The Education Writer's Association has carried lots of water for the pro-test, pro-corporate, pro-Core, anti-public ed crowd, so there's no real surprise when it was time for a discussion about the state of CCSS, their convention panel of "experts" includes six CCSS shills and one actual voice for public education.
Monday's panel included Dennis van Roekel (NEA president and CCSS fan), Terry Holliday (KY Ed Commissioner), Patrick McGuinn (Drew University), Sandra Alberti (from profiteering group Student Achievement Partners), Frederick Hess (American Enterprise Insitute), Michael Cohen (pres of Achieve) and, all by her loneseome, Carol Burris, outspoken principal and CCSS critic. What has been reported is a medley of old classic talking points and some nifty new ones.
It's Not Federal
Cohen said, "There are a lot of myths out there," and then proceeded to deal with some of the wackiest ones. Do any serious people believe "the standards were entirely a project of President Barack Obama's administration"? I doubt it, just as I doubt serious people believe that the Core will turn children gay or [insert pretty much anything from Glen Beck's book here]. Conspiracy by Gates et al? Beginnings of K-12 curriculum? Those two are more believable by serious people, but he didn't appear to actually refute them-- just lump them in with wacky ones, like a couple of valuable homes bundled in with bad mortgages so they could all fail together.
This is my favorite Cohen quote: "If federal money equaled a federal curriculum, we would have had a
federal curriculum since about 1990." Well, yes. If we could have ignored that whole Constitutional law thing which calls any such federal action illegal. So that might have created a bit of an obstacle. I wonder if there is way around all of that...? Hmmm.....
Holliday's contribution to the old standard was that Kentucky was doing just fine on the state level "until the President and secretary of education took credit for the Common Core," at which point all Southern political holy conservative hell broke loose.
It's All Politics
McGuinn characterized the brouhaha as "a lot of smoke but little fire," by which he meant that for all the sturm and drang, only one state has officially withdrawn from the standards (and that only in name; the substance of Indiana's standards looks oddly familiar).
This is one of the New Classic talking points-- the arguments are all about politics, and have nothing to do with professional educators seeing real issues of substance in the standards themselves (nor does it have anything to do with the fact that there is no mechanism at all by which those sorts of substantive issues can be addressed or adapted). Nope-- this is all just about the politics, the right's hatred of Obama, the left's hatred of corporations. Nothing at all to do with teachers saying, "In our professional judgment, these standards have serious problems."
Ghost Stories
NCLB reared its head at the panel discussion many times, most oddly in the remarks of Dennis Van Roekel. Van Roekel, you may have heard, is the president of something called the National Education Association, a group which used to represent rank and file teachers across the country but now exists to maintain the political connections of a handful of lobbyists and former teachers in DC.
Van Roekel is finally ready to follow the crowd in condemning VAM, but is certain that we can't scrap CCSS because we don't want to go back to NCLB, because....? I don't know. DVR has a short term memory problem so his powers of recall stretch back only a decade? But DVR is afraid that dumping the core will leave us stuck in NCLB which, as you know, results only in memorization and bubble tests.
Honestly, I sometimes forget how deeply disappointing my union leader is. Does he think we are not drowning in test prep and bubbling out the wazoo under CCSS? Memo to DVR: If you want a position to take that isn't stupid, try this one--
We demand that Congress get off its large collective butt and finally reauthorize the ESEA in a non-stupid form.
See how easy that was, DVR? I came up with that policy in the time it takes to type it. Stop saying stupid things with my dues money. Thank you.
Self-Serving Baloney
God, I wonder what people who work at places like SAP tell themselves when they get up in the morning. Alberti offered that CCSS is "a professional opportunity to shape education policy in this country,
and teachers across the country are taking on this challenge with energy
and commitment."
Because if there's one thing that has characterized the CCSS-based status quo, it's the enthusiastic embrace of teacher input and opinion. But Alberti says that teachers need support, and thank goodness there are corporate profiteers ready to sell all the support they can get a buck for. You're doing God's work, SAP-- thanks for your philanthropic, public-spirited desire to cash in on the new status quo.
Carol Burris
God bless Burris, who often wanders into these dens of Reformsters and just patiently hammers away armed with nothing more than her wits, her honesty, her ability to speak clearly, and facts. I would like to write her an epic poem of thanks here, but I'll stick to her Best Quote of the Day:
This is authentic pushback. Teachers are the canaries in the coal mine and the canaries are not doing well.
In other words, it's NOT just politics and teachers aren't just little leftie/rightie tools, but actual professionals who are the first to deal with, see, and experience the real results of these policies that Reformsters like to promote from their comfy offices somewhere high atop not-schools.
Burris's quote underlines the most bizarre feature of the EWA panels. They wanted to find out how Common Core is doing, and to find out they decided to talk to everyone except actual classroom teachers. It's extraordinary. It's as if a medical convention wanted to find out how a new surgical technique with artificial kidneys is working, and they called the salesmen from the company, the accountant from the hospital, and a few hospital board members-- but not a single surgeon or patient.
I'll give them one credit-- they gave Anthony Cody a nice award that he totally earned. But their panel skills are weak.
Wednesday, May 21, 2014
Tuesday, May 20, 2014
Go Home, Gramps!
In the ongoing battle to get older, more experienced, and (most importantly) more expensive teachers out of schools, the only surprise is that the latest push didn't come sooner.
Education Next, the magazine by and for the discerning corporate conservative educrats at the Fordham Institute, Harvard Kennedy School, and the Hoover Institution, brings us an article about incentive programs for early retirement.
Early Retirement Payoff is the headline. The payoff is in the subhead-- "Incentive programs for veteran teachers may boost student achievement." Oh, may. "May" is such a word, such a miniature poem that promises everything but requires nothing in the way of proof or substance. Shaking my monitor may make my computer run faster. Riding a bicycle may make my hair grow back. Investing in beet farms may lead to riches.
The article offers two chunks of research, but first, authors Maria D. Fitzpatrick and Michael F. Lovenheim would like to provide some background. You may have heard that public budgets have grown tighter (kudos on the correct use of political passive voice-- an effect has been created and we will stay mum about the cause-- those budgets grew tighter in the same mysterious way that my pants have grown tighter). Teachers get old and then they retire, which leads to hiring cheaper teachers. But sometimes teachers get really old. In 2010, one third of teachers were over fifty (wish I had a link for that, but no). Of course, we could also say that experienced teachers are replaced with inexperienced ones. So can we find a link between teacher early retirement and student achievement?
