FL: Bonus Plan Hits a Snag

Florida had a wacky idea-- let's give teachers a bonus for something completely unrelated to their job performance, and so was born the Best and the Brightest bonus program.

Teachers would be given a frosty $10,000 for having high SAT/ACT scores. This is potentially both expensive (Florida set aside $44 mill for this), and it's also crazy pants. Presumably that's why Florida did not also consider bonuses for students who were in the Bluebird reading group in third grade or who were regularly chosen to clean the erasers.

While the whole idea is silly and insulting and some teachers were fully prepared to tell the state to take its $10K and stick it where the mangroves grow, you can bet some Florida teachers were willing to keep a straight face all the way to the bank.

Except...

Now it turns out that an official transcript from your college, which lists your SAT score, is not good enough.

No-- you have to have an official straight-from-the-College-Board paper listing your score. This may be a bit of a problem if you took the SATs back when Nixon was President or you're not a compulsive packrat or you correctly noted that once you were admitted to college, your SAT score would never ever matter again in your entire life.

The deadline is October 1, so good luck getting a new printout from the College Board in time. Of course, new hires-- like, say, Teach for America candidates who are fresh out of college and headed down to Florida because they heard about the sweet $10K bonus-- I'll bet lots of those guys may still have their official SAT papers from just a few years ago.

Boy. It's almost like Florida only wanted to use the bonus to attract a certain kind of "teacher" to Florida, and the state wasn't really interested in rewarding the Best and Brightest that they already had.

FL Testing: Crash and Burn

From the Florida Time-Union comes word that computer-based testing in Florida is not running smoothly.

Yesterday Duval Public Schools called off testing for the second time this week, and reports are coming in from around the state of students who are staring are at blank screens, just trying to get logged into the testing program. This was the first week of the testing window in Florida, and as more students were added to the load, the system appeared not quite up to the task.

Superintendent Nikolai Vitti is quoted in the article:

Unfortunately, as I expected, with the larger districts joining the testing process this morning, along with middle schools, the system imploded. Students across the district saw white, blank screens when trying to log on. Districts throughout the state are reporting the same problem. I have directed all schools to cease testing.

Meanwhile, state ed department officials are declaring the testing a success, with Education Commissioner Pam Sewart announcing that she "feels with 100 percent certainty that everything is working as it should." Vitti had a response for that:

If the commissioner believes thousands of students staring at a blank screen for 30 minutes statewide is successful, then I am afraid that we have dramatically different levels of expectations for securing a reliable and valid testing environment.

 Florida actually followed Utah out of the testing consortium, using testing materials developed for Utah's test by AIR (the same people that developed the SBA test that Utah dropped out of in the first place). Bottom line: the same people whose test is grinding to a slow crawl in Florida are the people behind the SBAC. So good luck with that.

No word yet on what effect testing gurus think the bollixed roll-out will have on test results. How focused and test-effective is a student who just waited a half hour for the next question to come up?

FWIW, we went down this road in Pennsylvania several years ago. I've always suspected that's why we're one of the few states still sticking with paper and pencil. Of course, that doesn't generate nearly as much revenue for corporations, but no matter how bad our test is, at least our students can actually take it.

Utah Does Not Love Test It Sold To Florida

A hat tip to Jeffrey S. Solochek of the Tampa Bay Times for spotting this story.

Utah has been at the forefront of Common Core adoption, and they have been at the forefront of backing the hell away from the standards as well. They backed out of the Smarter Balanced Assessment Consortium back in the summer of 2012, citing concerns about federal intrusion, and they tried hard to keep arguing for the Core. But Utah had been playing with adaptive testing since 2009, adopting a legislative requirement to develop such a shiny test in 2012.

Of course, "develop" actually means "hire somebody to develop a test,' and Utah went with AIR (American Institutes for Research). AIR has been the ugly step-sister in the Race To Make Lots of Money from Testing. In 2014 they tried to sue the PARCC folks for creating a "bidding" process that declared that you could only win the contract if your company's name started with "P" and ended with "earson," but back in 2012 they did have one big score-- they landed the contract to develop the SBAC test. So Utah dropped out of the group that had hired SBAC to write a computer-based test of The Standards so that they could hire the exact same company to write a computer-based test of The Standards.

