Weeks 7 & 8

So this is what it feels like to be a "summer intern"......

I have decided to combine weeks 7 and 8 together as my final blog post for the summer. The reason for this is because the last 2 weeks have been fairly slow, with me working on projects in the office and wrapping up any loose ends before I leave.

Last week (week 7), was a very quiet week considering that I was pretty much the only person in the office. Augustus was away in West Virginia, Jason was in San Francisco, and Jim was in Colorado. John came into the office most of the days, but he would usually trickle in late, and I would be left to work on my projects alone. So the major project I was assigned to accomplish for the last 2 weeks of my fellowship was a project on comparing the ESEA recommendations put out from various education organizations to Knowledge Alliance's recommendations. Augustus had left me a list of about 35 prominent education organizations, so it was my job to search their websites for recommendations or contact them for direct information. The Department of Education put out a blueprint back at the beginning of the year, which gave organizations a sense of what ESEA reauthorization would look like under the Obama administration. After the release of such documents, it is standard here to give organizations a 90 day "comment window" in which they can make their comments and recommendations to the administration. Since most organizations truly believed ESEA would be reauthorized before the end of 2010, most of the groups I was asked to look up did have their recommendations posted online.

So the first couple days of the week were spent printing out these sometimes lengthy comments sheets and emailing key government relations contacts at the various organizations for their recommendations if I could not find them online. Out of the 35 groups I was able to gather 23 comments pages. The next step was to then read through each recommendation piece and highlight all of the comments that matched Knowledge Alliance's 8 priority proposals. This was obviously a time consuming task because after I highlighted as much information as I could in all 23 proposals, I then went through and created a spreadsheet that pulled direct quotes and placed them in one of the 8 priority categories. I was pretty proud of myself for being able to accomplish all of this before I left on Friday for South Florida, especially considering that it was completely done through self-motivation as I was alone at the office.

The rest of the week was spent summarizing news blurbs for the Knowledgeable Source, which this week, I wrote 4 pieces that made it in. I wrote about Google's new anti-net neutrality stance, Tom Vander Ark's claim that i3 grants won't actually lead to innovation, modern day carpetbaggers (aka- companies who are now claiming that they are school turnaround experts so that they can get government money), and a piece on the predictions of who will win RttT round 2 in early September. I actually really enjoy working on these news summaries, and wish that I had been given this responsibility earlier on in the summer. I guess this week will be my last chance to assist with these efforts.

This week (week 8) has so far been off to a very similar low-key start. I actually didn't come into work on Monday because I was flying back from Ft. Lauderdale with Kevin after an amazing birthday weekend. Tuesday began with me attending a symposium on Education in the Media, with panelists of education reporters for Education Week, USA Today and the Washington Post. This was a very relevant and timely symposium to attend considering that over the weekend, the LA Times ran a pretty groundbreaking education piece that publicly released the names of teachers and their test scores. I am not opposed to LAUSD using value added systems (test scores) as one way to evaluate teacher effectiveness, and don't really have a problem with the LA Times reporting on the results, although I do have an issue with releasing the names of teachers. This would not be such a problem if tenure did not exist, but now, parents are going to be outraged if their kids are placed in these publicly ousted "ineffective teachers," and there is nothing the principal can do about it since the teachers have lifetime job protections. Anyways, this symposium was helpful, since it does not seem like members of the media take a lot of time to teach organizations how to best represent themselves in the media, as well as to take the time to listen to many people's qualms and ideas about how education is currently being represented in the public sphere. The rest of the day was kind of a follow-up day where I responded to emails, added some new ESEA recommendations to my chart and talked with Augustus about what the rest of the week would look like. I also helped Augustus come up with a summary list of which priorities to comment on from Sec. Duncan's new document outlining the administration's priorities for discretionary funding. It was good to see that 2 of the priorities had to do with ensuring that sound research and evidence is utilized during the innovation and implementation of education policies and practices. The rest of the week is basically going to be the final wrap-up. I have an exit interview with Augustus on Thursday, and an exit interview with Jim on Friday. Jason will be returning from San Francisco, and Wednesday will be a birthday celebration day, with lunch at an Indian Buffet and then Happy Hour at the Mad Hatter. (Augustus' bday is Aug. 14th, mine is Aug. 15th and Jason's is Aug. 17th). Pretty random, huh? Also, Thursday will be my official goodbye lunch since Augustus will be out of the office Friday, and what better way to celebrate than with another trip to my favorite burger place, Spike's Good Stuff Eatery.

