Here's a nice clear metric for telling when you have a problem in your school district.
PIX11 reports that in 2014-2015, the school district of Elizabeth, New Jersey spent over $5.98 million on lawyers, both in house and outside firms. That works out to $237 per student. For comparison, the district spent roughly $750,000 on books in that same year.
School board member Jose Rodriguez notes that the board had to raise taxes to bring in an additional $7.1 million while cutting 81 positions in the district. The district has reportedly hired a forensic auditor, but I'm pretty sure a civilian amateur could figure out how many of those positions could have been saved with $5.98 million.
Elizabeth schools have had money issues before. In April of 2015 they were fined a chunk of money (over $300K) after it was determined that they had spent money state and federal lunch money to cater school board meetings. That investigation came on the heels of the school board president's conviction for falsifying her own child's free lunch documents. If we go back to 2011, we find even more accounts of graft and nepotism and shaking down staff for money for board members.
Okay, so maybe the hefty legal costs for the district make sense, given district leadership's apparent love of not-entirely-legal behavior. But it seems like it would be way cheaper to just send the lawyers home and just obey the law instead.
Showing posts with label New Jersey. Show all posts
Showing posts with label New Jersey. Show all posts
Wednesday, February 24, 2016
Monday, February 15, 2016
NJ: Red Bank and the New White Flight
The Red Bank, NJ, school system is actually a tiny little thing. Three boroughs (Red Bank, Little Silver and Shrewsbury) run their own K-8 schools which then feed into a regional high school.
There's one other school in Red Bank-- Red Bank Charter School. Red Bank Charter School is back in the news because its operators have asked to double the schools size, from 195 seats to 400, in a move that represents a direct assault on the public schools of the city. RBCS has served not just as a drain on the public system, but a powerful engine for resegregation. Red Bank Charter School is not just an example of how charters gut public school resources, but how charters can be the new white flight.
Red Bank Charter is no Success Academy-- when they announced the expansion, they left their own parents and supporters flatfooted. In January, charter leaders held a meeting for parents who wanted some sort of response for when their neighbors cornered them in the grocery store. One characterized the proposal as a PR disaster. At that meeting, they learned that part of the reason for the initiative was Chris Christie's full-on support for charters in his State of the State speech.
Flanked by Trenton lobbyists and a pair of ex-superintendents-turned-consultants, charter Principal Meredith Pennotti said one key reason the school is seeking to expand is “the political climate” — specifically, Governor Chris Christie’s unabashed support of school choice.
Best to expand the operation while the business climate supports it and before Christie leaves office. But there are more arguments-- none of them good.
RBCS likes to make the argument that they actually spend less per pupil than the public school system, even as research shows that they have been better-funded than the district to the tune of about $1,700 per student. They don't like to point out that the lower per-pupil spending is because they serve fewer students with special needs. NJ, like many states, has different state support rates for students with special needs, because they cost more to educate. In Red Bank Borough, the SSN population is 19.2%. At RBCS, the SSN population is 7.3%. RBCS spends less per pupil because they specialize in teaching the low-cost students. If you want a more complete, scholarly look at how this funding system works and how it affects local public schools, this paper by Julia Sass Rubin is worth a look.
When it comes to income, Red Bank Borough's free or reduced lunch population runs around 88%. RBCS runs around 40%.
Segregation is also reflected in racial makeup of the schools (here's where we could mention that New Jersey has a hugely segregated school system). Red Bank Borough is about 7% white. Red Bank Charter is about 52% white. The borough school is 80% Hispanic; the charter, 34%.
But RBCS admission is by lottery, which suggests that these demographics are not just the demographics of the students who attend RBCS, but the demographics of the students who apply. The charter is talking about going to a weighted lottery to favor poor students, but if this is their applicant pool, what difference would it really make?
Red Bank Charter School does not look very much like Red Bank, the borough, or the Red Bank Borough K-8 school.* What Red Bank Charter School does look like is the two neighboring boroughs. Those schools (Little Silver and Shrewsbury) have school populations that are 90% white and virtually without any free or reduced students at all. And they're very close by, so that if parents, say, wanted to get their children away from Those People, a move up the road would do it. What is a community to do to stop that kind of white flight?
Well, in a meeting between local journalists and three charter officials trying hard to sell the expansion, the answer emerged:
Although the charter school is supposed to offer an alternative so that they will as they said in this decision… so as to mitigate the effect of white flight. Now how do you do that? You start a small public school which will offer an opportunity for those who otherwise would leave town or choose the parochial or other private school. It’s as simple as that. What else would you do? Offer an alternative.
Yup. Charter schools as the new white flight. Don't buy a whole new house to keep your kids from going to school with Those People-- just sign up for your local charter.
RBCS uses many of the usual charter shell games-- they like to compare their PARCC scores to the Red Bank scores, despite the fact that their school population is hugely different from Red Bank's. If you care about PARCC scores (and I don't, but it is a reformy metric of choice) and if you can handle charts and regressions, this piece by Jersey Jazzman shows that RBCS's scores are nothing special, and that in some areas they are being outdone by the public system. In fact, a parent did some number crunching and found that the Red Bank public school actually outperformed the charter without adjustment-- for just one example, the average 8th grade scores for ELA and Math were higher at the public school, for one example. We can play with these numbers all day, but at a minimum, we have to conclude that RBCS does not significantly outperform the public school.[Update: You can look here for Jersey Jazzman's latest look at the latest data. Nothing has changed.]
Many in the Red Bank community have spoken out against the expansion. It's a small district in a small community, and the doubling the charter size will gut the financial support for the public school. Duplicating services is not financially efficient or cost-effective, but it's worse than that.
Charters have introduced a new entitlement-- the right to attend a private school at taxpayer expense. Maybe you could make a case for this if the private school were demonstrably better-- but Red Bank Charter is not. Maybe you could make a case if it weren't going to cost the taxpayers more-- but you can't run two systems for the cost of one. Maybe you could justify it if the new system was going to help all students-- but this will damage the public system for the students left in it. And maybe you could justify it if the charter system was offering something special-- but apparently Red Bank Charter is here just to provide a new version of white flight. Absent other evidence, I assume that the teachers and students of Red Bank Charter School are decent folks who work hard. But is that enough reason to let the charter double its size and take a huge bite out of the public school budget?
Imagine if parents had to go door to door and say, "Hey, I need to take some tax dollars from you so that my kid doesn't have to go to school with your kid." Or maybe a community gathering where someone announces, "Let's take up a collection so we can pay some better-off white folks to stay in town."
The irony at the end of this K-8 kerflufflage is that all of these schools feed into the Red Bank Regional High School, a school so successful and well-regarded that it regularly draws students over and above those coming out of the feeder schools. In other words, when all is said and done, everybody's kids ends up in high school with Those Peoples' Kids anyway.
State Education Commissioner Hespe is expected to rule on RBCS's expansion plan soon. If you're in New Jersey, you might want to contact him with your thoughts. I'm over in Pennsylvania, but I can't even see a reason to keep Red Bank Charter School open, let alone expand it. But I have a feeling that the taxpayers of Red Bank could use a few more voices on their side.
*Courtesy of Red Bank SD, here's a demographic breakdown of the charter and public schools in nifty chart form
There's one other school in Red Bank-- Red Bank Charter School. Red Bank Charter School is back in the news because its operators have asked to double the schools size, from 195 seats to 400, in a move that represents a direct assault on the public schools of the city. RBCS has served not just as a drain on the public system, but a powerful engine for resegregation. Red Bank Charter School is not just an example of how charters gut public school resources, but how charters can be the new white flight.
Red Bank Charter is no Success Academy-- when they announced the expansion, they left their own parents and supporters flatfooted. In January, charter leaders held a meeting for parents who wanted some sort of response for when their neighbors cornered them in the grocery store. One characterized the proposal as a PR disaster. At that meeting, they learned that part of the reason for the initiative was Chris Christie's full-on support for charters in his State of the State speech.
Flanked by Trenton lobbyists and a pair of ex-superintendents-turned-consultants, charter Principal Meredith Pennotti said one key reason the school is seeking to expand is “the political climate” — specifically, Governor Chris Christie’s unabashed support of school choice.
Best to expand the operation while the business climate supports it and before Christie leaves office. But there are more arguments-- none of them good.
RBCS likes to make the argument that they actually spend less per pupil than the public school system, even as research shows that they have been better-funded than the district to the tune of about $1,700 per student. They don't like to point out that the lower per-pupil spending is because they serve fewer students with special needs. NJ, like many states, has different state support rates for students with special needs, because they cost more to educate. In Red Bank Borough, the SSN population is 19.2%. At RBCS, the SSN population is 7.3%. RBCS spends less per pupil because they specialize in teaching the low-cost students. If you want a more complete, scholarly look at how this funding system works and how it affects local public schools, this paper by Julia Sass Rubin is worth a look.
When it comes to income, Red Bank Borough's free or reduced lunch population runs around 88%. RBCS runs around 40%.
Segregation is also reflected in racial makeup of the schools (here's where we could mention that New Jersey has a hugely segregated school system). Red Bank Borough is about 7% white. Red Bank Charter is about 52% white. The borough school is 80% Hispanic; the charter, 34%.
But RBCS admission is by lottery, which suggests that these demographics are not just the demographics of the students who attend RBCS, but the demographics of the students who apply. The charter is talking about going to a weighted lottery to favor poor students, but if this is their applicant pool, what difference would it really make?
Red Bank Charter School does not look very much like Red Bank, the borough, or the Red Bank Borough K-8 school.* What Red Bank Charter School does look like is the two neighboring boroughs. Those schools (Little Silver and Shrewsbury) have school populations that are 90% white and virtually without any free or reduced students at all. And they're very close by, so that if parents, say, wanted to get their children away from Those People, a move up the road would do it. What is a community to do to stop that kind of white flight?
Well, in a meeting between local journalists and three charter officials trying hard to sell the expansion, the answer emerged:
Although the charter school is supposed to offer an alternative so that they will as they said in this decision… so as to mitigate the effect of white flight. Now how do you do that? You start a small public school which will offer an opportunity for those who otherwise would leave town or choose the parochial or other private school. It’s as simple as that. What else would you do? Offer an alternative.
Yup. Charter schools as the new white flight. Don't buy a whole new house to keep your kids from going to school with Those People-- just sign up for your local charter.
RBCS uses many of the usual charter shell games-- they like to compare their PARCC scores to the Red Bank scores, despite the fact that their school population is hugely different from Red Bank's. If you care about PARCC scores (and I don't, but it is a reformy metric of choice) and if you can handle charts and regressions, this piece by Jersey Jazzman shows that RBCS's scores are nothing special, and that in some areas they are being outdone by the public system. In fact, a parent did some number crunching and found that the Red Bank public school actually outperformed the charter without adjustment-- for just one example, the average 8th grade scores for ELA and Math were higher at the public school, for one example. We can play with these numbers all day, but at a minimum, we have to conclude that RBCS does not significantly outperform the public school.[Update: You can look here for Jersey Jazzman's latest look at the latest data. Nothing has changed.]
Many in the Red Bank community have spoken out against the expansion. It's a small district in a small community, and the doubling the charter size will gut the financial support for the public school. Duplicating services is not financially efficient or cost-effective, but it's worse than that.
Charters have introduced a new entitlement-- the right to attend a private school at taxpayer expense. Maybe you could make a case for this if the private school were demonstrably better-- but Red Bank Charter is not. Maybe you could make a case if it weren't going to cost the taxpayers more-- but you can't run two systems for the cost of one. Maybe you could justify it if the new system was going to help all students-- but this will damage the public system for the students left in it. And maybe you could justify it if the charter system was offering something special-- but apparently Red Bank Charter is here just to provide a new version of white flight. Absent other evidence, I assume that the teachers and students of Red Bank Charter School are decent folks who work hard. But is that enough reason to let the charter double its size and take a huge bite out of the public school budget?
Imagine if parents had to go door to door and say, "Hey, I need to take some tax dollars from you so that my kid doesn't have to go to school with your kid." Or maybe a community gathering where someone announces, "Let's take up a collection so we can pay some better-off white folks to stay in town."
The irony at the end of this K-8 kerflufflage is that all of these schools feed into the Red Bank Regional High School, a school so successful and well-regarded that it regularly draws students over and above those coming out of the feeder schools. In other words, when all is said and done, everybody's kids ends up in high school with Those Peoples' Kids anyway.
State Education Commissioner Hespe is expected to rule on RBCS's expansion plan soon. If you're in New Jersey, you might want to contact him with your thoughts. I'm over in Pennsylvania, but I can't even see a reason to keep Red Bank Charter School open, let alone expand it. But I have a feeling that the taxpayers of Red Bank could use a few more voices on their side.
*Courtesy of Red Bank SD, here's a demographic breakdown of the charter and public schools in nifty chart form
Apologies to those who got here early. Attempting to edit by phone led premature publication as well as a host of other issues appearing and disappearing (including, i guess, this oddly centered text). This should now be it. I swear I'll never attempt editing by phone again.
Monday, June 22, 2015
So Long, Cami. No Celebration To Follow.
After four years of consistently disastrous misleadership, Cami Anderson will be stepping down as head of Newark Schools.
The announcement came today, attached to the name of Commissioner David Hespe. Who finally shoved Anderson out the door? It doesn't really matter. In the manner of other reformsters, I expect that she will fail upwards.
That's the good news. The less good news is that, contrary to Bob Braun's report last week, Anderson will not be replaced by Chris Cerf on a temporary basis; instead, Cerf will reportedly be offered a three year contract. While expectations of an Anderson resignation have been kicking around for at least a year, the emptying of her office gave new life to those expectations. Whoever shoved her gets no credit; Anderson's administration has been so clearly dysfunctional and addicted to failure that it's hard to think of anything that she ever did even sort of right. Leaving her in office this long has been its own sort of spectacular failure, like driving from New York to San Francisco in a car that blew out all four tires somewhere around Philadelphia. You don't get any genius points for finally doing something about the problem that has been killing you for years.