The test was to be called the SAGE, and in its rollout it bore a striking resemblance to all the other CCSS-ish tests, particularly in the way that it showed that Utah's students were actually way dumber than anyone expected so OMGZZ we'd better get some reformy action in here right now to fix it, because failing schools!

Meanwhile, in other States That Decided Maybe Common Core Was Very Bad Politics, Florida also dumped the SBAC. In 2013, Governor Rick Scott took a break from harvesting money to decree that SBAC was out the door. But what would they do about the federally required test-of-some-sort?

So maybe Florida made a phone call. Or maybe AIR said, "Well, if you want a Common Core test with all those nasty federal overreach barnacles scraped off it, we already have such a product." And lo and behold, the state of Utah suddenly found itself about to make a cool $5.4 million by renting out the SAGE to Florida. And that, boys and girls, is one example of how we end up NOT having the cool national assessments we were promised as part of the Core, even though we simultaneously end up with the same basic test everywhere (but can never say so, because federalism and commies and Obamacore). It's the worst of all worlds! Yay.

But wait-- there's more. Even as Florida was borrowing a cup of SAGE, Utah-ians (what do we call people who live there?) were not done hating all things Core. Turns out lots of Utah-vites aren't stupid, and when you show them a test that walks and talks and quacks like a duck, and comes from the same parents as all the ducks, they do not believe you when you tell them it's an aardvark.

You can measure the desperate thrashing of Utah's educational thought leaders by this "fact sheet" about the SAGE in which they make such points as "SAGE test students' knowledge and skills, not what they believe" and "SAGE tests are not part of the Common Core but they do-- in part-- measure whether students know and understand the Core standards."

Apparently that's not enough. Benjamin Wood in the Salt Lake Tribune reports that Utah's lawmakers are not feeling the high-tech SAGE love. Rep. Justin Fawson didn't like the state board's plan to use the leasing income to beef up the test (or, in other words, take the $5.4 million and just funnel it straight back to AIR). Rep. LaVar Christensen doesn't think the SAGE data is trustworthy.

"The data comes out low and it's treated as an accurate assessment of where we are, when in reality it's inherently flawed," Christensen said. "If you're going in the wrong direction, you don't step on the gas pedal."

Additionally, SAGE has the usual problems, including a shortage of computers to plunk every student in front of, so that according to Wood, some schools start their end-of-the-year testing in, well, now. Wood quotes Senator Howard Stephenson, a lawmaker who, back in 2008, thought Utah's computer adaptive testing was the bee's knees:

"There will be legislation this year to create a task force to look at doing away with the SAGE test entirely," Stephenson said during a Public Education Appropriation Subcommittee hearing. "I think we need to be looking at the whole issue of whether we should be having end-of-level tests."

So why did I find this story in the Tampa bay Times? Because now we have the prospect of Florida buying a product from folks who don't want to use the damn thing themselves. "Try this," says the salesman, who when asked about his own use, replies, "Oh, God, no. I would never use this stuff myself. But I will totally sell it to you." Congratulations, Florida, on buying material that has been field tested in Utah (which is a place very much like Florida in that they are both south of the Arctic Circle) but which the Utahvistas don't want themselves. It sounds like an excellent bargain.

Free Market & Strippers

One of America's super-duper examples of how the free market can unlock innovation and advance education is back in the news. With strippers.

Fast Train College has been out of the news since the feds raided it in 2012. Fast Train had unlocked the innovation of the free market with such great innovations primarily related to Applying for Free Federal money, with such competitive approaches as Faking High School Diplomas. They also embraced another principle of the Free Market (American Style) in which one makes sure that a legislator or two has your back. In their case it was apparently Alice Hastings, who has been a staunch supporter of For Profit schools, including working to defend them back in the early teens against Obama's initiative to shut down predatory for-profit schools (bet she's feeling silly now that the administration has demonstrated that "shut down predatory for profit colleges" actually means "protect profits of predatory for-profit operators")

Fast Train is now the subject of a federal suit (it must have taken two years just to shovel through the mountains of misbehavior). Amongst the many lies that Fast Train College used to grab some of that sweet, sweet federal cash (like lying about whether or not students actually attended classes), we find the money detail-- they hired strippers and exotic dancers as admissions officers.

