PA Charters Don't Want To Die By Sword

In Philadelphia, Irony has collided with Karma, casing an explosion of hilariously tragic tears.

First, some history. Philadelphia schools have suffered from financial and political issues (PA's school funding system is messed up, but we'll save that for another day), as well as questions about how well it was actually teaching children. In the late 1990s this resulted in some lawsuits against the state and a school superintendent (David Hornbeck) who decided to play chicken with the legislature.

"Give me more money, or I won't open the schools," he said.

"Fine," said the legislature. "We'll give you money, and we'll take over your district." (The Dem chair of the appropriations committee characterized Hornbeck's move as "bold but not very wise")

Since about 2001, Philly schools have been run by the School Reform Commission,  a board with three state appointees and two city appointees. That board has struggled with the task of keeping the schools functioning while still reflecting the governor's desire for all public education to go crawl in a hole somewhere and die.The SRC chugs along mostly quietly, emerging into the news every time they ask for another set of school laws to be suspended (End tenure and FILO please? Can we make teachers pay us to work here and then also work in the lunchroom?) The public school system of Philadelphia has been weakened, operated by a panel that doesn't even particularly believe in public education, operating under a law that gives them the power to ignore school law because they're poor. Remember that.

This of course has meant glorious good time for charters in Philly. The SRC has been able to follow Governor Corbett's charter philosophy (roughly, "Charters are super-swell, whether they're run by crooks or not").

That leaves them in a bind, because PA charters are the bloodsucking leeches of the education world. PA law says that when a child leaves your public school system, you must hand a pile of money over to the charter, and you are never, ever allowed to ask what the hell they did with it. Seriously-- when charter operators get caught defrauding in PA, it's usually only because the feds got involved. In PA, charter students get to take their ball, the bases and the grass off the field when they go home. Public school students are still free to play with rocks and dirt.

It seems that the SRC has started to notice that charter operators are, in fact, part of their financial woes. And so they have taken the unprecedented step of refusing to re-certify a charter, specifically the Walter D. Palmer Leadership Learning Partners Charter School. They are accused of not being academically superior to public schools, but mostly for hosing the school district financially.

The hosing seems to have taken two forms. One is billing for students they don't actually have enrolled. This is the oldest charter trick in the book-- enroll a student long enough to bring in money, then force him out before he can actually cost you money. This is why on certain days of the year you will find cyber-school operators and public school guidance counselors perched at their computers, like crazed bidders at some reverse ebay auction, passing students back and forth like cyber-hot-potatoes before the timer chimes.

Palmer's other infraction was to exceed their cap. Charter certifiers sometimes cap enrollment at the charter. Palmer exceeded theirs. Golly, you say, with all this coming and going I'm sure an accounting error could easily creep in. I'm thinking not. Palmer was authorized to enroll 675 students; they had 1289. That amounts to over $12 million traveling out of Philly schools into Palmer's coffers.

So now the PA rules that allow the SRC to carve up Philly schools are being turned on Palmer, and Palmer, who benefited from the public school buffet, now thinks the no-rules rules are bogus and must be fought.

SRC says under the financially-strapped-school-martial-law laws, they can totally do this. Palmer says, "You have no right to mess with our schools." If Philly schools were not such a sad mess, it would be entertaining to watch two large opponents of public education battle to the death.

I have no idea whether Walter D. Palmer (yes, the school is named after the real 80-year-old guy running it) thinks he's found a great retirement slush fund or truly believes he's operating a lifeboat for Philly's children, but he and his folks are fighting back. They have a moveon.org petition, some lawsuits going against the state, and a request for an injunction on the grounds that the SRC is overstepping their bounds.

Meanwhile, another charter is pushing back against oversight. The SRC was in front of the state supreme court arguing to be allowed to cap enrollment at West Philadelphia Achievement at all. The charter has said the SRC cannot do any such thing, and they refuse to agree to a cap, which the SRC says means they won't be allowed to open. The SRC says that the financial hardship no law law allows them to set caps, that the gushing of money from charters is in fact part of their financial problems.

The court has agreed to hear the case in the fall. This is huge in PA. It was the assertion that school districts need assistance and relief that opened the door to let charters dance into a happy land of do-as-they-please. If that same argument can be turned against the charters, then the business model of PA charters being able to make money more easily than a mint-- that could be in trouble, which would be great news for public education. Cross your fingers, but don't throw away your leech repellant.

Computer Shmomputer

You do know, don't you, that today' students have been around computers their lives, right?

