Governor Mike Pence of Indiana never gets tired of finding new ways to support charter schools, and he doesn't appear to be too worried about who he has to shaft to do it.
As reported in the Indy Star, Pence earlier this year convinced the Indiana legislature to set aside a few truckloads of free money for charter schools.
This was actually a compromise of sorts. Pence's goal had been to get a $1,500 bonus payment for each charter student, arguing that this would give charters the money to build to match the kind of money that public schools get through property taxes, an argument that kind of hurts my head because of course those same property tax dollars are used to fund charter schools. So Pence's argument was, I guess, that charter schools should get public tax dollars, and then they should get more public tax dollars.
Why is that "conservative" lawmakers so often support the most inefficient, expensive system of education possible? As public school systems are strapped for cash, the universally react the same way-- they close schools, because fewer buildings are cheaper to operate. But in charterland, we open more buildings and flood the school system with excess capacity, all of which must be paid for by the taxpayers.
Charter supporters are the shoppers saying, "Look. A 12 oz can of Dr. Pepper costs less than a two-liter bottle. There for, instead of getting one two-liter bottle, we should get a case of cans. That's cheaper, right?"
Ultimately, lawmakers balked at the $20 million price tag for the charter bonus, and as a "compromise" okayed only $500, plus a charter loan fund of $50 million.
Charters will pay a whopping 1% interest on the loans, meaning that the taxpayers of Indiana could have done almost as well taking $50 million and burying it in a jar in the back yard. And that's assuming that the loans are paid back. Back in 2013 the state paid off $90 million dollars in charter loans, which makes it all the more impressive that charters in Indiana are back in sorts of debt-- over half the charters in Indiana are collectively in debt to the tune of $120 million. Of course, if you could borrow money at rates somewhere between 1% and -100%, wouldn't you?
Supporters of the public money giveaway say that it's a good deal because the state ends up with a building as security. But noting that charters can close up shop any time they like, John O'Neal of ISTA comes up with the on-point quote:
"In the last couple years, there have been about 15 or more school
closures in Indiana alone," said John O'Neal, policy and research
coordinator for the Indiana State Teachers Association. "I think it's
definitely something to question whether it's a good use of tax dollars
when these schools can just pick up and leave."
It is something to question, but it doesn't look like the Indiana legislature is prepared to do the questioning (or even allow it-- the new loan package was passed at the 11th hour without debate or discussion). But they have certainly done their best to make sure that taxpayers foot the bill for as many extra school systems as their are privateers interested in profiting from them. Congratulations, Indiana taxpayers!
Showing posts with label Mike Pence. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Mike Pence. Show all posts
Monday, June 8, 2015
Thursday, February 12, 2015
What's The Matter With Indiana
In the modern era of education reform, each state has tried to create its own special brand of educational dysfunction. If the point of Common Core related reforms was to bring standardization to the country's many and varied state systems, it has failed miserably by failing in fifty different ways.
What Indiana provides is an example of what happens when the political process completely overwhelms educational concerns. If there is anyone in the Indiana state capitol more worried about education students than in political maneuvering and political posturing, it's not immediately evident who that person might be.
The current marquee conflagration of the moment is the announcement of a new Big Standardized Test that will take twelve hours to complete. This announcement has triggered a veritable stampede from responsibility, as every elected official in Indianapolis tries to put some air space between themselves and this testing disaster. And it brings up some of the underlying issues of the moment in Indiana.
Currently, all roads lead to Glenda Ritz.
Back before the fall of 2012, Indiana had become a reformster playground. They'd made early strides solving the puzzle of how to turn an entire urban school district over to privatizers, and they loved them some Common Core, too. Tony Bennett, buddy of Jeb Bush and big-time Chief for Change, was running the state's education department just the way reformsters thought it should be done. And then came the 2012 election.
Bennett was the public face of Indiana education reform. He dumped a ton of money into the race. And he lost. Not just lost, but looooooooosssssssssst!!! As is frequently noted, Glenda Ritz was elected Superintendent for Public Instruction with more votes than Governor Mike Pence. I like this account of the fallout by Joy Resmovits mostly because it includes a quote from Mike Petrilli that I think captures well the reaction of reformsters when Bennett lost.
"Shit shit shit shit shit," he said. "You can quote me on that."
After Ritz became a Democrat education in a GOP administration, Republican politicians decided that given her overwhelming electoral victory, they'd better just suck it up and find a way to honor the will of the people by working productively with her to fashion bi-partisan educational policies that put the needs of Indiana's students ahead of political gamesmanship. Ha! Just kidding. The GOP started using every trick they could think of to strip Ritz of her power.
As Scott Elliot tells it in this piece at Chalkbeat, things actually started out okay, with Ritz and the Pence administration carving out some useful compromises. Elliot marks the start of open warfare at Bennettgate-- the release of emails showing that Tony Bennett had gamed the less-than-awesome Indiana school grading system to favor certain charter operators.
Certainly Ritz and pence have different ideas about how to operate an education system. Mike Pence particularly loves charters-- so much so that he has taken the unusual move of proposing that charter schools be paid $1,500 more per student than public schools (so forget all about that charters-are-cheaper business).
Indiana has also created a complicated relationship with the Common Core, legislating a withdrawal from the Core, but one that required the state to do it without losing their federalbribes payments. The result was a fat-free Twinkie of education standards-- not enough like the original for some people and too much like it for others.
