“Rich Crandall possesses that all too rare combination of boundless creativity, tireless drive, and a deep understanding of the work that education entrepreneurs do,” said NewSchools CEO Ted Mitchell. “Having him on the team will be great for NewSchools’ work, and will help deepen our bond with the d.school, whose work we admire enormously.”

Crandall is a Teach for America alum with an MBA from Stanford. He spent four years at the d.school focused on spreading design thinking among K-12 educators and students. During that time he affected countless teachers, graduate students, school administrators, policy-makers, entrepreneurs and kids, helping to strengthen their creative confidence and develop their inner innovator. He has worked closely with renowned innovator and d.school co-founder David Kelley. In his new post at NewSchools, he will split his time between planning NewSchools’ annual Summit and Community of Practice events, and the nascent work on the National Network of Charter Schools to enhance college readiness and success. 

There are two problems here: the decisions that Idaho is making, and those that the Times is making. First, Idaho: I’m not sure the top-down mandate for a set of products and on-line classes was the smartest way to encourage the thoughtful integration of tech into the classroom. And if school systems take the money for the products out of the pay of the people expected to implement them, well, that doesn’t precisely set the plan up for shining success. I don’t quibble with the aim of making sure that kids don’t emerge from high school stunned and baffled by the sight of a tablet computer (though it rarely seems to be children who are baffled by digital devices). It’s just that there are better ways than Idaho’s strategy. Most fields (especially those involving public investment) have an established, healthy cycle of innovation that includes and in fact relies on the practitioners — think about how innovation in medicine involves doctors, or how innovation in aviation involves pilots. If you believe the Times, it sounds like while Idaho may have meant the technology as a relief airlift, it was delivered as a bunker-busting bomb.

But let’s not forget about the role of the New York Times here. I’ve puzzled before on this blog about the intentions of Matt Richtel, the Times’ Pulitzer-winning technology writer, who (full disclosure) was a friend when we worked together at the Oakland Tribune. To read the “Grading the Digital School” is to believe that education technology is a giant, undifferentiated conglomeration of everything from Smart Boards to computers running Microsoft Word to online courses that costs a zillion dollars, does nothing for kids, and annoys teachers. It’s not hard to find examples to support the case; in public education, as anywhere, some systems will make bad decisions, waste money, and irritate the professionals expected to do the real work. What’s missing is the crucial other side of the story: technology that translates into measurable progress for students, and meets the needs of teachers. This is the side that excites us, and that, happily, we see daily: technology that helps teachers group students more flexibly, tailor instruction more directly to the needs of each student, and focus their time and energy where it’s needed most. It’s a side of the story that needs to figure in school policy and budget decisions. As a former journalist, I know that newspapers are a whole lot better at describing the flaws of systems than their successes. But they are also capable of applauding innovation. If the Times continues to tell a one-sided story about education technology, the losers will be our kids.

So, in the holiday spirit of cheer and peacemaking, I’m delighted that just before the year runs out, the moment has arrived, in the form of an edgy and yet curiously delightful trend on Twitter.

The trend is in the form of a hashtag (for those who aren’t fully twitterate, that’s a label for a conversation topic, preceded by a #) called #takethetest. In short, it urges policymakers and other folks in positions of leadership in education who support test-based accountability, to take tests themselves. The trend was called out in a post yesterday on the New York Times’ SchoolBook blog, which in turn traces its roots to “a [Dec. 5] post on The Washington Post’s Answer Sheet blog that told the story of a school board member who took his state’s standardized math and reading tests for 10^th graders.”

The posts cap a year of complicated and contentious conversation about the role of test-based accountability in education. The conversation starts from a place of reasonable agreement—that it’s important for parents, schools, and school systems to know whether kids are learning what’s most important. And at least in theory, accountability is a concept that this country loves.

But the conversation quickly becomes more complicated when we talk about specific tools. Mostly, it revolves around standardized tests—an instrument that may be vitally necessary, but is darned hard to love. Over the past year, much of the drama has surrounded the brilliant, controversial LA Times series on value-added assessment, and a handful of cheating scandals attached to high-stakes standardized tests. An increasing backlash against such tests has motivated a small but incredibly vocal movement, which culminated in this virally circulated standoff between a movie star and a cub reporter on an overheated Washington day. Never in my memory have we seen more passion attach itself to the once-nerdy topic of educational assessment. And it’s not going away; as Jay Mathews pointed out this week, there’s not much light between the serious presidential contenders on test-based accountability.

