Schools, Transparency, and the Free Market

Scoop of the Week award goes to Stephen Dyer, who reported on his blog the surprising words of CREDO charter fan Margaret Raymond, who was speaking in Cleveland when she said

I actually am kind of a pro-market kinda girl. But it doesn’t seem to work in a choice environment for education. I’ve studied competitive markets for much of my career. That’s my academic focus for my work. And (education) is the only industry/sector where the market mechanism just doesn’t work. I think it’s not helpful to expect parents to be the agents of quality assurance throughout the state. I think there are other supports that are needed… The policy environment really needs to focus on creating much more information and transparency about performance than we’ve had for the 20 years of the charter school movement. We need to have a greater degree of oversight of charter schools. But I also think we have to have some oversight of the overseers.

This is not surprising in a "Gee I never thought of that" way. It's surprising in a "consider the source" way, coming from someone who works with a raftload of people who believe in the Invisible Hand and its magic powers.

Now, I disagree with her about education being the only sector where market mechanism doesn't work-- health care comes rapidly to mind followed by the food industry and by the military-industrial complex and by, well, almost everything. The free-ish market in this country is heavily bound up in regulation and government control, and much of that is not exerted on behalf of citizens, but on behalf of corporations for whom government regulation is just one of the avenues for using giant piles of money to tilt the scales. From Vanderbilt to Carnegie to Gates, rich folks just love the free market until they're winning, at which point they aren't so keen on the "free" part.

But you can get her point, particularly in follow-up comments that she sent to Valerie Strauss at the Washington Post.

In other industries, real markets are able to develop and function because suppliers and consumers get to meet each other in an unfettered set of offers and demands for goods or services.  There are no intermediary agents who guard access to supply or who aggregate demand and thus sway the free exchange of supply and demand.  Part of that free exchange relies on complete transparency about the attributes of the goods on offer and their prices, and the transactions are “known” by the participants in an open and complete way.

Again, I think she overestimates how many real markets work like this, but her point is well taken. To have a free market, you have to have transparency about all aspects of the transaction.

You also have to have some agreed-upon vocabulary. If I'm trying to sell you a "luxury" automobile or "good" maple syrup, we both have a pretty good idea of what I mean. But if I'm trying to sell a "good" school, nobody is sure what the heck I mean. The reformsters have tried to clear this up by imposing a definition of "good" on schools and teachers, but that definition is "high scores on a couple of standardized math and English tests" and nobody really believes that it's correct.

Some markets have taken years, decades to create that shared vocabulary. For instance, most of the market agrees that "good" maple syrup is "rich and thick."  Except that if you grew up around actual maple syrup, you know that it's thinner and slicker than water and cuts into your food like the sweetest battery acid ever imagined. Marketers had to train the public to associate rich and thick with maple syrup, just as marketers taught us that breakfast is the most important meal of the day.

The American free market doesn't run much on transparency. For some products, like cigarettes and beer, the market depends on a definite lack of transparency. We Americans are hustlers. We like smoke and mirrors. We expect to hear and see bullshit, and we deal in a little bit of it ourselves from time to time. I'll repeat myself here-- the free market does not foster excellent products; the free market fosters excellent marketing.

When it comes to education, the general public does not agree on what they want, how to get it, or how to recognize it when they see it. Add that education is a product that every citizen is required by law to purchase, putting educators in the unique market position of having to market a product to people who do not want that product. And that education is a product that everybody thinks they are qualified and capable of producing. Open the market, as the Obama administration and various state governments, and you have a market that is absolutely ripe for charlatans, humbugs, and well-meaning incompetents.

Finally, layer on our love of invisible regulation. We hate regulation, but we take for granted that nothing we buy in a store could actually hurt us. We hate regulation, but we never check our groceries for possible poisons, and we assume that any electrical appliance we bring into our home will not electrocute us. We like to believe that our world is just naturally safe in some magical unregulated way.

In that same way, people in the education marketplace have just assumed that some place that calls itself a school must automatically have certain programs in place, must address certain student concerns, must have some actual commitment to staying open. As many many many folks in Ohio can now tell you, making assumptions about what a charter is going to do (or not do) turns out to be a huge mistake.

I think Raymond's love of the free market blinds her to many hard truths about it. But as with any bad relationship, it's great to see her at least recognize that things aren't working out now. I believe that her faith that things can some day work out between the market and education is misplaced, but baby steps. Baby steps.

TFA vs. Harvard Students

Valerie Strauss reports an exchange between the TFA mother ship and members of the Harvard chapter of United Students Against Sweatshops. Strauss presents the letters from this back-and-forth in their entirety, and you should click on over there and read them. It's worth noting that both sides are extraordinarily polite and civil. But I want to highlight just a couple of details from the TFA missives.