After all, an early-retiring teacher might be burned out. Or he might be bailing because he sees a roomful of loser coming at him and he wants to dodge that bullet. Our intrepid researchers are curious, but fortuitously they found a big bucket full of data. From twenty years ago.
No- no- wait! Don't walk away. I am sure that there are really useful things we can learn by studying what happened in Illinois schools in the early 90s. Seriously. Okay, no, I don't believe it either. But I do believe by looking at whatever meal these folks cooked up from the leftovers that had been in the freezer for twenty years-- whatever that meal is, it will at least tell us what the Fordham, Hoover, Harvard Kennedy folks (hereafter known as FHHKs) are hungry for. So let's dive in, shall we?
The Illinois Early Retirement Incentive
There are plenty of numbers and even a graph, but the bottom line here is pretty simple.
1) When offered financial incentive to retire early, more teachers will retire. Hope we didn't spend too much money workin' that one out. Pro tip: The sun? It's rising in the East tomorrow.
2) The Illinois Teacher Retirement System needed a good accountant in the early 90s. The ERI saved school districts money and cost the state retirement system more, for a net loss. Oops.
The Effect on Student Test Scores
Now it becomes really challenging to figure out how these numbers are being cooked. I'm wishing that I had the Jersey Jazzman or Mercedes Schneider looking at this because it is a convoluted mess.
But let's start with the conclusion (which I am thinking may be how the researchers managed this as well). The conclusion is that getting teachers to retire early not only doesn't hurt test scores, but actually causes them to rise.
Here are some things we either don't know or will not say:
We don't know exactly who retired, how many years of experience they had, and whether or not they retired early. We assume that teachers retired at age 50 or older and that this means they had at least 15 years of experience. We also assume that because retirement spiked during these years, some significant number of the retirees were early retirees (this would be why we bothered to make obvious point #1 above.)
Illinois schools took standardized tests in 3rd, 6th and 8th grade, so we used those data. We never do say exactly what test we're talking about, including what, exactly, the tests were supposed to be measuring.
We don't know (and we admit as much) what other changes might have accompanied the staff turnovers in schools that lost many retirees. Was curriculum changed, class size altered, rooms moved, ice cream ordered in every Wednesday? We don't know.
We also don't know (and the author's don't admit this) what position the teachers retired from. Did we lose people in the tested grades, the grades immediately before or after? We don't know.
We don't know why the effect occurred. Our best guess is that teachers who are burned out and crappy are most likely to grab the opportunity to get out of Dodge (I'm paraphrasing).
What we do seem to know is that twenty years ago, as average years of experience went down, test scores went up. And we frame our conclusion like this:
But the implication of our results is clear: offering expiring incentives for late-career teachers to retire does not harm student achievement on average.
This is not how you frame an argument in favor of an action; this is how you head off anticipated objections to it. This is somebody saying, "We need to entice older teachers to get out sooner. People will claim that losing older teachers is bad for business. Let's assert that it isn't." It is also possible (this is just my suspicion here, but we seem to be open to WAGs here) that you lowball a finding that you can't explain and don't expect anyone to believe.
Their Policy Implications
Early retirement doesn't help the state if retired teachers are more expensive than employed ones. Make sure you fix that before you start getting people to retire. But if you can do that, it's a win all around. FHHK would really like that.
My Policy Implications
In the 90s, PA also had an early retirement bill passed by the state (in a rare example of legislative charm, it was named after its proposer, Sen. Robert Mellow, and so teachers who were retired early under that bill were said to have "Mellowed out"). Lots of teachers at my school retired, a large cohort who had entered in the hard-to-find-teachers 60s. Those guys were a completely different breed of teacher. I can't think of much to learn about my colleagues of today from my colleagues then.
What we have is research based on a very narrow sample of data from twenty years ago in which we have to tease out, deduce, and suppose the very details that we're treating as critical factors here. It is only slightly more rigorous research than the research which declares that public education has been going to hell in a handcart ever since the Supremes took prayer out of school.
Nevertheless, pay attention, because I suspect this isn't the last we've heard of this study. I fully expect the FHHKers to trot it out again.
Education Next, the magazine by and for the discerning corporate conservative educrats at the Fordham Institute, Harvard Kennedy School, and the Hoover Institution, brings us an article about incentive programs for early retirement.
Early Retirement Payoff is the headline. The payoff is in the subhead-- "Incentive programs for veteran teachers may boost student achievement." Oh, may. "May" is such a word, such a miniature poem that promises everything but requires nothing in the way of proof or substance. Shaking my monitor may make my computer run faster. Riding a bicycle may make my hair grow back. Investing in beet farms may lead to riches.
The article offers two chunks of research, but first, authors Maria D. Fitzpatrick and Michael F. Lovenheim would like to provide some background. You may have heard that public budgets have grown tighter (kudos on the correct use of political passive voice-- an effect has been created and we will stay mum about the cause-- those budgets grew tighter in the same mysterious way that my pants have grown tighter). Teachers get old and then they retire, which leads to hiring cheaper teachers. But sometimes teachers get really old. In 2010, one third of teachers were over fifty (wish I had a link for that, but no). Of course, we could also say that experienced teachers are replaced with inexperienced ones. So can we find a link between teacher early retirement and student achievement?
After all, an early-retiring teacher might be burned out. Or he might be bailing because he sees a roomful of loser coming at him and he wants to dodge that bullet. Our intrepid researchers are curious, but fortuitously they found a big bucket full of data. From twenty years ago.
No- no- wait! Don't walk away. I am sure that there are really useful things we can learn by studying what happened in Illinois schools in the early 90s. Seriously. Okay, no, I don't believe it either. But I do believe by looking at whatever meal these folks cooked up from the leftovers that had been in the freezer for twenty years-- whatever that meal is, it will at least tell us what the Fordham, Hoover, Harvard Kennedy folks (hereafter known as FHHKs) are hungry for. So let's dive in, shall we?
The Illinois Early Retirement Incentive
There are plenty of numbers and even a graph, but the bottom line here is pretty simple.