The Indiana GOP has been trying to separate Ritz from any power. They cite any number of complaints about her work style and competence (the GOP president of the Senate famously commented "In all fairness, Superintendent Ritz was a librarian, okay?") and most of the complaints smell like nothing but political posturing.
It's understandable that the state Board of Education would be a cantankerous group. Consider this op-ed piece from Gordon Hendry, newest member of the board, Democrat, attorney, business exec, and director of economic development under former Indianapolis mayor and current charter profiteer Bart Peterson. Hendry opens with, "To me, education policy is economic policy" (pro tip, Mr. Hendry-- education policy is education policy). After castigating Ritz for not running pleasant, orderly meetings (because her job is, apparently, to make alleged grownups behave like actual grownups), Hendry works up to this:
As a Democrat, I don't know why the superintendent insists on creating conflict where rational debate should instead exist.
That just sets off the bovine fecal detector into loud whoops. First, we've got an accusation buried as an assumption (she's the one creating conflict). Combine that with playing the feigned ignorance card-- I just have no idea why she could be so touchy! Really, dude? I'm all the way over here in Pennsylvania, and I can tell why she might be involved in some crankypants activity. I'm pretty sure winning an election and being forced to work with people who dismiss you and try to cut you out of power-- I'm pretty sure that would put someone in a bad mood. So I can understand finding her ideas obnoxious and disagreeing with how she runs a meeting, but when you claim her point of view is incomprehensible, that tells me way more about you than about her.
Most of the statements I read coming out of Indiana are like that-- they carry a screaming barely-subtext of "I am just stringing words together in a way that I've calculated might bring political advantage, but I am paying no real attention to what they actual mean to real humans."
I have no idea how good at her job Glenda Ritz actually is, but the political statement represented by her landslide election seems clear enough, and it's a little astonishing that Indiana's leaders are so hell bent on thwarting the will of the electorate. But damned if the legislature isn't trying to strip her of chairmanship of the Board of Education.
Meanwhile, the fat-free Twinkie standards have spawned some massive tumor of a test, coming in at an advertised length of twelve hours which breaks down to A) weeks of wasted classroom time and B) at least six hours worth of frustrated and bored students making random marks which of course gets Indiana C) results even more meaningless than the usual standardized test results although D) McGraw-Hill will still make a mountain of money for producing it. Whose fault is that? Tom LoBianco seems close to the answer when he says, basically, everyone. (Although Pence has offered a gubernatorial edict that the test be cut to six hours, so, I don't know- just do every other page, kids? Not sure exactly how one cuts a test in half in about a week, but perhaps Indiana is a land of miracles.*) But it's hard for me not see Ritz and Indiana schools as the victims of a system so clogged and choked with political asshattery that it may well be impossible to get anything done that actually benefits the students of Indiana.
UPDATE: On February 11, the Senate Education Committee gave the okay to a bill that would exempt voucher schools from taking the same assessment as public schools. In fact, the voucher schools can just go ahead and create a test of their own. It is remarkable that the State of Indiana has not just closed all public schools, dumped all the education money in a giant Scrooge McDuck sized vault, and sold tickets to just go in a dive around in it.
There's going to be a rally at the Statehouse on Monday, February 16th. If I were an Indiana taxpayer-- hell if I were a live human who lived considerably closer-- I would be there. This is a state that really hates its public schools.
* Edit-- I somehow lost the sentence about the shortening of the test in posting. I've since put the parenthetical point back.
What Indiana provides is an example of what happens when the political process completely overwhelms educational concerns. If there is anyone in the Indiana state capitol more worried about education students than in political maneuvering and political posturing, it's not immediately evident who that person might be.
The current marquee conflagration of the moment is the announcement of a new Big Standardized Test that will take twelve hours to complete. This announcement has triggered a veritable stampede from responsibility, as every elected official in Indianapolis tries to put some air space between themselves and this testing disaster. And it brings up some of the underlying issues of the moment in Indiana.
Currently, all roads lead to Glenda Ritz.
Back before the fall of 2012, Indiana had become a reformster playground. They'd made early strides solving the puzzle of how to turn an entire urban school district over to privatizers, and they loved them some Common Core, too. Tony Bennett, buddy of Jeb Bush and big-time Chief for Change, was running the state's education department just the way reformsters thought it should be done. And then came the 2012 election.
Bennett was the public face of Indiana education reform. He dumped a ton of money into the race. And he lost. Not just lost, but looooooooosssssssssst!!! As is frequently noted, Glenda Ritz was elected Superintendent for Public Instruction with more votes than Governor Mike Pence. I like this account of the fallout by Joy Resmovits mostly because it includes a quote from Mike Petrilli that I think captures well the reaction of reformsters when Bennett lost.
"Shit shit shit shit shit," he said. "You can quote me on that."
After Ritz became a Democrat education in a GOP administration, Republican politicians decided that given her overwhelming electoral victory, they'd better just suck it up and find a way to honor the will of the people by working productively with her to fashion bi-partisan educational policies that put the needs of Indiana's students ahead of political gamesmanship. Ha! Just kidding. The GOP started using every trick they could think of to strip Ritz of her power.
As Scott Elliot tells it in this piece at Chalkbeat, things actually started out okay, with Ritz and the Pence administration carving out some useful compromises. Elliot marks the start of open warfare at Bennettgate-- the release of emails showing that Tony Bennett had gamed the less-than-awesome Indiana school grading system to favor certain charter operators.