All in all, I could not have asked for a better summer fellowship, and I feel very lucky for having had the opportunity to meet all of the people in my office, as well as numerous contacts around the city, and country, really. I cannot thank Augustus and Jim enough for the exposure that I got this summer, particularly to the process of lobbying, as well as to insight on how to run a trade organization that deals with various members and interests. The amount of just raw policy knowledge I accumulated this summer is astounding. Education policy is SUCH A COMPLEX issue, and I still do not necessarily know how I stand on every single issue because I really truly can see both sides to most stories. I am encouraged at the bipartisan support that I have seen in education policy, but also discouraged by the newfound divide occurring between "reformers" and "formula supporters."

This experience has also definitely confirmed what I thought I already knew- that policy is absolutely what I would like to do with my life. This is exciting since I never really thought I had a "niche" for a career. You know, some people want to be doctors or lawyers or writers, and it is very easy for them to imagine what a career in one of those venues would look like. With me, I didn't ever think that there would be a job that I could have that would combine my interest in politics, helping others and specific interests such as education or health. Now I know that a policy job does just that.

Lastly, one other important realization I came to this summer is that this experience has really renewed me to want to become a much better and more dedicated teacher to my students this year. I think it was very valuable to step away from the classroom mentality for a summer and remind myself what it was like to work with adults, and realize that it is very rewarding to work with students. I have come to really appreciate the role that I have in being a leader, and can't believe I would ever say this, but I really now appreciate how busy I am during the school year. It's not that I wasn't busy this summer, but I definitely have become accustomed to having a never-ending to-do-list and loads of responsibility, and those are 2 things that may not always come with an office job, especially when you are an intern.

So, I guess folks, that wraps up this summer experience. I have really enjoyed my time blogging, and am very thankful that I slogged through it and made myself recap my experiences every week because I know it will be very easy to forget day-to-day details once I return to LA. Thank you to anyone who actually took the time to read this, I hope it gave you a detailed (way too detailed, I know) look into what I was able to observe and accomplish with my time here at Knowledge Alliance. Who knows, maybe I will start to blog regularly, although I find that pretty unlikely once I'm back in the swing of things this school year. Thanks again for reading, and as always, your support!!

Week 6

The Retreat!!! Finally, all of the hard work came to fruition this week, and I will not break down this post by day, but will merely recap the general feel of our "Big Ideas Conference: VUCA in the Education World." (VUCA is a military acronym used to describe a time in war when there is total chaos; it is typically the turning point of a war).

We arrived in beautiful New Mexico, and specifically the Tamaya Resort, on Sunday afternoon, which really gave us time to just relax and get familiar with the property and the space. Jason and I took this task to heart by going for a run around the 3 mile running trail that takes you along the Rio Grande and under the shadow of the great Sandia peak, and then we tested out the awesome water slide that goes into one of their 3 pools. In the evening, we went to dinner at a cute little institution restaurant in downtown Bernalillo called "The Range," and I had some very interesting conversations with some of our members, including Paul Kimmelman from Learning Point Associates and Dave Lash, an innovation strategist.