Cerf, of course, comes with a strong reformster pedigree. He worked for Joel Klein from 2006 to 2009, helping make a hash out of New York City schools. He became New Jersey's school chief next, leaving that job in 2014 at about the same time that Bridgegate was taking off. Cerf left directly to work for his old boss Klein at Amplify, the company that Rupert Murdoch hoped would help him cash in in the educational tech biz. No sooner had Cerf exited his New Jersey office then Cami Anderson awarded Amplify over $2 million worth of contracts. It is a cozy club that reformster belong to.
Cerf is one of those guys who has no regrets and never admits a mistake. But Amplify has been a train wreck. They were going to revolutionize education with tablets and on-line content. But, as Bloomberg put it, "that hasn't happened." Amplify couldn't come up with hardware that worked, software that worked, content that impressed anybody, and a workable plan to crack the crowded school market. They couldn't crack the market in assessments, they couldn't get their own internal bureaucracy sorted out, and they couldn't stop hemorrhaging money, making their market as the one division of News Corp that couldn't turn a profit. So when News Corp started waving its ax around, Amplify felt the cutting edge.
Cerf's trajectory is unusual-- he returns to New Jersey in a lower position than he left. But there is no reason to think that his arrival in Newark will be good news for anybody. At the same time, he will be facing some of the strongest, smartest and most experienced student and community activists anywhere in the country. It's true that Anderson set the bar low-- she couldn't even bring herself to speak with anybody in the community. But Cerf is walking into a huge mess with a four-year history of denying Newark citizens any semblance of democracy and any imitation of a working plan for running a public school system.
Cerf starts at the beginning of July. It should be an interesting summer.
The announcement came today, attached to the name of Commissioner David Hespe. Who finally shoved Anderson out the door? It doesn't really matter. In the manner of other reformsters, I expect that she will fail upwards.
That's the good news. The less good news is that, contrary to Bob Braun's report last week, Anderson will not be replaced by Chris Cerf on a temporary basis; instead, Cerf will reportedly be offered a three year contract. While expectations of an Anderson resignation have been kicking around for at least a year, the emptying of her office gave new life to those expectations. Whoever shoved her gets no credit; Anderson's administration has been so clearly dysfunctional and addicted to failure that it's hard to think of anything that she ever did even sort of right. Leaving her in office this long has been its own sort of spectacular failure, like driving from New York to San Francisco in a car that blew out all four tires somewhere around Philadelphia. You don't get any genius points for finally doing something about the problem that has been killing you for years.
Cerf, of course, comes with a strong reformster pedigree. He worked for Joel Klein from 2006 to 2009, helping make a hash out of New York City schools. He became New Jersey's school chief next, leaving that job in 2014 at about the same time that Bridgegate was taking off. Cerf left directly to work for his old boss Klein at Amplify, the company that Rupert Murdoch hoped would help him cash in in the educational tech biz. No sooner had Cerf exited his New Jersey office then Cami Anderson awarded Amplify over $2 million worth of contracts. It is a cozy club that reformster belong to.
Cerf is one of those guys who has no regrets and never admits a mistake. But Amplify has been a train wreck. They were going to revolutionize education with tablets and on-line content. But, as Bloomberg put it, "that hasn't happened." Amplify couldn't come up with hardware that worked, software that worked, content that impressed anybody, and a workable plan to crack the crowded school market. They couldn't crack the market in assessments, they couldn't get their own internal bureaucracy sorted out, and they couldn't stop hemorrhaging money, making their market as the one division of News Corp that couldn't turn a profit. So when News Corp started waving its ax around, Amplify felt the cutting edge.
Cerf's trajectory is unusual-- he returns to New Jersey in a lower position than he left. But there is no reason to think that his arrival in Newark will be good news for anybody. At the same time, he will be facing some of the strongest, smartest and most experienced student and community activists anywhere in the country. It's true that Anderson set the bar low-- she couldn't even bring herself to speak with anybody in the community. But Cerf is walking into a huge mess with a four-year history of denying Newark citizens any semblance of democracy and any imitation of a working plan for running a public school system.
Cerf starts at the beginning of July. It should be an interesting summer.
Saturday, May 23, 2015
Newark: The Civil Rights Lie
Friday, the students of Newark took to the streets. Thousands of students. Students from many different schools within the city. They took to the steps of City Hall, and then they moved to shut down the main drag. And unlike a previous protest in Newark, this one resulted in actual press coverage. In addition to coverage from Bob Braun, who has covered the story in Newark faithfully, the walkout was also covered in the "regular" media here and here.
As always, the students' actions were thoughtful, measured and positive. Their message was vocal and clear. Accountability for superintendent Cami Anderson (skewered in one sign as "$cami"). A return to local control. And end to charter takeover of schools that have no need of takeover.
Imagine you are someone thinking, "I believe that equitable education is the civil rights issue of our era. I believe that students who are not wealthy and not white are not represented and their needs are not respected. I am concerned that without test results, these students will become invisible."
Could you possibly have stood in Newark and said, "Boy, I just wish there were some way to find out what black families and students want, or what they think about the direction of education in Newark."
And yet, per nj.com*, the district had this to say:
"While the District supports our students' right to express their opinions and concerns, we cannot support these actions when they disrupt the regular instructional day," Parmley said in the statement. "The District remains committed to broadening opportunities for Newark's students through expanded learning time and through creating additional professional development opportunities for teachers."
Right. The district remains committed to doing everything except actually listening to their students. They will tell students what they need. They will tell students what they want.
Reports indicate that throughout the district, principals followed a directive to shut the student voices down by any means necessary. Hold lockdowns in the schools. Run long assemblies. Make phonecalls to threaten families with consequences (no prom, no graduation) should a student walk out. In other words-- make sure that those students are neither seen nor heard.
This is the opposite of listening. This is the opposite of making sure students have their civil rights. This is the opposite of treating members of the community as valued partners. This is the opposite of making sure all students are visible.
I am waiting. I am waiting for any of the reformsters who are so deeply concerned about the civil rights issue of the era, who are so concerned that some students might become invisible without certain policies in place, who are so worried that black students will not be heard-- I am waiting for any of those reformsters to speak up and say, "Hey! You have a perfect opportunity in Newark to talk to the people we're all concerned about, people who are clearly motivated by a passion and concern for education and schools. This was the perfect chance to talk to exactly the people we're concerned about, and you blew it. Cami Anderson should get out there and talk to them. Now." I am waiting to hear that.
Reformsters repeatedly claim that they are most concerned about American students like the students of Newark. The students of Newark have given them a chance to put their money where their mouths are, and reformsters have stayed silent. Cami Anderson remains unwilling to so much as talk to the students of Newark, and no leading "reform" voice has stepped up to call her out.
Newark is a clear and vivid demonstration that reformster talk about civil rights and the importance of hearing and responding to the voices of students and families-- it's all a lie. In walking out, the students of Newark have stood up, not just for their own community and schools, but for students and communities all across the country.
*NJ.com also included a completely egregious piece of reporting, noting that several students ran into a Rite-Aid and then later cops were at the Rite-Aid, so of course their reporter asked if there had been looting. Police replied there had been no reports of looting-- so there was nothing to report, and yet this business took up a full paragraph. I suppose it could have been worse-- they could have called the students "thugs."
As always, the students' actions were thoughtful, measured and positive. Their message was vocal and clear. Accountability for superintendent Cami Anderson (skewered in one sign as "$cami"). A return to local control. And end to charter takeover of schools that have no need of takeover.
Imagine you are someone thinking, "I believe that equitable education is the civil rights issue of our era. I believe that students who are not wealthy and not white are not represented and their needs are not respected. I am concerned that without test results, these students will become invisible."
Could you possibly have stood in Newark and said, "Boy, I just wish there were some way to find out what black families and students want, or what they think about the direction of education in Newark."
And yet, per nj.com*, the district had this to say:
"While the District supports our students' right to express their opinions and concerns, we cannot support these actions when they disrupt the regular instructional day," Parmley said in the statement. "The District remains committed to broadening opportunities for Newark's students through expanded learning time and through creating additional professional development opportunities for teachers."
Right. The district remains committed to doing everything except actually listening to their students. They will tell students what they need. They will tell students what they want.
Reports indicate that throughout the district, principals followed a directive to shut the student voices down by any means necessary. Hold lockdowns in the schools. Run long assemblies. Make phonecalls to threaten families with consequences (no prom, no graduation) should a student walk out. In other words-- make sure that those students are neither seen nor heard.
This is the opposite of listening. This is the opposite of making sure students have their civil rights. This is the opposite of treating members of the community as valued partners. This is the opposite of making sure all students are visible.
I am waiting. I am waiting for any of the reformsters who are so deeply concerned about the civil rights issue of the era, who are so concerned that some students might become invisible without certain policies in place, who are so worried that black students will not be heard-- I am waiting for any of those reformsters to speak up and say, "Hey! You have a perfect opportunity in Newark to talk to the people we're all concerned about, people who are clearly motivated by a passion and concern for education and schools. This was the perfect chance to talk to exactly the people we're concerned about, and you blew it. Cami Anderson should get out there and talk to them. Now." I am waiting to hear that.
Reformsters repeatedly claim that they are most concerned about American students like the students of Newark. The students of Newark have given them a chance to put their money where their mouths are, and reformsters have stayed silent. Cami Anderson remains unwilling to so much as talk to the students of Newark, and no leading "reform" voice has stepped up to call her out.
Newark is a clear and vivid demonstration that reformster talk about civil rights and the importance of hearing and responding to the voices of students and families-- it's all a lie. In walking out, the students of Newark have stood up, not just for their own community and schools, but for students and communities all across the country.
*NJ.com also included a completely egregious piece of reporting, noting that several students ran into a Rite-Aid and then later cops were at the Rite-Aid, so of course their reporter asked if there had been looting. Police replied there had been no reports of looting-- so there was nothing to report, and yet this business took up a full paragraph. I suppose it could have been worse-- they could have called the students "thugs."
Tuesday, May 19, 2015
NJ: No Applause for Banning Testing for the Littlest Students
The news from New Jersey is that the legislature is very close to banning using the Big Standardized Test on students in Kindergarten through Second Grade, which is good news, I guess.
Only there is no similar move being contemplated for the many New Jersey students currently required to take the Big Boys and Girls Version of the PARCC, despite the New Jersey landfill-sized mountain of evidence that such a move would be both beneficial and welcome. There is a mess of various proposals calling for everything from greater transparency to giving the commissioner power to open a can of state-level whoop-ass on any who dare to opt out (while simultaneous declaring that, hey, hardly anybody did that opty outy thing so it's just no buggy).
And anyway-- what does it say about the current state of reform foolishness that any such law is even a thing? Will the legislature also be considering a law again lacing school lunches with ground glass? Will the legislature legislate that school administrators may not administer swirlies to students? Do we need a law to tell schools that they may not have students spend recess playing in traffic? Is there a law saying that schools may not heat the building winter by burning the students' clothes?
The fact that giving BS Tests to kindergarten students is on anybody's mind in the first place is just a bad thing! If your brand new spouse looks over at you and says, "You know, you're so sweet, I think I won't sell your liver on the black market after all," that is not cause for either celebration or relaxation.
So while I guess this proposal is better than one which mandated ten mile runs for five year olds, I'm not prepared to applaud the NJ legislature for putting into law what anybody with even an iota of sense would know better than to vent think about. The fact that such a law seems like a good idea is just a sign of how many people without an iota of sense but with a great deal of power are roaming loose these days.
Only there is no similar move being contemplated for the many New Jersey students currently required to take the Big Boys and Girls Version of the PARCC, despite the New Jersey landfill-sized mountain of evidence that such a move would be both beneficial and welcome. There is a mess of various proposals calling for everything from greater transparency to giving the commissioner power to open a can of state-level whoop-ass on any who dare to opt out (while simultaneous declaring that, hey, hardly anybody did that opty outy thing so it's just no buggy).
And anyway-- what does it say about the current state of reform foolishness that any such law is even a thing? Will the legislature also be considering a law again lacing school lunches with ground glass? Will the legislature legislate that school administrators may not administer swirlies to students? Do we need a law to tell schools that they may not have students spend recess playing in traffic? Is there a law saying that schools may not heat the building winter by burning the students' clothes?
The fact that giving BS Tests to kindergarten students is on anybody's mind in the first place is just a bad thing! If your brand new spouse looks over at you and says, "You know, you're so sweet, I think I won't sell your liver on the black market after all," that is not cause for either celebration or relaxation.
So while I guess this proposal is better than one which mandated ten mile runs for five year olds, I'm not prepared to applaud the NJ legislature for putting into law what anybody with even an iota of sense would know better than to vent think about. The fact that such a law seems like a good idea is just a sign of how many people without an iota of sense but with a great deal of power are roaming loose these days.
Sunday, May 17, 2015
Who's Listening In Newark?
The mayor of a state's largest city joins protestors in blocking the main street during rush hour. Just imagine how that would play out anywhere else. Bill DeBlasio joins high school students to stage a protest shutting down Times Square. Rahm Emanuel joins members of the Chicago school community to bring traffic through downtown Chicago to a grinding halt (okay, that last one might not actually be noticeable).
But when Mayor Ras Baraka joined a student protest on Newark's main drag last Wednesday, it was if New Jersey media had collectively decided they were going to silence the dissenting voices of Newark. Go ahead and search for news about the protest on google-- you'll find nothing. You can find an account from independent journalist Bob Braun and not much else.
The protest was just one more in a long series of protests featuring the Newark Students Union and students from East Side High, groups that have consistently called attention to the embarrassing educational train wreck that is Newark.
Here's how reformsters keep telling us this is supposed to work: After collecting data that shows Certain Schools are failing, the Powers That Be will rush to make sure those schools get the assistance and support they need. That data will make sure those students (who often turn out to be not white and not wealthy) are not invisible. It's the civil rights issue of our era!
