The world of reformy stuff has altered my life; specifically, it has changed my daily routine. In the morning before school, I read. At lunch, I read. And sometimes in the evening, I read. And when I need a break from reading, I write.
There are soooooo many powerful writers out there covering the world of education, the high stakes test-driven status quo, and the many fronts in the ongoing battle to reclaim public education. The long list to the right of this column only scratches the surface. And to stay fully informed, I also read the work of the corporate champions of the high stakes test-driven status quo, the various organizations that fight and claw to keep the dream of educorporate schooling alive. So I've had plenty of opportunity to see what separates the two groups, what distinguishes the Network for Public Education from, say, StudentsFirst or TFA or any of the groups that shoehorn "Education" and "Quality" into their names.
The difference is money.
So many of the supporters of Reformy Stuff are bought and paid for. So many of the opponents are not.
If the Gates Foundation woke up tomorrow and discovered that all its money had turned into, I don't know, expired gift certificates for a free breakfast at Denny's, support for CCSS would collapse. If the Common Core and Teach for America and the Charter Movement had to survive on actual merit, this whole fight would be over in a week. If rich white guys couldn't buy studies and then buy other groups to study the studies and then buy organizations to praise the studies, the support for Reformy Stuff would evaporate.
You would think that the acolytes of meritocracy would want to say, "Look, if our concepts cannot survive in the marketplace of ideas strictly on their merit, then they don't deserve to live." But they are fans of another sort of meritocracy, one in which money proves one is a virtuous person, and therefor one's every idea must have merit and deserve to be rolled up in twenty dollar bills that are then shoved down less virtuous throats.
I watched and read about the Network for Public Education conference, and I can't help noticing that it does not include any people who are getting rich off fighting reformy stuff. In fact, I see quite a lot of people spending their own money and uncompensated time to fight this fight.
In the meantime, "I completely waived my speakers fee today and traveled at my own expense because I really believe in my message," said no Michelle Rhee ever. "Fixing schools" is making some people wealthy.
Time after time, Gates Foundation and other sources like it plant money in the ground and a group springs forth, ready to say whatever they are paid to say. People are making very good livings pushing this stuff.
But others of us are fighting it for free. I'd love to say something moving about how our righteous virtue in the support of a good cause gives us a homespun Davidian strength that no Goliath-like corporate heartless hucksters can overcome, but I don't think so.
I think Diane Ravitch has it right. They have to lose. The Masters of Reforming Our Nation's Schools are like farmers who have had to fill their field with plants that they bought at the store and transplanted on their own. When those plants die, they go back to the store and buy more. But every plant they buy and transplant fails.
They have bought (and bought and rebought and bought again) the illusion that they know how to raise those crops, but the truth is that they haven't a clue and every thing they have tried has failed, turned dry and dusty in the hard sun of reality. The successes they have enjoyed depend on nothing but a large supply of money, and eventually they will either run out or simply tire of spending it. What success can they point to that they did not prop up with money-based illusion? What words of support can they point to that haven't been paid for? What would happen to it all if the money went away?
The Reformy Stuff movement has no roots. Where roots should be there is only a large and impressive supply of money. But for those of us on the other side, there are roots that go deep, roots that were already planted by our love and passion for education and that have driven deep long before the fake foundation farmers came along. They can only keep this up as long as they can afford to pay for it. We can only keep this up as long as we have breath and brains, fingers to type, voices to speak.
It's not that their dependence on money makes them evil or dirty. Their dependence on money makes their movement unsustainable. But those of us fighting back and teaching and blogging and talking? We can keep this up all day, every day.
Tuesday, March 4, 2014
Monday, March 3, 2014
Cyber-Schools Still Suck, Says NEPC Report
The National Education Policy Center announced the release of its report on virtual schooling with the hefty headline "Responsible Policymaking Still Absent for Virtual Schools, Which Continue To Proliferate Despite Scant Research Support and Lagging Quality" There's going to be plenty of scholarly discussion and parsing of the full report, but based on the press release, I feel pretty comfortable with the headline I've chosen here.
The full title of the report, garnered by examining the records of 338 cybers, is VirtualSchools in the U.S. 2014: Politics, Performance, Policy, and Research Evidence, edited by University of Colorado Boulder Professor Alex Molnar, and it will be all over the place shortly. But while we're waiting for the grownup scholars to sort through the details, let me see what a hack fake journalist can tell you about it.
Enrollment is rocketing skyward, sort of. In a finding that is, well, rather an odd surprise, it turns out that cyber-schooling is mostly for white kids. Current enrollment stands at 248,000 students, which is a whopping 21.7% increase over 2011-2012. But that enrollment breaks down into around 75% non-Hispanic whites, 10% African-America, and 11% Hispanic. Given the large cyber-presence in heavily Hispanic states and a national school population of 23%, the Hispanic numbers are surprising.
Are cyberschools less appealing to non-whites, or are cybers aiming their marketing primarily at the white market? Has cyber-school become one more way to get your kids away from "Those People"? Time to take a closer look at the marketing for outfits like K12 (which has a whopping third of all the cybercustomers).
The cyber-free-or-reduced-lunch population runs 10% behind the general population (35%). Students with disabilities runs just over 7% compared to 13% nationally. I found this number surprising, since I think of students with disabilities as people for whom cyber-schooling can be a particular good alternative to bricks and mortar. Less surprising is the English Language Learners (ELL) population-- 9.6% in the real world, but less than 1% in cyberian schools.
So how well do cyber-schools serve their oddly skewed population? After sorting through various state measures of effectiveness, the researchers determined the answer is, "Crappily." (I'm paraphrasing).
