Jeb's National Education Summit

It's almost November and that means it's time to start making our plans to attend Bush III's National Education Summit, brought to you by your friends at Jeb Bush for President 2016 Foundation for Excellence in Education. It's a giant reformsterpalooza. (For some great stories from previous summits, read here and here.)

This year's theme is Unlocking Student Achievement: Choice * Accountability and it provides a great template for how we can peddle all of the regular reformster wares even as we completely scrub them of any reference to the Common Core. Bush III has been scrubbing all of the royal presidential educational advocacy materials lately, having noticed that being a Common Core Adorer is not winning him big love from the conservative wing of the GOP. Note this fundraising letter that completely avoids any mention of Bush III's previous policy BFF.

The national conference may be Common Core Free, but it is still stacked tall with reformy baloney. Here are the sessions you can expect to enjoy if you attend, and to save you time, I'll go ahead and predict the takeaways for each right now.

After Bush III's opening keynote (still working on a title, I guess), will be followed by these strategy sessions:

Measurement 2.0: Elevating students by testing what you teach

"States are adopting more rigorous academic standards" is about as close as we get to acknowledging that the Core exist (though if we're talking in present tense "dumping and distancing themselves from" might make a better sentence middle here).

But add to your stack of 1001 Statements That Prove CCSS and Tests Cannot Be Decoupled this sentence:

A standard without accurate measurement and strong accountability quickly becomes optional.

You can't kill the tests without killing the standards, and don't think for a moment that reformsters don't understand that. At any rate, this session focuses on the search for a super-duper test that is impervious to test prep and rote learning, and which measures critical thinking and depth of understanding. We will hear from four states about their search for this mythical test. Since the four states are Kentucky, Idaho, Mississippi and Florida (Pam Stewart will be there, perhaps to explain why tests should be administered to dying children), so I think we can cut to the chase, which is that nobody yet has the slightest clue how to create this mythically awesome tests.

Autonomy vs. Accountability: The right mix for school choice programs

We're talking about private school choice programs here. Michael McShane will be leading the panel, which includes leaders from FEE, Step Up for Students, and Alliance for School Choice.  Let's go ahead and predict that the right mix is "Let them do whatever the hell they want."

Communicating Reform Part 1: Crafting e-messages people will read and watch

Given the short life and sad demise of the "Learn More. Go Further" PR campaign that Bush and Friends launched. complete with sad sponsored teacher twitter accounts, I'm not sure FEE is the group to give advice about this. But somebody must because " we are confronted by an organized and well-funded opposition dedicated to maintaining the status quo." All I can say is-- somebody had better cough up my share of this well-fundedness, because I am clearly not getting a cut of the money that is buying other public education advocates their summer homes and fancy dijon mustard on their fancy ham sandwiches. I am literally sitting here at my desk in pajamas with a toasted bagel perched atop my desk mess, and shortly the dog is going to demand to go poop in the back yard and I will have to take him myself. I wonder if Jeb Bush has to take his own dog to poop in the back yard. I wonder how all of these reformsters dogs will cope when their owners are all in DC for two days.

In short, "organized and well-funded," my ass.

But @TeacherFaye is going to be here on the panel, so I'm pretty sure the takeaway will be, "Yes, go on and use the twitter on the interwebs, and the young persons will see your message and become convinced by the twitness."

Education Begins with K-3 Literacy: If kids can’t read, they can’t graduate

"because we won't let them" should probably be the rest of the title. FEE has beaten this drum since the first national convention in 2010, and the short form is simple-- flunk all third graders who can't pass your state's standardized reading test. The panel includes Mississippi State Senator Tollson and  Ohio Superintendent Richard Ross; if you are expecting to hear the slightest lick of research por evidence that this test and punish retention plan is a sound and helpful idea, you should just go wait in line with the people waiting to see Sasquatch riding a unicorn across the Bridge to Atlantis.

Takeaway: we should flunk third graders who flunk the state test because eight year olds need to be whipped into shape. Uphill, both ways.

Innovation in the Certification Process: Rethinking teacher licensure

"Rethinking" is a great word. I am rethinking taking my dog out to poop because my wife is now up and if I rethink it long enough, I might get out of doing it. While I do not mean to compare teacher licensure to dog poop, I think the rethinking process is similar. The panel also seems to be interested in rethinking tenure and FILO. It includes John King, so you know this will totally not be about how to rethink your way to an easily managed, low paid, non-licensed teaching workforce.