The college unlocked the forces of free market innovation by sending strippers out for high school visitations, recruiting young men whose interest in the beauty of round, firm education drove them to sign up as federal education money procurement tools for the edupreneurial wizards looking to make a quick buck by pursuing educational excellence.

Had this not involved crushing set and failed educational dreams for thousands of students, this would be a fairly hilarious story (confession-- I picked the story up from Seattle morning drive time DJ's). As it is, it's one more reminder that when you turn free market forces in education, you do not drive excellence in education. Market forces do not foster excellent products; market forces foster excellent marketing.-- and if your target demographic is 18-year-old males, strippers make a certain kind of marketing sense.

P.S. Fast Train College was based in Florida. Surprise.

Education Next Plugs Research Proving Not Much of Anything

This week Education Next ran an article entitled "The First Hard Evidence on Virtual Education." It turns out that the only word in that title which comes close to being accurate is "first" (more about that shortly). What actually runs in the article is a remarkable stretch by anybody's standards.

The study is a 'working paper" by Guido Schwert of the University of Konstanz (it's German, and legit) and Matt Chingos of Brooking (motto "Just Because We're Economists, That Doesn't Mean We Can't Act Like Education Experts"). It looks at students in the Florida Virtual School, the largest cyber-school system in Florida (how it got to be that way, and whether or not it's good, is a question for another day because it has nothing to do with the matter at hand). What we're really interested in here is how far we can lower the bar for what deserves to be reported.

The researchers report two findings. The first is that when students can take on-line AP courses that aren't offered at their brick and mortal schools, some of them will do so. I know. Quelle suprise! But wait-- we can lower the bar further!

Second finding? The researchers checked out English and Algebra I test scores for the cyber-schoolers and determined that their tenth grade test results for those subjects were about the same as brick-and-mortar students. Author Martin West adds "or perhaps a bit better"  but come on-- if you could say "better" you would have. This is just damning with faint praise-by-weasel-words.

West also characterizes this finding "as the first credible evidence on the effects of online courses on student achievement in K-12 schools" and you know what? It's not. First, you're talking about testing a thin slice of tenth graders. Second, and more hugely, the study did not look at student achievement. It looked at student standardized test scores in two subjects.

I know I've said this before. I'm going to keep saying this just as often as reformsters keep trying to peddle the false assertion used to launch a thousand reformy dinghies.

"Standardized test scores" are not the same thing as "student achievement."

"Standardized test scores" are not the same thing as "student achievement."

When you write "the mugwump program clearly increases student achievement" when you mean "the mugwump program raised some test scores in year X," you are deliberately obscuring the truth. When you write "teachers should be judged by their ability to improve student achievement" when you mean "teachers should be judged by students' standardized test scores," you are saying something that is at best disingenuous, and perhaps a bit of a flat out lie.

But wait-- there's less. In fact, there's so much less that even West has to admit it, though he shares that only with diligent readers who stick around to the next-to-last paragraph.

The study is based on data from 2008-2009. Yes, I typed that correctly. West acknowledges that there may be a bit of an "early adopter syndrome" in play here, and that things might have changed a tad over the past five years, so that then conditions under which this perhaps a bit useless data was generated are completely unlike those currently in play. (Quick-- what operating system were you using in 2008? And what did your smartphone look like?)

Could we possibly reveal this research to be less useful? Why, yes-- yes, we could. In the last sentence of that penultimate graf, West admits "And, of course, the study is also not a randomized experiment, the gold standard in education research." By "gold standard," of course, we mean "valid in any meaningful way."

So there you have it. Education Next has rocked the world with an account of research on six-year-old data that, if it proves anything at all, proves that you can do passable test prep on a computer. And that is how we lower the bar all the way to the floor.