30% of the schools had not been measured for effectiveness at all. Only 33.8% of the schools who had been rated did well. Cybers operated by private for-profit organizations were less likely to do well. Only 157 schools reported on-time graduation numbers; their rate was 43.8%. In other words, a student in cyberschool has a less-than-fifty-fifty chance of actually graduating from it.
The report looked through a wide variety of reports, from bureaucratic through journalistic, and wherever one looks, one sees fields and fields of cyberschool suckitude. Consistent, inexcusable, suckitude.
Funding. Apparently every state uses some version of the cockamamie system we use in PA, where the amount that the cyberschool is paid per student has nothing to do with what providing the education actually costs, thereby providing cyber operators with a profit-grabbing system that is literally easier than taking candy from a baby, because a baby cries but a legislator just asks if you want more.
In 2012 K12 made 29 million dollars profit. In 2013, that number was jacked up to 45 million. This is what it looks like when greed makes you stupid. Cybers could charge half the per-capita cost of a brick and mortar school. They would still make an obscene pile of money, and the savings to taxpayers would win cyber-operators hearts and minds from state capitols to local main streets. But since they can't pass up even one more dollar, cyber-operators now get caught both doing a lousy job of educating and price gouging for it.
They could have made allies out of all the people who hate public education, who accuse us of doing a lousy and costing us money. Instead, cyber-operators are busily demonstrating a system that is even worse, that wastes even more money and delivers even fewer results.
NEPC sticks to items that can actually be researched, so yet another report does not address some of the more obvious issues with virtual charter schools, or as some of my students like to call them, "those schools where anybody can do your homework for you, and you get a free computer." But there appears to be more than enough meat in this report to feed some well-needed discussion.
The report will hit the print media tomorrow and be available on line any minute. If you are not familiar with NEPC, you should be-- these folks do actual peer-reviewed legitimate research. Once you have digested this report, you should send off a copy to your favorite legislator (in PA, be sure to attach a note reminding them that SB 1085 is a lousy idea). It's time that cyber-schools be accountable to the taxpayers they milk and the customers they bilk.
The full title of the report, garnered by examining the records of 338 cybers, is VirtualSchools in the U.S. 2014: Politics, Performance, Policy, and Research Evidence, edited by University of Colorado Boulder Professor Alex Molnar, and it will be all over the place shortly. But while we're waiting for the grownup scholars to sort through the details, let me see what a hack fake journalist can tell you about it.
Enrollment is rocketing skyward, sort of. In a finding that is, well, rather an odd surprise, it turns out that cyber-schooling is mostly for white kids. Current enrollment stands at 248,000 students, which is a whopping 21.7% increase over 2011-2012. But that enrollment breaks down into around 75% non-Hispanic whites, 10% African-America, and 11% Hispanic. Given the large cyber-presence in heavily Hispanic states and a national school population of 23%, the Hispanic numbers are surprising.
Are cyberschools less appealing to non-whites, or are cybers aiming their marketing primarily at the white market? Has cyber-school become one more way to get your kids away from "Those People"? Time to take a closer look at the marketing for outfits like K12 (which has a whopping third of all the cybercustomers).
The cyber-free-or-reduced-lunch population runs 10% behind the general population (35%). Students with disabilities runs just over 7% compared to 13% nationally. I found this number surprising, since I think of students with disabilities as people for whom cyber-schooling can be a particular good alternative to bricks and mortar. Less surprising is the English Language Learners (ELL) population-- 9.6% in the real world, but less than 1% in cyberian schools.
So how well do cyber-schools serve their oddly skewed population? After sorting through various state measures of effectiveness, the researchers determined the answer is, "Crappily." (I'm paraphrasing).
30% of the schools had not been measured for effectiveness at all. Only 33.8% of the schools who had been rated did well. Cybers operated by private for-profit organizations were less likely to do well. Only 157 schools reported on-time graduation numbers; their rate was 43.8%. In other words, a student in cyberschool has a less-than-fifty-fifty chance of actually graduating from it.
The report looked through a wide variety of reports, from bureaucratic through journalistic, and wherever one looks, one sees fields and fields of cyberschool suckitude. Consistent, inexcusable, suckitude.
Funding. Apparently every state uses some version of the cockamamie system we use in PA, where the amount that the cyberschool is paid per student has nothing to do with what providing the education actually costs, thereby providing cyber operators with a profit-grabbing system that is literally easier than taking candy from a baby, because a baby cries but a legislator just asks if you want more.
In 2012 K12 made 29 million dollars profit. In 2013, that number was jacked up to 45 million. This is what it looks like when greed makes you stupid. Cybers could charge half the per-capita cost of a brick and mortar school. They would still make an obscene pile of money, and the savings to taxpayers would win cyber-operators hearts and minds from state capitols to local main streets. But since they can't pass up even one more dollar, cyber-operators now get caught both doing a lousy job of educating and price gouging for it.
They could have made allies out of all the people who hate public education, who accuse us of doing a lousy and costing us money. Instead, cyber-operators are busily demonstrating a system that is even worse, that wastes even more money and delivers even fewer results.
NEPC sticks to items that can actually be researched, so yet another report does not address some of the more obvious issues with virtual charter schools, or as some of my students like to call them, "those schools where anybody can do your homework for you, and you get a free computer." But there appears to be more than enough meat in this report to feed some well-needed discussion.
The report will hit the print media tomorrow and be available on line any minute. If you are not familiar with NEPC, you should be-- these folks do actual peer-reviewed legitimate research. Once you have digested this report, you should send off a copy to your favorite legislator (in PA, be sure to attach a note reminding them that SB 1085 is a lousy idea). It's time that cyber-schools be accountable to the taxpayers they milk and the customers they bilk.
