If I'd Run: Gubernatorial Cabinet, Staff and Policy Fire Sale

Steve Novick

As many of you know, I spent several months thinking I would run for Governor.  I wasn’t campaigning in the sense of raising money, etc.; I figured there was no point in doing that until I knew what Kitzhaber and DeFazio were doing.  Instead, I spent my time preparing to BE Governor – thinking about what I would actually do if I got the job. As part of that process, I developed a preliminary list of people I would want to serve in my Cabinet and on my staff. The list doubtless would have evolved over time; as I am sure you will note, it is insufficiently diverse, both geographically and ethnically.  But I still think it was a pretty good starting point.

Another part of the process, of course, was developing/refining/soliciting policy proposals on a variety of issues. I probably spent more time thinking about K-12 than anything else.

Now, as you know, I’m not running. Instead, I’m serving as the ‘fact guy’ for Defend Oregon in its effort to uphold the revenue measures the Legislature adopted.  Part of my job is to gather up facts and figures about State government, so that we can explain what’s at stake.  It sometimes makes me a bit wistful about the fact that I’m not running for Governor – I find myself thinking, “the State does so many important things; if I were Governor, it would be so much fun to find ways to let people know  how much they are getting for their State tax dollars!”

But I’m not running. And it might seem presumptuous for someone who decided not to run to offer up his leftover ideas. But I don’t like the idea of having months of preparation go completely to waste. So, I hereby offer up my list of personnel and policy ideas – mostly K-12 ideas – for perusal by anyone running or planning to run themselves.

I’ll start with the personnel.  Note: there are five people on this list with whom I actually discussed the job in question when I was thinking of running. I won’t say which five. Second note: It’s a very incomplete list.

Part I: Staff and Cabinet

Chief of Staff: Kristen Leonard.

Kristen is one of the smartest, most respected people in the Capitol. The Mercury named her Salem’s best lobbyist, for good reason. She’s both experienced and young. And she’s one of the most even-keeled people around.  To be honest, I’d probably have asked Aisling Coghlan to take the job first – she has more experience telling me what to do than Kristen does – but I think she’d have turned me down.  The brilliant Connie Seeley would be a great choice – but what chance would I ever have of getting anything through the Senate if I stole Peter Courtney’s chief of staff? So it’d be Kristen.

Deputy Chief of Staff for Policy: Tim Nesbitt.

Obviously you’d want to keep the smartest man in the State exactly where he is.

DAS (Department of Administrative Services): Beverly Stein.

Beverly is well versed in management theory and practice – she’s now a professional management consultant. She ran a large government. She is smart as hell and has a heart as big as all outdoors. And she’s a talented politician.  I actually got Mike Greenfield to agree that if I were Governor, he’d take his old job back, at least for a few months, to get us started, and I might have held him to that, but ultimately I think it should be Beverly.

Department of Human Services: Bruce Goldberg.

I think Bruce is terrific. I would not let him leave.

Department of Transportation: Lynn Peterson.

An engineer, an expert on transportation and land use, and a successful politician, Lynn would help drive good policy in a vital area and ensure that the politics are done right, too. I need to ask her, what does she think of Eugene’s Bus Rapid Transit system as a model for the future?  Oh wait – I’m not running for Governor – I don’t need to ask her that. But I might anyway. 

Economic development department (or whatever they’re calling it these days): Jack Roberts.

No, this is not just a token Republican pick. Jack works in the field; gives the best explanation I have heard of what “traded-sector” means; and is very smart and very funny.  Here’s the only piece of specific advice I’ll give a specific actual candidate: If John Kitzhaber is the next Governor, I think he should ask Jack to take this job despite – in fact, partly because of - the fact that Jack has relentlessly attacked him.  It would show Obama-like serenity.

I’d also ask my friends Don Washburn, former Hillsboro Mayor Tom Hughes, Washington County Commissioner Desiree Strader, and Jeff Cogen – among others - for economic development advice.

Oregon Youth Authority: Joanne Fuller. 

Joanne has headed up both Community Corrections and Human Services in Multnomah County and is one of my favorite people with whom to talk criminal justice policy. Might actually ask her to take over at Corrections if Max Williams wanted to go back to the private sector.

Criminal justice advisers: Dan Noelle and David Rogers. 