Here's how it actually has worked in Newark: After collecting "evidence" that the schools of Newark were in "crisis," the state took the district over, pushing out the superintendent and the elected school board. Today, Newark Schools are run by an outsider who won't meet, speak to, or respond to the students, parents and citizens of Newark, saddling them with a school system that is a bedraggled mess. They have elected a mayor to speak for them on this issue, and he, too, has been ignored. It has taken a series of demonstrations and protests to get the students and citizens of Newark any kind of attention at all. It's almost as if they're invisible.
Newark is what the solution to the "civil rights issue" of our time looks like. An entire community silenced, cut off from access to any power over their own schools, forced to create a larger and larger fuss just to get people to notice and acknowledge that Things Are Not Okay.
People want to be heard. When they are ignored, they just raise their voices, and keep raising them. The strategy of the PTB in New Jersey (which includes the news media) has been to ignore those voices, and to keep promoting a charterized system as a great way to meet the needs of the people, even as the people are out in the street blocking traffic and explaining just how un-met their needs are.
As quoted by Braun, here's what Ras Baraka had to say last Wednesday:
“This struggle is not emotional. It’s not about us being angry at Cami Anderson. I don’t want to make it about her and me or make it about her personality. We’re opposed to what’s going on and, who’s ever down there doing it, is wrong. No matter who they are or where they come from, it’s wrong.
“We’re not against it because she’s from New York, but because she’s wrong. We’re not mad about her personality. We’re mad because she’s wrong. We’re not upset about anything else except for the fact that she wrong.
“She was supposed to be here helping public schools grow, not closing them down. That’s what we’re upset about.
“Why am I upset? Because we have a 70 million budget deficit for the Newark schools that keeps growing because she keeps putting teachers on the EWP list, putting them in rubber rooms, putting administrators on the list, too, and making the city pay for it. The taxpayers are paying for it—not just the state taxpayers but Newark taxpayers—are paying for that, too. That’s why we’re upset.
“We’re upset because she keeps ‘renewing’ schools and it’s not working, the renew school thing is not working, but she keeps doing it and it’s not working.
“We’re upset because she says she’s going to turnaround schools but that’s a code name for closing them down. She’s getting money from the state for the turnaround and we don’t see any of that money. The state is supposed to be working with the schools for the turnarounds but that’s not happening either.
“We’re upset because she is splitting people’s families up. Because she’s sending kids with special needs to schools and the schools don’t offer special needs programs. We’re upset because she’s sending English language learners to schools without English language learner programs.
“That’s why we’re upset.”
Cami Anderson must go, he concluded. “Not tomorrow. Today.”
The mayor of New Jersey's largest city stood in the street, blocking rush hour traffic with students and community members, and the press chose to ignore it.
I do not know how folks like Cami Anderson and Chris Christie imagine this is going to end. Do they really think that at some point, the citizens and students and parents and community leaders of Newark will shrug and say, "Well, we tried, but I guess they're going to ignore us, so let's go home and just quietly enjoy being disenfranchised, ignored, and silenced. It probably won't be so bad." Is that what New Jersey's bosses think is going to happen.
The whole business reminds me of Patrick Henry's Speech in the Virginia Convention and his response to those who insist that more "proper" and "quiet" means of trying to resolve differences must be tried.
Sir, we have done everything that could be done to avert the storm which is now coming on. We have petitioned; we have remonstrated; we have supplicated; we have prostrated ourselves before the throne, and have implored its interposition to arrest the tyrannical hands of the ministry and Parliament. Our petitions have been slighted; our remonstrances have produced additional violence and insult; our supplications have been disregarded; and we have been spurned, with contempt, from the foot of the throne! In vain, after these things, may we indulge the fond hope of peace and reconciliation. There is no longer any room for hope. If we wish to be free-- if we mean to preserve inviolate those inestimable privileges for which we have been so long contending--if we mean not basely to abandon the noble struggle in which we have been so long engaged, and which we have pledged ourselves never to abandon until the glorious object of our contest shall be obtained--we must fight!
I don't know how things are going to end in Newark. The activists of Newark are thoughtful and committed. I admire how they have been able to respond to the situation with strong concerted action, but without lashing out in anger. As they raise their voices louder and louder, nobody will be able to ask why they didn't try more reasonable or appropriate ways to be heard. What people should ask is why in all that time, nobody in the halls of power bothered to listen.
But when Mayor Ras Baraka joined a student protest on Newark's main drag last Wednesday, it was if New Jersey media had collectively decided they were going to silence the dissenting voices of Newark. Go ahead and search for news about the protest on google-- you'll find nothing. You can find an account from independent journalist Bob Braun and not much else.
The protest was just one more in a long series of protests featuring the Newark Students Union and students from East Side High, groups that have consistently called attention to the embarrassing educational train wreck that is Newark.
Here's how reformsters keep telling us this is supposed to work: After collecting data that shows Certain Schools are failing, the Powers That Be will rush to make sure those schools get the assistance and support they need. That data will make sure those students (who often turn out to be not white and not wealthy) are not invisible. It's the civil rights issue of our era!
Here's how it actually has worked in Newark: After collecting "evidence" that the schools of Newark were in "crisis," the state took the district over, pushing out the superintendent and the elected school board. Today, Newark Schools are run by an outsider who won't meet, speak to, or respond to the students, parents and citizens of Newark, saddling them with a school system that is a bedraggled mess. They have elected a mayor to speak for them on this issue, and he, too, has been ignored. It has taken a series of demonstrations and protests to get the students and citizens of Newark any kind of attention at all. It's almost as if they're invisible.
Newark is what the solution to the "civil rights issue" of our time looks like. An entire community silenced, cut off from access to any power over their own schools, forced to create a larger and larger fuss just to get people to notice and acknowledge that Things Are Not Okay.
People want to be heard. When they are ignored, they just raise their voices, and keep raising them. The strategy of the PTB in New Jersey (which includes the news media) has been to ignore those voices, and to keep promoting a charterized system as a great way to meet the needs of the people, even as the people are out in the street blocking traffic and explaining just how un-met their needs are.
As quoted by Braun, here's what Ras Baraka had to say last Wednesday:
“This struggle is not emotional. It’s not about us being angry at Cami Anderson. I don’t want to make it about her and me or make it about her personality. We’re opposed to what’s going on and, who’s ever down there doing it, is wrong. No matter who they are or where they come from, it’s wrong.
“We’re not against it because she’s from New York, but because she’s wrong. We’re not mad about her personality. We’re mad because she’s wrong. We’re not upset about anything else except for the fact that she wrong.
“She was supposed to be here helping public schools grow, not closing them down. That’s what we’re upset about.
“Why am I upset? Because we have a 70 million budget deficit for the Newark schools that keeps growing because she keeps putting teachers on the EWP list, putting them in rubber rooms, putting administrators on the list, too, and making the city pay for it. The taxpayers are paying for it—not just the state taxpayers but Newark taxpayers—are paying for that, too. That’s why we’re upset.
“We’re upset because she keeps ‘renewing’ schools and it’s not working, the renew school thing is not working, but she keeps doing it and it’s not working.
“We’re upset because she says she’s going to turnaround schools but that’s a code name for closing them down. She’s getting money from the state for the turnaround and we don’t see any of that money. The state is supposed to be working with the schools for the turnarounds but that’s not happening either.
“We’re upset because she is splitting people’s families up. Because she’s sending kids with special needs to schools and the schools don’t offer special needs programs. We’re upset because she’s sending English language learners to schools without English language learner programs.
“That’s why we’re upset.”
Cami Anderson must go, he concluded. “Not tomorrow. Today.”
The mayor of New Jersey's largest city stood in the street, blocking rush hour traffic with students and community members, and the press chose to ignore it.
I do not know how folks like Cami Anderson and Chris Christie imagine this is going to end. Do they really think that at some point, the citizens and students and parents and community leaders of Newark will shrug and say, "Well, we tried, but I guess they're going to ignore us, so let's go home and just quietly enjoy being disenfranchised, ignored, and silenced. It probably won't be so bad." Is that what New Jersey's bosses think is going to happen.
The whole business reminds me of Patrick Henry's Speech in the Virginia Convention and his response to those who insist that more "proper" and "quiet" means of trying to resolve differences must be tried.
Sir, we have done everything that could be done to avert the storm which is now coming on. We have petitioned; we have remonstrated; we have supplicated; we have prostrated ourselves before the throne, and have implored its interposition to arrest the tyrannical hands of the ministry and Parliament. Our petitions have been slighted; our remonstrances have produced additional violence and insult; our supplications have been disregarded; and we have been spurned, with contempt, from the foot of the throne! In vain, after these things, may we indulge the fond hope of peace and reconciliation. There is no longer any room for hope. If we wish to be free-- if we mean to preserve inviolate those inestimable privileges for which we have been so long contending--if we mean not basely to abandon the noble struggle in which we have been so long engaged, and which we have pledged ourselves never to abandon until the glorious object of our contest shall be obtained--we must fight!
I don't know how things are going to end in Newark. The activists of Newark are thoughtful and committed. I admire how they have been able to respond to the situation with strong concerted action, but without lashing out in anger. As they raise their voices louder and louder, nobody will be able to ask why they didn't try more reasonable or appropriate ways to be heard. What people should ask is why in all that time, nobody in the halls of power bothered to listen.
Saturday, May 2, 2015
Newark: Students Stand Up Again
Look at this. Just look at this.
Yesterday the students of Newark took to the streets to register their displeasure with the newest round of New Jersey turnaround plans (and had the savvy to do it in front of the reporters already gathered for Bridgegate).
The students of Newark are a phenomenal group. I met three of them last weekend, and they are strong and smart and show a confidence and command in speaking up that many folks two or three times their age can envy. And they are also exactly like every teenager you've ever met.
The Newark Students Union has been a strong and relentless voice in Newark, one of the school districts of New Jersey that has had all of its democratic process stripped away in the name of reform (once again, the kind of public-silencing reform that most often seems targeted at a public that is mostly black). When superintendent Cami Anderson wouldn't talk to them, the students followed her to an AEI event in DC. And just a few months ago, they occupied her offices (using the insurgent strategy known as "walking through the open door").
Adult support for student activism isn't always great. "They're just kids. They don't really understand the issues. They have wacky, unrealistic demands. They get all caught up in drama. They create chaos and disorder."
And I'm sure that those objections are true sometimes. So what? We've seen that "responsible adults" with power and access make stupid terrible fact-less decisions and cement them as policy.
This is a democracy. Citizens and stakeholders are supposed to have a voice, and if students aren't stakeholders in schools, I don't know who else could be. I wish my students were this passionate about their school, their community, their right to speak up whether they have official permission or not.
Democracy is not about saying, "We will fix your schools (even if you didn't ask us to), but in exchange you will give up your right to have a voice in the governance of your own community." But that model, that model of silencing entire communities while using their schools to create revenue streams for folks who have no stake in that community-- that model is spreading from Newark to Philly to Chicago to Holyoke to Little Rock.
And so the students of Newark are standing up not just for their schools, but for the democratic heart of our nation. And they are not just standing up in Newark, but on the front lines of an incursion aimed at our entire country (well, except of course the rich parts). All of us who care about public education in this country owe the students of Newark our support and our thanks.
I believe that WE WILL WIN!
LIKE Our Page Newark Students Union NJ Communities United!!!
Posted by NJ Communities United on Friday, May 1, 2015
Yesterday the students of Newark took to the streets to register their displeasure with the newest round of New Jersey turnaround plans (and had the savvy to do it in front of the reporters already gathered for Bridgegate).
The students of Newark are a phenomenal group. I met three of them last weekend, and they are strong and smart and show a confidence and command in speaking up that many folks two or three times their age can envy. And they are also exactly like every teenager you've ever met.
The Newark Students Union has been a strong and relentless voice in Newark, one of the school districts of New Jersey that has had all of its democratic process stripped away in the name of reform (once again, the kind of public-silencing reform that most often seems targeted at a public that is mostly black). When superintendent Cami Anderson wouldn't talk to them, the students followed her to an AEI event in DC. And just a few months ago, they occupied her offices (using the insurgent strategy known as "walking through the open door").
Adult support for student activism isn't always great. "They're just kids. They don't really understand the issues. They have wacky, unrealistic demands. They get all caught up in drama. They create chaos and disorder."
And I'm sure that those objections are true sometimes. So what? We've seen that "responsible adults" with power and access make stupid terrible fact-less decisions and cement them as policy.
This is a democracy. Citizens and stakeholders are supposed to have a voice, and if students aren't stakeholders in schools, I don't know who else could be. I wish my students were this passionate about their school, their community, their right to speak up whether they have official permission or not.
Democracy is not about saying, "We will fix your schools (even if you didn't ask us to), but in exchange you will give up your right to have a voice in the governance of your own community." But that model, that model of silencing entire communities while using their schools to create revenue streams for folks who have no stake in that community-- that model is spreading from Newark to Philly to Chicago to Holyoke to Little Rock.
And so the students of Newark are standing up not just for their schools, but for the democratic heart of our nation. And they are not just standing up in Newark, but on the front lines of an incursion aimed at our entire country (well, except of course the rich parts). All of us who care about public education in this country owe the students of Newark our support and our thanks.
Tuesday, April 7, 2015
Charter Laboratory Is Failing
President Obama has called charter schools "incubators of innovation" and "laboratories of innovation," and he has done so for several years, despite the fact that, so far, the laboratories have yielded nothing.
One of the standard justifications for the modern charter movement is that these laboratories of innovation will develop new techniques and programs that will then be transported out to public schools. Each charter school will be Patient Zero in a spreading viral infection of educational excellence.
Yet, after years-- no viral infection. No bouncing baby miracle cure from the incubator. The laboratory has shown us nothing.
Here's my challenge for charter fans-- name one educational technique, one pedagogical breakthrough, that started at a charter school and has since spread throughout the country to all sorts of public schools.
After all these years of getting everything they wanted, modern charter schools have nothing to teach the public schools of the US.