Rigorizing Eight Year Olds

One of the most odious policies to emerge from the Reformster swamp is the mandatory retention of all third graders who don't pass the Big Test in reading. And now Mary Laura Bragg, the director of Florida's program, has popped up to help us all understand just how anti-child this policy is.

She has popped up in North Carolina (motto: Strapping schools to a rocket and shooting them back into the 19th century) where such a program is being definitely considered* (I would say "seriously," but nobody who is serious about educating children would ever consider such a policy). She is responding to an op-ed by Janna Siegel Robertson and Pamela Grundy laying out why the politics-driven Read to Achieve program is an educational mistake; their piece explains (with like, actual facts from experts in the field) why Read to Achieve is a dumb idea. But Bragg (who is also the National Director of Policy for FEE, a prolific generator of anti-public-ed nonsense) questions the rigor of their work, and wanted to make her own point. So what is her point?

Florida's program is called "Just Read, Florida!" and that name really captures the cluelessness of the whole approach. Like many Reformster programs, this one starts with the assumption that these little eight-year-old slackers just aren't being sufficiently threatened and browbeaten. They could read, dammit-- they're just holding out on us! Don't tell me about your problems or your challenges or your background or your use of English as a second language or your cognitive impairments or how your life gets in the way of your school-- Just Read, Dammit! Just do it! Because there is no better pedagogical technique than Insisting Strongly.

Bragg says the proof of her programs success is that the NAEP scores went up. This, too, captures what is so screwed up about this approach. Because remember, Moms and Dads, the school is not here to serve the students by providing them with an education. The students are here to serve the school by cranking out the scores the school needs to make its numbers.

The biggest complaint against retention is the use of test scores in making decisions. But good tests objectively measure real reading skills. A score is not simply a number on a piece of paper but a reflection of actual ability. 

Well, that's sort of true. Sometimes a score isn't simply a number on a piece of paper. Sometimes it's a number in a computer. But either way you cut it, it's simply a number. Do good tests objectively measure real reading skills? Here you're just making a definition, and if that's your definition, then no good tests exist, and they never will. (Also-- is that really the biggest complaint against retention. Because as Pamela Grundy points out below in the comments, the biggest complaint might actually be that retention does more harm than good.)

There is no such thing as an objective concept of "real reading skills." A reading test will always--ALWAYS-- measure the biased picture of reading skills promoted by the people who wrote the test. Always. We could break the internet launching into that argument, but if you want to shut me up, just provide an objective picture of Real Reading Skills that all educational experts agree on. I will not be waiting.

Children who enter fourth grade as struggling readers are four times more likely to drop out of school. The vast majority of teenagers who wind up in the juvenile justice system are illiterate. In other words, the most important indicator of whether a child will succeed in life is whether he or she is a strong reader by the end of third grade. 

Is there some sort of requirement that all Reformsters must skip Basic Statistics class. Maybe you missed this when it was going around the net, but here are some great charts showing, among other things, that the lower the divorce rate has dropped in Maine, the less margarine has been sold.

Your "most important indicator" is bogus, fake, false, unsupportable. At the very least, the correlation door can swing both ways-- a student unhappy enough with school to eventually drop out is less likely to try at his reading lessons (even if someone shouts, "Just Read, Dammit!" at him). What is most likely is that dropping out, getting in trouble with the law, and failing in school are all related to a separate factor.

But Bragg is STILL not done being ridiculous!

Retention policies are badly needed tough love. 

Oh for the love of God. Yes, because all those elementary teachers are in classroom saying, "Yes, reading's okay and all, but I would rather give Pat a cookie and sing Kun-Bay-Yah" because if there's anybody who DOESN'T understand the value of education, it's the people who decided to devote their adult professional lives to education.

Yes, these damn kids just need a kick in the pants. Bunch of slackers!

Children should hit developmental milestones when they are told to. The average height for an eight year old boy is 45 inches. I propose we hold all boys in third grade until they reach that height. If they won't reach that height, let's just use tough love and yell "Just Grow, Dammit!" Because children should grow as they are told to grow, and they should all grow exactly the same way at exactly the same time. And if they won't behave and conform and obey, they must be punished until they will.