Making Schools Better Instead of Just More Expensive: How to make your education dollars count

"Despite all evidence to the contrary, there is still widespread belief that school success is tied to school funding," begins this description. "So this panel will discuss how they cut the budgets of high achieving schools in rich neighborhoods down to level of low-achieving schools in poor neighborhoods because it shouldn't make any difference." Ha! Just kidding. This panel is led by Chester Finn. This panel will discuss how to "direct funds where they will do the most good" or, as I read it, how to rewrite funding rules so that generating good test scores gets you funding, because directing funding away from struggling schools so that they can be declared failures and closed is bad education, but damn fine business.

The Next Chapter in Educational Choice: Education Savings Accounts

aka "Maybe If We Try Legislating Vouchers This Way, We Can Finally Get Them Past the Courts."


Not Your Daddy’s Woodshop: Career and technical education in the 21st century

Possibly not stupid-- somebody has noticed that we have a problem filling high skills blue collar jobs. Since we haven't yet figured out how to make jobs like, say, welding as low-skills as making fries, we'll have to come up with a way to train these peoples. "This is definitely not your daddy's woodshop," they say, stopping just short of "And of course your mommy would never take wood shop because, no penis." The head of the US Chamber, heavy promoters of Common "Everyone Has To Go To College" Core will head this panel, so I hope he's taking his cognitive dissonance pills.

Accountability Works Workshop: A-F school grading

Another Bush III fave with no actual facts to back it up. Presumably we'll skip the unit on How To Tweak the System So You Don't Embarrass Your Charter School Friends.

Day II Starts with:

The Civil Rights Issue of Our Time: Access to a Quality Education

This general session is moderated by famous civil rights activist and educational expert Campbell Brown. Since she's only the moderator, presumably she will not deliver her speech on "How to squash uppity black ladies who try to horn in on your civil rights lawsuit action."

For actual panelists we get Andrew Malone of Harlem Success Academy, Rev. Samuel Rodriguez of the National Hispanic Christian Leadership Conference and Patrick Dobard or the New Orleans Recovery School District. The blurb suggests that this will be a demonstration of how to appropriate the language of civil rights to promote your business interests as you cash in in the education sector.

Communicating Reform Part 2: Delivering effective messages

Marketing strategy. This is about "how to effectively reach your target audiences with tailored messages." So I'm expecting an update of the classic Charter Messaging Bible.And it should be a good one-- one of the panelists is Felix Schein, president of RALLY, the PR firm that created the successful astroturf group Students Matter for David Welch. Expect some practical branding and messaging advice here.

Bridging the Access Gap: How to bring the best courses to every student, in every state

I last encountered this idea in Michael McShane's walk-and-talk video-- why voucherize entire schools when you can really unbundle and voucherize by individual classes. Charter operators, you should attend this session so that you can understand that when some reformsters look into the future of education, they don't see you.

Building Trust in the Classroom: Protecting student data privacy and security

The big question is why this is not entitled "Doing the Right Thing: Protecting student data and privacy." But in reformsterland, data security is a PR problem, not an actual problem. This session promises to address all the data security issues except the main ones. We're going to talk about securing your on-line gradebook, but apparently not for the wholesale collection, sharing and selling of the data gathered from high stakes testing.


And there you have it

The confab runs from early morning, Thursday, November 20, through Friday afternoon, thereby guaranteeing that the doors will not be darkened by anybody who actually works in a public school classroom. Registration for the event is $499, though you can apply for a scholarship. The conference will be held at the Washington Marriot Wardman Park, so, fancy.

But the organizers want you to know: "Attendees leave the National Summit armed with the knowledge and networks to advance bold education reform in their states." They call it an "uncommon conference" which is kind of hilarious because they have scrubbed every reference to certain common thing, so it is literally un-commoned. At any rate, it "serves as a catalyst for energizing and accelerating the reform movement across the nation. Be there or be left behind."

I would love to be there to watch and learn and write down things I could blog about in a well-funded and organized way later, but I actually lack the funding and I am using my personal days this year to visit my soon-to-be-newborn grandson. Also, somebody has to be here to take the dog out to poop. Priorities, you know.

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.]