Both this profile from the New York Times and a teacher interview with Diane Ravitch show that the widely-lauded Success Academy model of New York is based on the emotional brutalization of children and tunnel-vision focus on The Test. This is justified by an ugly lie-- that if poor kids can get the same kind of test scores as rich kids, the doors will open to the same kind of success.
Put all that together with a mission to weed out those students who just can't cut it the SA way, and you have a model that cannot, and should not, be exported to public schools. Success Academy demonstrates that charters don't necessarily need to cream for the best and the brightest, but just for the students who can withstand their particular narrow techniques.
But then, most modern charters are fundamentally incompatible with the core mission of public schools, which is to teach every single child. Examination of charters show over and over and over again that they have developed techniques which work-- as long as they get to choose which students to apply them to. New Jersey has been rather fully examined in this light, and the lesson of New Jersey charters is clear-- if you get to pick and choose the students you teach, you can get better results.
This is the equivalent of a laboratory that announces, "We can show you a drug that produces fabulous hair growth, as long as you don't make us demonstrate it on any bald guys."
Modern charters have tried to shift the conversation, to back away from the "laboratory" narrative. Nowadays, they just like to talk about how they have been successful. These "successes" are frequently debatable and often minute, but they all lack one key ingredient for legitimate laboratory work-- replication by independent researchers.
Replication is the backbone of science. Legit scientists do not declare, "This machine will show you the power of cold fusion, but only when I'm in the room with it." The proof is in replicating results by other researchers whose fame and income does not depend on making sure the cold fusion reactor succeeds.
If your charter has really discovered the Secret of Success, here's what comes next. You hand over your policies and procedures manual, your teaching materials, your super-duper training techniques to some public school to use with their already-there student body. If they get the excellent results, results that exceed the kind of results they've been getting previously, results measured by their own measures of success, then you may be on to something.
But if you only ever get results in your own lab with your own researchers working on your own selected subjects measured with your own instruments, you have nothing to teach the rest of us.
Andy Smarick recently charted up some charter results, looking at how they relate to CREDO and NACSA ratings. He did not make any wild or crazy claims for what he found, but he did note and chart correlations. The more CREDO likes a city (it offers more opportunities for chartering), the higher its charter testing results. The more NACSA thinks charters are regulated in a city, the lower the testing results. There are many possible explanations, but here are two that occur to me: the more charters you let open, the more they can set the rules and collect the students that they want, and the more that regulations force charters to play by the same rules as public schools, the more their results look just like public school results.
Maybe, as Mike Petrilli suggested, it's time to stop talking about charters as laboratories and stop pretending that they're discovering anything other than "If you get to pick which students you're going to teach, you can get stuff done" (which as discoveries go is on the order of discovering that water is wet). There may well be an argument to make about charters as a means of providing special salvation for one or two special starfish. But if that's the argument we're going to have, let's just drop the whole pretense that charters are discovering anything new or creating new educational methods that will benefit all schools, and start talking about the real issue-- the establishment of a two-tier schools system to separate the worthy from the rabble.
One of the standard justifications for the modern charter movement is that these laboratories of innovation will develop new techniques and programs that will then be transported out to public schools. Each charter school will be Patient Zero in a spreading viral infection of educational excellence.
Yet, after years-- no viral infection. No bouncing baby miracle cure from the incubator. The laboratory has shown us nothing.
Here's my challenge for charter fans-- name one educational technique, one pedagogical breakthrough, that started at a charter school and has since spread throughout the country to all sorts of public schools.
After all these years of getting everything they wanted, modern charter schools have nothing to teach the public schools of the US.
Both this profile from the New York Times and a teacher interview with Diane Ravitch show that the widely-lauded Success Academy model of New York is based on the emotional brutalization of children and tunnel-vision focus on The Test. This is justified by an ugly lie-- that if poor kids can get the same kind of test scores as rich kids, the doors will open to the same kind of success.
Put all that together with a mission to weed out those students who just can't cut it the SA way, and you have a model that cannot, and should not, be exported to public schools. Success Academy demonstrates that charters don't necessarily need to cream for the best and the brightest, but just for the students who can withstand their particular narrow techniques.
But then, most modern charters are fundamentally incompatible with the core mission of public schools, which is to teach every single child. Examination of charters show over and over and over again that they have developed techniques which work-- as long as they get to choose which students to apply them to. New Jersey has been rather fully examined in this light, and the lesson of New Jersey charters is clear-- if you get to pick and choose the students you teach, you can get better results.
This is the equivalent of a laboratory that announces, "We can show you a drug that produces fabulous hair growth, as long as you don't make us demonstrate it on any bald guys."
Modern charters have tried to shift the conversation, to back away from the "laboratory" narrative. Nowadays, they just like to talk about how they have been successful. These "successes" are frequently debatable and often minute, but they all lack one key ingredient for legitimate laboratory work-- replication by independent researchers.
Replication is the backbone of science. Legit scientists do not declare, "This machine will show you the power of cold fusion, but only when I'm in the room with it." The proof is in replicating results by other researchers whose fame and income does not depend on making sure the cold fusion reactor succeeds.
If your charter has really discovered the Secret of Success, here's what comes next. You hand over your policies and procedures manual, your teaching materials, your super-duper training techniques to some public school to use with their already-there student body. If they get the excellent results, results that exceed the kind of results they've been getting previously, results measured by their own measures of success, then you may be on to something.
But if you only ever get results in your own lab with your own researchers working on your own selected subjects measured with your own instruments, you have nothing to teach the rest of us.
Andy Smarick recently charted up some charter results, looking at how they relate to CREDO and NACSA ratings. He did not make any wild or crazy claims for what he found, but he did note and chart correlations. The more CREDO likes a city (it offers more opportunities for chartering), the higher its charter testing results. The more NACSA thinks charters are regulated in a city, the lower the testing results. There are many possible explanations, but here are two that occur to me: the more charters you let open, the more they can set the rules and collect the students that they want, and the more that regulations force charters to play by the same rules as public schools, the more their results look just like public school results.
Maybe, as Mike Petrilli suggested, it's time to stop talking about charters as laboratories and stop pretending that they're discovering anything other than "If you get to pick which students you're going to teach, you can get stuff done" (which as discoveries go is on the order of discovering that water is wet). There may well be an argument to make about charters as a means of providing special salvation for one or two special starfish. But if that's the argument we're going to have, let's just drop the whole pretense that charters are discovering anything new or creating new educational methods that will benefit all schools, and start talking about the real issue-- the establishment of a two-tier schools system to separate the worthy from the rabble.
Sunday, March 29, 2015
Razing Arizona
The Arizona Capitol Times last week ran an op-ed from a concerned citizen who wants to stick up for the beleaguered common core standards. Rebecca Hipps bills herself as a descendant of some of Arizona's founding families, and as such, she doesn't want the pioneer spirit to be damaged by the ejection of CCSS.
Hipps is not actually in Arizona. According to her LinkedIn profile, she spent her first three post-college years in three different teaching jobs before heading to DC, where she has worked for the DC Common Core Collaborative, a charter school, Teach Plus, and O'Dell Education, an outfit that appears to specialize in the manufacture and sales of Core-related programs and PD. They were founded by Judson O'Dell, who was Dean of Students at a university in Argentina before coming to work at the College Board and Educational Testing Service. That's Hipps' current employer, so her love for the Core is not exactly a surprise.
When she discusses her fears about the core ditchery that Arizona is contemplating, she says this:
My greatest fear in Arizona repealing the CCSS is that poorly developed standards with a hidden agenda will take its place.
Yes, yes, I can see how one would worry that schools would be commandeered by a set of standards developed by educational amateurs and pushed forward with an agenda of opening up public schools to private corporations or cracking open and unifying markets for publishing companies. Seriously-- "poorly developed standards with a hidden agenda" is as good a description of the common core standards as anyone has ever written. It's as if for a split second Hipps forgot which side she's paid to be on.
Her list of reasons that Arizona students need the Core is the usual boilerplate. Critical thinking, writing, reading, mathematical reasoning-- because apparently Arizona teachers are currently unaware of these things. Hipps is afraid that without the Core, Arizona teachers will slide back to some lesser land of educational inadequacy.
Given Hipps' concern for Arizona education, it's curious that she doesn't mention one of Arizona's other outstanding educational features-- leadership in frequent and brutal cuts to education budgets in the entire country. Arizona has cut public ed spending steadily since the late oughts, and they rank 50th in college per-student spending. It's a wonder that Hipps did not bring this up, as it would seem that Arizona is a poster child for spending bottom dollar on education and getting bottom dollar results.
At least Hipps is able to speak out at all. Arizona's teachers, superintendents, principals and school board members have spoken up about the slash and burn methods of their state leaders, and the state leader response has been to float a law that will require them to shut up.
Arizona lawmakers have attached an amendment to Senate Bill 1172. It prohibits "an employee of a school district or charter school, acting on the district's or charter school's behalf, from distributing electronic materials to influence the outcome of an election or to advocate support for or opposition to pending or proposed legislation."
On the one hand, it's a good idea that Mrs. O'Teacher not give her class an hour of self-directed worksheets while she stuffs envelopes for the new ballot initiative. On the other hand, there's that whole First Amendment thing. And the law is so broadly worded that I imagine a citizen asking a school district employee, "I'm really worried about the new proposed law cutting all money to public schools. Will that hurt our programs here," and said school employee must reply, by law, "I cannot share any information about that with you." Other critics of the bill fear that it would even prohibit any discussion of educational programs that directly affect children with those children's parents.
And while I'm not concerned, exactly, I am curious-- would this law also prohibit charter schools from advertising?
The law is clearly one more attempt to push educators out of the political world. No more informational letters to parents and voters. No more taking a public stand against assaults on school funding by the governor and legislators. Presumably no teacher or administrator in Arizona could write a response to Hipps' op-ed-- at least not with any indication that they were writing their response from the perspective of a public educator.
In other words, Arizona educators can use their professional judgement and expertise-- they just can't let anybody know that they have any, or share what it leads them to conclude. Note that the law doesn't make any distinction between advocacy based on facts and that based on political preferences.
In New Jersey, charter operators have been trying to shut down Rutgers researcher Julia Sass Rubin, whose research has been embarrassing charter operators and the government buddies with the use of actual facts and fully-supported data. Their argument in NJ has been that Rubin shouldn't be allowed to mention her credentials-- in other words, she can share her data without explaining why it should be given credence.
But that's reformsterism, and as Hipps' plaintive cry for the Core and the amendment's inclusion of charters might indicate, Arizona's leadership is not so much pro-reform as it is just plain anti-public education. Hell, even DFER is on their case (turns out that Arizona has little money for schools, but lots for prisons). New governor Doug Ducey (previous job-- CEO of Cold Stone Creamery) has shown no interest in continuing the reformy policies of his predecessor Jan Brewer.
Governor Ducey (whose children attend Catholic school) was plain as day at his inauguration that tax hikes are verbotten and that all of Arizona's financial problems come from spending money poorly, not spending too little. He likes school choice, but has not explained how that will work, particularly if all the choices are brutally underfunded. But then, he seems to admire the model of such no-government paradises as Somalia; it would seem that school choice is not so important as making sure that all schools are underfunded and unregulated. This is all more than a little ironic-- have you ever been in a Cold Stone Creamery? Workers there are regulated down to how they must talk and behave for the customers, and franchise owners must spend enough money to do things properly.
Why, out of this whole constellation of issues, Hipps would find the possible ejection of Common Core to be most alarming and troubling is, given her employment history, not exactly a puzzle. But even from way over here in Pennsylvania, I can see that dumping a bad set of amateur-created standards is the least of Arizona's worries. Let's just hope that the people who can identify those problems are still allowed to talk about them.
Hipps is not actually in Arizona. According to her LinkedIn profile, she spent her first three post-college years in three different teaching jobs before heading to DC, where she has worked for the DC Common Core Collaborative, a charter school, Teach Plus, and O'Dell Education, an outfit that appears to specialize in the manufacture and sales of Core-related programs and PD. They were founded by Judson O'Dell, who was Dean of Students at a university in Argentina before coming to work at the College Board and Educational Testing Service. That's Hipps' current employer, so her love for the Core is not exactly a surprise.
When she discusses her fears about the core ditchery that Arizona is contemplating, she says this:
My greatest fear in Arizona repealing the CCSS is that poorly developed standards with a hidden agenda will take its place.
Yes, yes, I can see how one would worry that schools would be commandeered by a set of standards developed by educational amateurs and pushed forward with an agenda of opening up public schools to private corporations or cracking open and unifying markets for publishing companies. Seriously-- "poorly developed standards with a hidden agenda" is as good a description of the common core standards as anyone has ever written. It's as if for a split second Hipps forgot which side she's paid to be on.
Her list of reasons that Arizona students need the Core is the usual boilerplate. Critical thinking, writing, reading, mathematical reasoning-- because apparently Arizona teachers are currently unaware of these things. Hipps is afraid that without the Core, Arizona teachers will slide back to some lesser land of educational inadequacy.
Given Hipps' concern for Arizona education, it's curious that she doesn't mention one of Arizona's other outstanding educational features-- leadership in frequent and brutal cuts to education budgets in the entire country. Arizona has cut public ed spending steadily since the late oughts, and they rank 50th in college per-student spending. It's a wonder that Hipps did not bring this up, as it would seem that Arizona is a poster child for spending bottom dollar on education and getting bottom dollar results.
At least Hipps is able to speak out at all. Arizona's teachers, superintendents, principals and school board members have spoken up about the slash and burn methods of their state leaders, and the state leader response has been to float a law that will require them to shut up.
Arizona lawmakers have attached an amendment to Senate Bill 1172. It prohibits "an employee of a school district or charter school, acting on the district's or charter school's behalf, from distributing electronic materials to influence the outcome of an election or to advocate support for or opposition to pending or proposed legislation."