Certainly Ritz and pence have different ideas about how to operate an education system. Mike Pence particularly loves charters-- so much so that he has taken the unusual move of proposing that charter schools be paid $1,500 more per student than public schools (so forget all about that charters-are-cheaper business).
Indiana has also created a complicated relationship with the Common Core, legislating a withdrawal from the Core, but one that required the state to do it without losing their federal
The Indiana GOP has been trying to separate Ritz from any power. They cite any number of complaints about her work style and competence (the GOP president of the Senate famously commented "In all fairness, Superintendent Ritz was a librarian, okay?") and most of the complaints smell like nothing but political posturing.
It's understandable that the state Board of Education would be a cantankerous group. Consider this op-ed piece from Gordon Hendry, newest member of the board, Democrat, attorney, business exec, and director of economic development under former Indianapolis mayor and current charter profiteer Bart Peterson. Hendry opens with, "To me, education policy is economic policy" (pro tip, Mr. Hendry-- education policy is education policy). After castigating Ritz for not running pleasant, orderly meetings (because her job is, apparently, to make alleged grownups behave like actual grownups), Hendry works up to this:
As a Democrat, I don't know why the superintendent insists on creating conflict where rational debate should instead exist.
That just sets off the bovine fecal detector into loud whoops. First, we've got an accusation buried as an assumption (she's the one creating conflict). Combine that with playing the feigned ignorance card-- I just have no idea why she could be so touchy! Really, dude? I'm all the way over here in Pennsylvania, and I can tell why she might be involved in some crankypants activity. I'm pretty sure winning an election and being forced to work with people who dismiss you and try to cut you out of power-- I'm pretty sure that would put someone in a bad mood. So I can understand finding her ideas obnoxious and disagreeing with how she runs a meeting, but when you claim her point of view is incomprehensible, that tells me way more about you than about her.
Most of the statements I read coming out of Indiana are like that-- they carry a screaming barely-subtext of "I am just stringing words together in a way that I've calculated might bring political advantage, but I am paying no real attention to what they actual mean to real humans."
I have no idea how good at her job Glenda Ritz actually is, but the political statement represented by her landslide election seems clear enough, and it's a little astonishing that Indiana's leaders are so hell bent on thwarting the will of the electorate. But damned if the legislature isn't trying to strip her of chairmanship of the Board of Education.
Meanwhile, the fat-free Twinkie standards have spawned some massive tumor of a test, coming in at an advertised length of twelve hours which breaks down to A) weeks of wasted classroom time and B) at least six hours worth of frustrated and bored students making random marks which of course gets Indiana C) results even more meaningless than the usual standardized test results although D) McGraw-Hill will still make a mountain of money for producing it. Whose fault is that? Tom LoBianco seems close to the answer when he says, basically, everyone. (Although Pence has offered a gubernatorial edict that the test be cut to six hours, so, I don't know- just do every other page, kids? Not sure exactly how one cuts a test in half in about a week, but perhaps Indiana is a land of miracles.*) But it's hard for me not see Ritz and Indiana schools as the victims of a system so clogged and choked with political asshattery that it may well be impossible to get anything done that actually benefits the students of Indiana.
UPDATE: On February 11, the Senate Education Committee gave the okay to a bill that would exempt voucher schools from taking the same assessment as public schools. In fact, the voucher schools can just go ahead and create a test of their own. It is remarkable that the State of Indiana has not just closed all public schools, dumped all the education money in a giant Scrooge McDuck sized vault, and sold tickets to just go in a dive around in it.
There's going to be a rally at the Statehouse on Monday, February 16th. If I were an Indiana taxpayer-- hell if I were a live human who lived considerably closer-- I would be there. This is a state that really hates its public schools.
* Edit-- I somehow lost the sentence about the shortening of the test in posting. I've since put the parenthetical point back.
Saturday, January 3, 2015
Teacher Union Alternatives?
One of the hallmarks of reformsterism continues to be a concerted effort to crush teacher unions. The bottom line is pretty simple-- privatizers and profiteers want to be able to hire and fire at will, and they want to be able to pay teachers whatever they feel like paying them. You make profit by controlling revenue and expense, and since education revenues are fairly static and beyond the easy control of reformster ed CEOs, the CEOs need to be able to control costs, and the number one cost in a school is personnel. Reformsters also want to be able to work their teachers with no constraints; nobody should be telling them that teachers won't be working twelve hour days, seven days a week.
So reformsters really want unions to go away.
In the New Orleans Advocate, we find Alexandria Neason pushing one form of anti-union baloney. Her article reports on a "trend" of NOLA teachers seeking out non-union alternatives, looking for other groups that "amplify teachers voices." And, holy smokes, what a list. America Achieves, Teach Plus, Educators 4 Excellence, Leading Educators -- a dozen Super Bowls couldn't use this much astroturf. I am not sure why Neason did not list the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation as a great alternative to the teachers' unions.
But it's an alternative that doesn't provide much of anything that a union does
The new organizations like America Achieves differ in their specific goals and structure, but they all seek to amplify teachers’ voice in policy debates, and they rarely, if ever, concern themselves with protecting one of unions’ main reasons for being: teacher tenure.
"Seek to amplify teachers' voices in policy debates." Seriously? I would love to see a specific example of that, but one is not forthcoming, so I'm going to assume that these groups are doing what astroturf groups have always done-- pursue their reformster-driven agendas while searching for teachers they can use as PR cover.
But what about the union function of bargaining contracts or providing resources and support for teachers under fire?