1) When offered financial incentive to retire early, more teachers will retire. Hope we didn't spend too much money workin' that one out. Pro tip: The sun? It's rising in the East tomorrow.
2) The Illinois Teacher Retirement System needed a good accountant in the early 90s. The ERI saved school districts money and cost the state retirement system more, for a net loss. Oops.
The Effect on Student Test Scores
Now it becomes really challenging to figure out how these numbers are being cooked. I'm wishing that I had the Jersey Jazzman or Mercedes Schneider looking at this because it is a convoluted mess.
But let's start with the conclusion (which I am thinking may be how the researchers managed this as well). The conclusion is that getting teachers to retire early not only doesn't hurt test scores, but actually causes them to rise.
Here are some things we either don't know or will not say:
We don't know exactly who retired, how many years of experience they had, and whether or not they retired early. We assume that teachers retired at age 50 or older and that this means they had at least 15 years of experience. We also assume that because retirement spiked during these years, some significant number of the retirees were early retirees (this would be why we bothered to make obvious point #1 above.)
Illinois schools took standardized tests in 3rd, 6th and 8th grade, so we used those data. We never do say exactly what test we're talking about, including what, exactly, the tests were supposed to be measuring.
We don't know (and we admit as much) what other changes might have accompanied the staff turnovers in schools that lost many retirees. Was curriculum changed, class size altered, rooms moved, ice cream ordered in every Wednesday? We don't know.
We also don't know (and the author's don't admit this) what position the teachers retired from. Did we lose people in the tested grades, the grades immediately before or after? We don't know.
We don't know why the effect occurred. Our best guess is that teachers who are burned out and crappy are most likely to grab the opportunity to get out of Dodge (I'm paraphrasing).
What we do seem to know is that twenty years ago, as average years of experience went down, test scores went up. And we frame our conclusion like this:
But the implication of our results is clear: offering expiring incentives for late-career teachers to retire does not harm student achievement on average.
This is not how you frame an argument in favor of an action; this is how you head off anticipated objections to it. This is somebody saying, "We need to entice older teachers to get out sooner. People will claim that losing older teachers is bad for business. Let's assert that it isn't." It is also possible (this is just my suspicion here, but we seem to be open to WAGs here) that you lowball a finding that you can't explain and don't expect anyone to believe.
Their Policy Implications
Early retirement doesn't help the state if retired teachers are more expensive than employed ones. Make sure you fix that before you start getting people to retire. But if you can do that, it's a win all around. FHHK would really like that.
My Policy Implications
In the 90s, PA also had an early retirement bill passed by the state (in a rare example of legislative charm, it was named after its proposer, Sen. Robert Mellow, and so teachers who were retired early under that bill were said to have "Mellowed out"). Lots of teachers at my school retired, a large cohort who had entered in the hard-to-find-teachers 60s. Those guys were a completely different breed of teacher. I can't think of much to learn about my colleagues of today from my colleagues then.
What we have is research based on a very narrow sample of data from twenty years ago in which we have to tease out, deduce, and suppose the very details that we're treating as critical factors here. It is only slightly more rigorous research than the research which declares that public education has been going to hell in a handcart ever since the Supremes took prayer out of school.
Nevertheless, pay attention, because I suspect this isn't the last we've heard of this study. I fully expect the FHHKers to trot it out again.
Further Proof Researchers Don't Understand Humans
Most of us suffer from employment bias, the belief that we are doing work that is self-evidently important. On that list of Things They Don't Teach You In Teacher School is the realization that while we can see how obviously important our work is, not everyone shares that belief.
Our employment bias simply sets us up for discouragement. But the employment bias of the folks who work with surveys and tests creates larger problems for all of us.
Take the research reported by Holly Yettick over at EdWeek. Joseph P. Robinson-Cimpian at the University of Illinois at Urbana came up with the surprising news that when you give anonymous surveys to teens about personal sociological information, your results might not be accurate because the little buggers will lie to you!
Let's pause for just a moment so that every single high school teacher and parent in America can exclaim, "Shocked! I am shocked!!"
Robinson-Cimpian's research provides some awesome examples. Follow-up research revealed in one case that out of 253 teens who reported using artificial limbs, 251 were lying. And it appears that many teens report themselves as gay when they actually aren't. Says Robinson-Cimpian, "Just like these jokester youths think it's funny to say they are gay and blind, they also think it's funny to say that they are suicidal, engage in sexually risky behavior, and take drugs."
Yettick does not want us to be too amused by these "mischievous responders," because they "can pose a serious threat to the validity of survey-based research studies."
I think Yettick is missing the picture here. These responders do not pose a serious threat to survey validity. They reveal why survey validity is a tissue-thin construct in the first place.
Yettick quotes this exchange at the beginning of the piece:
Q: Last school year, did you ever have an unexcused absence or a ditched class?
A: No, but why would I tell?
She characterizes this as "silly sarcasm." I would characterize it as an honest answer. What she calls a "mischievous responder" I would call a teen who decides not to play the game, who doesn't even bother to employ an adult's more sophisticated techniques for pretending to play nice while thumbing his nose at the system. Are there survey writers who know better? Statistically that seems probable, but the bulk of surveys and tests suggest it's a tiny group (tinier than the group of mischievous responders).
Survey and test creators make one huge, huge assumption-- that the people who use their instruments owe them an honest answer. Their employment bias is so strong, their certainty that they are doing self-evidently Important Work so clear, that they don't imagine people not seeing it. These folks live in a magical land where, if they walk up to a total stranger and ask him what kinds of people he likes to have sex with, he will feel obliged to give an honest answer.
The same holds true for standardized testing. The foundational belief of the testing industry, the concrete on which every other piece of structure rests, is the assumption that students who take The Test must of course take it Seriously. If a student is bored or tired or distracted or just doesn't care or doesn't see any point or just feels like playing ACDC or thinks that high-stakes testing is stupid or wants to write open-ended answers in the form of dirty limericks-- if that happens, every single piece of precious data from student results to VAM to student growth to all of it is crap crap crap.
On some level, the test fans know this. That's why we make the tests high stakes and instruct teachers to say inspiring things-- because we know there is no earthly reason for students to take any of this bubblicious baloney seriously. Robinson-Cimpian estimates that about 12% of responders are not being straight. I think he's being overly optimistic. This is just further evidence that the whole model of analyzing what's inside a person's head by asking standardized test questions is just a failed, broken joke. Mischievous responders just see the joke, and respond accordingly.