Monday morning was time for Jason and I to assist John with setting up the ball room and getting registration ready. The conference officially began after lunch, and I must say that the "knowledge catchers," (aka dream catchers) that I had commissioned as conference gifts were a big hit. The first session was a mega-session with Tony Bryk and Louis Gomez from the Carnegie Foundation, and Lindsay Martin from the Institute for Healthcare Improvement to discuss the idea of rapid prototyping. The concept really has to do with this idea of having research projects set to 90 day cycles, that really allow researchers to rapidly find answers to small questions, and then have those answers build upon one another to eventually lead to a big picture idea. 90 day cycles are currently being utilized as an effective method of research in the healthcare arena, and the session was aimed to encourage education to try this same prototype for its own projects. Although I have never spent a lot of time thinking about the research priorities of the education sector, this session was still informative. The only qualm I had was when we split up into our "breakout sessions," and I certainly faced ageism with the people at my table questioning my authority of attending the conference due to my obviously youthful appearance. I let off some of my frustrtation with this by taking advantage of the open bar at the reception prior to dinner.

Monday's dinner proved to have one of the most interesting sessions, probably because I could participate fully in the discussion due to its topic. The presentation, hosted by Jillian Darwish, was one on the idea of how fast change occurs, and attempted to take a look at a future learner in 2020. The conversation obviously led to a discussion on how the future of technology, environment and globalism will affect the way learners gather information, and how education researchers and practitioners will have to adapt in order to continue to educate learners effectively in the future. We had very engaging table discussions at our dinner table regarding this topic, and people were interested to hear both mine and Jason's points of view since we were the closest ones at the table who could be considered "digital natives". It is kind of overwhelming to think that the innovations and inventions that will exist in 2020 are ones in which we cannot even imagine today.

Tuesday morning was a full day of conference activities starting with breakfast at 8:00 AM and ending with dinner at 8:00 PM. The morning session was led by Mike Smith, a former under secretary and deputy secretary for the Department of Education, to give a perspective on VUCA in the federal government. We broke out into small group sessions again, where small groups had the opportunity to think about how Knowledge Alliance can assist the research community through the many changes occurring in education. We then ate this ridiculously good buffet lunch that consisted of bbq short ribs and green chili mac and cheese, and after lunch, reconvened for another lecture led by Tom Vander Ark and Ted Kolderie on "Crisis as the Mother of Invention in Education." This discussion led us to think about how the education community can take advantage of the crisis state of education, and how we can use this time to truly be innovative in our practices. We broke into round robin table groups where we were asked to think about and strategize on what we think the greatest levers for change truly are in the education world. As a group, we could not come to a total consensus, but could obviously agree on the fact that the economy, technology, and students themselves will play a key role in deciding the fate of the education community.

The evening activities were followed by another open bar reception and another 5 course dinner, which allowed me to have fascinating conversation with Mike Bowler, the former education reporter for the Baltimore Sun. After dinner, Jim and a panel of members led a wrap-up discussion on the conference as a whole, which aimed to summarize some of the big takeaways from the last 48 hours. The following morning continued the conversation with feedback of the conference being shared over breakfast.

Wednesday morning 8/4/2010 (Happy Birthday, Amy!), Augustus, John and I packed up shop and headed back to the Albuquerque airport to make our return flight home. Once arriving in Baltimore, we made it back to the car, and then spent about 20 minutes trying to find Augustus' car key, which had been accidentally dropped into one of our bags. Overall, I really enjoyed my first ever business trip experience, and was glad to have the opportunity to sit in on a confererence being held with some of the biggest education researchers in the country. Policy really was not the main focus of the conference, so I found myself wearing my "teacher" hat moreso than my "policy fellow" hat during the retreat. It is encouraging to know that so many organizations are dedicating their efforts and time to ensure that teachers receive the best practices to ultimately lead to student success.