America Achieves, where Eckhardt is now the head of the teacher fellowship program, focuses less on advocating for specific positions and more on helping teachers learn how to advocate for themselves.
So, sure. When it's time to get a new salary set or it's time to defend your career against a biased or incompetent administrator, just march into district offices and take care of that yourself. America Achieves also rounds up teachers to provide fun audiences for things like NBC's Education Nation Reformster Infomercials, and they provided the teacher props for the Arne Duncan Meets With Live Teachers photo op of 2010. They also help teachers write op-eds and other great reformster PR. And when it comes to putting teachers in these settings, Eckhardt gets in a zinger:
But the group didn’t tell the teachers what to say — something Eckhardt said would never have happened with a union.
And, well, damn, he's not entirely wrong. In the name of unity, teachers unions can be absolutely terrible about allowing a diverse group of voices to speak. NY has its infamous loyalty oath. And nobody rises to positions of national leadership without proving to people in power that you're the Right Kind of Person.
I've been a local union leader in a tough contract year followed by a tough strike year. I know just how invaluable the resources and experts from the state level can be. I also know it would be foolish to assume that local, state and national union interests are always 100% aligned.
But Eckhardt's statement is disingenuous. Of course his group didn't tell teachers what to say-- they just made sure to select teachers who would only be inclined to say The Right Thing in the first place. I think some people imagine that politics works by giving somebody a pile of money and saying, "Okay, now you should pretend to be opposed to mugwump regulation." But it's much simpler to find someone who is actually opposed to mugwump regulation and use your money to give him a platform. Astroturf groups don't need to indoctrinate people-- just recruit the right people to start with.
Jim Testerman of NEA argues that NEA is a member-driven group where members set the policy. I wish that were more true of the national unions, but it's not. Consider last summer when both AFT and NEA members forced anti-Duncan resolutions on their leaders, who have since made sure that those resolutions had absolutely no affect on what NEA and AFT have actually done. Rank and file members have little hope of using their national or state unions as methods of amplifying their voices.
Of course, that's only part of the point. If you are a teacher who wants your voice to be heard in national policy debates, get a blog. If you are a teacher who wants a decent contract, protection on the job and some heavy guns to back you when trouble comes your way, join a union. It's as simple as that. Saying these groups are a substitute for a union is like saying a bicycle is a substitute for steak.
The astroturf threat is just the more modern approach to eroding unions. Indiana has just unveiled a pretty standard approach. Governor Mike Pence just unveiled "Freedom To Teach," and if that sounds kind of like "Right To Work," that's because they're the same idea.
Freedom To Teach will earmark a bunch of money for any school that wants to chuck out its old teacher pay method and replace it with a system that will pay all the teachers in the school way more. Ha! Just kidding, although Pence tries to sell the program with that page straight from the reformster handbook:
“Everyone knows that good teachers make a difference, we have to get even more good teachers in front of more classrooms,” Pence says. “You get more good teachers by paying good teachers more.”
The key to making this kind of merit pay work is that you only pay "good teachers" well. And since you are deciding what qualifies someone as a good teacher, you never have to find yourself employing more good teachers than you can afford. The rest will leave quickly, but so what? Your program allows you to recruit saying, "Come here! We pay a top salary of $125K!" Just make sure you don't include the ad copy that says, "You'll probably never see that money, and you'll start at poverty wages, but come be our fresh meat anyway."
Indiana House Democratic leader Scott Pelath explains his take on the program:
“‘Freedom to teach’ — those are just words,” Pelath said. “Those are words that were dreamed up in some think tank with pollsters sitting by their sides. That’s not about freedom to teach, it’s about deconstructing and deregulating schools to the point where they don’t matter anymore, and that’s what the goal is.”
And to pursue that goal, reformsters need to break the unions.
Look, I'm not a knee-jerk union booster. On the state and national level, unions are their own second-worst enemies. They supported Common Core when it should have been obvious that it was the tip of a reformy spear aimed straight at teachers' heads. They make terrible deals for "a seat at the table" and try to justify them with, "It could have been worse." They try to oppose testing and stick by CCSS, which is like saying, "Okay, I accept that the earth is part of a solar system revolving around the sun, but I still believe it's a flat disc on a turtle's back." Unions have been failing miserably to draw new, young members, and they are entirely too quick to squelch dissent in the ranks.
But there is no way to stand up and be represented in the room with the people with the power in school districts without some sort of union.
The most effective way for management to get rid of a union has always been clear-- treat your employees well and build trust that you will watch out for their interests as carefully as you watch out for your own. Even if you have a union, the relationship does not have to be adversarial. I've known managers in industry who had excellent relationships with their unions because they were honest, transparent and fair, and in those businesses, the union became an effective way to help run the company better.
But if you have decided, as many reformsters have, that the interests of your employees, your teachers, is in direct opposition to your own interests, if you have decided that every win for them is a loss for you, then you are going to find yourself facing a hostile union or something like it. You have created a rocky path for yourself, and all the astroturf in the world will not smooth it out (not even if you fertilize it with bullshit). You cannot create better schools by crushing the teachers that work in them. It's a cliche, but it's the truth-- our working conditions are student learning conditions.
Friday, November 28, 2014
5 Governors in Search of a Talking Point
On November 19, at the GOP Governor's Gathering, a panel of five Republican state leaders joined with moderation by Chuck Todd from "Meet the Press" (motto: Yes, We're Still On) to discuss many things, but they threw in a good twelve minutes about every Republican politicians favorite sticky point-- the Common Core. Each auditioned his own version of How To Deal With This Ugly Stepchild. Let's see how each one did!