Our employment bias simply sets us up for discouragement. But the employment bias of the folks who work with surveys and tests creates larger problems for all of us.
Take the research reported by Holly Yettick over at EdWeek. Joseph P. Robinson-Cimpian at the University of Illinois at Urbana came up with the surprising news that when you give anonymous surveys to teens about personal sociological information, your results might not be accurate because the little buggers will lie to you!
Let's pause for just a moment so that every single high school teacher and parent in America can exclaim, "Shocked! I am shocked!!"
Robinson-Cimpian's research provides some awesome examples. Follow-up research revealed in one case that out of 253 teens who reported using artificial limbs, 251 were lying. And it appears that many teens report themselves as gay when they actually aren't. Says Robinson-Cimpian, "Just like these jokester youths think it's funny to say they are gay and blind, they also think it's funny to say that they are suicidal, engage in sexually risky behavior, and take drugs."
Yettick does not want us to be too amused by these "mischievous responders," because they "can pose a serious threat to the validity of survey-based research studies."
I think Yettick is missing the picture here. These responders do not pose a serious threat to survey validity. They reveal why survey validity is a tissue-thin construct in the first place.
Yettick quotes this exchange at the beginning of the piece:
Q: Last school year, did you ever have an unexcused absence or a ditched class?
A: No, but why would I tell?
She characterizes this as "silly sarcasm." I would characterize it as an honest answer. What she calls a "mischievous responder" I would call a teen who decides not to play the game, who doesn't even bother to employ an adult's more sophisticated techniques for pretending to play nice while thumbing his nose at the system. Are there survey writers who know better? Statistically that seems probable, but the bulk of surveys and tests suggest it's a tiny group (tinier than the group of mischievous responders).
Survey and test creators make one huge, huge assumption-- that the people who use their instruments owe them an honest answer. Their employment bias is so strong, their certainty that they are doing self-evidently Important Work so clear, that they don't imagine people not seeing it. These folks live in a magical land where, if they walk up to a total stranger and ask him what kinds of people he likes to have sex with, he will feel obliged to give an honest answer.
The same holds true for standardized testing. The foundational belief of the testing industry, the concrete on which every other piece of structure rests, is the assumption that students who take The Test must of course take it Seriously. If a student is bored or tired or distracted or just doesn't care or doesn't see any point or just feels like playing ACDC or thinks that high-stakes testing is stupid or wants to write open-ended answers in the form of dirty limericks-- if that happens, every single piece of precious data from student results to VAM to student growth to all of it is crap crap crap.
On some level, the test fans know this. That's why we make the tests high stakes and instruct teachers to say inspiring things-- because we know there is no earthly reason for students to take any of this bubblicious baloney seriously. Robinson-Cimpian estimates that about 12% of responders are not being straight. I think he's being overly optimistic. This is just further evidence that the whole model of analyzing what's inside a person's head by asking standardized test questions is just a failed, broken joke. Mischievous responders just see the joke, and respond accordingly.
Monday, May 19, 2014
Rigorizing Eight Year Olds
One of the most odious policies to emerge from the Reformster swamp is the mandatory retention of all third graders who don't pass the Big Test in reading. And now Mary Laura Bragg, the director of Florida's program, has popped up to help us all understand just how anti-child this policy is.
She has popped up in North Carolina (motto: Strapping schools to a rocket and shooting them back into the 19th century) where such a program is being definitely considered* (I would say "seriously," but nobody who is serious about educating children would ever consider such a policy). She is responding to an op-ed by Janna Siegel Robertson and Pamela Grundy laying out why the politics-driven Read to Achieve program is an educational mistake; their piece explains (with like, actual facts from experts in the field) why Read to Achieve is a dumb idea. But Bragg (who is also the National Director of Policy for FEE, a prolific generator of anti-public-ed nonsense) questions the rigor of their work, and wanted to make her own point. So what is her point?
Florida's program is called "Just Read, Florida!" and that name really captures the cluelessness of the whole approach. Like many Reformster programs, this one starts with the assumption that these little eight-year-old slackers just aren't being sufficiently threatened and browbeaten. They could read, dammit-- they're just holding out on us! Don't tell me about your problems or your challenges or your background or your use of English as a second language or your cognitive impairments or how your life gets in the way of your school-- Just Read, Dammit! Just do it! Because there is no better pedagogical technique than Insisting Strongly.
Bragg says the proof of her programs success is that the NAEP scores went up. This, too, captures what is so screwed up about this approach. Because remember, Moms and Dads, the school is not here to serve the students by providing them with an education. The students are here to serve the school by cranking out the scores the school needs to make its numbers.
The biggest complaint against retention is the use of test scores in making decisions. But good tests objectively measure real reading skills. A score is not simply a number on a piece of paper but a reflection of actual ability.
Well, that's sort of true. Sometimes a score isn't simply a number on a piece of paper. Sometimes it's a number in a computer. But either way you cut it, it's simply a number. Do good tests objectively measure real reading skills? Here you're just making a definition, and if that's your definition, then no good tests exist, and they never will. (Also-- is that really the biggest complaint against retention. Because as Pamela Grundy points out below in the comments, the biggest complaint might actually be that retention does more harm than good.)
There is no such thing as an objective concept of "real reading skills." A reading test will always--ALWAYS-- measure the biased picture of reading skills promoted by the people who wrote the test. Always. We could break the internet launching into that argument, but if you want to shut me up, just provide an objective picture of Real Reading Skills that all educational experts agree on. I will not be waiting.
Children who enter fourth grade as struggling readers are four times more likely to drop out of school. The vast majority of teenagers who wind up in the juvenile justice system are illiterate. In other words, the most important indicator of whether a child will succeed in life is whether he or she is a strong reader by the end of third grade.
Is there some sort of requirement that all Reformsters must skip Basic Statistics class. Maybe you missed this when it was going around the net, but here are some great charts showing, among other things, that the lower the divorce rate has dropped in Maine, the less margarine has been sold.