On the one hand, it's a good idea that Mrs. O'Teacher not give her class an hour of self-directed worksheets while she stuffs envelopes for the new ballot initiative. On the other hand, there's that whole First Amendment thing. And the law is so broadly worded that I imagine a citizen asking a school district employee, "I'm really worried about the new proposed law cutting all money to public schools. Will that hurt our programs here," and said school employee must reply, by law, "I cannot share any information about that with you." Other critics of the bill fear that it would even prohibit any discussion of educational programs that directly affect children with those children's parents.
And while I'm not concerned, exactly, I am curious-- would this law also prohibit charter schools from advertising?
The law is clearly one more attempt to push educators out of the political world. No more informational letters to parents and voters. No more taking a public stand against assaults on school funding by the governor and legislators. Presumably no teacher or administrator in Arizona could write a response to Hipps' op-ed-- at least not with any indication that they were writing their response from the perspective of a public educator.
In other words, Arizona educators can use their professional judgement and expertise-- they just can't let anybody know that they have any, or share what it leads them to conclude. Note that the law doesn't make any distinction between advocacy based on facts and that based on political preferences.
In New Jersey, charter operators have been trying to shut down Rutgers researcher Julia Sass Rubin, whose research has been embarrassing charter operators and the government buddies with the use of actual facts and fully-supported data. Their argument in NJ has been that Rubin shouldn't be allowed to mention her credentials-- in other words, she can share her data without explaining why it should be given credence.
But that's reformsterism, and as Hipps' plaintive cry for the Core and the amendment's inclusion of charters might indicate, Arizona's leadership is not so much pro-reform as it is just plain anti-public education. Hell, even DFER is on their case (turns out that Arizona has little money for schools, but lots for prisons). New governor Doug Ducey (previous job-- CEO of Cold Stone Creamery) has shown no interest in continuing the reformy policies of his predecessor Jan Brewer.
Governor Ducey (whose children attend Catholic school) was plain as day at his inauguration that tax hikes are verbotten and that all of Arizona's financial problems come from spending money poorly, not spending too little. He likes school choice, but has not explained how that will work, particularly if all the choices are brutally underfunded. But then, he seems to admire the model of such no-government paradises as Somalia; it would seem that school choice is not so important as making sure that all schools are underfunded and unregulated. This is all more than a little ironic-- have you ever been in a Cold Stone Creamery? Workers there are regulated down to how they must talk and behave for the customers, and franchise owners must spend enough money to do things properly.
Why, out of this whole constellation of issues, Hipps would find the possible ejection of Common Core to be most alarming and troubling is, given her employment history, not exactly a puzzle. But even from way over here in Pennsylvania, I can see that dumping a bad set of amateur-created standards is the least of Arizona's worries. Let's just hope that the people who can identify those problems are still allowed to talk about them.
Friday, February 20, 2015
Where's Cami? [Updated]
[Update: Okay, that didn't take long. According to a piece posted on NJ.com within the last hour, Anderson has met with the student group occupying her office
"This morning, Superintendent Anderson met with the group of students who have been demonstrating since Tuesday and listened to their concerns," district spokeswoman Brittany Chord Parmley said in a statement.
"The conversation was productive, and we see this as a promising step towards an ongoing constructive dialogue where both sides are heard and valuable learning time is not compromised."
So skip the following, or just read it with the knowledge Cami is, according to her office, no longer AWOL. It just took her four days. Four days.]
As the week winds down, the handful of students from the Newark Students Union still occupies the offices of Superintendent Cami Anderson, while the rest of us watch and follow along from, well, all across the country. The whole world, or at least a representative sample of it, really is watching.
The support for the students, their resolve and dedication-- these are all impressive. Some of these stories are so very 21st century-- one of my readers wrote to say that she ordered the students a pizza.
I contacted them through their email, newarkstudentsunion@gmail.com and I ordered from Tony's Pizza (973) 821-4723 and had it sent to 2 Cedar Street 8th floor.
They later sent her a picture of the empty box with "thanks" written on it. Meanwhile, you can find numerous updates from them on youtube (search "newark students union") or you can follow them on their facebook page.
As striking as the students' continued devotion the face of pressure and attention and what I can only assume is a huge amount of boredom, I am even more struck by the absolute silence of Anderson and her aides.
They had a visit on Tuesday, and a district spokesperson offered press this:
"Despite our best efforts to work together, they have repeatedly ignored district requests to meet and engage in a constructive dialogue," district spokeswoman Brittany Chord Parmley said in a statement Tuesday. "While we appreciate their passion, this is not the appropriate forum to engage in productive conversation."
That single paragraph has run repeatedly in every story I've read since Tuesday, presumably because that's the last thing anybody from Anderson's office has had to say, and I find it kind of bizarre.
Some activists stage a sit-in in your office and take to the internet to broadcast their message. Why would your most immediate response be to go hide? Say nothing?
What possible message could Anderson hope to convey here? We don't bother to talk to students or residents of Newark? Fewer than a dozen remarkably well-behaved teens are just to scary to go face? No big deal because I never use my office for anything, anyway? Talking to people is hard and I'd rather not? Children scare me? Black folks scare me? I am so out of my depth that I am simply frozen into inaction?
There's no possible way to read Anderson's silence and non-appearance in any positive light. I've seen lots of school administrators follow an approach of "Do nothing and hope it goes away," and it never works. Never! And it has been especially not working in Newark. If you don't listen to people when they speak, they will simply keep raising their voices until they think they have been heard, and the Newark Students Union has been demonstrating that principle in action for over a year! It would make more sense to expect them to be swept away on the backs of singing unicorns than to hold onto the hope that they'll just go away. All the way from western Pennsylvania I can see that-- surely it's evident right there in Newark.
The silent disappearance is, first and foremost, a leadership fail. Stuff happens, by the hands of humans, God, or just accident, and what a leader says is, "I didn't ask for this stuff, but it's mine and I'm responsible for it, and so I have to step up." But Anderson, who seems to have a history of flying from any possible confrontation or problem, is not demonstrating that quality.
Look, even from out here I can see that this is not just a group of plucky kids-- there's clearly some savvy adult expertise lending a helping hand. But that doesn't change Anderson's responsibility or her position. If this is her district, and she's supposed to be the leader, she needs to climb out from whatever foxhole she's burrowed into and step up. She needs to deal with the people that she is responsible for.
If I were an Anderson backer, I can't imagine how I would defend her at this juncture. Has she shown bravery, rigor, courage, leadership, cool judgment, anything like wisdom? No. What she has shown is the failure of trying to translate a corporate leadership model to public service and education. Corporate bosses can adopt a particular style because they only deal with people who have to listen to them because they're paid to. In public service in general and public education in particular, you have to listen to your people, even when you don't want to, because you are not the boss of them. You can't just make them obey. You have to work with them.
Every day that Anderson fails to step up is one more day of proof that she is not fit for her job. If she wants to say otherwise, she needs to step out, step up, open her mouth, and open her ears.
"This morning, Superintendent Anderson met with the group of students who have been demonstrating since Tuesday and listened to their concerns," district spokeswoman Brittany Chord Parmley said in a statement.
"The conversation was productive, and we see this as a promising step towards an ongoing constructive dialogue where both sides are heard and valuable learning time is not compromised."
So skip the following, or just read it with the knowledge Cami is, according to her office, no longer AWOL. It just took her four days. Four days.]
As the week winds down, the handful of students from the Newark Students Union still occupies the offices of Superintendent Cami Anderson, while the rest of us watch and follow along from, well, all across the country. The whole world, or at least a representative sample of it, really is watching.
The support for the students, their resolve and dedication-- these are all impressive. Some of these stories are so very 21st century-- one of my readers wrote to say that she ordered the students a pizza.
I contacted them through their email, newarkstudentsunion@gmail.com and I ordered from Tony's Pizza (973) 821-4723 and had it sent to 2 Cedar Street 8th floor.
They later sent her a picture of the empty box with "thanks" written on it. Meanwhile, you can find numerous updates from them on youtube (search "newark students union") or you can follow them on their facebook page.
As striking as the students' continued devotion the face of pressure and attention and what I can only assume is a huge amount of boredom, I am even more struck by the absolute silence of Anderson and her aides.
They had a visit on Tuesday, and a district spokesperson offered press this:
"Despite our best efforts to work together, they have repeatedly ignored district requests to meet and engage in a constructive dialogue," district spokeswoman Brittany Chord Parmley said in a statement Tuesday. "While we appreciate their passion, this is not the appropriate forum to engage in productive conversation."
That single paragraph has run repeatedly in every story I've read since Tuesday, presumably because that's the last thing anybody from Anderson's office has had to say, and I find it kind of bizarre.
Some activists stage a sit-in in your office and take to the internet to broadcast their message. Why would your most immediate response be to go hide? Say nothing?
What possible message could Anderson hope to convey here? We don't bother to talk to students or residents of Newark? Fewer than a dozen remarkably well-behaved teens are just to scary to go face? No big deal because I never use my office for anything, anyway? Talking to people is hard and I'd rather not? Children scare me? Black folks scare me? I am so out of my depth that I am simply frozen into inaction?
There's no possible way to read Anderson's silence and non-appearance in any positive light. I've seen lots of school administrators follow an approach of "Do nothing and hope it goes away," and it never works. Never! And it has been especially not working in Newark. If you don't listen to people when they speak, they will simply keep raising their voices until they think they have been heard, and the Newark Students Union has been demonstrating that principle in action for over a year! It would make more sense to expect them to be swept away on the backs of singing unicorns than to hold onto the hope that they'll just go away. All the way from western Pennsylvania I can see that-- surely it's evident right there in Newark.
The silent disappearance is, first and foremost, a leadership fail. Stuff happens, by the hands of humans, God, or just accident, and what a leader says is, "I didn't ask for this stuff, but it's mine and I'm responsible for it, and so I have to step up." But Anderson, who seems to have a history of flying from any possible confrontation or problem, is not demonstrating that quality.
Look, even from out here I can see that this is not just a group of plucky kids-- there's clearly some savvy adult expertise lending a helping hand. But that doesn't change Anderson's responsibility or her position. If this is her district, and she's supposed to be the leader, she needs to climb out from whatever foxhole she's burrowed into and step up. She needs to deal with the people that she is responsible for.
If I were an Anderson backer, I can't imagine how I would defend her at this juncture. Has she shown bravery, rigor, courage, leadership, cool judgment, anything like wisdom? No. What she has shown is the failure of trying to translate a corporate leadership model to public service and education. Corporate bosses can adopt a particular style because they only deal with people who have to listen to them because they're paid to. In public service in general and public education in particular, you have to listen to your people, even when you don't want to, because you are not the boss of them. You can't just make them obey. You have to work with them.
Every day that Anderson fails to step up is one more day of proof that she is not fit for her job. If she wants to say otherwise, she needs to step out, step up, open her mouth, and open her ears.
Monday, February 16, 2015
Why Are Suburban Moms Agitated
Laura McKenna is a former poli-sci professor, pretty entertaining blogger and suburban mother of a child with special needs. She is, by her own admission, not an expert on curriculum, but she also did PhD work on education policy and vouchery stuff. She claims to have done her reading up on the subject, but that expertise is not on display in her article last week for the Atlantic, "Suburbia and Its Common Core Conspiracy Theories."
McKenna gets a lot wrong. A lot. But she's in a mainstream magazine, and so we need to pay attention because this is part of the narrative that's Out There. Let's look at the story as McKenna tells it.
Who doesn't love the Core?
Common Core standards are, "of course, a set of broad, universal academic goals in math and English-language arts for public school children of all ages." They're connected to tests which are scaring everyone and giving rise to all sorts of pushback. So far, so good.
McKenna uses the old template for characterizing CCSS opponents-- they're mostly Tea Party crazies. She dismisses the idea that the Core initiative represents federal overreach, and she collects a list of the most indefensible foolishness with which the Core has been-- it will turn kids gay, Muslim, communist and anti-American. So you know we can ignore those folks. CCSS is also opposed by politicians who are afraid that kids in their district will stack up unfavorably against others. She suggests they have reason to worry.
But there are also suburban moms. She happens to be one, and she thinks Arne Duncan may have been onto something when he made his infamous White Suburban Moms comment. Those moms are angry. And they're angry because they don't know what the heck they're talking about. So McKenna is here to address their many and varied misconceptions caused by all those other crazed and/or self-serving Core opponents mentioned previously.
She ticks off the many foolish misconceptions that these ladies post, email, and agitate about, in the process revealing that maybe she's a little behind on her recent reading on the subject. It is an unfortunate fact of life in the debate for public education that there are some cray-cray people opposed to CCSS for some reality-impaired reasons. It would be useful not to lump them in with every other argument against the Core.
Common Core is ruining childhood and eliminating recess. Well, yes. Teachers "drill irrelevant facts into kids' heads in order to game the testing results." Well, no. Test prep is more insidious than that-- teachers now teach a kind of reading and writing that is only useful for test-taking, and we spend time teaching students how to outwit the gotcha questions that new tests come loaded with.
"And since the new exams will be taken on computers, hackers might even reveal the test results to colleges." Are you kidding, Ms. McKenna? Hackers will not be required-- the dream here is a cradle to career pipeline in which a mountain of data is collected for each child, to be lovingly curated and made available (for a price) to government agencies and employers. This is not conspiracy-style reading-between-the-spaces-between-the-lines. Just google cradle to career pipelines and meet all the agencies and groups that are already working on it. Go read about Pearson's plans for Big Data, or watch a Knewton exec explain how the dream is to be able to tell a child what to eat for breakfast on test day.
Nothing to worry about! Just calm down!
While maybe there's some truth in the concerns, the protests have become "irrational, hysterical" (oh, that word). McKenna is concerned that all these fears have led to real action (which is an artful construction-- can you fill in this blank? "_______ fears have led to real actions." McKenna does an careful job throughout the article of calling the moms foolish and wrong without saying it directly).
But these folks are getting worked up for nothing:
I’m not an expert on curriculum, so I can’t tell you whether or not this particular system is way better than other programs. I trust the experts on this one. And, as I also said, the experts came from diverse political groups and from all areas of education.