Todd establishes his lack of fitness for the task right up by trying to set up the question with, first, a prologue that Governor Kasich is "pretty funny" about this (yes, my teacher friends in Ohio think he's frickin' HI-larious), and then says,
It does seem to me-- everybody agrees we need to have nationa--some form of standards, but now Common Core's a four letter word, instead of what it is.
Bobby Jindal immediately calls Todd on the "national standards" part of his intro. But it's not his turn yet, and Todd wants to move on. So let's listen to each of the governors and see which can generate the best CCSS talking points. We'll rate them in elephant tusks for their degree of likely usefulness for any Republican who wants to grapple with the Core. Note: I'm not rating them for fairness or accuracy, but for how useful they'd be for a GOP candidate, which in turn tells us how likely it is we'll have to hear them again over the next two years. Forewarned is forearmed.
John Kasich
Kasich sticks with the classics, complete with self-contradictions. His bottom line is that we need national-oops-some sort of standards that shouldn't be set by the federal government, but somehow standards that ensure that students all over the country are learning the same thing at the same time. His understanding is that the governors got together, called up the state superintendents and principals in their states to come over for pizza, they all had a slumber party and wrote the Common Core.
We're not doing well in the world. "If we're not careful, the googles and the paypals are going to be invented somewhere else!" Which begs the question of why they were invented here if we are in so much trouble, but okay. Also, the Germans landed a thingy on a comet (which will comes as news to the other members of the European Space Agency, but his point remains). Kasich as "like-- woah--why wasn't that here." It's an interesting criticism, given Kasich's unwillingness to fund NASA funding in Ohio.
Local control! Ohio is loaded with it. It's local districts with parental advisors who design curriculum! So, not Obamacore at all! He has looked at it carefully. Kasich's concern is with the PARCC test. Is it a good test. "We have" delayed the impact of the test, and I'm sure who "we" are because reportedly PARCC itself has delayed test results. "If it's a goofy test, we'll throw it out."
But he's for the idea that kids in many states must all reach a higher level of achievement, but if the federal government starts driving education policy out of DC, well, now, bub, that's an issue. How many states would spontaneously achieve the same level with students without the feds, or how Kasich could not have noticed federal intrusion in the last decade of ed policy is a mystery for the ages. As long as parents are involved, particularly in match and English (Kasich offhandedly notes that they aren't going to so social studies in a tone of voice that suggests well, that would be stupid), he thinks this is great.
So apparently Kasich is a dope. His talking points are old, worn, and require a serious disconnect with reality. One tusk.
Bobby Jindal
As one of the cutting edge CCSS turncoats, Jindal has his shtick down cold. He thought Comon Core sounded great when it looked like it was going to be what Kasich described (this is a GOP gathering, so he is not going to observe that Kasich must have his head under a rock somewhere next to his brains). But once that Arne Duncan and the federal department of education (his tone of voice makes those names sound like "that puss-sucking weasel and his weaselly friends") started making curriculum decisions, which Jindal correctly notes is what you're doing when you fund giant national high stakes tests.
Jindal namechecks NAEP and says we could always check ourselves against other states even before there was Common Core. Jindal's concern is that Common Core has become "something that it was never intended to be." 1) A one size fits all federal approach developed with no transparency and 2) the federal government is not allowed constitutionally to make curriculum decisions. This is an effective spin on the "Common Core was great till the feds hi-jacked it" talking point, which plays really well despite the fact that it's unvarnished baloney. If you think CCSS has not turned out exactly the way it was designed to, I would like to sell you some magic watermelon seeds which, I promise, will grow into a lasagna bush.
Jindal then plays the "look at these stupid Common Core homework assignments" game. Mind you, if other states or schools want to do these wacky things, that's fine. But when the feds use RttT bribery and NCLB waiver extortion to force states, funding the big tests, and violating the 10th amendment, Jindal is going to oppose the Common Core.
Jindal's weakest link requires arguing history to refute, and this is America, so nobody cares about history. His anti-federalism argument is a proven winner, even if he connects it to anecdotal homework baloney. Three tusks.
Momentary Sidetrack
Todd weirdly interjects himself here to say something about everybody being politics too sensitive arble garble but eventually we all have to agree and BOOM-- we're on to
Scott Walker
who leaps in to say, no, no we don't all have to agree. We were leaders in getting off the Common Core train. And Todd jumps in to, I don't know-- display his complete lack of journalistic knowledge or objectivity-- by asking something about how do you have high standards? and the governor starts rattling off stats about SAT scores and third grade reading and graduation rates all going up.
Walker's theory is that schools are not failing because of a lack of high standards, but because schools aren't held to the standards we have, and if you've been paying attention to Wisconsin and Walker, you already know what the real problem is going to turn out to be-- those damn unions. Walker says that test scores have gone up in Wisconsin because they "unleashed that burden" on schools. "We didn't just go after collective bargaining to deal with pensions and health care," he says, and now local school boards totally run the schools. The biggest problem in urban school systems around the country is that the schools are filled with rotten teachers just taking it easy with their big tenure protections.
But in Wisconsin (new motto: A Great State To Live If You're Not a Serf), they're free to hire and fire at will, to pay for whatever merit they imagine is meritorious. Walker concludes that "that"-- the ability to completely rule your teaching staff, crush unions, hire and fire at will-- "is what we need more than a national standard."