So why do some folks still think that a boring worksheet will suddenly be cool if it's on a computer? Or that a lecture from a teacher who can't be questioned is more interesting if it's on a computer?

I tell you what. For every fifteen year old you find me who says, "Wow! This instruction is on a computer!" I will find you a sixty year old who says, "Wow! They make pens where you can just click the point in and out of the end."

I get that there are folks who don't have a computer in every (or any) room at home. The same is true of books, which are just as novel and wow-worthy as computers for today's students. So any program that sells itself by declaring "And it's on a comPUter!" is a con job.

But when we try to implement a wow program on a computer-- whatever it is you wan to do, you are already too late.

Do you remember "Flappy Bird"? It was a hugely popular game with m students a few months ago. For about a week. Did you get to play 2048? A month ago my students didn't play anything else. For about a week. Right now, I think they're still playing "Make It Rain," but it feels like it's been about a week since that popped up on my radar, so by Monday I expect it will have been replaced.

So the idea that I can sit down right now and pick out a program that next year will make my students say, "Wowee! I can't wait to get on my computer and play Mindless Drill Festival until my fingertips bleed." Anybody who can pull off that trick gets to skip retirement and go straight to Indolent Gabillionaire. Everyone else will be too late to the marketplace with a software product that will be no more exciting than a re-issue of Heart of Darkness with a brand new Dover Mystery Graphic Art Cover.

The other reason you'll be too late? Those games I mentioned? None of my students played them on computer. The majority of my students are completely plugged in, but only on their phones. A handful use computers to handle certain kinds of productivity, but I can find more students carrying around some damn John Green novel. But virtually all of my students, regardless of background, are packing smartphones.

People in the computer biz have to know this. Their market research has to tell them this. So why are folks from computerized charters to standardized test mandaters insisting on computer-based instruction? I can think of two reasons.

For the first, I have to tell you a story. from around 1880 to 1920, there were tens of thousands of community bands in this country. Every town, no matter how tiny, had a band. Instrument manufacturers were surfing on a robust income stream. But post-Great European War, town bands evaporated. The bottom dropped out of the market. Instrument manufacturers were looking at ruin. So they invented school music programs. They convinced school districts all across America that what they needed was a school band.

This is not to suggest that school music programs are a snare and a delusion. School music programs made me what I am today (I know I occasionally hyperbolize for effect, but that's not what I'm doing here). What I am suggesting is that sometimes, when the bottom drops out, companies need to find huge new markets, and one of the hugest self-renewing markets is the one made out of millions of public school children.

What other reason to try to computerize worksheets, instruction, and testing, even though we already know that it won't improve the experience one whit for the students?

Because we aren't doing it for the students at all. It's not that computerization makes it easier for them to do their work; it's that computerization makes it easier to collect the results of their work. We already know that Data Collection is one of the driving forces of reformy stuff. Computerization allows our Data Overlords to hoover up data like hungry hungry hippos.

I am not a luddite. I love my technology. But tech is a tool, and it has to be judged by whether or not is does something useful. It's dumb to use a hammer for a screwdriver job just because you think the hammer is shinier. There's no reason to use a computer just because it's a computer. The kids are not impressed, gramps.

Jack Schneider & That Woman

Jack Schneider is my hero.

Over at EdWeek, he has spent the last month co-authoring, "Beyond the Rhetoric." The other co-author of the blog is She Who Will Not Be Named. In the opening piece, Schneider talks about the considerable tension created by the forces surrounding the fight for public education:

Sometimes this tension has been fruitful—leading to the adoption of policies for which there is diverse and well-founded support.  More often, however, it has provoked animosity and mistrust, accompanied by increasingly alarmist rhetoric.  Arguments have devolved into attacks.  Fact has been blended with fiction.  And ideology has undermined respect for evidence.  In this war of words, reasoned debate is being driven to the margins.  And neither side is blameless.

And so he and That Woman have embarked on an attempt to dialogue, addressing an issue each week with three pieces in the week.


Schneider, for his part, has been impressive. He has managed to continue having a serious conversation with a woman who many of us have long since stopped taking seriously. I think it's even working, a little. The first week in particular showed That Woman apparently thinking she would just state her talking points repeatedly and he would intersperse them with comments of his own, but I swear she's actually starting to converse. Sure, he could have torn into her the way many of us would like to (or have), but her unwillingness to stick around for hard talk is well-known. After a month, she is still in the room with Schneider, keeping the conversation going. That's no small achievement.