McKenna gets a lot wrong. A lot. But she's in a mainstream magazine, and so we need to pay attention because this is part of the narrative that's Out There. Let's look at the story as McKenna tells it.
Who doesn't love the Core?
Common Core standards are, "of course, a set of broad, universal academic goals in math and English-language arts for public school children of all ages." They're connected to tests which are scaring everyone and giving rise to all sorts of pushback. So far, so good.
McKenna uses the old template for characterizing CCSS opponents-- they're mostly Tea Party crazies. She dismisses the idea that the Core initiative represents federal overreach, and she collects a list of the most indefensible foolishness with which the Core has been-- it will turn kids gay, Muslim, communist and anti-American. So you know we can ignore those folks. CCSS is also opposed by politicians who are afraid that kids in their district will stack up unfavorably against others. She suggests they have reason to worry.
But there are also suburban moms. She happens to be one, and she thinks Arne Duncan may have been onto something when he made his infamous White Suburban Moms comment. Those moms are angry. And they're angry because they don't know what the heck they're talking about. So McKenna is here to address their many and varied misconceptions caused by all those other crazed and/or self-serving Core opponents mentioned previously.
She ticks off the many foolish misconceptions that these ladies post, email, and agitate about, in the process revealing that maybe she's a little behind on her recent reading on the subject. It is an unfortunate fact of life in the debate for public education that there are some cray-cray people opposed to CCSS for some reality-impaired reasons. It would be useful not to lump them in with every other argument against the Core.
Common Core is ruining childhood and eliminating recess. Well, yes. Teachers "drill irrelevant facts into kids' heads in order to game the testing results." Well, no. Test prep is more insidious than that-- teachers now teach a kind of reading and writing that is only useful for test-taking, and we spend time teaching students how to outwit the gotcha questions that new tests come loaded with.
"And since the new exams will be taken on computers, hackers might even reveal the test results to colleges." Are you kidding, Ms. McKenna? Hackers will not be required-- the dream here is a cradle to career pipeline in which a mountain of data is collected for each child, to be lovingly curated and made available (for a price) to government agencies and employers. This is not conspiracy-style reading-between-the-spaces-between-the-lines. Just google cradle to career pipelines and meet all the agencies and groups that are already working on it. Go read about Pearson's plans for Big Data, or watch a Knewton exec explain how the dream is to be able to tell a child what to eat for breakfast on test day.
Nothing to worry about! Just calm down!
While maybe there's some truth in the concerns, the protests have become "irrational, hysterical" (oh, that word). McKenna is concerned that all these fears have led to real action (which is an artful construction-- can you fill in this blank? "_______ fears have led to real actions." McKenna does an careful job throughout the article of calling the moms foolish and wrong without saying it directly).
But these folks are getting worked up for nothing:
The reality of the Common Core model is much
more boring. America’s schools could be better, no doubt. They could be
more equal. They could be more effective in preparing kids for the new,
global economy and the ever-growing rigors of higher education. But
there is no evidence that one set of standards, that a single
standardized test, will alter the basic school experience of children.
They will probably still have to do book reports on Abraham Lincoln and To Kill a Mockingbird.
They almost certainly will still have time to joke around on the
playground with their buddies. They will be evaluated by teachers’ exams
and rubrics and probably won’t be penalized by the Common Core tests.
Worrying about this new batch of tests is silly. Students already take lots of standardized tests, and they still spend more time playing Super Mario. So why are suburban moms and dads so concerned about them? I can't speak for New Jersey (where McKenna is located) but I'm pretty sure that in PA part of the concern is that the Big Standardized Test will soon become a graduation requirement. And it's a lousy test. So I'm thinking that could be a factor.
So why are the suburbs uproarified?
But her answer, ultimately, is that it's a matter of parental protectiveness plus parental misinformation, stoked up by "click-bait" articles, and she provides some examples without discussing whether or not those titles ("Parents Opting Kids Out of Common Core Face Threats From Schools," or "Common Core Test Fail Kids In New York Again. Here’s How," or "5 Reasons the Common Core Is Ruining Childhood.") lead to articles that include facts. (And as click-bait these seem pretty tame to me-- not a single "and what happens next will astound you" or a Kardashian in the bunch).
McKenna makes a comparison to anti-vaxxer panic, but she skips the critical step in that comparison. Yes, the motivations may be similar-- but what about the facts behind them? That would be the way to make this point, and McKenna doesn't.
McKenna next notes the teacher role in all this, and gets it wrong again. She says teachers unions were initially "very supportive," which is technically correct-- leadership of NEA and AFT threw their support behind the Core (and to date have not yet really unthrown it), and they have taken increasing amounts of grief from actual teachers because of it. She also says that teachers helped shape the goals of Common Core, and that piece of cheese is years old at this point. I am not sure where McKenna found a source that still tries to sell that story.
She indicates that teacher support waned as test results were tied to punishments. Teacher evaluations are now tied to test results per federal mandate. School evaluations have been tied to test results per federal mandate for over a decade, and now those evaluations are being used as justification for closing schools.
How do we calm these mothers down?
Without political and education leaders providing valid, fact-based justifications for the new testing system and a clear, jargon-free explanation of new teaching strategies, suburban parents are easily influenced by others.
Here's part of the problem. No such valid fact-based justifications exist. All that exists is a nation of schools cutting programs and losing funding and scrambling to keep test scores up over all else, for tests that have not been proven to indicate anything at all.
McKenna wants to get simple facts out there, like "the Common Core does not prescribe certain textbooks." But that's not so simple. Depending on your state and district, some text or "program" with Common Core approval will be enforced. It's like Henry Ford's "you can have a Model T in any color you like, as long as it's black." And since there are teaching materials out there available from the exact same company that produced the test, what are the odds that well-off districts will feel compelled to buy them. Your spouse is technically free to sleep with anyone else at all, but it might lead to some serious marital problems. Technically "any textbooks you want" is a choice, just like "any bedmate you want." But practically speaking, it is not a choice at all.
McKenna notes that suburban schools generally do fine on these test thing, and that seems like a point she might have pursued, thereby noting that the best predictor of standardized test results is socio-economic class and thereby questioning whether the test is a valid measure or a biased crapshoot, but no, she seems content with "Bad things like test failures don't happen to us in the suburbs, so let's just simmer down and forget about it." When the test results are published (because, they've all been super secret so far??), suburban moms will see that all is as it has always been, and they'll calm down.
Petrilli offers perspective and monkeys
Mike Petrilli at the Fordham also took a look at this article, and while he gives the "any books you want" point an uncritically supportive pass, he sees something else.
Suburban moms, he says, may contain some of the expressionist parents. These are what we might call the artsy-fartsy types (the illustration is, I kid you not, a pair of hippie monkeys, playing sitar and flute and wearing a headband and tie-dye). Expressionist parents may just be focused on artsy stuff and not academics and test results and so want their children not to be stamped into conformity.
That's okay, says Petrilli. "One size fits most." And within broad parameters, I'd be inclined to agree with him. But we aren't looking at a system that's set up for most kids. We're looking at a system that is supposed to cover all students, every last one (well, except for the wealthy kids that go to un-core-ified private schools). We're looking at a system that doesn't see students who are "different." It sees students who are "deficient" or "just plain wrong" or, in some cases "not going to graduate" and "on the path to fail at life." Until we fix that feature, talking about One Size Fits Most is not a sufficient defense.
But that's the response to suburban moms. Calm down, honey. You're getting all hysterical over nothing. You'll see. Everything will just be like it's always been, and this won't be any big deal. And if that's really the defense of Common Core, then why are we bothering? You can't have it both ways. Either Common Core (and the testing that is irreversibly welded to it) are going to shake things up and rock the educational world with systemic changes that will unearth and root out all sort of issues-- in which case parents are correct to be concerned about how their children may get caught in the destruction-- or it's just business as usual, keep moving, nothing to see here, in which case it's the most expensive nothing we've ever launched. It can't be both.
McKenna closes her blog discussion of this article with these words
I’m not an expert on curriculum, so I can’t tell you whether or not this particular system is way better than other programs. I trust the experts on this one. And, as I also said, the experts came from diverse political groups and from all areas of education.
Well, no. They didn't. The "experts" came from the industry leaders who most stood to profit from a systemic overhaul of education, and they have since been joined by more "experts" who hope to profit from privatizing every aspect of public education.
So perhaps suburban moms are responding to a growing sense that their previous bundle of joy is being viewed and treated as a piece of meat, a commodity to be bought and sold and squeezed for the profit of corporations or the survival of the school. Perhaps suburban moms are sensing that schools no longer devote as much time and attention to protecting the children because too much of the school's energy goes into protecting itself.
McKenna says she's looked at the issue. I suggest she go back and look some more, and not start with the assumption that her fellow moms are just hysterical.
Sunday, January 18, 2015
NJ Charters Play Hardball
A week ago I brought the story of an attempt by the New Jersey Charter School Association to shut down Dr. Julia Sass Rubin (a Rutgers professor) and Mark Weber (grad student and prominent blogger Jersey Jazzman). Rubin and Weber have done research which has produced an assortment of facts which the NJCSA find inconvenient. Rather than try to dispute the facts or their interpretation, NJCSA instead chose to gin up some state ethics charges against Rubin, suppress the report, and force her to keep her qualifications a secret every time she talked about the research.
Now from New Jersey blogger Marie Corfield comes news that the charter association hired a PR specialist, a Darth Vader who has experience in smearing opponents. Michael Turner actually has a history of working for folks in the toxic waste business, so the NJ Charter School Association is really asking for extra mockery here. Exactly who made the connection. Did someone in the NJCSA officed say, "A toxic waste expert would be the perfect guy to make the case for charter schools." Or does somebody working for NJCSA think of Turner because they had previously worked with him back when they were in the toxic sludge business themselves.
Either way, making a direct connection between standing up for charter schools and defending polluters seems like a bad first PR step.
Turner has been part of some great NJ stories. When the Diamond Shamrock Chemical Company was found guilty of two decades of deliberately, intentionally, and illegally polluting the Passaic River, it was Michael Turner who, twelve years later, was leading the PR battle to make sure they never had to do a thing about it.
In 2006, Alexander Lane at the Star-Ledger wrote a profile of Turner (despite the fact that Turner's boss twice tried to talk the Star-Ledger out of writing it). It's not easily locatable on line-- if you've got a Yahoo account, you can get to a copy of it here. The article (which starts with the now oft-quoted characterization of Turner as Darth Vader) is pretty thorough. I'm just going to hit some highlights.
After graduating from Roger Williams University in 1992 with a poli sci/history degree, Turner went to work in political campaigns before landing at MWW. He rose to become the head of their brownfield redevelopment business (a brownfield is a contaminated site; redevelopers like them for being cheap to acquire, but work to keep their cleanup costs down while making sure the public feels secure). Brownfield developments sites in NJ include a golf course and a mall. Turner is quoted in the story saying that he truly believes in his clients, and will not work for clients in whose goals he does not believe. Lane notes that on a board from earlier brainstorming are the words "No fear... destroy opposition."
Jeff Tittel, state head of the Sierra Club, characterized Turner as "very pushy, very aggressive and very arrogant." Joe Morris of the Interfaith Community Organization, another Turner opponent, "said it's difficult to know how effective Turner's advocacy is, but it's certainly aggressive." Another Turner foe ultimately cut a deal, with a company handing over some land to the Meadowlands Conservative Trust in exchange for an endorsement of a development elsewhere.
MWW is also in the new in NJ because they were the creators of the "Stronger than the Storm" ad campaign, which has become part of the federal audit of Christie's NJ because it looks (and without any great deal of squinting) as if Hurricane Sandy relief money bought Christie a nice ad campaign promoting the governor in an election year.
MWW itself is a full-sized operation. They have "full-service" offices in LA, Seattle, DC, and New York, and an impressive list of clients including Continental Airlines, Bethlehem Steel, Kaiser Aluminum, and Verizon/New Jersey. Many websites will tell you that, "the MWW Group is among the top 20 public affairs and strategic communications agencies in the U.S. and is known for its results-driven approach to public relations."
So that's what the New Jersey Charter Schools Association hired to take care of a college professor and a school teacher. My first thought is that, wow, they must have a pile of money if they can just up and hire an outfit like MWW. My second thought is that Rubin and Weber must really scare the crap out of them.
I mean, think of how much cheaper and easier it would have been to just pop up saying, "We believe that Rubin and Weber have their facts wrong, and here are the numbers to prove it" or "We believe their reasoning is incorrect and here's where they made a mistake" or even, "Here's a picture of a cat riding a unicycle; your argument is invalid." I mean, if NJ charters were magically successful, there would be oodles of just-plain-factual material to mount a counter-argument instead of having to throw a bunch of money at a high-powered shark-attack PR firm. So much for magical charter school success.
Now from New Jersey blogger Marie Corfield comes news that the charter association hired a PR specialist, a Darth Vader who has experience in smearing opponents. Michael Turner actually has a history of working for folks in the toxic waste business, so the NJ Charter School Association is really asking for extra mockery here. Exactly who made the connection. Did someone in the NJCSA officed say, "A toxic waste expert would be the perfect guy to make the case for charter schools." Or does somebody working for NJCSA think of Turner because they had previously worked with him back when they were in the toxic sludge business themselves.
Either way, making a direct connection between standing up for charter schools and defending polluters seems like a bad first PR step.
Turner has been part of some great NJ stories. When the Diamond Shamrock Chemical Company was found guilty of two decades of deliberately, intentionally, and illegally polluting the Passaic River, it was Michael Turner who, twelve years later, was leading the PR battle to make sure they never had to do a thing about it.
In 2006, Alexander Lane at the Star-Ledger wrote a profile of Turner (despite the fact that Turner's boss twice tried to talk the Star-Ledger out of writing it). It's not easily locatable on line-- if you've got a Yahoo account, you can get to a copy of it here. The article (which starts with the now oft-quoted characterization of Turner as Darth Vader) is pretty thorough. I'm just going to hit some highlights.