Mercedes Schneider Rips CCSS in Five Minutes
I don't reblog a lot of other people's stuff here, mostly because I am a small, low rung on the edublog ladder, and if you're reading me, you've probably read most of what I have. But if I can add just five more views to this video, I've served a useful purpose today.
Mercedes Schneider is one of my teacher heroines. We've never met, but she's taught me a ton about what is really going on, and she's taught me a lot about how to be an activist-writer while still serving your students in a classroom.
At last weekend's Network for Public Education conference, she sat on a panel about CCSS and used her five minutes to hit many of the same fatal flaws that I hate in CCSS. Most of all, the intent to completely cut my professional classroom teacher I'm-actually-standing-in-front-of-these-live-human-students judgment out of the educational loop. I also recognize the notion that a classroom teacher's role now includes serving as a buffer between students and what the Powers That Be want to inflict on them.
So take five minutes and listen to what a passionate fan of public education and teaching the way it was meant to be has to say.
Mercedes Schneider is one of my teacher heroines. We've never met, but she's taught me a ton about what is really going on, and she's taught me a lot about how to be an activist-writer while still serving your students in a classroom.
At last weekend's Network for Public Education conference, she sat on a panel about CCSS and used her five minutes to hit many of the same fatal flaws that I hate in CCSS. Most of all, the intent to completely cut my professional classroom teacher I'm-actually-standing-in-front-of-these-live-human-students judgment out of the educational loop. I also recognize the notion that a classroom teacher's role now includes serving as a buffer between students and what the Powers That Be want to inflict on them.
So take five minutes and listen to what a passionate fan of public education and teaching the way it was meant to be has to say.
11 Essential Questions from the Network for Public Education
At the wrap-up from last weekend's Network for Public Education conference in Austin, TX, the leaders of the national pro-public education (I realize that alignment should be obvious from the title, but these days you can't assume these things) issued a call for Congressional hearings " to investigate the over-emphasis, misapplication, costs, and poor
implementation of high-stakes standardized testing in the nation’s K-12
public schools."
NPE offered a list of eleven essential questions for Congress to ask, but I'd offer those questions to anyone who is questioning test-based high stakes education in their schools. There will be, I hope, plenty written about this, but the word needs to be spread far and wide.These are questions that need to be answered, in public, loudly.
Do the tests promote skills our children and our economy need? Is there a big market for professional bubblers, or people who can take tests that are easy to score with a computer? If we need creative thinkers, problem solvers and collaborators for the future, do these tests foster or measure any of those abilities? Tests promote certain values by virtue of saying "This is what counts." Are the tests aligned with the skills we really value?
What is the purpose of these tests? Couldn't be to help me teach, because the students in my class who take them will be gone by the time I see my highly generalized results. Nor will my students get any kind of useful feedback from them. So why do we need to take these again?
How good are the tests? Take a look at them. This may take some work, because test security is high, almost as if the test-makers knew that their work couldn't stand the light of day. "Tests are not scientific instruments like barometers; they are commercial products that are subject to multiple errors."
Are tests being given to children who are too young? Let be plain-- if you are giving a standardized test to a kindergartner, you are a dope. If you are giving a timed test that requires keyboarding to an eight-year-old, you are a dope. And an abusive dope at that.
Are tests culturally biased? Do we even have to ask? Standardized tests universally correlate to socio-economic class. That tells us either that a) class is completely a function of intellect and all rich people are rich because of their superior merit or b) tests include a class bias. Take your pick.
Are tests harmful to students with disabilities? The horror stories of dying children being forced to take standardized tests are terrible in and of themselves, but they underline a larger point-- the people pushing this stuff really haven't thought things through. At worst, testing is damaging to students with disabilities. At best, the tests have been rushed through so quickly and haphazardly that adaptations that might allow disabled students to actually be measured by the tests have been completely overlooked.
How have the frequency and quantity of testing increased? Testing time has an opportunity cost. A day spent testing is a day not spent playing in band or drawing art or playing in phys ed. It's a day not spent studying history or science. Increased testing has the effect of shortening the school year. What would you say if your child's school announced that the year would be over in March? That is effectively what increased testing is doing in some schools.
Does testing harm teaching? Are teachers in your district so worried about the test scores that they have narrowed their instruction? Do you have teachers who are buckling under the stress of possible bad evaluations because of test scores that, in many cases, they can't even control?
How much money does it cost? Again, don't just look at the expense-- look at the opportunity costs. LA schools spent $1 billion on ipads for their students as part of a testing initiative. If someone had given LAUSD $1 billion dollars and they had said, "What's the best stuff we could get with this money?" would over-priced ipads have carried the day? Districts are looking at the cost of tests, pre-tests, hiring test prep coaches, and in some states, technology upgrades to make testing possible. What is this costing you?
Are there conflicts of interest in testing policies? Not really a question here. By working all sides of this issue-- producing the test, producing the aligned materials, producing the legislation and standards that drive it all-- corporations are creating both the demand and the supply. \
Was it legal for the U.S. Department of Education to fund two testing consortia for the Common Core State Standards? Okay, so this question really is for Congress. But the feds are barred from directing local education, and the last twelve years sure look like a clever end-run around that legality. Is this administration even worse with legalities? Before you answer too loudly, you may want to keep in mind that the current administration believes it's legal to kill a US citizen who in their opinion represents a threat to our country.
On one level, I'm not that excited about asking Congress to look into this (that would be the level that believes the current Congress is not capable of getting much right, as well as the level that believes the federal government needs to just get out of the education biz). But on another level, I welcome anything that puts the current test-driven high stakes status quo under scrutiny. There's so much going on that can't stand the light of day any better than a light-sensitive cockroach, so anything that throw light toward it is welcome.