Here's the thing about Walker. I know that he is absolutely full of shit. I know that we have numbers out the wazoo making it clear that student achievement goes hand in hand with strong job protections, and that the system he describes is guaranteed to hurt teaching and therefor hurt schools (just click on the "tenure" tab at the top of this page). But when I see him talk, I can see how he survives political challenges. He sells it, and sells it hard. Jindal sounds like a college professor. Kasich sounds like an Ohio-style Cliff Claven who has been at the bar too long. But Walker sounds like a governor; I can see how this baloney would play well for certain low-information audiences. My heart goes out to everyone trying to make a teaching career in Wisconsin. Two tusks.
Mike Pence
Todd observes that NCLB has to be re-authorized at some point, and the he asks Pence what Pence wants from the feds re: education.
Pence reminisces about being a first term opposing NCLB, and then hits his point-- "Resources, not red tape." He elaborates-- just send us bales of money and let us spend it however we wish.
He tells the stirring tale of how Indiana withdrew from CCSS and PARCC and how they undertook the "arduous task" or making some minor changes to CCSS so that they escape the political fall-out of an unpopular program without actually changing the program. Ha ha, just kidding. He talks about creating whole new Indiana standards.
But it's "who decides" that's important. The government that governs least governs best, partuicularly if it sends bales of money for local people to divide up in profitable ways. Ha. Kidding again. Pence is buttoned up and tightly controlled on his talking point (he is literally the most carefully dressed person on the podium-- everyone else is dressed to hang out and he is ready to speak at a church, probably Episcopalian). He brags about having the soon-to-be-largest voucher program in the country, with test scores, reading, and graduation rates up. I'm just going to recommend Doug Martin's Hoosier School Heist as a good one stop shop for how Indiana has perfected education as a path to illegitimate riches. And Pence finishes with, "Just send money; don't ask us what we did with it." Ha, no. It's "resources, not red tape" again.
And if Walker sounds like a governor, Pence sounds like a governor's chief accountant. Two tusks.
Rick Perry
I have to admit. I kind of like post-failed-Presidential-candidacy Rick Perry. He has this relaxed, screw-it-I've-got-nothing-riding-on-anything quality that I find, if not charming, at least a breezier kind of bullshit. Let's see how he does with his turn.
Todd opens again with "What do you want out of the new NCLB?" And Perry, who is tie-less, legs crossed (manly style) with his hands clasped around his knee, says we are on a return to federalism "like you've never seen it in this country before," in a earnest southern Fred Rogers tone. He says the solutions are in the states, not DC, and he sees no reason to re-authorize No Child Left Behind at all. See? Isn't this guy fun?
Texas blew off the Core and RttT because they believe that education decisions are best made, not by bureaucrats in the federal capital, but by bureaucrats in state capitals. The idea that Washington knows best in many different areas (name checking healthcare) is dopey. Tosses in Brandeis states as laboratories of democracy quote. "If you want to put programs in place, put them in place at the state level, and if they foul them up, they've only fouled up their state and not the entire country." And that is the one line that draws applause in the entire panel discussion, which is good because the applause covers the tortured extra clause that Perry tries to tack onto the end of the sentence. Seems to be the Rick Perry way-- good routine, but failure to stick the landing. Three tusks.
Bonus Round- John Kasich
After listening to four grown up governors indirectly suggest he's an idiot, Kasich can hold his water no longer, and jumps back in on the tail of Perry's applause.
He's really kind of worked up. "Dammit guys, but I know I was told that governors got together [he and Todd co-screw up the detail that it was all 45 CCSS governors who met] because they were worried that we were falling behind! That's what I was told, and dammit, Virginia, I believe it." He rants on, grasping at his own fingertips-- "In my state we've got choice and teacher..um...er... you know..evaluation [I would love to know what words he considered and rejected there] and third grade reading--" and he's looking at the other governors as if to say, "Hey, I did all that shit too, man!"
In his state-- he doesn't know, maybe it was different in these other states-- but in his state it's all local control. Local school board set control. If other things are happening, boy, dude, let him know because he hasn't seen anything like that. Kasich is really upset, like he's never heard of this stuff before! He is really, really flabbergasted by this federal control complaint, so flabbergasted that he's about to say something extraordinary. If anyone has any information about anybody out there who knows something about somebody setting curriculum, please let him know because-
I don't have any complaints from anybody in my state that they're not able to set their own curriculum to meet higher standards.
He's really upset, like he found out all the other governors went out and played pickup basketball last night when they told him they were just turning in early. "Maybe I didn't get the message from the forty-five governors," he says, and goes on to say that there was no Arne Duncan involved in writing these standards, no federal government involvement and you just want to pat him and say, "Oh, honey." There's some noise about PARCC and something else about how SAT and ACT are national tests already, you know. But this was governors writing this and that's what I thought we wanted, "but I'm going to look at what these guys say and mumble mumble sit back in confusion." Good God, man-- even Jeb Bush has a better handle on his love for the Core than Ohio's blustering man-child of a governor.
So there's your challenge, Ohio residents. Everyone else on stage may have been full of it, but at least they knew what they were talking (or being less than truthful) about. Your governor doesn't seem to understand how testing drives curriculum, and or where Common Core came from. Please go educate this guy before he blows a gasket. And while you're at it, empty Lake Erie with a spoon, blindfolded. Because, yes, it appears that Kasich has never listened to anybody on any side of this issue ever. He's clearly just not ready for a seat at the grownup table. Also, I'm downgrading him a half a tusk.
