program lives on in its current form.

Here are a few excerpts from Hess's article:

Nearly two decades have passed since the enactment of the landmark Milwaukee Parental Choice Program by the Wisconsin legislature. The program and its many supporters had hoped this experiment in school choice would lead the way in transforming American schools. But it is by now clear that aggressive reforms to bring market principles to American education have failed to live up to their billing.
...
Today, the Milwaukee voucher program enrolls nearly 20,000 students in more than 100 schools, yet this growing marketplace has yielded little innovation or excellence. The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel recently described 10 percent of voucher schools as having “alarming deficiencies.” These include Alex’s Academics of Excellence, which was launched by a convicted rapist, and the Mandella School of Science and Math, whose director overreported its voucher enrollment and used the funds to purchase two Mercedes. Veteran Journal Sentinel writer Alan Borsuk has opined, “[Milwaukee Parental Choice Program] has preserved the status quo in terms of schooling options in the city more than it has offered a range of new, innovative, or distinctive schools.”
...
We should have no difficulty conceding Milwaukee’s disappointing record while remaining coolly confident that sensible K–12 market reforms have the potential to boost productivity, spur purposive innovation, provide more nuanced accountability, and make the sector a magnet for talent. Failures to dates should not be read as indictments of market reform but of the notion that “parental choice” programs represent a coherent approach to improving our schools. Reaching that goal will require approaching educational deregulation with an agenda much broader than simply increasing parental choice.
...
The lessons are increasingly clear. If school choice is to enjoy a brighter future than wave upon wave of supposed school reforms past, it is time for reformers to fight not just for choice but for good choices.

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