Thursday and Friday back at the office were pretty low-key days coming off the excitement of the retreat. John, Augustus and I didn't even show up to the office until around 11 AM on Thursday, and I quickly left at noon to attend my second to last PALI fellows brownbag lunch with my other TFA fellows. Our guest speaker for this luncheon was actually with the Indianapolis cohort, and his name was Dale Chu, and he works with the Indiana Department of Education. He gave us kind of the "state's perspective" on a lot of the federal programs that are circulating through the country right now, particularly Race to the Top and the Common Core Standards. Apparently Indiana's Department of Education had a lot of inner debate as to whether or not to adopt the Common Core since the Fordham Institute put out a report ranking Indiana's current state standards higher than the Common Core. Indiana eventually decided to the adopt the common core, which probably had to do with increasing their chances of potentially being eligible for RttT round 3 money, as well as to be included in any federal assessments that are being written for Common Core states. In the afternoon, after I headed back to the office, Augustus had me work on a project going through the finalists (aka- winners if they can find 20% matching funds) of the Innovating in Investment or I3 grants to see how many of our members were involved in winning proposals. After sorting through the 49 winners' abstracts, we concluded that 9 of our members were involved in at least 16 winning applications, meaning that our members will be involved with appx. 29% of I3 grants. This is great news for our members, since they will be receiving money to be the evaluators or primary researchers for the grants. The competition was incredibly fierce, with over 1,700 applications, and only 49 finalists. Surprisingly, I was personally connected to 3 of the winners, with Forsyth County Schools (my home school system) winning a grant to test a program to reduce drop out race; Teach For America winning one of only 4 scale up grants for a total of $50 million to expand the program; and LAUSD (my current employer) to turn around low performing schools. I am proud of all 3 of these organizations winning grants, but I must comment on Forsyth County. With all of the anti-federalist tea party sentiment swirling around the county, it surprises me that 1. the district would even apply for ARRA money, and 2. take that money if they find a match. I absolutely think they deserve and should have the money, but it should certainly make people question their arguments that the federal government has no place in local jurisdictions, because clearly the $5 Million dollars given to the Forsyth County School system will play an important role in the county's innovation.

Friday, 8/6/2010- Friday was also a fairly slow day, with me attending my very last TFA luncheon with my other fellows. The guest speaker today was also brought to us via conference call, and the speakers Sylvia Puente from the Latino Policy Forum and Maria Whelan with Action for Children, and their job was to discuss the idea of turning policy into advocacy. How can you actually rally and shape public opinion to advance your cause? Obviously they work on various Latino causes, but education is certainly one of them, even if it is not the most prominent issues in the news, because it is an issue of inequality in the Latino community. After the call, I returned to the office, and helped Augustus work on pieces for the Knowledgeable Source. I helped to summarize stories on the i3 winners, Common Core Adoption, and a new Databank debuting on the Dept. of Ed. website. All in all it was a good week, but I can start to feel the wrap up of this experience. Next week, I will be left to work on projects alone as all of my bosses and Jason will be out of the office.

Week 5

By far the most exciting week on the job to date...I'm sure that this will be the week I look back on when thinking about all of the great experiences I've had this summer.

7/26/10: The week began again with the typical morning call to Ellen- not too much to report new other than the anticipation of the Senate appropriations mark up taking place the next day. Ellen was pretty certain that the Senate would not embargo the appropriations like the House, so it would be the first time we would actually be able to get a feel of how R&D would fare in the federal government this year. (Aka- how much does the federal government value the role of R&D in education?). After this call, Augustus, Jason and I headed over to the Raben Group offices (a lobbying LLC), to listen to a head member from the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee (DCCC) to give a forecast of how the Democrats will fare in the midterm elections. Although the speaker was very optimistic in predicting that the Dems would not lose either the House or the Senate, we were a little less optimistic. It appears as though the Dems are currently raising more money than the Republicans, however, this is not including any of the special interest money from corporations, which will clearly set Republicans over the edge. I really don’t think that anyone knows how the election will play out in November, but it will be certain that we will lose at least 20-30 seats in the House, and maybe 6-7 in the Senate. Either way, this election will only further deepen the partisan divide in Washington for the remaining 2 years in Obama’s first term.