 Bragg's closing shot is as anticlimactic as it is obnoxious: "This debate obviously will continue. It is important to ensure all relevant information be included. One would hope those in academia would not rely on others to do basic research." This despite the fact that she has not offered any relevant information or basic research.

Look, North Carolina-- this is a bad, bad, dumb idea for which there is no good argument. It assumes that children can be punished into excellence and achievement, and while that is a logical extension of the NC policy towards teachers, there isn't a lick of support to suggest that it creates smarter, healthier, happier grown-ups. And taking education advice from Florida is like taking political advice from Iraq. Just Say No, Florida!

*EDIT: Just to clarify-- yes, NC actually has one of these reprehensible laws in place. As it comes time to actually make third graders suffer the consequences of  NC legislative malfeasance, Grundy and Robertson have stepped forward to plead that NC's leaders reconsider before somebody (particularly a third grade somebody) gets hurt. Bragg stepped in to argue staying the course. So the law's in place, but nobody has really thought about what it's going to mean until now. That's where we come in at the beginning of this piece.

Read more here: http://www.newsobserver.com/2014/05/15/3864342/mary-laura-bragg-reading-initiatives.html#storylink=cpy

FEE & FL Spew Out Silly Test Advice

Are your students worried about big stupid standardized tests? Well, Jeb Bush's shiny ed initiative has some help for you.

You may recall that Jeb Bush has been scaling up the Learn More Go Further campaign. The educational reformy initiative has been scaled up for a national audience-- it's almost as if Jeb is trying to prepare for some sort of national campaign of some sort. Learn More Go Further is what you would get if you set out to collect every bit of numbskullery ever said about the Common Core. You can read about this nifty initiative here, and follow it up with this account of their sad attempt to make use of that twitter thingy all the young folks are talking about.

My earlier attempts at shaming them notwithstanding (it's almost as if they aren't really worried about what some D-list blogger says about them), the LMGF folks have continued to crank out educational whiz-bangery including this-- a special printout guide for students who are concerned about whatever cockamamie test they are about to be subjected to.

Page one has a header of two chipper young (10-ish) students holding their bright yellow pencils-- wait! what? Are they not getting ready to take their FCATs on line? Are we not all planning to take our Big Tests on line? Maybe our intent is not to scare the children, but if that's the case, we run into trouble in the very first paragraph, which is this:

Over the past 15 years, Florida has successfully taken steps to implement policies to
increase the quality of education for students. This has resulted in vast academic improvements, made evident through the state surging upwards in national rankings.

Yes, I'm imagining the conversation between millions of third graders on their way to school on test day.

Chris: Hey, are you ready to do some surging upwards today?
Pat: Yeah, baby! Watch me take some successful steps to implement this policy!

Okay, so nobody talks like the ad copy on this flier, but you know who especially doesn't talk like that? The students that these fliers are theoretically aimed at. Perhaps it gets better, you say? Oh, honey.

Along with the hard work of teachers, students and parents, Florida’s transformation is largely rooted in accountability and assessments. A commitment to higher academic standards and aligned assessments are the next steps. By creating smarter, more efficient tests that push students to apply knowledge, students will develop greater critical thinking and analytical skills to prepare them for life after high school.

Two paragraphs in and we still haven't said a single thing that would be spoken by a real live human being, AND we've managed to wrap this verbacious gobbledeegook around utter bullshit. The impressive achievement here is that there isn't a single verifiable, supportable, non-baloney claim in this paragraph. What transformation? How do you trace the cause and effect? What is a smarter, more efficient test, and how exactly does it make students better thinkers? And why is any of this on a flier whose intended audience is students?????

And then-- oh, dear reader, oh sweet lord in heaven-- there is this. In the flier version it's just text, but Kris Nielsen located this awesome suitable-for-hanging poster version

I give the LMGF folks credit for just one thing-- it looks like they might have recognized that one of the great giant gaping holes in the narrative of test-based accountability is that students can't see any earthly reason to give so much as one half of a gluteus rattus about testing.  But hey kids-- testing is a part of life! All these professionals-- all they do is just take a test and pass it and they are ready to fly a plane into surgery.