Your "most important indicator" is bogus, fake, false, unsupportable. At the very least, the correlation door can swing both ways-- a student unhappy enough with school to eventually drop out is less likely to try at his reading lessons (even if someone shouts, "Just Read, Dammit!" at him). What is most likely is that dropping out, getting in trouble with the law, and failing in school are all related to a separate factor.
But Bragg is STILL not done being ridiculous!
Retention policies are badly needed tough love.
Oh for the love of God. Yes, because all those elementary teachers are in classroom saying, "Yes, reading's okay and all, but I would rather give Pat a cookie and sing Kun-Bay-Yah" because if there's anybody who DOESN'T understand the value of education, it's the people who decided to devote their adult professional lives to education.
Yes, these damn kids just need a kick in the pants. Bunch of slackers!
Children should hit developmental milestones when they are told to. The average height for an eight year old boy is 45 inches. I propose we hold all boys in third grade until they reach that height. If they won't reach that height, let's just use tough love and yell "Just Grow, Dammit!" Because children should grow as they are told to grow, and they should all grow exactly the same way at exactly the same time. And if they won't behave and conform and obey, they must be punished until they will.
Bragg's closing shot is as anticlimactic as it is obnoxious: "This debate obviously will continue. It is important to ensure all relevant information be included. One would hope those in academia would not rely on others to do basic research." This despite the fact that she has not offered any relevant information or basic research.
Look, North Carolina-- this is a bad, bad, dumb idea for which there is no good argument. It assumes that children can be punished into excellence and achievement, and while that is a logical extension of the NC policy towards teachers, there isn't a lick of support to suggest that it creates smarter, healthier, happier grown-ups. And taking education advice from Florida is like taking political advice from Iraq. Just Say No, Florida!
*EDIT: Just to clarify-- yes, NC actually has one of these reprehensible laws in place. As it comes time to actually make third graders suffer the consequences of NC legislative malfeasance, Grundy and Robertson have stepped forward to plead that NC's leaders reconsider before somebody (particularly a third grade somebody) gets hurt. Bragg stepped in to argue staying the course. So the law's in place, but nobody has really thought about what it's going to mean until now. That's where we come in at the beginning of this piece.
She has popped up in North Carolina (motto: Strapping schools to a rocket and shooting them back into the 19th century) where such a program is being definitely considered* (I would say "seriously," but nobody who is serious about educating children would ever consider such a policy). She is responding to an op-ed by Janna Siegel Robertson and Pamela Grundy laying out why the politics-driven Read to Achieve program is an educational mistake; their piece explains (with like, actual facts from experts in the field) why Read to Achieve is a dumb idea. But Bragg (who is also the National Director of Policy for FEE, a prolific generator of anti-public-ed nonsense) questions the rigor of their work, and wanted to make her own point. So what is her point?
Florida's program is called "Just Read, Florida!" and that name really captures the cluelessness of the whole approach. Like many Reformster programs, this one starts with the assumption that these little eight-year-old slackers just aren't being sufficiently threatened and browbeaten. They could read, dammit-- they're just holding out on us! Don't tell me about your problems or your challenges or your background or your use of English as a second language or your cognitive impairments or how your life gets in the way of your school-- Just Read, Dammit! Just do it! Because there is no better pedagogical technique than Insisting Strongly.
Bragg says the proof of her programs success is that the NAEP scores went up. This, too, captures what is so screwed up about this approach. Because remember, Moms and Dads, the school is not here to serve the students by providing them with an education. The students are here to serve the school by cranking out the scores the school needs to make its numbers.
The biggest complaint against retention is the use of test scores in making decisions. But good tests objectively measure real reading skills. A score is not simply a number on a piece of paper but a reflection of actual ability.
Well, that's sort of true. Sometimes a score isn't simply a number on a piece of paper. Sometimes it's a number in a computer. But either way you cut it, it's simply a number. Do good tests objectively measure real reading skills? Here you're just making a definition, and if that's your definition, then no good tests exist, and they never will. (Also-- is that really the biggest complaint against retention. Because as Pamela Grundy points out below in the comments, the biggest complaint might actually be that retention does more harm than good.)
There is no such thing as an objective concept of "real reading skills." A reading test will always--ALWAYS-- measure the biased picture of reading skills promoted by the people who wrote the test. Always. We could break the internet launching into that argument, but if you want to shut me up, just provide an objective picture of Real Reading Skills that all educational experts agree on. I will not be waiting.
Children who enter fourth grade as struggling readers are four times more likely to drop out of school. The vast majority of teenagers who wind up in the juvenile justice system are illiterate. In other words, the most important indicator of whether a child will succeed in life is whether he or she is a strong reader by the end of third grade.
Is there some sort of requirement that all Reformsters must skip Basic Statistics class. Maybe you missed this when it was going around the net, but here are some great charts showing, among other things, that the lower the divorce rate has dropped in Maine, the less margarine has been sold.
Your "most important indicator" is bogus, fake, false, unsupportable. At the very least, the correlation door can swing both ways-- a student unhappy enough with school to eventually drop out is less likely to try at his reading lessons (even if someone shouts, "Just Read, Dammit!" at him). What is most likely is that dropping out, getting in trouble with the law, and failing in school are all related to a separate factor.
But Bragg is STILL not done being ridiculous!
Retention policies are badly needed tough love.
Oh for the love of God. Yes, because all those elementary teachers are in classroom saying, "Yes, reading's okay and all, but I would rather give Pat a cookie and sing Kun-Bay-Yah" because if there's anybody who DOESN'T understand the value of education, it's the people who decided to devote their adult professional lives to education.
Yes, these damn kids just need a kick in the pants. Bunch of slackers!
Children should hit developmental milestones when they are told to. The average height for an eight year old boy is 45 inches. I propose we hold all boys in third grade until they reach that height. If they won't reach that height, let's just use tough love and yell "Just Grow, Dammit!" Because children should grow as they are told to grow, and they should all grow exactly the same way at exactly the same time. And if they won't behave and conform and obey, they must be punished until they will.
Bragg's closing shot is as anticlimactic as it is obnoxious: "This debate obviously will continue. It is important to ensure all relevant information be included. One would hope those in academia would not rely on others to do basic research." This despite the fact that she has not offered any relevant information or basic research.