NPE offered a list of eleven essential questions for Congress to ask, but I'd offer those questions to anyone who is questioning test-based high stakes education in their schools. There will be, I hope, plenty written about this, but the word needs to be spread far and wide.These are questions that need to be answered, in public, loudly.
Do the tests promote skills our children and our economy need? Is there a big market for professional bubblers, or people who can take tests that are easy to score with a computer? If we need creative thinkers, problem solvers and collaborators for the future, do these tests foster or measure any of those abilities? Tests promote certain values by virtue of saying "This is what counts." Are the tests aligned with the skills we really value?
What is the purpose of these tests? Couldn't be to help me teach, because the students in my class who take them will be gone by the time I see my highly generalized results. Nor will my students get any kind of useful feedback from them. So why do we need to take these again?
How good are the tests? Take a look at them. This may take some work, because test security is high, almost as if the test-makers knew that their work couldn't stand the light of day. "Tests are not scientific instruments like barometers; they are commercial products that are subject to multiple errors."
Are tests being given to children who are too young? Let be plain-- if you are giving a standardized test to a kindergartner, you are a dope. If you are giving a timed test that requires keyboarding to an eight-year-old, you are a dope. And an abusive dope at that.
Are tests culturally biased? Do we even have to ask? Standardized tests universally correlate to socio-economic class. That tells us either that a) class is completely a function of intellect and all rich people are rich because of their superior merit or b) tests include a class bias. Take your pick.
Are tests harmful to students with disabilities? The horror stories of dying children being forced to take standardized tests are terrible in and of themselves, but they underline a larger point-- the people pushing this stuff really haven't thought things through. At worst, testing is damaging to students with disabilities. At best, the tests have been rushed through so quickly and haphazardly that adaptations that might allow disabled students to actually be measured by the tests have been completely overlooked.
How have the frequency and quantity of testing increased? Testing time has an opportunity cost. A day spent testing is a day not spent playing in band or drawing art or playing in phys ed. It's a day not spent studying history or science. Increased testing has the effect of shortening the school year. What would you say if your child's school announced that the year would be over in March? That is effectively what increased testing is doing in some schools.
Does testing harm teaching? Are teachers in your district so worried about the test scores that they have narrowed their instruction? Do you have teachers who are buckling under the stress of possible bad evaluations because of test scores that, in many cases, they can't even control?
How much money does it cost? Again, don't just look at the expense-- look at the opportunity costs. LA schools spent $1 billion on ipads for their students as part of a testing initiative. If someone had given LAUSD $1 billion dollars and they had said, "What's the best stuff we could get with this money?" would over-priced ipads have carried the day? Districts are looking at the cost of tests, pre-tests, hiring test prep coaches, and in some states, technology upgrades to make testing possible. What is this costing you?
Are there conflicts of interest in testing policies? Not really a question here. By working all sides of this issue-- producing the test, producing the aligned materials, producing the legislation and standards that drive it all-- corporations are creating both the demand and the supply. \
Was it legal for the U.S. Department of Education to fund two testing consortia for the Common Core State Standards? Okay, so this question really is for Congress. But the feds are barred from directing local education, and the last twelve years sure look like a clever end-run around that legality. Is this administration even worse with legalities? Before you answer too loudly, you may want to keep in mind that the current administration believes it's legal to kill a US citizen who in their opinion represents a threat to our country.
On one level, I'm not that excited about asking Congress to look into this (that would be the level that believes the current Congress is not capable of getting much right, as well as the level that believes the federal government needs to just get out of the education biz). But on another level, I welcome anything that puts the current test-driven high stakes status quo under scrutiny. There's so much going on that can't stand the light of day any better than a light-sensitive cockroach, so anything that throw light toward it is welcome.
Sunday, March 2, 2014
Opportunity Cost: Distance Learning & Best Ravitch Line from NPE Conference
In the midst of show weekend with my students here in PA, it was interesting to try to follow the Network for Public Education Conference in Austin this weekend. I have two initial takeaways from the experience.
Distance Learning Is Even Worse Than Phone Sex
I followed lots of folks on twitter, watched some of the streamed video, viewed video clips as soon as anyone put them up. This conference left a huge footprint on the interwebs, with #npeconference leading the twitter trend list both days on weekend that included rising tensions in the Ukraine and preparations for tonight's Oscar bash. Beyond getting a few more sessions in front of the live streaming or hiring someone to carry around video devices, I'm not sure how much more digitally covered the conference could have been.
And I have to tell you-- it wasn't nearly enough. I caught some of the meat, got to see the real faces and hear the real speech cadences of many people that I've come to know online, read many of the best lines form the weekend-- but in the end, I still felt like a bunch of my friends had had a really cool party and group experience and I had missed out on it. So much energy and excitement leaked through the sad tiny pipeline that is the internet-- I can't quite imagine how much there was in the real place.
Which made me think-- if this was how it felt to try to distance-follow an event in which I was primed to be engaged and which was accessible to me by a whole array of current technology, how terribly inadequate distance learning, cyber-schooling and all the other computer-based substitutes for a real live teacher in the same room as students must be.
Like phone sex (I imagine), the experience lived somewhere in the land between better-than-nothing and painful-because-it-reminds-you-of-what-you're-missing. In the end, I come down on better-than-nothing, but my feelings that distance learning must be terribly inadequate are now even more confirmed.