Yet for all the passion, disappointingly little of the public conversation has been about better, smarter ways to figure out whether kids are learning what’s most important. I don’t know anybody who thinks that reading and math skills are enough to get you through college, but are we any good at figuring out what kids know in other areas, from critical thinking to working collaboratively to writing? The SAT remains the best widely used indicator of kids’ readiness for college, but as Andy Rotherham noted this week, that’s a troubled marriage at best. Meanwhile, a well-funded effort by the Obama administration to improve assessment has been little part of the national conversation. And a really terrific tool to assess writing and critical thinking skills, developed by RAND and a better predictor of college success than the SAT, remains practically secret.

That’s why I love #takethetest so much—because it’ll get us talking about the actual tools more, and the politics less. In fact, there’s a movement building inside my office for all of us at NewSchools to take the standardized tests that are used to track student progress in the schools and other entrepreneurial organizations that we support. This could actually be fun. For a minute or two.

No one doubts that we need to know, as a former president said, whether our kids is learning. Here’s to 2012 being a year of more light and less heat.

The December 11 op-ed, by Duke public policy professor Helen Ladd and former New York Times education editor Edward Fiske, was headlined “Class Matters. Why Won’t We Admit It?” It makes a few points that ought to worry anybody who cares a lot about education in low-income communities:

1. The Obama administration and education reformers are in denial about the link between family income and children’s educational outcomes.
2. It is a foolish for us to expect schools to break that link.
3. As a society, we are better off putting our energy into afterschool programs and such

Certainly, Ladd and Fiske are correct when they state that educational achievement is closely tied to income. It’s hard to figure out, as Peter Meyer points out in a strong Education Next blog post, who exactly is in denial on that point (whether you agree or disagree with Meyer’s take on past antipoverty efforts).

But the truly problematic part of the Fiske and Ladd piece comes when they heap scorn on the idea that schools can change the lives of poor children. They write:

So why do presumably well-intentioned policy makers ignore, or deny, the correlations of family background and student achievement?

Some honestly believe that schools are capable of offsetting the effects of poverty. Others want to avoid the impression that they set lower expectations for some groups of students for fear that those expectations will be self-fulfilling. In both cases, simply wanting something to be true does not make it so.

Another rationale for denial is to note that some schools, like the [KIPP] charter schools, have managed to “beat the odds.” If some schools can succeed, the argument goes, then it is reasonable to expect all schools to. But close scrutiny of charter school performance has shown that many of the success stories have been limited to particular grades or subjects and may be attributable to substantial outside financing or extraordinarily long working hours on the part of teachers. The evidence does not support the view that the few success stories can be scaled up to address the needs of large populations of disadvantaged students.

It’s worth taking that oddly mismatched list of reasons for high performance one at a time. First, holding up the remarkable—and thoroughly documented—achievements of KIPP and other top charter networks against “close scrutiny” of the mixed performance of charter schools overall seems to sow doubt where it doesn’t belong. Second, there’s replete evidence that additional funding—“outside” or otherwise—isn’t well correlated with school performance, absent other changes, so that’s a lousy explanation for better performance. Money by itself doesn’t fix bad schools—otherwise, the comparatively well-funded schools of Newark, NJ, should be delivering a far better education than, say, those of Oakland, CA. It’s only the third point—hard-working teachers—that actually figures as a reason for strong student performance. Ironically, that point counters the authors’ claims, and suggests that good schools might have a lot to do with setting kids from poor communities on a trajectory for success.

It’s in vogue to critique reform efforts by suggesting that the connection between poverty and low educational achievement is an unchangeable fact, and that schools merely play around the edges. But that belief flies in the face of both evidence and the very purpose of public schools in America—and it irresponsibly sows doubt about the value of working to improve schools.

Our public education system grew from Horace Mann’s belief that education “prevents being poor” and could be “the balance wheel of the social machinery.” In the century and a half since then, America has viewed one of the primary roles of public schooling as providing a path from humble circumstances to middle-class comfort. Moreover, one wonders how exactly we fight poverty if our schools fail to provide a path out. As Kathleen Porter-Magee brilliantly wrote in a blog post last summer, “Of course, the link between student achievement and socioeconomic status is unmistakable….  But saying we need to fix poverty before we can fix schools is like a doctor saying that he’s going to wait until you get better before he treats you.  Education is the path out of poverty, not the consolation prize offered to children whose families have managed to dig their way out on their own.”

Today, even in communities of concentrated poverty, excellent public schools are demonstrating that college success—the main ticket to economic mobility—is in reach. The hundreds upon hundreds of schools in America’s toughest communities that are sending students to college at high rates already have proven that great schools can break the link between poverty and educational outcomes. KIPP alone has created more than 100 such schools. We need many thousands of schools that good, and even KIPP is humble about the work it will take to prepare every student for success in college. There is no doubt that it’s hard work to replicate the best schools, which is true. But good schools change lives, and are our best lever to fight poverty. We are past the days when anyone should pretend otherwise, or claim it’s not worth the effort.

* Disclosure: I worked for KIPP Foundation for several years.