Look, North Carolina-- this is a bad, bad, dumb idea for which there is no good argument. It assumes that children can be punished into excellence and achievement, and while that is a logical extension of the NC policy towards teachers, there isn't a lick of support to suggest that it creates smarter, healthier, happier grown-ups. And taking education advice from Florida is like taking political advice from Iraq. Just Say No, Florida!
*EDIT: Just to clarify-- yes, NC actually has one of these reprehensible laws in place. As it comes time to actually make third graders suffer the consequences of NC legislative malfeasance, Grundy and Robertson have stepped forward to plead that NC's leaders reconsider before somebody (particularly a third grade somebody) gets hurt. Bragg stepped in to argue staying the course. So the law's in place, but nobody has really thought about what it's going to mean until now. That's where we come in at the beginning of this piece.
Sunday, May 18, 2014
FEE & FL Spew Out Silly Test Advice
Are your students worried about big stupid standardized tests? Well, Jeb Bush's shiny ed initiative has some help for you.
You may recall that Jeb Bush has been scaling up the Learn More Go Further campaign. The educational reformy initiative has been scaled up for a national audience-- it's almost as if Jeb is trying to prepare for some sort of national campaign of some sort. Learn More Go Further is what you would get if you set out to collect every bit of numbskullery ever said about the Common Core. You can read about this nifty initiative here, and follow it up with this account of their sad attempt to make use of that twitter thingy all the young folks are talking about.
My earlier attempts at shaming them notwithstanding (it's almost as if they aren't really worried about what some D-list blogger says about them), the LMGF folks have continued to crank out educational whiz-bangery including this-- a special printout guide for students who are concerned about whatever cockamamie test they are about to be subjected to.
Page one has a header of two chipper young (10-ish) students holding their bright yellow pencils-- wait! what? Are they not getting ready to take their FCATs on line? Are we not all planning to take our Big Tests on line? Maybe our intent is not to scare the children, but if that's the case, we run into trouble in the very first paragraph, which is this:
Over the past 15 years, Florida has successfully taken steps to implement policies to
increase the quality of education for students. This has resulted in vast academic improvements, made evident through the state surging upwards in national rankings.
Yes, I'm imagining the conversation between millions of third graders on their way to school on test day.
Chris: Hey, are you ready to do some surging upwards today?
Pat: Yeah, baby! Watch me take some successful steps to implement this policy!
Okay, so nobody talks like the ad copy on this flier, but you know who especially doesn't talk like that? The students that these fliers are theoretically aimed at. Perhaps it gets better, you say? Oh, honey.
Along with the hard work of teachers, students and parents, Florida’s transformation is largely rooted in accountability and assessments. A commitment to higher academic standards and aligned assessments are the next steps. By creating smarter, more efficient tests that push students to apply knowledge, students will develop greater critical thinking and analytical skills to prepare them for life after high school.
Two paragraphs in and we still haven't said a single thing that would be spoken by a real live human being, AND we've managed to wrap this verbacious gobbledeegook around utter bullshit. The impressive achievement here is that there isn't a single verifiable, supportable, non-baloney claim in this paragraph. What transformation? How do you trace the cause and effect? What is a smarter, more efficient test, and how exactly does it make students better thinkers? And why is any of this on a flier whose intended audience is students?????
And then-- oh, dear reader, oh sweet lord in heaven-- there is this. In the flier version it's just text, but Kris Nielsen located this awesome suitable-for-hanging poster version
I give the LMGF folks credit for just one thing-- it looks like they might have recognized that one of the great giant gaping holes in the narrative of test-based accountability is that students can't see any earthly reason to give so much as one half of a gluteus rattus about testing. But hey kids-- testing is a part of life! All these professionals-- all they do is just take a test and pass it and they are ready to fly a plane into surgery.
Well, that's page one. Page two has the actual tips for students facing a test. And first, to remind you that this whole thing was written by someone who has never met an actual child, we start with "While tests may seem scary, and some associated nervousness is normal, there are ways you can properly prepare to reduce stress." Yes, many's the time that teachers all the way from K through 12 have sat their students down and reassured them by looking them in the eye and saying soft, soothing tones, "Some associated nervousness is normal." I think Teddy Ruxpin used to have a chip programmed with that line.
Tips? We've got tips!
Before the test, approach the test with confidence. Get a good night's sleep. And-- as God is my witness I am not making this shit up-- "Strive for a relaxed state of concentration." Perhaps the writer chose the elevated diction to hide the ridiculousness of the advice-- work real hard to be relaxed. And also, don't take the test on an empty stomach. Fresh fruits and vegetables help reduce stress, so pound back some broccoli for breakfast on test day. (We'll ignore the traditional advice, which is don't eat out of the ordinary because it will make you drowsy).
After the test, check your answers and make sure you didn't make any silly mistakes. Then celebrate your achievement. I'm not sure if that means on the spot, like dancing in the aisle, or after school, when you try to share broccoli farts on the bus.
What about during the test? That's the biggest list. Read and follow the directions. Don't get frustrated and/or quit. Skip hard ones and come back. Use process of elimination (which it goes on to explain, as if this specific technique isn't routinely drilled into students' heads during the weeks of test prep prior to the test). And this-- "Don’t panic when other students appear to be finished. There’s no reward for finishing first." This is true; there will, however, be punishments for finishing at the bottom of the pack, so think about doing what you can to distract and sabotage your classmates, because their success will be your failure thanks to the magic of test results stack ranking.
Presumably LMGF envisions this handout being given to every testing student in Florida. It underlines, once again, twice, how much groups like this are envisioning imaginary children taking tests under imaginary conditions that will produce results of imaginary validity.
You may recall that Jeb Bush has been scaling up the Learn More Go Further campaign. The educational reformy initiative has been scaled up for a national audience-- it's almost as if Jeb is trying to prepare for some sort of national campaign of some sort. Learn More Go Further is what you would get if you set out to collect every bit of numbskullery ever said about the Common Core. You can read about this nifty initiative here, and follow it up with this account of their sad attempt to make use of that twitter thingy all the young folks are talking about.
My earlier attempts at shaming them notwithstanding (it's almost as if they aren't really worried about what some D-list blogger says about them), the LMGF folks have continued to crank out educational whiz-bangery including this-- a special printout guide for students who are concerned about whatever cockamamie test they are about to be subjected to.
