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“Houston, we have a solution!” That was the conclusion of a hotly contested vote to determine which city was most likely to lead the nation in education reform. The election was held at a special education session at the 2007 Annual Meeting of The Philanthropy Roundtable. When all of the votes were tallied, Houston edged out Chicago, Delaware, and the dark horse candidacy of “the entrepreneur.”
Chester E. Finn Jr. from the Thomas B. Fordham Foundation, moderated the session, keeping order (mostly) over a lively and vocal audience. The session began with backers of Houston, Chicago, and the state of Delaware making the case for their city or state. Jim Blew from the Walton Family Foundation and Kevin Hall from the Broad Foundation, then offered commentary on the three frontrunners, and Finn opened the floor for other nominations. Several audience participants shouted out and quickly made their arguments for other contenders, including Oklahoma City, Cincinnati, Indianapolis, New Orleans, Washington, D.C.—and “the entrepreneur.”
Michael Dee, a member of the Investment Committee at the Hoglund Foundation, got the session rolling with the case for Houston. Dee said that Houston—with 200,000 students, 78 percent of whom are disadvantaged—has made Texas-sized reforms to its education system. The city is promoting decentralization. It’s offering merit pay. And it’s instituting school choice across the district.
“If you are zoned to any Houston school, you are allowed to go to any other Houston independent school, provided there is room for you,” said Dee. “So we basically have within the Houston Independent School District a voucher system, and there is a lot of movement. We are one of the nation’s leaders in merit pay. Since first instituting merit pay last year, we have upped it and doubled it against the resistance of the unions.”
Dee further cited an ambitious expansion of two of the cities most successful charter schools—going from about 6 to 42 as part of a $100 million dollar philanthropic effort. He described collaborative efforts, like a K-14 iniative through the Houston Community College, as well as a partnership with Rice University to build a new MBA program in educational entrepreneurship.
Houston has to think ahead of the curve, Dee noted, because the city has long been a demographic trendsetter. Demographically, Houston’s schools today are what American classrooms will look like in the future. Two-thirds of Houston’s minority population is Hispanic and nearly one-fourth of all total students do not consider English their primary language.
Chicago and Delaware followed suit, making strong appeals for the top honors. Robin Steans from the Steans Family Foundation in Chicago said that mayoral control of the Windy City’s school district has installed solid leadership with a renewed emphasis on recruiting top-notch teachers and principals. She also cited support from the civic and philanthropic community and robust growth of charter schools as strengths of the Chicago system.
Highlighting nine reasons in all, Steans emphasized the comprehensiveness of her city’s plan. “If you took any one of these things away, we are probably not going to be the leader in 2020. But we have them all, and that is a very unusual set of circumstances. And we have a jump-start because there are other people who are trying to put these things in place but we are a few years ahead.”
Representing Delaware was Paul Herdman from the Rodel Family Foundation. He described the state’s Vision 2015 initiative, which is taking a statewide approach to comprehensive education reform with a year 2015 implementation deadline. The plan tackles six major priorities, ranging from investing in early childhood education to developing common curricula to encouraging innovation to demanding accountability. (To read more from Paul Herdman, click here.)
Then Jim Blew and Kevin Hall had their say, nominating a few additional cities as potential leaders in education reform. Both agreed that New Orleans could make a surprise contender. “I actually think there is a great chance that people will look at New Orleans as the best performing urban school district within the next five years,” Hall said.
Blew’s nomination of New Orleans was driven by his certainty “that the winner of this competition in 2020 will be the district or area that has the right regulatory and political environment…. [In New Orleans] they are building a fresh new political environment," creating many opportunities for meaningful school reform.
The most unexpected nominee, however, came from audience member John Lock from the Charter School Growth Fund, who said that “the entrepreneur,” and not necessarily the cities themselves, would lead the way in education reform. Lock also said that finding the right people to change the system could be more important than implementing specific policies by individual cities.
“What we miss out on so often as philanthropists is that while we’re trying to find the one single thing, the one single event, the one single problem, we overlook the people, the people who change things. We need to back those people who make change happen,” Lock said. It is the “district entrepreneur or a charter entrepreneur or a new technology entrepreneur or a parent entrepreneur” who really shakes things up in education.
Lock’s dark horse candidate made a surprisingly good run, tying with Chicago for second-place. But, at the end of the session, when the ballots were tallied, the recounts complete, the chads gathered up, and the re-recounts finished, Houston won the day. Congratulations, Houston. Now make us proud!
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