My Favorite Ravitch Point of The Weekend
I got the keynote address in bits and pieces through twitter (set strike was today), so I know there were plenty of applause lines there. But I definitely caught the truncated video of the NPE press conference, and that call for Congress to get involved again some more in the Giant Testing Mess (which leaves me with some mixed feelings because, hey, there's no way THAT could end badly) included a phrase we ought to hear much more often in this debate.
Opportunity cost.
"Opportunity cost" used to be a semi-obscure economics term. Basically it underlines that buying a candy bar for a dollar doesn't cost you a dollar-- it costs you all the other things you COULD have spent the dollar on. By spending money here, you lose the opportunity to spend it over there.
This is the perfect way to frame the debate over testing and test prep. We keep talking about ytime, about how much time the tests take, how much time we spend preparing, how much time goes into testing.
But it's not just time. As Diane correctly noted, we're really talking about opportunity costs. A week of test prep means students lose the opportunity to play in band or sing in choir or draw in art or play a game in phys ed. A week of testing costs students the opportunity to spend that week doing something else.
We could pay the cost of testing simply in time. We could say, "Look, these tests are so important that we are going to add two months to the school year just to get ready for the tests and then take them." We could actually pay the cost in time pretty easily. But if we paid it that way, we'd know exactly what it was costing us (summer vacations, angry phone calls from angry parents).
But opportunity costs we can hide. And we have. We've hidden them because we are pros at that and have been for years. We add new units about health and safety and nutrition and adopting dogs and fold it into the year as if the school year is a big accordion-shaped squeezebox of fluid infinite time. We never talk about opportunity costs.
So it is dead-on correct to call for a study of opportunity costs. It is dead-on correct to ask what we are taking away to do this unholy regime of pointless testing.
Because when something costs time, there's the illusion that there's always more time. We can get it back. But opportunities lost are gone for good. And talking about opportunity costs force us to ask hard questions.
Talking about value is easy. Did I get good value for what I spent? Is this a decent dollar's worth of candy bar?
But talking about opportunity cost-- that's another thing. Because now the question is-- of all the things I could have spent this dollar on, is this candy bar the best?
Proponents of the high stakes test-based education status quo (another thing that Ravitch got dead-on correct-- this IS the status quo, not a challenge to it) don't just need to prove that their testing regimen has some value or may serve some useful purpose. What they need to prove is this-- looking at the resources spent, the money spent, the hours of young lives spent, the work of education professionals spent-- looking at all those costs, were there better opportunities? What opportunities did we give up to pursue the big ball of testing wax, and would some of those opportunities have been a better use of our resources? What opportunities are we and our students going to have tomorrow, and which ones should we pursue? Is the high stakes test-based status quo really the best thing we can think of to spend our time and effort on? I may not have been there, but I bet everybody who was in Austin knows the answer.
Distance Learning Is Even Worse Than Phone Sex
I followed lots of folks on twitter, watched some of the streamed video, viewed video clips as soon as anyone put them up. This conference left a huge footprint on the interwebs, with #npeconference leading the twitter trend list both days on weekend that included rising tensions in the Ukraine and preparations for tonight's Oscar bash. Beyond getting a few more sessions in front of the live streaming or hiring someone to carry around video devices, I'm not sure how much more digitally covered the conference could have been.
And I have to tell you-- it wasn't nearly enough. I caught some of the meat, got to see the real faces and hear the real speech cadences of many people that I've come to know online, read many of the best lines form the weekend-- but in the end, I still felt like a bunch of my friends had had a really cool party and group experience and I had missed out on it. So much energy and excitement leaked through the sad tiny pipeline that is the internet-- I can't quite imagine how much there was in the real place.
Which made me think-- if this was how it felt to try to distance-follow an event in which I was primed to be engaged and which was accessible to me by a whole array of current technology, how terribly inadequate distance learning, cyber-schooling and all the other computer-based substitutes for a real live teacher in the same room as students must be.
Like phone sex (I imagine), the experience lived somewhere in the land between better-than-nothing and painful-because-it-reminds-you-of-what-you're-missing. In the end, I come down on better-than-nothing, but my feelings that distance learning must be terribly inadequate are now even more confirmed.
My Favorite Ravitch Point of The Weekend
I got the keynote address in bits and pieces through twitter (set strike was today), so I know there were plenty of applause lines there. But I definitely caught the truncated video of the NPE press conference, and that call for Congress to get involved again some more in the Giant Testing Mess (which leaves me with some mixed feelings because, hey, there's no way THAT could end badly) included a phrase we ought to hear much more often in this debate.
Opportunity cost.
"Opportunity cost" used to be a semi-obscure economics term. Basically it underlines that buying a candy bar for a dollar doesn't cost you a dollar-- it costs you all the other things you COULD have spent the dollar on. By spending money here, you lose the opportunity to spend it over there.
This is the perfect way to frame the debate over testing and test prep. We keep talking about ytime, about how much time the tests take, how much time we spend preparing, how much time goes into testing.
But it's not just time. As Diane correctly noted, we're really talking about opportunity costs. A week of test prep means students lose the opportunity to play in band or sing in choir or draw in art or play a game in phys ed. A week of testing costs students the opportunity to spend that week doing something else.
We could pay the cost of testing simply in time. We could say, "Look, these tests are so important that we are going to add two months to the school year just to get ready for the tests and then take them." We could actually pay the cost in time pretty easily. But if we paid it that way, we'd know exactly what it was costing us (summer vacations, angry phone calls from angry parents).
But opportunity costs we can hide. And we have. We've hidden them because we are pros at that and have been for years. We add new units about health and safety and nutrition and adopting dogs and fold it into the year as if the school year is a big accordion-shaped squeezebox of fluid infinite time. We never talk about opportunity costs.