Rogers is the head of the Partnership for Safety and Justice, which advocates sentencing reform. Noelle was a hard-nosed Multnomah County sheriff.  They come at criminal justice issues from different perspectives but both are smart, thoughtful people.  I think if I listened to both of them, along with Joanne Fuller (see below), I’d get a pretty good idea of where to go. Also, Dan is married to Rosie Sizer, and if I had him in the fold I’d hope that she’d show up for a meeting or three, as well. (Yes, I am concerned about the Chasse case. But I still think Rosie is a pretty big brain on the justice system.) 

Education advisers: I’m scared to say.

I’m going to punt on this one. I’m going to outline some fairly detailed proposals on K-12 below, and I don’t want anyone to be stuck with people who don’t like my ideas thinking that specific other people were responsible for them, as might happened if I named names.  But I’d certainly talk to Courtney and Kate and Matt and Eduardo and Pat and Betsy and Susan pretty regularly.  (I’m not giving last names but you know who you are.)  And of course Dana, but I’d be tempted to make her legislative liaison as her day job. Her or Arthur, but I think she’d be more likely to take the job.

Communications director: Jake Weigler

Jake was my brilliant campaign manager – and we had no separate press person, because he’s incredible at getting good press.  Of course, I’d wish I had a big enough budget to hire Kristen Grainger and Anna Richter Taylor too.  

Health Care advisers: John Santa and Ginny Ehrlich.   

Santa’s part of the old Kitzhaber team, left the state awhile ago but I’d try to lure him back; when he says stuff, it makes sense. Ginny used to do health-related issues at the Department of Education and now heads up the childhood obesity arm of the Bill Clinton philanthropy conglomerate.  I think reducing childhood obesity is potentially a great economic development strategy – if we have the healthiest workforce in the country, with the cheapest health care costs as a result, it would be a great incentive for employers to come and stay here. I’d also keep Thomas Aschenbrenner of the Northwest Health Foundation, Lynn-Marie Crider (until recently of SEIU) and Jack Friedman of Providence Health Plans on speed-dial.

Intergovernmental Affairs: Chris Warner.

Chris has been doing transportation policy for Governor Kulongoski. He also happens to have encyclopedic knowledge about every place and most of the people in the State. I would have asked him to keep in touch with the cities and counties, make sure we’re aware of the on-the-ground impact of state policies.

Department of Energy: Angus Duncan or – if he were willing to leave the Legislature - Jules Bailey.

Angus, of the Bonneville Environmental Foundation, has been an energy-head for decades.  Jules was responsible (with a lot of support from Angus and others) for a very important, innovative piece of legislation, the Energy Efficiency and Sustainable Technology Act, which will help make it easier for  building owners to get long-term low-interest loans to make the buildings more energy-efficient – and pay back the loans through their electric bills.  Both Angus and Jules are aware that the cheapest kilowatt hour is the one we don’t use. Although I’m all for renewable energy (see below), from what I’ve heard, I tend to be a bit dubious about claims about Oregon becoming the “Saudi Arabia of …” (fill in the blank) – although we do have a potential big advantage in wave energy. (For example, we’re not even in the top 20 of wind-energy-potential states – though that’s no excuse for not developing the wind potential we do have.)  But there’s no reason we can’t become America’s Japan (Japan being the most energy efficient nation).  We’re already pretty good at the efficiency thing, and we can get even better.

One idea I’d like to try to build up a renewable energy investment fund, so that the state can invest in the most promising technologies: Poll after poll shows that over 50% of people SAY they’d pay several dollars extra a month to get renewable energy. But very few (less than 10%) actually take advantage of utilities’ green power programs. Behavioral economics research has shown that inertia, rather than truly deliberate decision-making, is a big factor in economic behavior. For example, some employers tell employees they’ll assume you want to be in a 401(k) plan unless you check a box opting out; others don’t put you in the plan unless you check a box opting in. It turns out that it makes a huge difference – people’s level of participation depends, to a great extent, on whether they have to check boxes.

So I’d like to try getting the PUC to collect contributions to a renewable energy investment fund by having the utilities send notices to customers – for months in advance – saying: “SURVEYS SHOW MOST PEOPLE WOULD BE WILLING TO PAY $5 EXTRA A MONTH FOR RENEWABLE ENERGY. SO ON JANUARY 1 WE WILL ENROLL YOU IN THE RENEWABLE ENERGY INVESTMENT FUND, DESCRIBED BELOW, UNLESS YOU CHECK THE ‘NO’ BOX AND SEND THIS PIECE OF PAPER BACK TO US” – and then starting the fund with contributions from whoever doesn’t opt out.  

Counsel to the Governor: Chip Lazenby.

I think I’d make Chip take his old job back. Need someone to talk Dylan and baseball with, for one thing.