7/27/10: Today was an exciting day for me because I got to attend the National Press Club luncheon to hear Secretary Arne Duncan give a major speech on Education, and release the finalists for Race to the Top round 2. The press club itself was quite the experience , with the old wooden paneled walls, and pictures of old politicians in the press club throughout the ages. The food itself was absolutely terrible, but they had really cute cookies that were “teacher themed” for dessert. Sec. Duncan’s speech was not anything I hadn’t heard before, but since it was being taped for C-Span, I’m sure he was just sticking to his talking points. When he made the announcement for RttT, he ended up awarding 18 states and DC as finalists, which means that those states will now come and make presentations to the Dept. of Education, and most likely 5-10 winners will be selected to receive the grant money in early September. Whatever criticisms people have of the program, it is irrefutable that RttT has caused states to make drastic education policy changes without ever spending a single dime. I don’t want to get into the whole formula versus competitive funding debate, but I do know that the status quo is not working, and we have to be innovative in our approach to ed. reform at this point. After the speech, I headed back to the office, while Jason, Augustus and Jim went to the Senate subcommittee appropriations mark up for Labor, HHS, and Ed. Apparently this mark up was very different from the House subcommittee, which meant that it only lasted 10 minutes, and then everybody just ran up to staffers at the end to find out how much money was given for their individual programs. It was great news for R&D however, because the Institute for Education Sciences actually got an increase in funding for the upcoming fiscal year, while many other programs were being cut.

7/28/10: This morning began with a very early event put on by National Journal Live, and it was an event to discuss the state of education policy in the country. The guest speaker was Rep. George Miller (D-CA), who is the chairman of the House Education Committee, and is a very key player in shaping what education policy passes the House. After his interview, a panel including AFT president Randi Weingarten, and the President of the New Teacher Project came on and basically “graded” the current education system and had to make suggestions for improvement. It was no surprise that the panelists gave the current system a failing grade, although they both agreed that that failing grade was only for some of the students and schools, while recognizing that there are school systems that are working for the students. After this event, (actually in the middle of it), I had to make my way to the Department of Education building to participate in a teacher-focused discussion with some members of the Department, as well as their current Teacher Ambassador Fellows. This discussion mainly focused on trying to come up with solutions to some of the most pressing teacher issues today, such as how can we fairly evaluate teachers? and how can we get teachers to stay at some of the most underperforming schools? It was really encouraging that this discussion was being led by and held for teachers who know best what the conditions are like on the ground. I think some of the interesting ideas that were brought up were potentially having parents involved in the evaluation process, as well as giving the teachers the opportunity to evaluate their administration so that there are 360 degrees of accountability. Lastly, following this discussion, I headed back to the office where we held our final retreat planning committee meeting to go over all of the final details of the retreat. I actually was able to order 80 handmade dream catchers as party favors to be ready by Sunday, and finally finished the agendas.