So it is dead-on correct to call for a study of opportunity costs. It is dead-on correct to ask what we are taking away to do this unholy regime of pointless testing.
Because when something costs time, there's the illusion that there's always more time. We can get it back. But opportunities lost are gone for good. And talking about opportunity costs force us to ask hard questions.
Talking about value is easy. Did I get good value for what I spent? Is this a decent dollar's worth of candy bar?
But talking about opportunity cost-- that's another thing. Because now the question is-- of all the things I could have spent this dollar on, is this candy bar the best?
Proponents of the high stakes test-based education status quo (another thing that Ravitch got dead-on correct-- this IS the status quo, not a challenge to it) don't just need to prove that their testing regimen has some value or may serve some useful purpose. What they need to prove is this-- looking at the resources spent, the money spent, the hours of young lives spent, the work of education professionals spent-- looking at all those costs, were there better opportunities? What opportunities did we give up to pursue the big ball of testing wax, and would some of those opportunities have been a better use of our resources? What opportunities are we and our students going to have tomorrow, and which ones should we pursue? Is the high stakes test-based status quo really the best thing we can think of to spend our time and effort on? I may not have been there, but I bet everybody who was in Austin knows the answer.
"If not CCSS, then what?"
If not the CCSS, then what?
This refrain comes back and back and back again, echoing this morning over the interwebs all the way from the NPE conference in Austin. Today it's Randi Weingarten, but it could just as easily be Dennis Van Roekel (well, if he ever went to anything or spoke to anybody outside of NEA PR work) or any number of people in the Reluctant CCSS Warrior Crowd (see also The It's Just An Implementation Problem crowd).
This question has become the big rhetoric conversation nuker, just like "So which children do you think we should leave behind" used to shut down NCLB opponents. So let me offer some possible answers you might want to use the next time someone unloads this cannon d'argument on you.
Locally-developed standards.
Put your districts key teachers, key parents, key administrators in a room. Send out some questionnaires if you like. Talk to former students, local employers. Make a selection of stakeholders consistent with the needs, priorities, history, desires of your local district. Let all those people put their heads together to decide what standards are appropriate and desired for your local district.
It's a measure of how screwed up we are these days that even I can hear how radical that sounds, but really, why should it? This is local control, the way we did this for ages. And what the hell does somebody in a state capital or DC know about the needs of your students that local people do not?
"Well, then, we'll have some school in Texas teaching that Jesus rode a dinosaur," is the complaint. To which I say, "So what?" If it really bothers you, institute a simple "Thou shalt not teach any really dumb crap" law at the state level. Otherwise, leave those people alone. Yes, I think they're dead wrong, but at what point do we finally say in this country, "What those people over there do is none of my damn business?"
Because here's the problem with central standards. You may intend to hamstring the people who want to do dumb things, but at the same time, you are also hamstringing the people who don't want to do stupid things. Not only that, but you know who will ignore your hamstringing and just go on ahead anyway-- the people who want to do stupid things.
And even worse, increasingly the people who want to do stupid things have realized that if a central government is writing the rules, all they have to do is capture that central office, and they are not only free to do all the stupid things they want, but they can make other people do them, too.
So-- leave local standards in the hands of local control.
Local accountability
Some folks want national standards so they can have national accountability.
I refuse to engage in trying to prove that we should have local accountability instead. Anyone who wants to argue for national accountability is carrying the burden of proof. Why does Arne Duncan need to know what the students in my third period class are doing and how well they're doing it? Why does the federal government need a national database of all students and their various academic achievements?
Nobody-- not one single solitary person-- has made so much as a feeble argument for this kind of national oversight. I suspect that's because this is not about accountability-- it's about marketing. Well, no. You don't get to argue that my students should live in this new national straightjacket so that you can more easily market programs and materials today and collect data on customers and employees to use against them tomorrow.
No parent of a local school district ever needed to consult some sort of federal report to know how well their child is doing or which teachers is the one you want to get for fourth grade. We have accountability covered, and we always have. Unless you can come up with a good argument for why the feds should butt in, they should butt out.
Anarchy of the Professionals
Look, I'm really not a national standards guy. If I go to the doctor, I don't want him to consult some federal bureaucrat's instructions on how to properly rotate my spleen. I want him to use his best judgment about me, my situation, my health, and my spleen. I want him to make choices based on his professional judgment about what is best for me, not what is best for his standing with various state and federal bureaucrats and oversight agencies.
Ditto for teachers. I'm a professional. Let me work. Let me do my job. Let me make professional judgments based on my knowledge of the material and the students and make choices based on what would be best for those students. Nobody anywhere on the planet is in a better position than I am to know best what that student needs in my classroom. Okay-- parents in most cases are right up there, too. "Oh, if only I had a set of federally mandated tests and standards that I could consult," said no parent or teacher ever.
And if none of these answers are useful, do not forget this one--
Why are you assuming we need anything at all?
"If not CCSS, then what?" assumes that we need something.
Maybe we're assuming a giant educational crisis, only we know that no such crisis exists.
Maybe we're assuming that there is a political problem, that various government folks and the corporate sponsors who own them have mustered enough political clout to pose a threat, and what our leaders really mean by this question is "We are about to be mugged-- what's the best way to avoid serious injury?" That's a legitimate concern and question, but please-- let's not start with the assumption that the mugger has a legitimate claim on our wallet and jewelry. Let's address the real problem-- that we are taking serious political fire from all sides, including the sides that we thought we could trust.