Topics so far have included standardized testing, teacher evaluation, and teacher training. Some recurring themes have emerged already.

One is an exchange that the two keep having, which goes something like this:

That Woman: Let me make a sweeping, cool-sounding restatement of one of my talking points.

Schneider: I'm going to respond with actual facts from the actual world.

Another recurring theme is that She Who Will Not Etc doesn't seem to really grasp the connection between rhetoric and reality. The most recent editions in particular find her asserting that since TFA and TNTP are pursuing some internal fixes, that should be good, and there's no accountability or consequences of their continued public bashing of traditional teachers. Words have meaning, and words create consequences. I'm not sure She gets that. I'm quite certain she doesn't get any of the complicated nuances of some of the issues at which she goes swinging her rhetorical hatchet.


So is this blog worthwhile? I responded to the first one by noting I was sad to see She get a platform to air her noises, and I still have mixed feelings about that. But I cannot with an even remotely straight face claim that writers like me accomplish anything by calling She names (we just feel better), so why not let Schneider try it his way for a while. At the very least, the blog is providing an interesting window on what is going on in She's brain, and a masters's class in how to respond patiently, firmly and effectively to some of what comes out of She's mouth. It's not the She vs. Ravitch debate, or any of the potentially Palinesque matchups that She has so carefully avoided, but it's a sort of dialogue, and a little dialogue never hurt anybody.

It would be fun, probably, to wade through the pieces and extract the various silly things She says, or play Daily Show and hold them up against things She has said and done in the past, and I certainly thought about doing that. But it feels mean to rain on Schneider's attempted picnic when he is so diligently standing up for Things That Are Right. And beyond that, what do we want.

At some point, we'll have to decide what winning looks like and whether we want to drive towards a day when public education is put right, or a day when people like She break down in sobs and beg forgiveness for all the nasty, evil, wrongheaded educational malpractice they tried to force down a nation's throat. The first is what we really need, and we probably can't have it AND the second at the same time. In fact, we probably can't have the second at all. So hats off to you, Jack Schneider.

What is "Failing"?

(This started out as part of this previous column, but it got away from me)

We've been hearing a ton of verbage spewed out over the past umpteen years about failing schools. We need Common Core because our schools are failing. We can't go back to the failing schools of yesteryear. Failing failing failing. Well, the next time somebody tells you that schools are failing, please ask them this for me--

Failing at what?

Is there, for instance, new research to suggest that Americans are largely more unhappy and discontented than in the past, and it's all because of their education? Are we failing to help our children grow up mentally healthy?

Is there a research-based link between high school education quality and the divorce rate? Are we failing to teach our children how to be good marriage partners?

Are we failing to teach children how to properly appreciate and even make music?

Are we failing to raise children who are physically fit and active in sports?

Are we failing to raise children with a clear and well-developed sense of personal responsibility infused with a strong moral compass?

Are we failing to raise young people with a well-developed sense of empathy?

Are we failing to teach children how to self-direct, self-educate, and self-assess as they dive into the vast sea of information and ideas in front of them?

No. I mean, it's clear that we are not 100% on any of those measures, but that's not what the "failing" in "failing schools" means. You know what the "failing" in "failing schools" invariably means?

We are failing to teach students to get really good tests on standardized tests.

We are failing to provide corporations with workers who can be easily absorbed and shed.

And-- well, I've got nothing else. That's it. Scratch the failing schools rhetoric, and it comes down to those two things. That's it. That's the massive failure of American public education.

Our definition of success has become so meager, so narrow, so sad and small. And yet, because it is so narrow, we easily fail. CCSS gives us a system in which a student who walks on water will be marked as failing his swimming test. No, our big failure is to recognize the richness and variety, the beauty and awesomeness that is the full range of human expression and ability and experience.

What Is "Working"?

At first this post started with a long embedded twitter conversation between @TeacherSabrina and @MichaelPetrilli, spinning off from a discussion of how charters and closings lead to re-segregation, but I've narrowed it down to a most revealing exchange:

@TeacherSabrina "Who should get to decide what works and what doesn't?"

@Michael Petrilli "What works and what doesn't work is a matter of good research."

And there is one of the big disconnects on the side of the Reformsters. Because what works and what doesn't work is not a matter of good research at all. Or rather, the research doesn't matter.

Only one thing matters-- the definition of "works."