In reply to the USAS charge that TFA no longer follows its original mission of relieving a teacher shortage:

To your question about shortages, our program exists to meet local demand for teachers and long-term education leaders. In many of our partner districts, this demand stems from a severe shortage of available candidates for low-income schools generally. In others, the shortages are specific to certain subject areas or grade levels. In some, we serve as an additional source of teaching talent for principals to choose from.[Emphasis mine]

So, note that the program has as its stated purpose creating long-term education leaders. The teaching thing is just a training program for future edubosses, edupreneurs, and edubureaucrats.

The TFA writer also notes that TFA only applies for open positions, which is probably wise because back when I was job-hunting, I found that applying for occupied positions wasn't very helpful. The writer does not make any particular distinction about how those positions became open (say, through mass firings instituted so that the position could be filled with TFA members). And then we revisit the point made above:

We believe that students are best served when principals have access to the most robust possible talent pipeline – whether through our program, other alternative certification routes, or the schools of education that continue to prepare the vast majority of our nation’s teachers. We aim to be one small part of a well-trained, supported and celebrated national teaching force.

So-- it's not that there's a teacher shortage, or even (per the newest iteration of TFA) a teacher of color shortage. It's that principals need more choices, because what's coming through the traditional pipeline just isn't good enough. It's as straightforward a TFA statement as I've ever seen saying, "We fully intend to beat out new teacher school graduates for these jobs. You don't need us because there are too few teachers. You need us because there are two few teachers who are as awesome as we are."

After a USAS response, the next TFA letter comes from co-chief Matt Kramer. Kramer offers this interesting statistic:

Compared to first year teachers in general, they [TFA bodies] are more likely to teach a second year.

Not clear how he figures this one. While the USAS letters come with footnotes for their allegations. Kramer just says stuff. He also addresses the TFA Just Passing Through criticism by saying that the problems of education are larger than a classroom teacher can fix so he deplores the idea of judging any teacher based on student test results. Ha! Just kidding. He says that since these problems are too big for classroom teachers, many TFAers do education the favor of becoming "principals, community activists, district administrators, policy makers, elected officials and parent advocates." Thanks, guys!

The whole thing is an eye-opening exchange, particularly in the ways USAS find to say gently, firmly and politely, "You are full of it. Here are the facts. Stop lying." But totally civilly and respectfully. I could probably learn a lesson or two from them.

Lily E. Garcia Will Break My Heart

It is clear that my relationship with the new NEA president will be fraught with ups and downs.

I have expressed my willingness to be courted. And she has definitely had her moments.

Back on August 11, Valerie Strauss unveiled an interview with LEG that had many folks cheering. Plainspoken and direct, LEG, provided a brace of great quotes:

Arne Duncan is a very nice man. I actually believe he is a very honest man. And that cannot excuse the fact that he is wrong wrong wrong on just about every thing that he believes is reform.

And I believe will go down to my last breath telling people that the most corrupting influence in public influence today is a high-stakes consequence for not hitting the cut score on a standardized test.

Stop doing stupid.

Her call for what is somewhere between civil disobedience and passive-aggressive insubordination.
“The revolution I want is ‘proceed until apprehended.’”In other words, ignore directives to engage in educational malpractice, and follow your best professional judgment until someone pins you down and forces you.

That is dead on. Yes, you have to weigh taking a stand against keeping your job in some settings. But there are also teachers out there following bad instructions because they are afraid that an administrator might speak to them sternly or give them a dirty look. It is way past time for teachers to stop being good little soldiers.

So, with the WaPo interview, LEG had me feeling all the feelings. Yes, her love for CCSS remained undimmed, but, you know, no relationship is perfect. And yes, the word on the street is that LEG talks a better game than she delivers, but that still makes her a step up from DVR, who was 0/2 on the talking/delivering business.

And then came this NEA press release in response to the PDK/Gallup poll that further chronicled the not-love directed at the Core.

It’s no surprise that many aren’t behind the Common Core as they are victims of targeted misinformation campaigns. Some on the far right have turned high standards for all students into a political football.

Dammit, Lily. I thought I could believe in you.

It's one thing to take the position that the Core are swell and lovely. You're wrong, but I get it (but you're wrong).

But it's quite another thing to stick with that old baloney about how people who don't love the Core are either 1) tragically misinformed or 2) tin hat Tea Party tools. Mistaking the CCSS for sound educational policy can be chalked up to a very different point of view (although, you are wrong). But mistaking the opposition to CCSS as a combination of ignorance and political wingnuttery is just delusional.

I know that you have to hold the NEA line, and that "proceed until apprehended" can be used in a classroom, but never an NEA boardroom. But even the backers of the CCSS have figured out they can't simply write off opposition as the result of ignorance and political buffonery. I don't think it's too much to expect the leader of my national union to have figured out the same thing.

This is going to be a long, tumultuous courtship as it is. Let's not make things worse by writing off critics from within the union itself. My heart just can't take it.