Maybe we're assuming there's some sort of teaching crisis, and that teachers are now so terrible that they can no longer be defended. In which case, we should not be leading a national teacher union. If someone else is making the "teachers are so terrible" assumption, then once again we're dealing with a low-information arguer, and the injection of facts might be called for.
I'm bone tired of this question. It has no validity, no basis in fact, no foundation in assumptions that deserve to be assumed. This question deserves to be questioned. Not attacked, because when people start attacking questioners and questions nobody ever hears or learns anything, but questioned directly and responded to clearly. There is no "need" for CCSS, and there never was, so there is no "need" to come up with an alternative.
This refrain comes back and back and back again, echoing this morning over the interwebs all the way from the NPE conference in Austin. Today it's Randi Weingarten, but it could just as easily be Dennis Van Roekel (well, if he ever went to anything or spoke to anybody outside of NEA PR work) or any number of people in the Reluctant CCSS Warrior Crowd (see also The It's Just An Implementation Problem crowd).
This question has become the big rhetoric conversation nuker, just like "So which children do you think we should leave behind" used to shut down NCLB opponents. So let me offer some possible answers you might want to use the next time someone unloads this cannon d'argument on you.
Locally-developed standards.
Put your districts key teachers, key parents, key administrators in a room. Send out some questionnaires if you like. Talk to former students, local employers. Make a selection of stakeholders consistent with the needs, priorities, history, desires of your local district. Let all those people put their heads together to decide what standards are appropriate and desired for your local district.
It's a measure of how screwed up we are these days that even I can hear how radical that sounds, but really, why should it? This is local control, the way we did this for ages. And what the hell does somebody in a state capital or DC know about the needs of your students that local people do not?
"Well, then, we'll have some school in Texas teaching that Jesus rode a dinosaur," is the complaint. To which I say, "So what?" If it really bothers you, institute a simple "Thou shalt not teach any really dumb crap" law at the state level. Otherwise, leave those people alone. Yes, I think they're dead wrong, but at what point do we finally say in this country, "What those people over there do is none of my damn business?"
Because here's the problem with central standards. You may intend to hamstring the people who want to do dumb things, but at the same time, you are also hamstringing the people who don't want to do stupid things. Not only that, but you know who will ignore your hamstringing and just go on ahead anyway-- the people who want to do stupid things.
And even worse, increasingly the people who want to do stupid things have realized that if a central government is writing the rules, all they have to do is capture that central office, and they are not only free to do all the stupid things they want, but they can make other people do them, too.
So-- leave local standards in the hands of local control.
Local accountability
Some folks want national standards so they can have national accountability.
I refuse to engage in trying to prove that we should have local accountability instead. Anyone who wants to argue for national accountability is carrying the burden of proof. Why does Arne Duncan need to know what the students in my third period class are doing and how well they're doing it? Why does the federal government need a national database of all students and their various academic achievements?
Nobody-- not one single solitary person-- has made so much as a feeble argument for this kind of national oversight. I suspect that's because this is not about accountability-- it's about marketing. Well, no. You don't get to argue that my students should live in this new national straightjacket so that you can more easily market programs and materials today and collect data on customers and employees to use against them tomorrow.
No parent of a local school district ever needed to consult some sort of federal report to know how well their child is doing or which teachers is the one you want to get for fourth grade. We have accountability covered, and we always have. Unless you can come up with a good argument for why the feds should butt in, they should butt out.
Anarchy of the Professionals
Look, I'm really not a national standards guy. If I go to the doctor, I don't want him to consult some federal bureaucrat's instructions on how to properly rotate my spleen. I want him to use his best judgment about me, my situation, my health, and my spleen. I want him to make choices based on his professional judgment about what is best for me, not what is best for his standing with various state and federal bureaucrats and oversight agencies.
Ditto for teachers. I'm a professional. Let me work. Let me do my job. Let me make professional judgments based on my knowledge of the material and the students and make choices based on what would be best for those students. Nobody anywhere on the planet is in a better position than I am to know best what that student needs in my classroom. Okay-- parents in most cases are right up there, too. "Oh, if only I had a set of federally mandated tests and standards that I could consult," said no parent or teacher ever.
And if none of these answers are useful, do not forget this one--
Why are you assuming we need anything at all?
"If not CCSS, then what?" assumes that we need something.
Maybe we're assuming a giant educational crisis, only we know that no such crisis exists.
Maybe we're assuming that there is a political problem, that various government folks and the corporate sponsors who own them have mustered enough political clout to pose a threat, and what our leaders really mean by this question is "We are about to be mugged-- what's the best way to avoid serious injury?" That's a legitimate concern and question, but please-- let's not start with the assumption that the mugger has a legitimate claim on our wallet and jewelry. Let's address the real problem-- that we are taking serious political fire from all sides, including the sides that we thought we could trust.
Maybe we're assuming there's some sort of teaching crisis, and that teachers are now so terrible that they can no longer be defended. In which case, we should not be leading a national teacher union. If someone else is making the "teachers are so terrible" assumption, then once again we're dealing with a low-information arguer, and the injection of facts might be called for.
I'm bone tired of this question. It has no validity, no basis in fact, no foundation in assumptions that deserve to be assumed. This question deserves to be questioned. Not attacked, because when people start attacking questioners and questions nobody ever hears or learns anything, but questioned directly and responded to clearly. There is no "need" for CCSS, and there never was, so there is no "need" to come up with an alternative.
Selling Is Not Doing
In yesterday's New York Times, Suzanne Mettler provided one more explanation of why school choice doesn't-- and won't-- work.