Page one has a header of two chipper young (10-ish) students holding their bright yellow pencils-- wait! what? Are they not getting ready to take their FCATs on line? Are we not all planning to take our Big Tests on line? Maybe our intent is not to scare the children, but if that's the case, we run into trouble in the very first paragraph, which is this:
Over the past 15 years, Florida has successfully taken steps to implement policies to
increase the quality of education for students. This has resulted in vast academic improvements, made evident through the state surging upwards in national rankings.
Yes, I'm imagining the conversation between millions of third graders on their way to school on test day.
Chris: Hey, are you ready to do some surging upwards today?
Pat: Yeah, baby! Watch me take some successful steps to implement this policy!
Okay, so nobody talks like the ad copy on this flier, but you know who especially doesn't talk like that? The students that these fliers are theoretically aimed at. Perhaps it gets better, you say? Oh, honey.
Along with the hard work of teachers, students and parents, Florida’s transformation is largely rooted in accountability and assessments. A commitment to higher academic standards and aligned assessments are the next steps. By creating smarter, more efficient tests that push students to apply knowledge, students will develop greater critical thinking and analytical skills to prepare them for life after high school.
Two paragraphs in and we still haven't said a single thing that would be spoken by a real live human being, AND we've managed to wrap this verbacious gobbledeegook around utter bullshit. The impressive achievement here is that there isn't a single verifiable, supportable, non-baloney claim in this paragraph. What transformation? How do you trace the cause and effect? What is a smarter, more efficient test, and how exactly does it make students better thinkers? And why is any of this on a flier whose intended audience is students?????
And then-- oh, dear reader, oh sweet lord in heaven-- there is this. In the flier version it's just text, but Kris Nielsen located this awesome suitable-for-hanging poster version
Well, that's page one. Page two has the actual tips for students facing a test. And first, to remind you that this whole thing was written by someone who has never met an actual child, we start with "While tests may seem scary, and some associated nervousness is normal, there are ways you can properly prepare to reduce stress." Yes, many's the time that teachers all the way from K through 12 have sat their students down and reassured them by looking them in the eye and saying soft, soothing tones, "Some associated nervousness is normal." I think Teddy Ruxpin used to have a chip programmed with that line.
Tips? We've got tips!
Before the test, approach the test with confidence. Get a good night's sleep. And-- as God is my witness I am not making this shit up-- "Strive for a relaxed state of concentration." Perhaps the writer chose the elevated diction to hide the ridiculousness of the advice-- work real hard to be relaxed. And also, don't take the test on an empty stomach. Fresh fruits and vegetables help reduce stress, so pound back some broccoli for breakfast on test day. (We'll ignore the traditional advice, which is don't eat out of the ordinary because it will make you drowsy).
After the test, check your answers and make sure you didn't make any silly mistakes. Then celebrate your achievement. I'm not sure if that means on the spot, like dancing in the aisle, or after school, when you try to share broccoli farts on the bus.
What about during the test? That's the biggest list. Read and follow the directions. Don't get frustrated and/or quit. Skip hard ones and come back. Use process of elimination (which it goes on to explain, as if this specific technique isn't routinely drilled into students' heads during the weeks of test prep prior to the test). And this-- "Don’t panic when other students appear to be finished. There’s no reward for finishing first." This is true; there will, however, be punishments for finishing at the bottom of the pack, so think about doing what you can to distract and sabotage your classmates, because their success will be your failure thanks to the magic of test results stack ranking.
Presumably LMGF envisions this handout being given to every testing student in Florida. It underlines, once again, twice, how much groups like this are envisioning imaginary children taking tests under imaginary conditions that will produce results of imaginary validity.
Serious People
Why is it that I'm so hard on some people I disagree with here and so gentle with others? Because I have a hard time taking people seriously when they aren't serious people.
Certain positions in the current debates indicate clearly how serious a person is. I don't support the idea of national education standards; I think it's a bad idea, doomed to failure, that will not yield any of the benefits its supporters believe in. But I recognize that serious, well-intentioned, intelligent people can support the idea. Pitch national standards to me and I will disagree with you, but I won't automatically think less of you.
On the other hand, no serious person could ever say, "Only Common Core has made it possible for me to teach critical thinking in my classroom." Say that, and you have announced that you are a silly person, and I will treat you like a silly person who insists on saying silly things.
Serious people are not necessarily serious (I think of myself as a serious person), but you can usually spot them by their language:
1) Serious people recognize that words have both meaning and consequences. They don't just say whatever bullshit they feel like making up just because. They do not view communication as a game to win. They consider how words and actions really affect the things they claim to be serious about.
2) Serious people seek congruity between reality, their values, and their goals. Serious people don't focus on one at the cost of the other two. They do not ignore reality and sacrifice their values in order to achieve goals. They do not allow their values to blind them to reality. They do not look at reality and give up everything else. They don't ignore reality because it might be inconvenient.
3) Serious people do not lie. Most particularly, they do not lie about their goals and objectives. They are not bullshit artists. It's the silly people who will pee on your leg, tell you it's raining, and expect you to believe them because they used words and a faux serious expression.
One of the most striking things about the battle for public education is what a large percentage of the people fighting in the resistance are serious people, and what a large percentage of the people battling for the CCSS-anchored, high stakes test-driven, corporate backed status quo are NOT serious people.
Arne Duncan is not a serious person. Earlier in his career he made noises that sounded good, but which were unrelated to the actual policies he pursued. More often lately he sounds like that kid who hasn't done the homework but is hoping he can bullshit his way past you. There are no signs that he has ever made a serious attempt to see what is happening on the ground when it comes to the current test-driven status quo.
She Who Must Not Be Named is not a serious person. She does not appear to grasp the connection between rhetoric and reality, that somehow if you declare, "I must take action to show my deep and abiding love for you," and then punch your partner is the face, that's perfectly okay. Especially if you then announce, "He was totally pulling a gun on me." Even if there's no gun to be found.
David Coleman and his ilk are not serious people. Coleman has no more interest in what actually happens in classrooms than he has in the traffic patterns in ant colonies. When you are so deeply wise, you don't need to understand lesser realities-- you just make them bend to your will.
The Hedgemasters backing the charter movement are not serious people. Charters are investment opportunities and educational rhetoric is just ad copy. They are no more serious about finding real educational solutions than General Mills is serious about researching what the most healthy breakfast would really include.