Does this raggedy philips head screwdriver work? That depends on whether I want to use it to unscrew screws or punch holes in a soup can. Does telling my wife she's fat work? That depends on whether I want to make her happy or angry.

If I get to define what "working" looks like, all the measuring, testing, researching, test tubial navalgazing introexamination that follows is secondary. Part of what gets folks' backs up about the Reformsters is that they start with, "You do not understand how a school is supposed to work. You are doing school wrong."

The most fundamental part of local control is the community definition of what a working school looks like. The districts under the thumb of colonizers, districts like Newark and Philadelphia, are districts where the community definition has been thrown out.

Imagine a group of parents get together to define what a working school looks like. "It's in the community, so people can walk there. And students are at home in the evenings, learning the responsibilities of being part of a family (however messed up it may be). Student groups do community service in their own community, and students are able to be active in community groups based in the same neighborhood where they live."

Now let's do some scientific research to measure in sciency way how well schools stack up, and lookee here-- Philips Exeter Academy and other elite boarding schools all fail. They are all schools that don't work.

Research doesn't mean jack.

Or rather, by the time the research starts, the people who commissioned it have already picked the winners and losers. Common Core stacks the deck before it even gets to the actual standards, because it defines up front that a working education is only one that prepares the student for a job-- period (yes, yes, or for college-- defined down as the gateway to a higher class of job).

Don't tell me what the research says. Tell me what yardstick you set up for the research. 

The generally drift of Petrilli's argument was that bringing in outsiders to replace non-working schools with working schools is a win. But that process doesn't replace a non-working school with a working school-- it replaces the community's definition of "working" with the outsider's definition. It's invasive and extraordinarily patronizing (how do you imagine Philips Exeter's parents would greet an outside that stopped by to tell them their school was failing)?

Are there schools that are failing? Sure. Spectacularly in some cases. You know what those schools have in common? A community that knows it. They don't need Reformsters to come in and tell them to sit down and shut up because they don't run the [your district's name] schools. They don't need someone to come shove them out of the way so that their judgment can be replaced with the judgment of someone superior. They already have all the overly politicized bloated self-important bureaucratic monstrosities they need.

That's why parents in some urban districts initially welcomed reformsters with open arms-- they thought the reformsters were going to help them make schools work. Instead, reformsters have steadily told them that they don't know how a school is supposed to work, and they should all shut up and accept the substitution of other standards for their own. After all, it's supported by research.

US DOE Ambassadors!

US Department of Edumacation press release

There has been much discussion lately of our Principal Ambassador program, a program in which US DOE-indoctrinated principals are inserted into school settings where they can sort of work for the school district while spreading the good word of Common Core Etc. This was spun off of our successful Teacher Ambassador program which replaced classroom teachers with special US DOE agents. Both programs were conjured up as a way to keep local districts in line provide federal guidance.

Some have said that these programs are classic Duncan Vaporware-- programs that are announced with some fanfare and then ignored, almost as if few people in the real world were actually interested in Arne's great ideas, or as if the department is more interested in announcing things than actually accomplishing things. Nothing could be further from the truth. In fact, we are pleased to announce several more Ambassador programs!

Ambassador Librarians

Ambassador librarians will be embedded in school libraries, where they will make sure that students are following federal guidelines for reading selections. Should a student attempt to check out a book below his grade level for some lame reason like "he enjoys it," the ambassador librarian will apply a federal ruler rigorously to the child's hand.

Ambassador Lunch Ladies

Ambassador lunch ladies will be place in cafeteria lunch lines, where they will make sure that every student takes some federal cheese (motto: still smelly after thirty years). Ambassador lunch ladies will also circle through the dining area to scold all students who have not eaten all their vegetables. They will also be responsible for monitoring the federal grumpiness guidelines, and report to the department any other lunch ladies who are too often cheerful.

Ambassador Bus Drivers

Ambassador bus drivers will be responsible both for making sure the bus travels where it is supposed to and also for making sure that all the passengers are happy about it. Ambassador bus drivers will be trained in leading the new federally-produced cheerily-engineered songs "If You're Happy I Should Know It" and "It's For Your Own Good."

Ambassador Parent

Let's face it. One of the major factors in student learning is the home situation, and we have learned that many of you weak, lying, sad excuses for parental units would rather talk about "love" and "support" and your precious baby than give the child the rigorous ass-kicking he probably needs. So this federal program will put an additional federally-funded parent in your home to monitor your proper use of motivational techniques and to oversee homework production. Families will also be instructed in proper use of federal bed time standards as well as the federally-approved manner for tucking small children in without exceeding the federally-supported number of bedtime kisses.