After graduating from Roger Williams University in 1992 with a poli sci/history degree, Turner went to work in political campaigns before landing at MWW. He rose to become the head of their brownfield redevelopment business (a brownfield is a contaminated site; redevelopers like them for being cheap to acquire, but work to keep their cleanup costs down while making sure the public feels secure). Brownfield developments sites in NJ include a golf course and a mall. Turner is quoted in the story saying that he truly believes in his clients, and will not work for clients in whose goals he does not believe. Lane notes that on a board from earlier brainstorming are the words "No fear... destroy opposition."
Jeff Tittel, state head of the Sierra Club, characterized Turner as "very pushy, very aggressive and very arrogant." Joe Morris of the Interfaith Community Organization, another Turner opponent, "said it's difficult to know how effective Turner's advocacy is, but it's certainly aggressive." Another Turner foe ultimately cut a deal, with a company handing over some land to the Meadowlands Conservative Trust in exchange for an endorsement of a development elsewhere.
MWW is also in the new in NJ because they were the creators of the "Stronger than the Storm" ad campaign, which has become part of the federal audit of Christie's NJ because it looks (and without any great deal of squinting) as if Hurricane Sandy relief money bought Christie a nice ad campaign promoting the governor in an election year.
MWW itself is a full-sized operation. They have "full-service" offices in LA, Seattle, DC, and New York, and an impressive list of clients including Continental Airlines, Bethlehem Steel, Kaiser Aluminum, and Verizon/New Jersey. Many websites will tell you that, "the MWW Group is among the top 20 public affairs and strategic communications agencies in the U.S. and is known for its results-driven approach to public relations."
So that's what the New Jersey Charter Schools Association hired to take care of a college professor and a school teacher. My first thought is that, wow, they must have a pile of money if they can just up and hire an outfit like MWW. My second thought is that Rubin and Weber must really scare the crap out of them.
I mean, think of how much cheaper and easier it would have been to just pop up saying, "We believe that Rubin and Weber have their facts wrong, and here are the numbers to prove it" or "We believe their reasoning is incorrect and here's where they made a mistake" or even, "Here's a picture of a cat riding a unicycle; your argument is invalid." I mean, if NJ charters were magically successful, there would be oodles of just-plain-factual material to mount a counter-argument instead of having to throw a bunch of money at a high-powered shark-attack PR firm. So much for magical charter school success.
Saturday, January 10, 2015
Bullying in New Jersey
I've been staring into the reformy abyss for over a year, and that involves such a general ongoing background level of outrage that it takes something special to really tweak the rage-o-meter. But this week, it happened, as reported by Adam Clark at nj.com:
Contending that a Rutgers professor and public schools advocate has used her position, title and state university resources to wage a personally driven campaign against them, a group representing the state’s charter schools has filed an ethics complaint against the Save Our Schools NJ co-founder.
Yes, confronted by clear scientific data that conflicted with their position, the New Jersey Charter Schools Association did the only thing that reasonable, ethical, intelligent human beings can do in that situation-- they went after the bearer of bad tidings with a switchblade and brass knuckles. Not since Tonya Harding tried to have Nancy Kerrigan kneecapped have we seen such a reasoned and rational approach to conflicting views.
Dr. Julia Sass Rubin is the target of this baldfaced attempt at intimidation and character assassination, and she earned that privilege for her work with Mark Weber (aka Jersey Jazzman) in breaking down the demographics and achievement numbers for New Jersey charters.
The findings are, to students of charter schools, completely unsurprising. NJ charter success rests largely on enrolling fewer very poor students, fewer non-English speaking students, and fewer students with special needs. But putting that out there and backing it up with actual facts was really crimping NJCSA's style (and marketing). On top of that, Dr. Rubin has been active with Save Our Schools New Jersey, which has also upset the sad, delicate sensibilities of NJCSA (because, you know, no college professor in the history of ever has ever become involved in advocacy groups related to their field of expertise).
So, something had to be done.
You might think that "something" could include any one of the following:
* responding to Rubin's facts and analyses with facts and analyses
* sitting down with Rubin to discuss the implications and analyses of her work
* mounting a spirited response to her work, including using the data to tweak and improve the NJCSA business model
But no. We skipped right past that to, "Somebody has to shut that woman up." And so NJCSA has tried to attack Rubin professionally by bringing ethics charges against her. Her alleged unethical behavior is, as near as I can tell:
1) Saying things that the NJCSA doesn't like
2) Telling people what her job is when she speaks.
The complaint seriously seeks the remedy of having Rubin stop identifying herself as a Rutgers professor when she says these things that make the NJ Charter operators look like lying liars who lie. From philly.com coverage:
I can understand their confusion to a point. It is, of course, standard operating procedure in the reformster world to NOT identify who you actually work for, get money from, or otherwise are affiliated with. It's SOP to put out a slick "report" without actually explaining why anyone should believe you know what you're talking about, but Rubin and Weber go ahead and list their actual credentials. Apparently NJCSA's argument is that it's unethical to let people know why your work is credible.
The irony here is that Rubin and Weber's work is simply collecting and crunching numbers, and so is completely checkable. It wouldn't really member if they were a couple of garbage collectors-- their work would still stand up. But NJCSA wants to make sure that Rubin never again invokes the magic title of Rutgers professor, and they don't want SOSNJ to have the credibility of being connected to an actual certified professional with a university job. Oh, and they also want Rubin to stop "embarrassing" Rutgers.
This is bullying, and not even very impressive bullying, at that.
“We cannot sit back and allow our accomplishments, our achievements, to be questioned in the way that they have been questioned by Dr. Sass Rubin,” said Michael Turner, spokesperson for the New Jersey Charter Schools Association.
What way is that, exactly, Mr. Turner? If you think her facts are wrong, present your facts. If you think her analyses is wrong, present your analyses. If you think her reasoning is wrong, explain why.
Exactly. The NJCSA is behaving like a punk, and like a weak punk at that who lacks the tools or the skills to come at Rubin and Weber directly. And they have more work to do, because as Weber points out on his own blog, the conclusions have already been acknowledged as the truth but Cami Anderson and Paymon Rouhanifard, so NJCSA better start ginning up a full scale job-threatening division for the entire state.
Rubin and Weber have been remarkably good sports. In the face of attack, Weber has written things like this:
If these fine, reformy fellows want to have a serious debate about charter school proliferation, that's cool with me. I'm not anti-charter; as I've said many times before, I started my K-12 teaching career in a charter school. There are some very good people working in charters, and many of these schools serve their students well. Good for them.
And in an op-ed response, Rubin wrapped up with this:
We need to bring all the stakeholders together to discuss these and other solutions instead of wasting time on useless personal attacks.
So, given the opportunity to let loose a "neener neener" or "so's your old man" on attackers who had shown no sign of being interested in actual dialogue, both Weber and Rubin kept their eyes on the real point-- the question of how best to serve the educational needs of students in New Jersey-- and acted like grown-ups.. If NJCSA has an ounce of class, they will put down their brass knuckles, put on their big girls pants, and deal with reality honestly and productively instead of trying to bully Rubin into silence.
Contending that a Rutgers professor and public schools advocate has used her position, title and state university resources to wage a personally driven campaign against them, a group representing the state’s charter schools has filed an ethics complaint against the Save Our Schools NJ co-founder.
Yes, confronted by clear scientific data that conflicted with their position, the New Jersey Charter Schools Association did the only thing that reasonable, ethical, intelligent human beings can do in that situation-- they went after the bearer of bad tidings with a switchblade and brass knuckles. Not since Tonya Harding tried to have Nancy Kerrigan kneecapped have we seen such a reasoned and rational approach to conflicting views.
Dr. Julia Sass Rubin is the target of this baldfaced attempt at intimidation and character assassination, and she earned that privilege for her work with Mark Weber (aka Jersey Jazzman) in breaking down the demographics and achievement numbers for New Jersey charters.
The findings are, to students of charter schools, completely unsurprising. NJ charter success rests largely on enrolling fewer very poor students, fewer non-English speaking students, and fewer students with special needs. But putting that out there and backing it up with actual facts was really crimping NJCSA's style (and marketing). On top of that, Dr. Rubin has been active with Save Our Schools New Jersey, which has also upset the sad, delicate sensibilities of NJCSA (because, you know, no college professor in the history of ever has ever become involved in advocacy groups related to their field of expertise).
So, something had to be done.
You might think that "something" could include any one of the following:
* responding to Rubin's facts and analyses with facts and analyses
* sitting down with Rubin to discuss the implications and analyses of her work
* mounting a spirited response to her work, including using the data to tweak and improve the NJCSA business model
But no. We skipped right past that to, "Somebody has to shut that woman up." And so NJCSA has tried to attack Rubin professionally by bringing ethics charges against her. Her alleged unethical behavior is, as near as I can tell:
1) Saying things that the NJCSA doesn't like
2) Telling people what her job is when she speaks.
The complaint seriously seeks the remedy of having Rubin stop identifying herself as a Rutgers professor when she says these things that make the NJ Charter operators look like lying liars who lie. From philly.com coverage:
"The paper's conclusion and
recommendations are identical to - and clearly intended to provide the
appearance of legitimate academic support for - the lobbying positions
that Dr. Rubin and SOSNJ have zealously promoted for years," the Charter
Schools Association wrote in its complaint.
So, as a citizen, she's not allowed to believe what she believes as an academic? When her research as an academic leads her to certain conclusions, she must never talk about them outside of school? Or when she's speaking as a citizen, she is not allowed to note that she has professional training and skills that qualify her to make certain conclusions?
I can understand their confusion to a point. It is, of course, standard operating procedure in the reformster world to NOT identify who you actually work for, get money from, or otherwise are affiliated with. It's SOP to put out a slick "report" without actually explaining why anyone should believe you know what you're talking about, but Rubin and Weber go ahead and list their actual credentials. Apparently NJCSA's argument is that it's unethical to let people know why your work is credible.
The irony here is that Rubin and Weber's work is simply collecting and crunching numbers, and so is completely checkable. It wouldn't really member if they were a couple of garbage collectors-- their work would still stand up. But NJCSA wants to make sure that Rubin never again invokes the magic title of Rutgers professor, and they don't want SOSNJ to have the credibility of being connected to an actual certified professional with a university job. Oh, and they also want Rubin to stop "embarrassing" Rutgers.
This is bullying, and not even very impressive bullying, at that.
“We cannot sit back and allow our accomplishments, our achievements, to be questioned in the way that they have been questioned by Dr. Sass Rubin,” said Michael Turner, spokesperson for the New Jersey Charter Schools Association.
What way is that, exactly, Mr. Turner? If you think her facts are wrong, present your facts. If you think her analyses is wrong, present your analyses. If you think her reasoning is wrong, explain why.
"If you can silence academics that easily,
then basically you have no freedom of speech for a lot of people who
are often the only ones who can speak up," Rubin said. "And that's the
whole idea of an academic institution, is, you have the ability to
speak. No one assumes you're speaking for the university."
Exactly. The NJCSA is behaving like a punk, and like a weak punk at that who lacks the tools or the skills to come at Rubin and Weber directly. And they have more work to do, because as Weber points out on his own blog, the conclusions have already been acknowledged as the truth but Cami Anderson and Paymon Rouhanifard, so NJCSA better start ginning up a full scale job-threatening division for the entire state.
Rubin and Weber have been remarkably good sports. In the face of attack, Weber has written things like this:
If these fine, reformy fellows want to have a serious debate about charter school proliferation, that's cool with me. I'm not anti-charter; as I've said many times before, I started my K-12 teaching career in a charter school. There are some very good people working in charters, and many of these schools serve their students well. Good for them.
And in an op-ed response, Rubin wrapped up with this:
We need to bring all the stakeholders together to discuss these and other solutions instead of wasting time on useless personal attacks.
So, given the opportunity to let loose a "neener neener" or "so's your old man" on attackers who had shown no sign of being interested in actual dialogue, both Weber and Rubin kept their eyes on the real point-- the question of how best to serve the educational needs of students in New Jersey-- and acted like grown-ups.. If NJCSA has an ounce of class, they will put down their brass knuckles, put on their big girls pants, and deal with reality honestly and productively instead of trying to bully Rubin into silence.
Sunday, November 16, 2014
100% Charter Fail
Writer-researcher Mark Weber published a piece about charters on NJSpotlight this week that deals with charter schools in New Jersey, but which has implications for the charter movement all across the US.
Weber is perhaps better known in the edubloggoverse as Jersey Jazzman, and his research prowess (coupled with that of Julia Sass Rubin of Ruthers) is highly respected. This piece brings together much work that he's published in the past; a trip through the pages of his blog will reveal considerable more detail for those who want it.
The bottom line is that New Jersey charters do not serve the same population as the districts that house them. Specifically, they serve a smaller percentage of poor students and students with extra learning challenges.
As Weber reports, even Cami Anderson has admitted this in public. And the numbers, readily available from public sources, fully support this conclusion. There really are no grounds on which to dispute it. And yet many charteristas continue to do so.
Why? The most obvious reason would be that the numbers explain away what little success some charters can claim. It raises the bar of expectations of charters-- if you've creamed all the better students, why aren't you doing any better than you are?
But more importantly, it reveals the limits of the charter business model.
New Jersey can never be a 100% charter state system. At least not with the current charter operating system. Let's sort students into two groups-- let's call students who come from better economic backgrounds and have no special needs Low Cost Students, and students from lower economic backgrounds or with special needs will be called High Cost Students. If the state wide ratio of LCS to HCS is 3:1, but the ratio inside charters is 12:1, we cannot get all the students in New Jersey into a charter school. Somewhere we're going to have a big old pile of leftover High Cost Students.
In the meantime, it would also be nice to have Condoleeza Rice visit NJ and see how charters provide the machinery for de facto segregation. Charter opponents are racist, my ass.
Plenty of folks have always assumed that this was the end game: a private system for the best and the-- well, if not brightest, at least the least poor and problematic-- and an underfunded remnant of the public system to warehouse the students that the charter system didn't want.