Todd establishes his lack of fitness for the task right up by trying to set up the question with, first, a prologue that Governor Kasich is "pretty funny" about this (yes, my teacher friends in Ohio think he's frickin' HI-larious), and then says,
It does seem to me-- everybody agrees we need to have nationa--some form of standards, but now Common Core's a four letter word, instead of what it is.
Bobby Jindal immediately calls Todd on the "national standards" part of his intro. But it's not his turn yet, and Todd wants to move on. So let's listen to each of the governors and see which can generate the best CCSS talking points. We'll rate them in elephant tusks for their degree of likely usefulness for any Republican who wants to grapple with the Core. Note: I'm not rating them for fairness or accuracy, but for how useful they'd be for a GOP candidate, which in turn tells us how likely it is we'll have to hear them again over the next two years. Forewarned is forearmed.
John Kasich
Kasich sticks with the classics, complete with self-contradictions. His bottom line is that we need national-oops-some sort of standards that shouldn't be set by the federal government, but somehow standards that ensure that students all over the country are learning the same thing at the same time. His understanding is that the governors got together, called up the state superintendents and principals in their states to come over for pizza, they all had a slumber party and wrote the Common Core.
We're not doing well in the world. "If we're not careful, the googles and the paypals are going to be invented somewhere else!" Which begs the question of why they were invented here if we are in so much trouble, but okay. Also, the Germans landed a thingy on a comet (which will comes as news to the other members of the European Space Agency, but his point remains). Kasich as "like-- woah--why wasn't that here." It's an interesting criticism, given Kasich's unwillingness to fund NASA funding in Ohio.
Local control! Ohio is loaded with it. It's local districts with parental advisors who design curriculum! So, not Obamacore at all! He has looked at it carefully. Kasich's concern is with the PARCC test. Is it a good test. "We have" delayed the impact of the test, and I'm sure who "we" are because reportedly PARCC itself has delayed test results. "If it's a goofy test, we'll throw it out."
But he's for the idea that kids in many states must all reach a higher level of achievement, but if the federal government starts driving education policy out of DC, well, now, bub, that's an issue. How many states would spontaneously achieve the same level with students without the feds, or how Kasich could not have noticed federal intrusion in the last decade of ed policy is a mystery for the ages. As long as parents are involved, particularly in match and English (Kasich offhandedly notes that they aren't going to so social studies in a tone of voice that suggests well, that would be stupid), he thinks this is great.
So apparently Kasich is a dope. His talking points are old, worn, and require a serious disconnect with reality. One tusk.
Bobby Jindal
As one of the cutting edge CCSS turncoats, Jindal has his shtick down cold. He thought Comon Core sounded great when it looked like it was going to be what Kasich described (this is a GOP gathering, so he is not going to observe that Kasich must have his head under a rock somewhere next to his brains). But once that Arne Duncan and the federal department of education (his tone of voice makes those names sound like "that puss-sucking weasel and his weaselly friends") started making curriculum decisions, which Jindal correctly notes is what you're doing when you fund giant national high stakes tests.
Jindal namechecks NAEP and says we could always check ourselves against other states even before there was Common Core. Jindal's concern is that Common Core has become "something that it was never intended to be." 1) A one size fits all federal approach developed with no transparency and 2) the federal government is not allowed constitutionally to make curriculum decisions. This is an effective spin on the "Common Core was great till the feds hi-jacked it" talking point, which plays really well despite the fact that it's unvarnished baloney. If you think CCSS has not turned out exactly the way it was designed to, I would like to sell you some magic watermelon seeds which, I promise, will grow into a lasagna bush.
Jindal then plays the "look at these stupid Common Core homework assignments" game. Mind you, if other states or schools want to do these wacky things, that's fine. But when the feds use RttT bribery and NCLB waiver extortion to force states, funding the big tests, and violating the 10th amendment, Jindal is going to oppose the Common Core.
Jindal's weakest link requires arguing history to refute, and this is America, so nobody cares about history. His anti-federalism argument is a proven winner, even if he connects it to anecdotal homework baloney. Three tusks.
Momentary Sidetrack
Todd weirdly interjects himself here to say something about everybody being politics too sensitive arble garble but eventually we all have to agree and BOOM-- we're on to
Scott Walker
who leaps in to say, no, no we don't all have to agree. We were leaders in getting off the Common Core train. And Todd jumps in to, I don't know-- display his complete lack of journalistic knowledge or objectivity-- by asking something about how do you have high standards? and the governor starts rattling off stats about SAT scores and third grade reading and graduation rates all going up.
Walker's theory is that schools are not failing because of a lack of high standards, but because schools aren't held to the standards we have, and if you've been paying attention to Wisconsin and Walker, you already know what the real problem is going to turn out to be-- those damn unions. Walker says that test scores have gone up in Wisconsin because they "unleashed that burden" on schools. "We didn't just go after collective bargaining to deal with pensions and health care," he says, and now local school boards totally run the schools. The biggest problem in urban school systems around the country is that the schools are filled with rotten teachers just taking it easy with their big tenure protections.
But in Wisconsin (new motto: A Great State To Live If You're Not a Serf), they're free to hire and fire at will, to pay for whatever merit they imagine is meritorious. Walker concludes that "that"-- the ability to completely rule your teaching staff, crush unions, hire and fire at will-- "is what we need more than a national standard."