Mettler is looking at how college has become the "great unleveler," an education system that reinforces a caste system instead of breaking down walls. That's in no small part because the percentage of household income required to send a child to college has skyrocketed for the lower classes since 1971 (for the bottom fifth, it now takes 114% of annual household income to send a child to college),
"But wait," you say (particularly if you haven't tried to finance someone's college education lately), "Don't we have a system that makes grants, or at least loans, available to folks who need financial help for college?" The first part of the answer is "Not so much as we used to," and that part of the discussion is best served by Mettler's article.
The second part of the answer is, "Yes, we do, some, and how that plays out tells us about how vouchers really work."
As a graph in Mettler's article vividly illustrates, for profit colleges represent a voucher-fied, market-based business model. Management at Phoenix, Corinthian, Kaplan and others have realized a powerful insight about how to make it in the biz.
Selling is not doing.
There are a whole bunch of folks out there who have control of a big chunk of money for college. The money might be grants or it might be loans-- it really doesn't matter to me if I'm setting up a for-profit. What matters, what I must absolutely grasp, is that my business is not providing a service. My business is selling a service. My business is convincing those people to give me the chunk of money that they control.
Are they later dissatisfied? Doesn't matter-- I already have that money. And this isn't a used car lot. I don't need them to come back again and again for the rest of their lives.
Selling a service and providing a quality service are two entirely different operations, and only one of them provides immediate cash flow for my business.
Phoenix, Kaplan, Corinthian, Education Management and DeVry all reap over 80% of their revenue from government loans and grants-- higher education vouchers. Convincing customers to fork over those $$ isn't crucial to their business model. It IS their business model. Vouchers aren't the key to their survival; it's their reason for existing.
Selling is not doing. We know this already. We collectively observe every four years, for instance, that the skills needed to be an effective President are not exactly the same ones needed to win a Presidential election. We know that we'd better google that guy who took our sister on such a fabulous first date.
Every time we buy Coke or Pepsi, we give them a little extra money so that they can spend it on marketing aimed at convincing us to give them more money.
Selling is not doing, and selling is a separate budget category. The next time someone says, "What's wrong with schools making a profit if they educate kids?" Tell them this: Every cent that schools have to spend on marketing is a cent that doesn't get spent on actually doing the education thing. And every cent they spend on students is one less cent to spend on selling. Voucher and choice schools must screen out high-overhead students because they need that extra money for marketing.
Market forces do not foster superior quality. Market forces foster superior marketability.
The more we open education to market forces, the more money we will waste on marketing schools, the fewer resources we will devote to actual education, and the more educational snake-oil salesmen we will find working their way into the school biz. Sure, the marketplace will sort some of them out-- we're seeing some of that already in places like Ohio, where charter schools have the same life span as tse-tse flies. But how much student education, how many years of students' lives, do we want to throw away as cannon fodder for the invisible hand?
There is no place for hucksterism in education. Schools should be doing, not selling.
Mettler is looking at how college has become the "great unleveler," an education system that reinforces a caste system instead of breaking down walls. That's in no small part because the percentage of household income required to send a child to college has skyrocketed for the lower classes since 1971 (for the bottom fifth, it now takes 114% of annual household income to send a child to college),
"But wait," you say (particularly if you haven't tried to finance someone's college education lately), "Don't we have a system that makes grants, or at least loans, available to folks who need financial help for college?" The first part of the answer is "Not so much as we used to," and that part of the discussion is best served by Mettler's article.
The second part of the answer is, "Yes, we do, some, and how that plays out tells us about how vouchers really work."
As a graph in Mettler's article vividly illustrates, for profit colleges represent a voucher-fied, market-based business model. Management at Phoenix, Corinthian, Kaplan and others have realized a powerful insight about how to make it in the biz.
Selling is not doing.
There are a whole bunch of folks out there who have control of a big chunk of money for college. The money might be grants or it might be loans-- it really doesn't matter to me if I'm setting up a for-profit. What matters, what I must absolutely grasp, is that my business is not providing a service. My business is selling a service. My business is convincing those people to give me the chunk of money that they control.
Are they later dissatisfied? Doesn't matter-- I already have that money. And this isn't a used car lot. I don't need them to come back again and again for the rest of their lives.
Selling a service and providing a quality service are two entirely different operations, and only one of them provides immediate cash flow for my business.
Phoenix, Kaplan, Corinthian, Education Management and DeVry all reap over 80% of their revenue from government loans and grants-- higher education vouchers. Convincing customers to fork over those $$ isn't crucial to their business model. It IS their business model. Vouchers aren't the key to their survival; it's their reason for existing.
Selling is not doing. We know this already. We collectively observe every four years, for instance, that the skills needed to be an effective President are not exactly the same ones needed to win a Presidential election. We know that we'd better google that guy who took our sister on such a fabulous first date.
Every time we buy Coke or Pepsi, we give them a little extra money so that they can spend it on marketing aimed at convincing us to give them more money.
Selling is not doing, and selling is a separate budget category. The next time someone says, "What's wrong with schools making a profit if they educate kids?" Tell them this: Every cent that schools have to spend on marketing is a cent that doesn't get spent on actually doing the education thing. And every cent they spend on students is one less cent to spend on selling. Voucher and choice schools must screen out high-overhead students because they need that extra money for marketing.
Market forces do not foster superior quality. Market forces foster superior marketability.
The more we open education to market forces, the more money we will waste on marketing schools, the fewer resources we will devote to actual education, and the more educational snake-oil salesmen we will find working their way into the school biz. Sure, the marketplace will sort some of them out-- we're seeing some of that already in places like Ohio, where charter schools have the same life span as tse-tse flies. But how much student education, how many years of students' lives, do we want to throw away as cannon fodder for the invisible hand?
There is no place for hucksterism in education. Schools should be doing, not selling.
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