Well, that's page one. Page two has the actual tips for students facing a test. And first, to remind you that this whole thing was written by someone who has never met an actual child, we start with "While tests may seem scary, and some associated nervousness is normal, there are ways you can properly prepare to reduce stress." Yes, many's the time that teachers all the way from K through 12 have sat their students down and reassured them by looking them in the eye and saying soft, soothing tones, "Some associated nervousness is normal." I think Teddy Ruxpin used to have a chip programmed with that line.

Tips? We've got tips!

Before the test, approach the test with confidence. Get a good night's sleep. And-- as God is my witness I am not making this shit up-- "Strive for a relaxed state of concentration." Perhaps the writer chose the elevated diction to hide the ridiculousness of the advice-- work real hard to be relaxed. And also, don't take the test on an empty stomach. Fresh fruits and vegetables help reduce stress, so pound back some broccoli for breakfast on test day. (We'll ignore the traditional advice, which is don't eat out of the ordinary because it will make you drowsy).

After the test, check your answers and make sure you didn't make any silly mistakes. Then celebrate your achievement. I'm not sure if that means on the spot, like dancing in the aisle, or after school, when you try to share broccoli farts on the bus.

What about during the test? That's the biggest list. Read and follow the directions. Don't get frustrated and/or quit. Skip hard ones and come back. Use process of elimination (which it goes on to explain, as if this specific technique isn't routinely drilled into students' heads during the weeks of test prep prior to the test). And this-- "Don’t panic when other students appear to be finished. There’s no reward for finishing first." This is true; there will, however, be punishments for finishing at the bottom of the pack, so think about doing what you can to distract and sabotage your classmates, because their success will be your failure thanks to the magic of test results stack ranking.

Presumably LMGF envisions this handout being given to every testing student in Florida. It underlines, once again, twice, how much groups like this are envisioning imaginary children taking tests under imaginary conditions that will produce results of imaginary validity.

Bush, FEE, The Chamber & How Not To Tweet

Have corporations learned how to make social media work for them yet? Well......

Last week we noted that Jeb Bush's FEE (Foundation for Excellence in Education) and the Higher States Standards Partnership (a group funded by the US Chamber of Commerce and a few others well explained here by Erin Osborne) were launching a shiny new Common Core promotional blitz. (And by "shiny" I mean "shiny in the same way that artificial turf is shiny.")

And somebody in the launching team apparently said, "Hey, let us use some of the social media that I hear is very hip these days. The social media with the viral things-- we should use some of that, because I hear it is big with the young persons. (Also, with the rap music.)"

To anchor this blitz-ish like sort-of onslaught, the marketing team deployed four teachers as the face of "Learn More. Go Further." The four include a Florida DOE teacher ambassador (and previous virtual school instructor), two charter school teachers, and a pubic school reading specialist recently promoted to assistant principal. Beyond the obvious non-public-school slant, there's the more subtle slant involved in choosing four ladies; no secondary man teachers. The designers of the program did select one apparently-Latina lady; the other three are looking mighty white. I'm not suggesting any of these choices reveal nefarious purposes, but given that they had to be deliberate marketing choices, I find them.... interesting.

More puzzling is the fact that the four ladies resemble each other pretty closely in physical type. Some people have made observations about the type, and I want to be clear that using a woman's body type as a basis for criticizing her is just unacceptable uber-jerk behavior, and those people need to either grow up or shut up. But regardless of what configuration we're talking about, these four women look very much the same. I'm reduced to telling them apart by hair style. If four women look like each other, I don't see that as a sign of dark conspiracy-- but this is somebody's deliberate choice, and the messaging was supposed to be, "Look-- a wide variety of teachers support Common Core," then somebody failed.

At any rate. LMGF has set these four up with their own twitter accounts, because, you know, the social media. I've been following their progress. Let's see how they're doing.