The bottom line here is that we can't trust you yahoos to do anything right. We give you all these great programs and instructions and you insist on making your own choices about your own lives and acting as if the federal government doesn't know best. Time after time, we come up with awesome programs like Common Core-- dammit, I can never remember that third word-- what was it-well, never mind, because now that I think about it, we totally DID NOT come up with that one. But we provide these swell programs and people don't just adopt them.

So why shouldn't we send some of our people out there to nudge you along? Why shouldn't we send someone out to help you make the right choice (and to let us know that you're making it)?

These programs are going to be hugely popular. People want to do the right thing, and we know what the right thing to do is, so everybody can be happy!

Our only concern is that demand might be so high that we won't have enough ambassadors to go around. But we have a plan-- we could use distance learning techniques and if an actual ambassador isn't available for your location, we can set up web-cams and internet linkage. Ambassador-cam can be your friendly help and our friendly eyes.

With those types of resources, we can eventually launch the last of the ambassador program-- one that creates an ambassador sibling. Someone friendly and close to you, to help you through every tough situation while keeping you on the right path. It would probably be an older sibling. Probably a boy. Yeah, that's the ticket.

Jennifer Rubin Strikes Out

Over at the Washington Post, Jennifer Rubin took her turn at propping up the ever-besieged conservative defense of Common Core. She did not succeed. (even though I'm giving her an extra swing or two).

Strike One

Rubin starts out with the old standard "We were getting totes whupped on the PISA by all the other kids on the playground, which was completely a crisis because we're worse than Korea and the Netherlands." She crunches some of the subdivisions with a bit more style than the classic version of this argument, but she still fails to spackle over the giant hole in this argument, to wit:

Exactly what is the linkage between standardized test supremacy and anything? Where is the evidence that greater standardized test scores are linked to economic prosperity or military supremacy or better symphony orchestras or happier, more attractive children?

Foul Ball

She points out that the Core is NOT curriculum, as in, it is not responsible for those evil lessons trying to brainwash children into thinking the federal government is better than your mom. She is not wrong here, though she misses the nuance that CCSS made the widespread distribution of such baloneyicious school material far more likely.

She airs out the new talking point-- this should be a pedagogical debate, not a political one. Which is true. It was true back when many of us were saying so, but the pro-Core folks had the political upper hand so they pooh-poohed the pedagogical points. Live/die by sword, and all that.

Strike Two

You have to propose an alternative. Personally, I reject this argument. If a doctor wants to cut out my lungs for no good reason, I do not have to answer the question, "Well then, what other organ do you want me to cut out instead?" It's the Reformsters who wanted to change the education world; it's the Reformsters who have to make a case for doing so.

But I accept that the game has already started. Fortunately, there are plenty of alternatives out there. Some states had perfectly good standards before we started, so they could use those. There is a very interesting open source approach out there. Even I have a proposal for standards. Plus guys like Tom Hoffman who can explain the issues in great detail.

Rubin is okay with states coming up with their own standards, though she figures they'll just be cribbed from the CCSS like the Indiana standards are. I'm not sure if she realizes the reason for that (hint: it's not a pedagogical reason-- it's the other one).

Strike Three

Rubin's other big point is that the Core is already happening, and so we just can't stop. This is a particularly entertaining argument from a conservative right now, and I look forward to hearing conservatives bring it up as a defense of the Affordable Care Act. Or will their argument be, "It's really bad so I don't care how far the train is out of the station, we have to stop it before it causes more damage." I'm betting on door number two.

She reminds conservatives that they like standards and rules, and they like businessy stuff, and I think she is maybe half right there, depending on which conservatives we're talking to. But hey-- lots of states are doing things, and "the economies of size are unfolding " which means corporations are heavily into financial foreplay as they begin disrobing the national market for education stuff and you don't want to stop them in the middle of that! You don't want to be THAT guy!

Beanball

Rubin actually writes this sentence in her conclusion. "But the results will speak for themselves." This is worth remembering because we've been at this long enough for results to start talking, and what they're saying is "No signs of success around here, buddy!" Nothing about CCSS and its attendant reforms smells like anything other than flop sweat. In fact, the more results we see, the more people seem to get the sense that the results are saying, "Run away!" The only people who are seeing success anywhere in the neighborhood of the CCSS regime are the people making money from it. And that is a small, select, and increasingly outnumbered group.