OK – that was at least most of my list – now I’ll get to

Part II: K-12 policy

As I said, I spent much of my time thinking about K-12, partly because that’s my natural tendency and partly because it’s the biggest part of the State budget. 

I would have focused on four things:

 Getting Young Children Ready for School. 

This is a no-brainer. There’s been a whole mess of research on brain development highlighting the importance of children’s early years. And, as the Oregonian recently noted, the various ‘achievement gaps’ tend to manifest themselves very early in students’ school careers and then stay about the same; which suggests that getting to kids early, through Healthy Start and Early Head Start and other proven programs, makes more sense than ignoring them for five years and then blaming the schools for failing to make everybody equal. (That’s an exaggeration of what happens, but I think there’s some truth to it.)

Any old early childhood program won’t do, though. We need quality programs and a coherent system. In order to ensure that’s what we’re getting, we should look at data on existing programs in Oregon … and also, review a host of information and ideas from other states that should be available when states submit their applications to the Federal government for funds from the Early Learning Challenge Fund.  Obama’s made $8 billion available over eight years to “states with plans to improve standards, training and oversight of programs serving infants, toddlers and preschoolers,” according to the New York Times.  Hopefully we’ll get some of that money ourselves;   but regardless, we should review all the other states’ proposals and steal the best ideas.

Expand the Research Role of the Department of Education; Use Testing to Identify Potentially Promising Practices, Rather than to Humiliate Schools.

Susan Castillo is a good friend, and what I am about to say is not a knock on her at all. But I had two conversations in the past year which demonstrate what a box the Department is in. One was with a former high-level Department official who said: “It’s hardly an Oregon Department of Education anymore. It’s a No Child Left Behind implementation agency.”  Another was with a math teacher in Lebanon, which was identified in an Oregonian article as having amazing results in elementary school math. I asked the teacher – after witnessing her magical class – “has the Department of Education been in touch with you to see what you’re doing and let other schools know about it?” She said: “The Louisiana Department of Education called us.”

The fact is that Federal requirements, plus the State’s chronic shortage of money, plus a tendency to see the Department as extraneous ‘administration,’ have left the Department in a position where, despite the commitment and dedication of Susan and her staff, it barely has the resources to do much more than develop and administer all the tests it’s required to administer, and distribute the results.  And what’s the message of all the tests?  The message, to many schools, is simply: “you’re failing.”  The ultimate message of No Child Left Behind is: “If you don’t make every child above average by 2014, you’re all failing.” 

To a great extent, test scores don’t do a heck of a lot more than reflect the demographics of the district or school in question.  But there are occasional outliers. There are some places and subjects – like Lebanon Elementary in math – which stand out; where the teachers and students are beating the odds.  A major mission of the Department of Education should be to study those places, find out what they’re doing, figure out if it’s real (sometimes test scores are a kind of mirage), figure out if it’s replicable, and let other schools and districts know what’s going on in those schools. I’m not talking about mandates, I’m not talking one-size-fits-all; I’m not saying we can expect every district to produce miracles; I’m talking about doing some research and distributing the results.

But the Department doesn’t have the resources to do much of that.  (It does identify schools that seem to be ‘closing the achievement gap.’) And come budget time, it doesn’t have much leverage. That needs to change.  The next Governor should ask Castillo to develop a proposal for a serious research-and-outreach budget, and fight for it.

Emphasize Recruiting, Training and Retaining the Next Generation of Teachers.

We have a very mature teaching work force.  There will be thousands of retirements over the next ten years.  We have some very good work going on in our public schools of education, and very good people (including two good friends of mine who recently decided to leave politics for teaching) going into the field.  But I don’t think the State as a whole has put a premium on teacher recruitment and education. Finland has built the strongest education system on Earth in large part by deliberately elevating the status of the profession and putting a strong emphasis on recruitment and training. We should emulate Finland.

We should follow in North Carolina’s footsteps and provide some college scholarships to high-octane young people who agree to teach in public schools for at last four years. Not only would that give us some good teachers – the very fact of such a program would help elevate the status of the profession.

I think our schools of education are fairly well regarded.  But we should make every effort to constantly raise the bar. One simple idea (not mine) is to survey school of education graduates several years down the road, and find out how many got jobs, how many have stayed in teaching, and get their views on how well their training prepared them for the classroom.  That information could be used to improve practice in the schools of education.