@USTeacherFaye first tweeted in March 15. She has 33 tweets as I type this and each one is a promotional comment. Here's a typical tweet:

My passion for kids is what inspired me to be a teacher. My passion for their success is why I support Common Core: http://bit.ly/1fMIS5g

I can call this "typical" because she has actually tweeted it twice. Ditto for "Students face so many challenges. Academic standards shouldn't be one of them. Support Common Core." She usually tweets once or twice a day, but not on weekends. She has three re-tweets (two from LMGF and one from a Tom Greene at AEI). She has not once tweeted at anyone else, and she has not responded to any of the tweets directed at her, which seem to cover a wide range of Core-related crankiness.

@USTeacherRian lists herself as a government and economics teacher. Her first tweet is also March 15. She has 36 tweets and two retweets (one from LMGF and one from USTeacherFaye inviting people to follow the four spokesladies). She is also a one-or-two-a-weekday tweetress, but she was feeling feisty on April 2nd and responded to two critical tweets (CCSS is not a curriculum, y'all).

@USTeacherBeth is "excited to help more students go further to college and great careers." 33 tweets since March 15. I'll confess that I love Teacher Beth best of all. For one thing, she actually took a break from posting advertising copy with links to throw in an Emerson quote (“The secret of education lies in respecting the pupil.”). For another, she has a whopping five posts in reply to others, and one of them is to me. I'd tweeted a variety of more substantive challenges to the ladies and was becoming sad at the lack of response, so I tweeted to all four that I was beginning to suspect that they were bots, or paid interns. Awesomely, Teacher Beth tweeted me the following reply:

"Neither."

So now I have a huge twitcrush on her and her minimalist post-modern sniptweeting.

@USTeacherAngela is the group slacker. With a mere 20 tweets, I think we can agree she's just not trying very hard. No tweets addressed to anyone, no responses to her critics. Come on, Teacher Angela. Step up your game.

Now, I said I'd get back to the ladies' critics, because I think there's important information to be gleaned there.

See, these four accounts are being promoted, as is the initiative and the ads that go with it. If like me you visit some of these materials, you'll start seeing links for LMGF fill your browser ad spaces, and the four ladies will be appearing regularly as promoted twitter feeds. Online marketing allows very carefully directed marketing-- so can we guess at whom FEE and HSSP are aiming themselves?

There are two types of criticism aimed at the ladies. One is from teachers; in many cases, specifically BATS. I suspect that has something to do with some posting I did on the BATs facebook page. But listen to some of the other posts:

"You are communist dupes" (seriously-- I'm not making this up)

"Fell [sic] free to be interviewed by someone like @GerriWillisFBN from @FoxBusiness otherwise this is just propaganda."

"#CommonCore is more engaging & focuses on the Gov. Master. That's why progressives and unions support it."

So, boys and girls, using our context clues, which audience seems to have been the recipient of LMGF's media attention? If you're guessing "conservatives," I'm with you. The freshly scrubbed friendly (mostly) white ladies (who are US teachers!) and an American flag-quoting logo are beginning to suggest to me that Learn More. Go Further is not really concerned with selling CCSS to everybody, but is mostly about trying, again, to get conservatives on board with the Core. After a close reading of the four twitter accounts, I'm concluding two things:

1) The folks behind this think that once you set up a twitter account and pay to promote it, buzz just sport of magically appears, even if you don't really do anything with it or engage anybody.

2) Jeb Bush is really worried that hard right conservatives will kneecap his White House dreams if he doesn't somehow get them to drink the CCSS Koolaid.

Judging from much of what the conservative press are writing (like this recent Michelle Malkin piece), these four ladies and the massive well-funded media machine they are stapled to the front of-- well, they've all got their work cut out for them.

[Update: The folks at Integrity in Education directed my attention to the fact that the women have EIGHT accounts-- each has one as a USTeacher and one as FLTeacher. Not a surprise as many aspects of the initiative still have FL pieces stuck from when this Florida specific program was scaled up to national level.

The FLTeacher accounts are pretty much the same story-- same time frame, same style of tweets, though a bit more chatty tone. Oddest difference-- the FL accounts give the ladies last names.

So my apologies for missing that part of the story. I'll do better faux journalism in the future.]