4. EXERCISE OUTCOMES

In this section we report each participant group's output from the two seminar game moves and the exercise's final task. While we give some indication of the rationales behind the groups' decisions, we defer most discussion of the motivation for these choices to the next section. Teams were identified by the states they represented and a color: Algonquin Green, Algonquin Yellow, Montoya Blue, Montoya Red.

• Move 1 Allocations
• Move 2 Designs
• Federal Policy Recommendations

MOVE 1 ALLOCATIONS

Tables 4.1 through 4.3 give the Move 1 allocations by each of the panels, along with the budgetary allocations for the previous fiscal year, all in percentage terms. In Table 4.1, for example, the first data column shows what portion (in percent) of the federal block grant had previously been allocated to the programs subsumed under it. This allocation serves as a baseline against which the panels' allocation can be compared. The "unallocated" portion is the amount of the total represented by the funding increment.[6] The middle columns in Table 4.1 show the allocations by the Algonquin Green and Yellow panels to the programs subsumed under the block grant and to various other educational purposes,[7] again, as percentages of the block grant total.

The final column gives the combined federal and state categorical funding for the various programs. These are funds not subsumed by the block grant. They show the level of funding that panelists might have expected to continue for certain programs regardless of what they did. This is important because ongoing funding levels might be expected to influence where panelists decide to allocate incremental dollars. For comparative purposes, continuing categorical funding levels are shown as a percentage of the block grant total.

Thus, for every $100 of block grant funding, the Yellow panel left $37 in Pell-like grants and moved $63 from the various other categories under "Previous Allocation" to K-12 education. It did this in the context of continuing K-12 funding amounting to $781 (for every $100 of block grant funding), continuing community college funding of $23, and so forth down the last column. To put it another way, the panel chose to delete federal funding for "other job training,"[8] Perkins, and adult education in Algonquin in order to increase the federal and state contribution to K-12 education there by 63/781 or about 8 percent.[9]

The Montoya allocations are shown in Tables 4.2 and 4.3. The Montoya panel allocations (and the comparison columns) are given in two different tables because the Red team combined categories in making its allocations and the Blue team did not. The Blue panel's allocations are shown in Table 4.2 as they were actually made. In Table 4.3, they are converted to the condensed set of categories used by the Red panel, for comparison.

The allocations themselves represent only part of the panels' output for Move 1. All panels took some pains to precede or accompany the numbers with assumptions, recommendations, or an analysis of problems and strategies that they had undertaken as a prelude to the allocation itself. Indeed, panels typically spent only a small portion of the move actually coming up with numbers.

It is clear from the tables that the four panels saw the solution to the problem with which they were faced, if not the problem itself, quite differently. The Algonquin Yellow panel felt a need to react to cross-district K-12 funding inequalities and failing inner-city school systems in Algonquin. As a result, it put not only the "windfall" increment but also all federal funding previously devoted to the "second-chance" system into K-12. This reflected a sense among most of the panels that it was preferable to fix the "first-chance" K-12 system rather than expend resources indefinitely on second chances for the graduates of a flawed first-chance system. Not incidentally, the new money for K-12 was to be accompanied by provisions for choice among public schools, with funding following the student. The shift to K-12 also represented skepticism about the wisdom of programs like Perkins, those under the Job Training Partnership Act (JTPA), and adult education, in which the money flows to institutions instead of individuals. (However, the panel's skepticism did not extend to vocational education in high school.) Other design recommendations included the establishment of performance contracts for all schools and development of performance indicators for students to get them to take a more academically rigorous curriculum.

The other Algonquin panel (Green) took the most conservative approach, holding harmless all previous programs and treating only the funding increment as discretionary. Like the Yellow panel, the Green panel sought improvements (in this case, more charters and choice) within the K-12 system but focused most of its attention on those at the middle school to adult levels. This panel wanted to award the entire $250 million funding increment competitively to partnerships of education providers, firms, and community-based organizations whose proposed strategies show the most promise toward assisting those most in need, e.g., welfare recipients.

Some of this disparity in emphasis between early and later education also manifested itself in the differences between the Montoya panels. Both sought to address the state's immigration-derived English literacy problems. However, the Blue panel put most of its funding increment into the K-12 system and effectively shifted funds from Pell grants to secondary-level (if more vocationally related) Perkins grants. It kept job-training, adult education, and welfare-to-work funding at previous levels. The Red panel, on the other hand, divided the increment about half and half between activities carried on principally by the K-14 system on behalf of young people and the programs serving principally adults.