I don’t pretend to be any kind of expert in teacher training. But I did have one idea, that I admit sounds kind of gimmicky, but that some really smart educators and education policy people encouraged me to keep pushing. I suggested establishing a sort of mini-Chancellor of the public schools of education, someone to oversee the teaching of teachers, and paying her whatever the University of Oregon football coach is making at the time. That would both send a big loud signal that we take teacher education seriously (helping to enhance the status of the profession), and give us an awfully good chance of getting somebody really good. (I said “her” in part because I was specifically thinking of Stanford’s Linda Darling-Hammond. I haven’t called her up to ask her if she’d be willing to move north if we were offering Chip Kelly’s salary, but it’s worth a shot.) 

Then there’s ongoing professional development and retention. I agree with Stand for Children and others that having experienced teachers act as mentors to new teachers is critical. And yes, that costs money: it means having more personnel, to step in and teach the classes the mentors won’t be teaching while they’re observing their mentees’ classes and talking with them between classes. 

Speaking of talking between classes, there is wide variation between districts and schools in how much time teachers of all experience levels have during the week to sit down together, discuss students and strategies, learn from each other. I’m convinced by those who think making time for that activity should be a priority. If there’s a big fat tax reform package that results in more money for schools, it may be that the state should encourage schools to use a bunch of the money to buy time for teachers to reflect and collaborate – rather than focusing solely on class size.

Give High School Students More Concrete Reasons to Stay in School, By Making the Curriculum More Obviously Relevant to their Future Lives.

OK, I realize that the rant that follows might sound like – and maybe it is partly like – I’m talking about the State infringing on local school boards’ prerogatives, but I think that I’d also be scaling back some state impositions.  What follows would be the start of a discussion with the local folks.

What’s the conventional wisdom in elite circles on education these days? It’s that we’ve got to get more kids to go to college, and skill them up in math and science to prepare them to compete and win in the global economy.

But what the heck does that mean, exactly? 

Does it mean we think every kid will go to and complete a four-year college?  If we’re being honest, the answer is no. It would be nice – very nice - to increase the percentage, but it’s never going to be anywhere near 100%.  And it doesn’t need to be. There are very good jobs that don’t require a four-year degree.

Does it mean that every good job requires lots of advanced math and science?  It better not mean that, because it’s not true.  A couple of years ago, a study Commissioned by Education Week found that “while 94 percent of workers across [the occupations surveyed] reported using some kind of math on the job, just 22 percent said they used any math more advanced than adding, subtracting, multiplying or dividing. Only 19 percent said they used math reaching the level of Algebra 1, and 9 percent used Algebra 2 … Strong majorities of workers, by contrast, said they used more basic math, such as fractions, multiplication, and division …Even among upper-white-collar employees, such as managers, only 30 percent said they used Algebra 1 on the job, and only 14 percent said they used Algebra 2.” (I’ll return to this article in a few paragraphs.)

 

I think that the gap between rhetoric and reality seeps down into the classroom. The elites build castles in the air, people who know better (including teachers) are left without realistic elite-approved advice to give kids about their futures, and the kids wind up confused. Last year I asked a bright group of students how often they were told why they needed to learn the things they were told to learn. They said “hardly ever.” I subsequently asked a high-ranking school district official what he thought of that answer. He said “I would listen to the kids.”

If kids don’t really know why they need to learn what they are learning, is it any wonder there’s a high dropout rate?  Sure, there will be some classes that kids just enjoy for their own sakes – and some kids who enjoy almost all their classes for their own sake. But many kids in many classes will be wondering ‘what’s the point?’  

Now, I’m not saying, by the way, that math and science are not important. In fact, a grasp of basic math is important for almost everyone, and people who do learn advanced math tend to do well. (Although many – like me; I was a math major – stop using advanced math, and forget it all, soon after college.)

What I’m saying is that we should step back, think about what kids really need to know, depending on what they are interested in doing, and tell them the truth about what knowledge they will really use in what contexts. We can still require some courses, but we should also give them options to explore – or not – based on their own interests and the information we have given them about future relevance.

In other words, we should tell high school kids: “Here are the courses you all need to take because they will be relevant to ALL of your lives. They really will be. You’ll all use this stuff in the future – we’ll tell you how. Here are the courses that you need to take because … well, just because. We think at least reading this stuff once is important to being an educated person. And then there are courses that might be relevant, depending on what you end up doing with yourself. We’re going to give you some information about what kinds of jobs are out there, and what people in various kinds of jobs need to know, and then you can decide what courses to take. Or even if we’re still requiring some courses that will really only be relevant to certain jobs, at least you’ll know they could be relevant to something.”   