Here's the thing about Walker. I know that he is absolutely full of shit. I know that we have numbers out the wazoo making it clear that student achievement goes hand in hand with strong job protections, and that the system he describes is guaranteed to hurt teaching and therefor hurt schools (just click on the "tenure" tab at the top of this page). But when I see him talk, I can see how he survives political challenges. He sells it, and sells it hard. Jindal sounds like a college professor. Kasich sounds like an Ohio-style Cliff Claven who has been at the bar too long. But Walker sounds like a governor; I can see how this baloney would play well for certain low-information audiences. My heart goes out to everyone trying to make a teaching career in Wisconsin. Two tusks.
Mike Pence
Todd observes that NCLB has to be re-authorized at some point, and the he asks Pence what Pence wants from the feds re: education.
Pence reminisces about being a first term opposing NCLB, and then hits his point-- "Resources, not red tape." He elaborates-- just send us bales of money and let us spend it however we wish.
He tells the stirring tale of how Indiana withdrew from CCSS and PARCC and how they undertook the "arduous task" or making some minor changes to CCSS so that they escape the political fall-out of an unpopular program without actually changing the program. Ha ha, just kidding. He talks about creating whole new Indiana standards.
But it's "who decides" that's important. The government that governs least governs best, partuicularly if it sends bales of money for local people to divide up in profitable ways. Ha. Kidding again. Pence is buttoned up and tightly controlled on his talking point (he is literally the most carefully dressed person on the podium-- everyone else is dressed to hang out and he is ready to speak at a church, probably Episcopalian). He brags about having the soon-to-be-largest voucher program in the country, with test scores, reading, and graduation rates up. I'm just going to recommend Doug Martin's Hoosier School Heist as a good one stop shop for how Indiana has perfected education as a path to illegitimate riches. And Pence finishes with, "Just send money; don't ask us what we did with it." Ha, no. It's "resources, not red tape" again.
And if Walker sounds like a governor, Pence sounds like a governor's chief accountant. Two tusks.
Rick Perry
I have to admit. I kind of like post-failed-Presidential-candidacy Rick Perry. He has this relaxed, screw-it-I've-got-nothing-riding-on-anything quality that I find, if not charming, at least a breezier kind of bullshit. Let's see how he does with his turn.
Todd opens again with "What do you want out of the new NCLB?" And Perry, who is tie-less, legs crossed (manly style) with his hands clasped around his knee, says we are on a return to federalism "like you've never seen it in this country before," in a earnest southern Fred Rogers tone. He says the solutions are in the states, not DC, and he sees no reason to re-authorize No Child Left Behind at all. See? Isn't this guy fun?
Texas blew off the Core and RttT because they believe that education decisions are best made, not by bureaucrats in the federal capital, but by bureaucrats in state capitals. The idea that Washington knows best in many different areas (name checking healthcare) is dopey. Tosses in Brandeis states as laboratories of democracy quote. "If you want to put programs in place, put them in place at the state level, and if they foul them up, they've only fouled up their state and not the entire country." And that is the one line that draws applause in the entire panel discussion, which is good because the applause covers the tortured extra clause that Perry tries to tack onto the end of the sentence. Seems to be the Rick Perry way-- good routine, but failure to stick the landing. Three tusks.
Bonus Round- John Kasich
After listening to four grown up governors indirectly suggest he's an idiot, Kasich can hold his water no longer, and jumps back in on the tail of Perry's applause.
He's really kind of worked up. "Dammit guys, but I know I was told that governors got together [he and Todd co-screw up the detail that it was all 45 CCSS governors who met] because they were worried that we were falling behind! That's what I was told, and dammit, Virginia, I believe it." He rants on, grasping at his own fingertips-- "In my state we've got choice and teacher..um...er... you know..evaluation [I would love to know what words he considered and rejected there] and third grade reading--" and he's looking at the other governors as if to say, "Hey, I did all that shit too, man!"
In his state-- he doesn't know, maybe it was different in these other states-- but in his state it's all local control. Local school board set control. If other things are happening, boy, dude, let him know because he hasn't seen anything like that. Kasich is really upset, like he's never heard of this stuff before! He is really, really flabbergasted by this federal control complaint, so flabbergasted that he's about to say something extraordinary. If anyone has any information about anybody out there who knows something about somebody setting curriculum, please let him know because-
I don't have any complaints from anybody in my state that they're not able to set their own curriculum to meet higher standards.
He's really upset, like he found out all the other governors went out and played pickup basketball last night when they told him they were just turning in early. "Maybe I didn't get the message from the forty-five governors," he says, and goes on to say that there was no Arne Duncan involved in writing these standards, no federal government involvement and you just want to pat him and say, "Oh, honey." There's some noise about PARCC and something else about how SAT and ACT are national tests already, you know. But this was governors writing this and that's what I thought we wanted, "but I'm going to look at what these guys say and mumble mumble sit back in confusion." Good God, man-- even Jeb Bush has a better handle on his love for the Core than Ohio's blustering man-child of a governor.
So there's your challenge, Ohio residents. Everyone else on stage may have been full of it, but at least they knew what they were talking (or being less than truthful) about. Your governor doesn't seem to understand how testing drives curriculum, and or where Common Core came from. Please go educate this guy before he blows a gasket. And while you're at it, empty Lake Erie with a spoon, blindfolded. Because, yes, it appears that Kasich has never listened to anybody on any side of this issue ever. He's clearly just not ready for a seat at the grownup table. Also, I'm downgrading him a half a tusk.
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