These differences in allocative emphasis mask a consensus in strategic emphasis, however. Besides agreeing on the need to confront the literacy problem, both teams sought to establish standards and fund collaborative efforts. The Blue panel funded these as line items, while the Red panel specified that the funding it was directing to the K-14 system was to implement such strategies. The funding it directed to later education was specifically to create a structure to match clients to employers (and to enhance literacy).

Finally, even in the allocations themselves, there was a consensus across all four panels on three items:

• A program like the federal Pell grants was provided, in three cases at the same level of funding as the current program.

• Outside of that, none of the block grant money was to go to education in four-year colleges and universities.

• None of the block grant money was to go to tax deductions or credits for higher-education expenses. This is interesting, because this option was mentioned in materials provided to the panels and because it was subsequently enacted into federal law.

MOVE 2 DESIGNS

As implied by the preceding discussion, all panels began system design in Move 1. They reasoned from challenges to strategies that addressed those challenges, and only then to allocations, or they attached system design provisions to the allocations. What we report here then is really a combination of design-related panel outputs from Moves 1 and 2.

Table 4.4 summarizes the approaches recommended by each panel to redesign its state's education and training system. Tables 4.5 and 4.6 give a bit more detail. There, we break system design into seven elements and indicate the manner and extent to which each is incorporated in the four designs.

The Algonquin Green panel again emphasized changes to the "second-chance" system, with a clear orientation to the needs of workers and employers. This panel seems to have been more optimistic than the others about the efficacy of reforming vocational education and training per se. It does not appear to have shared the view implicit in at least some degree in all the other designs that real reform should begin with the K-12 system. The Green panel's design concept focused on individual accounts for incumbent workers and others that could be tapped for training leading to a sequence of certifications. The panel did agree with the others on the importance of coordination, which was seen as necessary to correct the disparity between what the workplace would be needing and what school would be providing. The corollary to better school-work coordination is better coordination between academic and vocational education. The Green panel sought to achieve the latter by putting both under a single state authority. (It is worth noting that the block grants assumed in this exercise facilitate the coordination of spending priorities at the state level.)

The Algonquin Yellow panel's system redesign is based on the beliefs that the needs of individuals diverge before they finish high school and that postsecondary education and training might be needed at intervals over a worker's life. The result was a revolutionary concept in which the K-12 system is replaced by a K-10 system. "Grades" 11 and 12 could be taken at any time within the next five years and could entail quite divergent curricula, offered by diverse institutions, with the choice depending on the individual's ambitions. These provisions embodied and supported a lifelong-learning paradigm that broke down both the distinction between an individual's school and work careers and between academic and vocational education. (The Green panel also emphasized the importance of lifelong learning, although they did not reinvent the system to implement it.)

As in Move 1, the Montoya panels fell between the Algonquin extremes. Both came up with systems characterized by the need for individuals to meet standards both academically and in workplace skills attained. In fact, the need for standards was a recurring theme in panel discussions throughout the exercise. Panelists observed that, without standards, there could be no accountability on the part of educators for ensuring that students acquired the skills necessary for success in the new economy. Instead, the same poor performance--graduating students who could not read, write, etc.--would be perpetuated. Most panels also agreed on giving teachers the training necessary to see that their students would meet the new standards.

The Red panel's attraction to standards was a bit more thorough-going than the Blue team's. Red also advocated high-stakes assessments of achievement, along with teacher development to support those assessments, and accountability for institutions. The panel wanted the state to have the power to take corrective action when institutions, teachers, or students failed to meet standards.

The Blue panel also sought greater use of standards and greater efforts expended on professional development for teachers. However, that panel emphasized the need for greater coordination between educational reforms and the skills needed in the workplace as the economy evolves.

In designing their systems, the panels went well beyond the menu of design elements they were given to prioritize. The panels did incorporate such elements as standards and certifications, greater system coherence from the individual's perspective, and various pedagogies such as applied teaching, team-teaching, work-based education, and integrated academic and occupational education. But the panels strove to express internally consistent visions that substantially modified these elements by placing them within a broader perspective, and about half the design elements identified by the panels were not in the materials given them.

It is also interesting that the principal differences among panels only partially reflected the differences between the states whose problems they were attempting to solve. The two most disparate solutions (Green and Yellow) came from the same state. It is possible, though, that Algonquin's K-12 system, less problematic on average than Montoya's, allowed these panels the luxury of considering variant solutions. Meanwhile, the Montoya panels, faced with a poorly performing K-12 system, may have felt more compelled to focus on standards to motivate its upgrade.