I know that some of this goes on now. High schools have career path curricula and so forth. But I don’t think it’s nearly as widespread and comprehensive as it could be.  

I think this approach would reduce dropout rates. Because I think kids will be eager to learn subjects when they do understand their relevance. I asked two groups of students last year, “what do you think about requiring more math for graduation?” The first group was divided fifty-fifty; the second was overwhelmingly against. Then I said: “What if instead of mandating an extra year of higher math, you were all required to learn personal finance, credit cards, mortgages and so forth?” The answer was a resounding YES from both groups.

The kids’ reaction – that they didn’t mind more math, as long as it was tied to a subject that they knew they all would need to know – was consistent with the recommendations of the experts interviewed by Education Week:

But if a central goal of high school is to prepare students for the workforce, the push for tougher curricular requirements and coursework needs to be rethought, some suggest. They also say creating courses that place a greater emphasis on real-world or “applied” math as opposed to simply increasing academic requirements, could not only improve students’ workforce skills, but also their enthusiasm for that subject …

As those graduation requirements increase, policymakers should make greater efforts, some observers

say, to supplement traditional advanced courses with other math options for students, such as classes

that emphasize applied and workplace skills.

 

Such courses could be just as challenging academically, but could also present math less abstractly—an approach that, in turn, would keep students more interested in math, and in school overall, Carnevale and Desrochers say. Rubillo, of the math teachers’ organization, believes students would benefit from more “alternative” fourth-year math courses as high school seniors— classes that integrate math with lessons on business, personal finance, computers, and other subjects.

 

I think that the approach Education Week outlines for math, plus the reaction I got from the kids, suggests what our general approach to high school should be.  Start with the things everyone really should know, because they’re relevant to everybody. 

We’ll all have to balance our budgets, we’ll all need to learn how to deal with credit cards and mortgage and car payments - so we all need personal finance. (Susan Nielsen of the Oregonian is dead right on this.)

We all will be healthy or not healthy, and will spend a lot of our money, directly or indirectly, on health care – so we need to know something about personal health, and health care financing.

We’ll all pay taxes, most of us will vote, and we’ll all hear claims from politicians about taxes and budgets – so we need to know, at least in general terms, where tax dollars go. When Citizens for Oregon’s Future developed a ‘balance the state budget’ exercise in 2005, the six teachers who used it got a great reaction from their students – they were interested and engaged. (Frankly, people need to know where tax dollars go a hell of a lot more than ‘how a bill becomes a law’ – unless you’re going to run for office, who cares? And ‘naming the three branches of government,’ which I know polls say lots of people can’t do, causing much hand-wringing – who cares about that either, really? If someone can name the three biggest EXPENSES of government, s/he will be ready to call bull**** on a lot of phony politicians’ claims about tax and budget issues. You could name the three branches and still be at the mercy of unscrupulous campaigners). 

 We’ll all use some form of transportation and we’ll all use electricity, and we’ll all be living in a planet that may be frying like a grilled cheese sandwich  – so we should all know the economic and environmental costs of various forms of transportation and electric power.  Part of the curriculum should just be your basic “where does electricity come from?” Heck, I was about 40 before I learned that America still gets half its electricity from coal, and I was amazed; I bet 15-year-olds would find that amazing, too. (And no, I’m not just saying this as an excuse to indoctrinate students in liberal orthodoxy. Students should know about global warming – and I share teacher Bill Bigelow’s concern that right now, the textbooks say almost nothing about it; but they should also know that right now, at least, solar power is expensive and coal is cheap. They should know that the cheapest first step to a cooler planet is weatherproofing their houses. Hey, that comes back to personal finance too.)

 Again, I am sure that many school administrators will say they are already doing all this stuff. But I go back to Susan Nielsen’s point – if we aren’t teaching personal finance to every kid, we aren’t doing enough of it.

And I am quite sure, by the way, that many teachers – who tend to be dubious about the real-world relevance of the latest fancy-pants elite theories – would agree with all this stuff. As long as I wouldn’t be proposing to add new mandates on top of the old mandates. And I promise, I wouldn’t do that.

III. Yes, I Know I’m Ignoring Money.

Yes, I know that a lot of what I’m talking about would cost money.  I have some pretty definite ideas about tax reform that would address the issue of money. But since I am, at the moment, working on a tax reform campaign, I’m not going to muddy things up by talking about any tax ideas other than those that will be on the ballot in January.

That’s All, Folks.

That’s all, folks.  

By Steve Novick Oct. 07, 2009