The Data Overlords are not serious people. Or rather, they're not serious about education. They are serious about data collection, but it really makes no difference to them whether the education delivered is good or not, just as long as it's all tagged and bagged.
The Systems and Government pushers are not serious people. They are sure that if they can get total control of the whole system, it will work the way they imagine it will, and they do not want to be distracted by any evidence to the contrary. The pursuit of excellence should never be derailed by facts, or by the puny lesser humans who get in the way.
The corporate profiteers are not serious people. When Pearson believes their main problem is bad PR, they show such a disconnect from life on this planet that they cannot be taken as serious people.
People who are serious about education recognize that education is hard, teaching is hard, learning is hard, and that it takes a lifetime of looking and listening and paying attention to get a handle on how all the moving pieces of a public education are working. They seek to live out their respect and devotion to education, and they seek to live out their respect for the students that we serve. They align their words and actions and values. They are not worried about making education a lesser priority than profits and power.
If you are serious about education, your focus is on education. Not on finding facts to match your pre-conceived notions. Not on figuring out ways to "message" people so that they will believe you (and not, say, their eyes). Not on how you can use education to further your own ends (and it's someone else's problem if education gets busted up while being used as a tool). And certainly not on arranging for the biggest payout.
I have not yet mentioned the biggest tell of all-- serious people are still, always looking for answers. Do serious people sometimes fall for the reformy rubbish? Yes, they do. But I can tell they're serious because they are still trying to figure out how all this can fit together (and ultimately, like the entirely-serious Diane Ravitch, figuring out that it doesn't). Beware people who believe they have all the answers (personally, I have about 2% of the answers).
The supporters of the high-stakes test-driven corporate-backed status quo are, for the most part, silly people. Dangerous, powerful silly people, but still, while I have to take the danger they pose to public education seriously, I find it impossible to take them seriously at all.
Certain positions in the current debates indicate clearly how serious a person is. I don't support the idea of national education standards; I think it's a bad idea, doomed to failure, that will not yield any of the benefits its supporters believe in. But I recognize that serious, well-intentioned, intelligent people can support the idea. Pitch national standards to me and I will disagree with you, but I won't automatically think less of you.
On the other hand, no serious person could ever say, "Only Common Core has made it possible for me to teach critical thinking in my classroom." Say that, and you have announced that you are a silly person, and I will treat you like a silly person who insists on saying silly things.
Serious people are not necessarily serious (I think of myself as a serious person), but you can usually spot them by their language:
1) Serious people recognize that words have both meaning and consequences. They don't just say whatever bullshit they feel like making up just because. They do not view communication as a game to win. They consider how words and actions really affect the things they claim to be serious about.
2) Serious people seek congruity between reality, their values, and their goals. Serious people don't focus on one at the cost of the other two. They do not ignore reality and sacrifice their values in order to achieve goals. They do not allow their values to blind them to reality. They do not look at reality and give up everything else. They don't ignore reality because it might be inconvenient.
3) Serious people do not lie. Most particularly, they do not lie about their goals and objectives. They are not bullshit artists. It's the silly people who will pee on your leg, tell you it's raining, and expect you to believe them because they used words and a faux serious expression.
One of the most striking things about the battle for public education is what a large percentage of the people fighting in the resistance are serious people, and what a large percentage of the people battling for the CCSS-anchored, high stakes test-driven, corporate backed status quo are NOT serious people.
Arne Duncan is not a serious person. Earlier in his career he made noises that sounded good, but which were unrelated to the actual policies he pursued. More often lately he sounds like that kid who hasn't done the homework but is hoping he can bullshit his way past you. There are no signs that he has ever made a serious attempt to see what is happening on the ground when it comes to the current test-driven status quo.
She Who Must Not Be Named is not a serious person. She does not appear to grasp the connection between rhetoric and reality, that somehow if you declare, "I must take action to show my deep and abiding love for you," and then punch your partner is the face, that's perfectly okay. Especially if you then announce, "He was totally pulling a gun on me." Even if there's no gun to be found.
David Coleman and his ilk are not serious people. Coleman has no more interest in what actually happens in classrooms than he has in the traffic patterns in ant colonies. When you are so deeply wise, you don't need to understand lesser realities-- you just make them bend to your will.
The Hedgemasters backing the charter movement are not serious people. Charters are investment opportunities and educational rhetoric is just ad copy. They are no more serious about finding real educational solutions than General Mills is serious about researching what the most healthy breakfast would really include.
The Data Overlords are not serious people. Or rather, they're not serious about education. They are serious about data collection, but it really makes no difference to them whether the education delivered is good or not, just as long as it's all tagged and bagged.
The Systems and Government pushers are not serious people. They are sure that if they can get total control of the whole system, it will work the way they imagine it will, and they do not want to be distracted by any evidence to the contrary. The pursuit of excellence should never be derailed by facts, or by the puny lesser humans who get in the way.
The corporate profiteers are not serious people. When Pearson believes their main problem is bad PR, they show such a disconnect from life on this planet that they cannot be taken as serious people.
People who are serious about education recognize that education is hard, teaching is hard, learning is hard, and that it takes a lifetime of looking and listening and paying attention to get a handle on how all the moving pieces of a public education are working. They seek to live out their respect and devotion to education, and they seek to live out their respect for the students that we serve. They align their words and actions and values. They are not worried about making education a lesser priority than profits and power.
If you are serious about education, your focus is on education. Not on finding facts to match your pre-conceived notions. Not on figuring out ways to "message" people so that they will believe you (and not, say, their eyes). Not on how you can use education to further your own ends (and it's someone else's problem if education gets busted up while being used as a tool). And certainly not on arranging for the biggest payout.
I have not yet mentioned the biggest tell of all-- serious people are still, always looking for answers. Do serious people sometimes fall for the reformy rubbish? Yes, they do. But I can tell they're serious because they are still trying to figure out how all this can fit together (and ultimately, like the entirely-serious Diane Ravitch, figuring out that it doesn't). Beware people who believe they have all the answers (personally, I have about 2% of the answers).
The supporters of the high-stakes test-driven corporate-backed status quo are, for the most part, silly people. Dangerous, powerful silly people, but still, while I have to take the danger they pose to public education seriously, I find it impossible to take them seriously at all.
Saturday, May 17, 2014
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.
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.
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