But those folks may have underestimated the greed, ambition and delusions of some charter backers. "Why stop at the icing," operators say, "when we can have the whole cake?" And chartercrats like Arne Duncan, with dreams of scaleability dancing in their sugarplum heads, may really think that full-scale charter systems can work because A) they don't understand that most charter "success" is illusory and B) they don't know why.
It's telling that while chartercrats are cheering on complete charter conversions for cities from York, PA to Memphis, TN, no charter chains have (as far as I know) expressed a desire to have a whole city to themselves. The preferred model is an urban broker like Tennessee's ASD or the bureaucratic clusterfarfegnugen that is Philadelphia schools-- charter operators can jostle for the juiciest slice of the steak and try to leave the gristle for some other poor sucker.
It's not even that charters are worried about how successful they will look. The business model is still evolving, and charters are learning how to spin and market almost anything that comes out in their numbers. They do need good numbers, and they have gotten better at getting them. But the numbers that they are most attentive to are the ones on the bottom line, and that's why no charter operators in their right minds would want a 100% charter system that they had to be responsible for.
I sorted students into High Cost and Low Cost because that's how charter operators see them. It's not that it's easier to get good numbers out of a smart, rich kid. It's that it's cheaper. Students with special needs, students from poor backgrounds, students who have behavioral issues-- these students cost more money. And never forget-- every dollar that a charter operator has to spend on s student is a dollar the charter operator doesn't get to put in his pocket.
Here's one more reason that free market economics do not belong in public education-- in the free market, all customers are NOT created equal. All customers are NOT equally desirable to businesses. And the free market deals with these undesirable customers very simply-- it doesn't serve them. (This is why, for instance, when you hire FEDex or UPS to deliver a package to your uncle on some back road in Bumfargel, PA, FEDex and UPS turn around and hire the United States Postal Service to deliver it for them.) In a charter system, those High Cost Students become human hot potatoes.
"Well, we'll just require charters to serve a certain segment of the population in our 100% charter system," you say. And I will remind you of one other critical difference between charters and true public schools. True traditional public schools do not say, "It's too hard to turn a profit in this business environment, so we are just going to close our doors." Traditional public schools are in it for the long haul. Charter operators are in it as long as it makes business sense to be in it. If they don't like the deal you're offering them, they don't have to stay.
A effective total charter system is not going to happen. If you're not convinced by the ongoing slow-motion disaster in New Orleans, just look at the number from New Jersey. It's unsustainable and unscaleable.
Weber is perhaps better known in the edubloggoverse as Jersey Jazzman, and his research prowess (coupled with that of Julia Sass Rubin of Ruthers) is highly respected. This piece brings together much work that he's published in the past; a trip through the pages of his blog will reveal considerable more detail for those who want it.
The bottom line is that New Jersey charters do not serve the same population as the districts that house them. Specifically, they serve a smaller percentage of poor students and students with extra learning challenges.
As Weber reports, even Cami Anderson has admitted this in public. And the numbers, readily available from public sources, fully support this conclusion. There really are no grounds on which to dispute it. And yet many charteristas continue to do so.
Why? The most obvious reason would be that the numbers explain away what little success some charters can claim. It raises the bar of expectations of charters-- if you've creamed all the better students, why aren't you doing any better than you are?
But more importantly, it reveals the limits of the charter business model.
New Jersey can never be a 100% charter state system. At least not with the current charter operating system. Let's sort students into two groups-- let's call students who come from better economic backgrounds and have no special needs Low Cost Students, and students from lower economic backgrounds or with special needs will be called High Cost Students. If the state wide ratio of LCS to HCS is 3:1, but the ratio inside charters is 12:1, we cannot get all the students in New Jersey into a charter school. Somewhere we're going to have a big old pile of leftover High Cost Students.
In the meantime, it would also be nice to have Condoleeza Rice visit NJ and see how charters provide the machinery for de facto segregation. Charter opponents are racist, my ass.
Plenty of folks have always assumed that this was the end game: a private system for the best and the-- well, if not brightest, at least the least poor and problematic-- and an underfunded remnant of the public system to warehouse the students that the charter system didn't want.
But those folks may have underestimated the greed, ambition and delusions of some charter backers. "Why stop at the icing," operators say, "when we can have the whole cake?" And chartercrats like Arne Duncan, with dreams of scaleability dancing in their sugarplum heads, may really think that full-scale charter systems can work because A) they don't understand that most charter "success" is illusory and B) they don't know why.
It's telling that while chartercrats are cheering on complete charter conversions for cities from York, PA to Memphis, TN, no charter chains have (as far as I know) expressed a desire to have a whole city to themselves. The preferred model is an urban broker like Tennessee's ASD or the bureaucratic clusterfarfegnugen that is Philadelphia schools-- charter operators can jostle for the juiciest slice of the steak and try to leave the gristle for some other poor sucker.
It's not even that charters are worried about how successful they will look. The business model is still evolving, and charters are learning how to spin and market almost anything that comes out in their numbers. They do need good numbers, and they have gotten better at getting them. But the numbers that they are most attentive to are the ones on the bottom line, and that's why no charter operators in their right minds would want a 100% charter system that they had to be responsible for.
I sorted students into High Cost and Low Cost because that's how charter operators see them. It's not that it's easier to get good numbers out of a smart, rich kid. It's that it's cheaper. Students with special needs, students from poor backgrounds, students who have behavioral issues-- these students cost more money. And never forget-- every dollar that a charter operator has to spend on s student is a dollar the charter operator doesn't get to put in his pocket.
Here's one more reason that free market economics do not belong in public education-- in the free market, all customers are NOT created equal. All customers are NOT equally desirable to businesses. And the free market deals with these undesirable customers very simply-- it doesn't serve them. (This is why, for instance, when you hire FEDex or UPS to deliver a package to your uncle on some back road in Bumfargel, PA, FEDex and UPS turn around and hire the United States Postal Service to deliver it for them.) In a charter system, those High Cost Students become human hot potatoes.
"Well, we'll just require charters to serve a certain segment of the population in our 100% charter system," you say. And I will remind you of one other critical difference between charters and true public schools. True traditional public schools do not say, "It's too hard to turn a profit in this business environment, so we are just going to close our doors." Traditional public schools are in it for the long haul. Charter operators are in it as long as it makes business sense to be in it. If they don't like the deal you're offering them, they don't have to stay.
A effective total charter system is not going to happen. If you're not convinced by the ongoing slow-motion disaster in New Orleans, just look at the number from New Jersey. It's unsustainable and unscaleable.
Thursday, October 30, 2014
PARCC Is Magical
Today David Hespe, the acting education commissioner in New Jersey, sent out a letter to Chief School Administrators, Charter School Lead Persons, School Principals, and Test Coordinators.
The re: is "Student Participation in the Statewide Assessment Program." Specifically, it's "why there ought to be some, and how you handle uppity folks who want to avoid it."
In the two page letter, the first page and a half are taken up with a history lesson and a legal brief. Basically, "some laws have been passed, starting with No Child Left Behind, and we think they mean that students have to take the PARCC." (If you want to see the faux legal argument dismantled, check out Sarah Blaine's piece here.)
But then Hespe, correctly suspecting that this might not be sufficient for dealing with recalcitrant parental units, offers this magical paragraph:
In speaking with parents and students, it is perhaps most important to outline the positive reasons that individual students should participate in the PARCC examinations. Throughout a student’s educational career, the PARCC assessments will provide parents with important information about their child’s progress toward meeting the goal of being college or career ready. The PARCC assessments will, for the first time, provide detailed diagnostic information about each individual student’s performance that educators, parents and students can utilize to enhance foundational knowledge and student achievement. PARCC assessments will include item analysis which will clarify a student’s level of knowledge and understanding of a particular subject or area of a subject. The data derived from the assessment will be utilized by teachers and administrators to pinpoint areas of difficulty and customize instruction accordingly. Such data can be accessed and utilized as a student progresses to successive school levels.
The Partnership for Assessment of Readiness for College and Careers (forgot that's what PARCC stands for, didn't you) is a magical magical test. It can tell with absolute precision, how prepared your student is for college or career because, magic. And who wouldn't want to know more about the powerful juju contained in the PARCC test.
So if Mr. Hespe and any of his friends come to explain how crucial PARCC testing is for your child's future, you might try asking some questions.
* Exactly what is the correspondence between PARCC results and college readiness. Given the precise data, can you tell me what score my eight year old needs to get on the test to be guaranteed at least a 3.75 GPA at college?
* Does it matter which college he attends, or will test results guarantee he is ready for all colleges?
* Can you show me the research and data that led you to conclude that Test Result A = College Result X? How exactly do you know that meeting the state's politically chosen cut score means that my child is prepared to be a college success?
* Since the PARCC tests math and language, will it still tell me if my child is ready to be a history or music major? How about geology or women's studies?
* My daughter plans to be a stay-at-home mom. Can she skip the test? Since that's her chosen career, is there a portion of the PARCC that tests her lady parts and their ability to make babies?
* Which section of the PARCC tests a student's readiness to start a career as a welder? Is it the same part that tests readiness to become a ski instructor, pro football player, or dental assistant?
* I see that the PARCC will be used to "customize instruction." Does that mean you're giving the test tomorrow (because it'a almost November already)? How soon will the teacher get the detailed customizing information-- one week? Ten days? How will the PARCC results help my child's choir director and phys ed teacher customize instruction?
* Is it possible that the PARCC will soon be able to tell me if my eight year old is on track for a happy marriage and nice hair?
* Why do you suppose you keep using the word "utilize" when "using" is a perfectly good plain English substitute?
* To quote the immortal Will Smith in Independence Day, "You really think you can do all that bullshit you just said?"
The PARCC may look like just one more poorly-constructed standardized math and language test, but it is apparently super-duper magical, with the ability to measure every aspect of a child's education and tell whether the child is ready for college and career, regardless of which college, which major, which career, and which child we are talking about. By looking at your eight year old's standardized math and language test, we can tell whether she's on track to be a philosophy major at Harvard or an airline pilot! It's absolutely magical!
Never has a single standardized test claimed so much magical power with so little actual data to back up its assertions. Mr. Hespe would be further ahead to skip his fancy final paragraph and just tell his people to look parents in the eye and say, "Because the state says so." It's not any more educationally convincing than the magical CACR bullshit, but at least it would be honest.
The re: is "Student Participation in the Statewide Assessment Program." Specifically, it's "why there ought to be some, and how you handle uppity folks who want to avoid it."
In the two page letter, the first page and a half are taken up with a history lesson and a legal brief. Basically, "some laws have been passed, starting with No Child Left Behind, and we think they mean that students have to take the PARCC." (If you want to see the faux legal argument dismantled, check out Sarah Blaine's piece here.)
But then Hespe, correctly suspecting that this might not be sufficient for dealing with recalcitrant parental units, offers this magical paragraph:
In speaking with parents and students, it is perhaps most important to outline the positive reasons that individual students should participate in the PARCC examinations. Throughout a student’s educational career, the PARCC assessments will provide parents with important information about their child’s progress toward meeting the goal of being college or career ready. The PARCC assessments will, for the first time, provide detailed diagnostic information about each individual student’s performance that educators, parents and students can utilize to enhance foundational knowledge and student achievement. PARCC assessments will include item analysis which will clarify a student’s level of knowledge and understanding of a particular subject or area of a subject. The data derived from the assessment will be utilized by teachers and administrators to pinpoint areas of difficulty and customize instruction accordingly. Such data can be accessed and utilized as a student progresses to successive school levels.
The Partnership for Assessment of Readiness for College and Careers (forgot that's what PARCC stands for, didn't you) is a magical magical test. It can tell with absolute precision, how prepared your student is for college or career because, magic. And who wouldn't want to know more about the powerful juju contained in the PARCC test.
So if Mr. Hespe and any of his friends come to explain how crucial PARCC testing is for your child's future, you might try asking some questions.
* Exactly what is the correspondence between PARCC results and college readiness. Given the precise data, can you tell me what score my eight year old needs to get on the test to be guaranteed at least a 3.75 GPA at college?
* Does it matter which college he attends, or will test results guarantee he is ready for all colleges?
* Can you show me the research and data that led you to conclude that Test Result A = College Result X? How exactly do you know that meeting the state's politically chosen cut score means that my child is prepared to be a college success?
* Since the PARCC tests math and language, will it still tell me if my child is ready to be a history or music major? How about geology or women's studies?
* My daughter plans to be a stay-at-home mom. Can she skip the test? Since that's her chosen career, is there a portion of the PARCC that tests her lady parts and their ability to make babies?
* Which section of the PARCC tests a student's readiness to start a career as a welder? Is it the same part that tests readiness to become a ski instructor, pro football player, or dental assistant?
* I see that the PARCC will be used to "customize instruction." Does that mean you're giving the test tomorrow (because it'a almost November already)? How soon will the teacher get the detailed customizing information-- one week? Ten days? How will the PARCC results help my child's choir director and phys ed teacher customize instruction?
* Is it possible that the PARCC will soon be able to tell me if my eight year old is on track for a happy marriage and nice hair?
* Why do you suppose you keep using the word "utilize" when "using" is a perfectly good plain English substitute?
* To quote the immortal Will Smith in Independence Day, "You really think you can do all that bullshit you just said?"
The PARCC may look like just one more poorly-constructed standardized math and language test, but it is apparently super-duper magical, with the ability to measure every aspect of a child's education and tell whether the child is ready for college and career, regardless of which college, which major, which career, and which child we are talking about. By looking at your eight year old's standardized math and language test, we can tell whether she's on track to be a philosophy major at Harvard or an airline pilot! It's absolutely magical!
Never has a single standardized test claimed so much magical power with so little actual data to back up its assertions. Mr. Hespe would be further ahead to skip his fancy final paragraph and just tell his people to look parents in the eye and say, "Because the state says so." It's not any more educationally convincing than the magical CACR bullshit, but at least it would be honest.
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