It appeared, however, from our observations of the panel deliberations that some of the differences between panels in the strategies taken arose from differences in the perspectives put forward. As mentioned in Section 2, an attempt was made to ensure a variety of perspectives on each panel. Still, persons with a given background differed across panels in the extent and intensity of their participation.

FEDERAL POLICY RECOMMENDATIONS

Recommendations from the exercise's "Back from the Future" session are given in Tables 4.7 and 4.8. The recommendations are grouped by issue, following the design elements in Tables 4.5 and 4.6. As the panels generally took care to specify whether the federal government should provide funding or simply play a leadership role in promoting certain activities, the nature of the federal involvement is indicated with a bold character: B, for use of the bully pulpit; 0, for actions involving little or no additional cost to the federal government; $, for actions involving additional funding, typically in the form of strategic

investments rather than large new programs. It is important to keep in mind that panelists were asked to base their federal policy recommendations on their experiences in Moves 1 and 2 of the game. These recommendations might have been different in a scenario that did not assume a shift in responsibility to the state level via block grants.

On the whole, the panels were relatively cautious in invoking federal power. Of the 28 panel x issue cells (4 panels, 7 issues), 10 involved no federal role beyond those responsibilities still in existence following the presumed shift to block grants. In particular, most of the panels saw no new federal role in ensuring institutional accountability or in the professional development of teachers.[10] However, all panels recommended some federal role in the establishment of standards and certification and in coordinating the efforts of various agencies and institutions involved in education and training. But of the 18 cells in which some federal involvement is recommended, 8 involve negligible increases in federal funds.

Recall that the panels were to leave their state identifications behind in this portion of the exercise. Nonetheless, there was considerable continuity between the design philosophies motivating the state-level outcomes of the seminar game and the actions each panel recommended the federal government take.

The Green panel called for perhaps the most activist federal role. The panel believed the federal government should play a role in developing and sustaining a national lifelong-learning and human-resource infrastructure for a high-wage, high-skill economy. In particular, panelists called for federal involvement in establishing (voluntary) standards and an information system that could help match individuals having certain credentials or certificates and opportunities in colleges and the job market. They also sought federal participation in establishing the individual training accounts they recommended in Move 2 of the game.

The Yellow panel, on the other hand, did not seek near-term implementation of the reinvented education and training system it proposed in Move 2. On the contrary, it settled for a low-key near-term federal role, one characterized by collaborative efforts with states and at most a supporting role for federal dollars.

Enthusiasm for standards (and assessments) again led the Blue panel's menu of desired actions. The panel viewed standards-driven educational reform and workforce development as important elements in "regional workforce investment systems" consisting of school-to-work and training strategies connecting academic institutions, the workplace, and a better economic future. The panel also saw a coordinative role for the federal government in establishing incentives for integration at local and state levels. Finally, the Blue panel felt officials such as the Secretary of Education could use the "bully pulpit" to instill an appreciation for the tough job schools have and the long-term nature of the challenge they face. The Secretary might also prepare schools and parents for the likelihood that many students will not meet higher standards at first.

The Red panel also saw the need for a federal "bully pulpit" in framing issues, promoting dialogue, and recruiting key constituencies. It restricted its claim on additional federal funds to a set of strategic investments in varied areas ranging from encouragement of standards-based instruction to consolidation of teacher preparation activities. Again, this and the preceding recommendations assume a block grant environment.

[6]Recall from Section 3 the assumption for purposes of the game that the federal government would merge into the block grant those monies proposed by the president for higher-education tuition tax credits and deductions.

[7]The categories listed in Table 4.1 are the options provided to the panelists. We use the term "program" interchangeably with "category" to refer to activities undertaken for a particular purpose rather than to any specific legally established initiative. Thus, though Perkins grants would be supplanted by the block grant, the state could use some of the block grant money for the same purpose, which, for convenience, we still refer to as "Perkins."

[8]That is, funds provided to institutions, as through the current Job Training Partnership Act--as opposed to grants to individuals under the current Pell program.

[9]Appendix B gives the "Previous Allocation" and "Continuing Categorical" columns for each state in dollar terms. The panels were requested to provide allocations in percentage terms.

[10]It was assumed that the federal government would continue its support for teacher development under the Higher Education Act and the Eisenhower Teacher Development Act.