7/29/10: Today was a very jam packed day as well because I was running all over the place to attend meetings and markups. I attended another TFA brownbag lunch, with guest speaker Frederick Hess from the American Enterprise Institute. Now I knew Rick Hess was a conservative guy who would be speaking about the idea of market-based reform in schools (aka- for profit schools), but I did not realize how inflammatory his remarks would be. I think he is a very intelligent man, who I think does have some interesting ideas, but I found his delivery of them to be slightly offensive and off-putting. I mean, he really did not feel concerned with being politically correct, and he made comments such as all minority parents are crackheads, so why should we think the parents always know best? Or, the implication that segregated schools was a valuable system, and that parents should have any choice in the world to not take their kids to a school where the ethnic composition is high with minority students. I mean, it was certainly an interesting point of view to listen to since he was basically trying to say that the school system is working for many parents and students, and that there shouldn’t be as much attention paid to always closing the achievement gap. I mean, I completely disagree with him, but that’s what makes this country an interesting place. Anyways, after this luncheon, I had to quickly taxi over to the Senate to meet Jason and Augustus in line for the Senate Full Appropriations Committee Markup. This was by far one of the most exciting and important things I have done all summer. The committee room, first of all, was large and grand, and 30 Senators sat around this large square shaped table to take their final votes on the Foreign Services, Labor HHS Ed, and State Appropriations bills. Now the committee is made up of 18 Democrats and 12 Republicans, and in the first time in the last 2-3 decades, the vote to approve the appropriations bills for all 3 bills was voted on a party line. This absolutely upset the Democrats, and it was my Senator, Dianne Feinstein, who gave the most impassioned, level-headed speech questioning why the Republicans would vote down the bill, even though the entire process all along was 100% bipartisan. (This committee is notoriously known for being bipartisan). It was just the principle that the Republicans would ask for programs to receive funding, and even put in their own earmarks, just to vote no on the final bill. The Republican rebuttal, led by Senator Judd Gregg of NH, was that the Republicans asked for the bill to be $20 billion less than the president’s proposal, and even though the Democrats were able to get it down to $14 billion below, that still wasn’t good enough for them. It was just remarkable to see this dialogue going on in a completely civil manner behind closed doors, but it does make me question why the Democrats do not publicly call out the Republicans for this kind of behavior. I mean, to me, it certainly seems cowardly to request earmarks and funding for programs behind closed doors, and then vote no on the final bill, knowing full and well that it will pass because of the Democratic majority, but still running to your constituents to say, “look at how fiscally irresponsible those Democrats are.” I think Senator Tom Harkin from IA said it best since he is the Chairman of the Labor HHS Ed subcommittee, by saying that not a single Republican wrote a letter to him requesting any cuts, but wrote many letters to him requesting his inclusion of their programs. Instead, he was charged with having to make the tough decisions of cutting the programs, while the Republicans got to sit back and claim fiscal responsibility. It was so fascinating for me to watch, and I was so proud of my own Senator for her speaking up in a polite and eloquent manner. After the Republicans all voted no for the 3 bills, but they passed anyways because the Democrats won the 18-12 approval vote, the next step was to go through and have the Senators offer any amendments that they would like to see in the bill. Some of the amendments were to end the Mexico City Law (Global Gag Rule which stated that no foreign country could receive US dollars if they even used their own money to provide abortions), which passed 19-11 (Sen. Collins voted yes), and another amendment to increase funding to the NIH by $1Billion, which failed 28-2. The most interesting amendment, however, was when Alaskan Senator Lisa Murkowski, who is a Republican, tried to get an amendment to put $10 Billion dollars into re-opening the Denali Health Clinics in her state. Now, talk about hypocrisy…just 20 minutes earlier, she had voted no on the bill because it was not fiscally responsible, and now here she was requesting an additional $10Billion in funding? Unfortunately for her, the amendment failed and the Democrats were not even remotely sympathetic to her request.

7/30/10: Last day in the office before the big retreat! The day began with the weekly CEF meeting, which hosted the Education Leg. Assistant from Senator Durbin’s office as their guest. The meeting was not that informative, and really was mainly spent going over the final appropriations numbers from the Senate Appropriations Committee markup from the day before. Also, news came in that the education jobs bill was going to be added on to the Senate FAA bill on Monday, which means that there is still a chance that $10 Billion will go towards saving teacher jobs, although if passed, that money will probably not trickle down to states and districts until Christmas, which means the first semester of the upcoming school year will face teacher layoffs indefinitely. After the CEF meeting, I headed back to the Hill to attend another TFA luncheon, this time hosting a panel of TFA alum who currently work on the Hill or in the Department of Education. This panel was so informative for me, and just listening to them made me finally realize that this is absolutely what I want to be doing with my life, even if working on the Hill is not very glamorous and is ridiculously stressful. They certainly made me feel confident in my decision to stay in teaching another year, because they said that I should be gaining as much “on the ground” training as I can to become a better policymaker. They also said that people on the hill look at TFA alum who taught more than just their 2 year commitment in a different light than those who leave the classroom after 2 years. It was just very exciting for me to speak with and listen to people who feel the exact same way about policy as I do. I really haven’t felt this way in a long time, and I feel excited to be able to know that I think I might have actually figured out what to do with the rest of my life. Lastly, the day ended with me heading back to the office and assisting Jason with putting any last minute touches to our retreat materials. We put together the packets for the presenters and moderators, created the slide templates to show during the presentations, and ran through one more time what our specific jobs will be during the retreat. I have no idea what is in store, but I am excited to be going on my first ever “business trip.”