If you want to find the grubby handprints of Rich People on education, look at the issue of geography.
It has become fashionable for Reformsters to decry the influence of geography, to say that students should not be stuck with a school based on zip code, that community schools are quaint and all, but their time has passed. From Denver to Newark, Reformsters are taking deliberate aim at community schools, claiming that students should not be locked into failing local schools, but should be free to fly like little birds across school lines to enter shiny new better schools. By which we usually mean charters.
And why not? Did we not decide sixty years ago that we would bus black children from underfunded, collapsing sub-par schools to the better schools across town?
Well, there are several reasons why not.
Alternative Solutions
Not to belabor the obvious, but if there is serious inequality between facilities and programs at two different schools, instead of chasing students out of the weaker school, we could always, I don't know, strengthen that school so that it is just as good as the other schools.
This admittedly would be different from the policy favored in some districts in which leaders
1) Cut funding and resources for school
2) Watch school collapse from neglect and starvation
3) Express horror and outrage that school is failing
4) Declare that students must be rescued, preferably by sending them to shiny charter school
We start this conversation with the assertion that schools within a particular zip code are bad, but somehow the end of the sentence is never "and that's why we need to focus resources and energy on making those schools better." Granted, there's a long history of throwing money at these sorts of problems ineffectively, but the escape pod solution still seems to skip a step.
After all, if I take my car to have a flat tire fixed and the mechanic keeps failing to fix it, my next thought is not, "Guess I need to buy a new car."
Community Schools Matter
And they
matter more in smaller, less wealthy communities. For well-to-do folks,
there are many third places from the gym to the club to the mall. But in
smaller, less wealthy communities, it's the school.
My
children went to a rural elementary school. On Talent Show night, every
person in the community was there. Not every parent-- every person.
Community meetings were all in one of two places-- the fire hall or the
school. There are hundreds of thousands of community schools with
similar stories.
When you're rich, you get to think of a school as one more business that you hire to provide a service. But in many communities, the schools are the face of the community, the expression of local peoples' hearts and goals and dreams, right up there with churches.
Transportation Transportation Transportation
A social worker in my mostly-rural area once explained to me that we don't have homelessness-- we have carlessness. There are always places to live in my county-- but how you'll get from there to an employer or grocery store is a whole other issue.
It is the height of Rich Person thinking to assume that anybody can easily get from Point A to Point B whenever they want to, but that's just not so. It's no surprise to me that Cami Anderson's genius plan for Newark was based on moving students around to any school any where-- but had no provisions for how those students would get there.
One of the signs of privilege is that you can go where you want to when you want to. For working class and poor folks, any trip involves many questions-- how long will it take to get there, and will I have that time available to make the trip? Will I have access to some sort of vehicle (and will the vehicle work)? In urban settings, will I be traveling through safe neighborhoods?
The World Isn't All That Flat
What flattens the world is technology. What buys technology is money. If you don't have access to much of that, your world is still primarily the one you can see, the one you can reach on foot. And if you have grown up and lived in a strong community, it's not all that self-evident that you should ditch that community for a larger, wider one.
Let$ Be Hone$t
The people who are talking about freeing students from the tyranny of neighborhood schools are by and large the people making a buck from it, the people who would like to build their lucrative new charters in desirable neighborhoods. Let's shut down this public school in a poor, brown neighborhood and build a shiny new charter in a well-off white neighborhood.
In other words, neighborhood and community should not matter to the students, but it sure as heck matters to the developers of these new schools-- or they'd be building the new charters right where the defunct public school once stood.
And what are we saying when we claim to rescue students from their terrible neighborhood schools other than, "We are writing this neighborhood off. We're no longer even going to pretend to try to improve it."
Whether $$$ have given them a clueless disconnection from the issues of space and community, or whether they're simply using rhetoric about zip codes to mask one more marketing ploy, the anti-zip code Reformsters are flunking geography.
Thursday, May 22, 2014
Wednesday, May 21, 2014
Relationships & Other Missing Links
Even I can be amazed at how far off track we've gotten.
I just came home from our high school choir concert. It was particularly bittersweet because our young choir director has had quite a year. She delivered a child with some complications, including the complication that led to surgery a few weeks ago (for her-- the baby is doing well now). Somewhere in the midst of all that, administration called her in to tell her that she was being involuntarily transferred to the elementary school and no longer run the high and middle school choral programs she's built over the past seven years. So in addition to the usual seniors' last concert feelings, there were a few other emotions in the room tonight.
She held things together with class and professionalism through the concert. They finished with the "senior send-off" song-- a medley of "For Good" and "Defying Gravity" from Wicked. And then the seniors told her to go sit in the auditorium.
The seniors (there were many of them) stepped up and delivered personal messages. Some were funny, some sad, some angry-ish. One girl who is not terribly talkative or outgoing tried to speak, but couldn't stop crying; the fact that she even tried was pretty impressive. And then, after flowers and a scrapbook and the words, they sang her the song that they had written for her. A couple of the seniors had written it, and they had used her surgical "break" to teach the chorus to the rest of the choir. The whole presentation was heartfelt, pitch perfect, somehow managing to strike perfect notes while steering clear of the uglier politics of the situation. It was a send-off that any teacher would be honored and pleased to receive from her students. It is possible that I even cried a little, possibly.
The students talked about choir being a family, about the ways their teacher had touched their lives, changed them personally, helped them grow into better people, stronger people, more capable, knowledgeable and talented people. It was about relationships. It was about how those young people will carry the experiences on into the rest of their lives.
It was, in short, a thousand world's away from talk of testing and standards and competencies and test preparation. I don't think you could have gathered many dry data points in the room, nor do I think there was much to be gained by arranging the choir members into some sort of bell curve.
It was so clearly the sort of thing that can only happen in school, that should happen in school, and yet which the Reformster concept of school doesn't even imagine would happen in school.
They are so far off track. So far. And they continue to insist on dragging the rest of us with them, toward some imaginary land where students compose songs to commemorate the growth experiences they had in front of a computer screen, answering rigorous multiple choice questions. "Oh," they will sing, "the way you implemented that scripted program with its standardized exercises will stay with me for the rest of my life."
So far off track. So far.
I just came home from our high school choir concert. It was particularly bittersweet because our young choir director has had quite a year. She delivered a child with some complications, including the complication that led to surgery a few weeks ago (for her-- the baby is doing well now). Somewhere in the midst of all that, administration called her in to tell her that she was being involuntarily transferred to the elementary school and no longer run the high and middle school choral programs she's built over the past seven years. So in addition to the usual seniors' last concert feelings, there were a few other emotions in the room tonight.
She held things together with class and professionalism through the concert. They finished with the "senior send-off" song-- a medley of "For Good" and "Defying Gravity" from Wicked. And then the seniors told her to go sit in the auditorium.
The seniors (there were many of them) stepped up and delivered personal messages. Some were funny, some sad, some angry-ish. One girl who is not terribly talkative or outgoing tried to speak, but couldn't stop crying; the fact that she even tried was pretty impressive. And then, after flowers and a scrapbook and the words, they sang her the song that they had written for her. A couple of the seniors had written it, and they had used her surgical "break" to teach the chorus to the rest of the choir. The whole presentation was heartfelt, pitch perfect, somehow managing to strike perfect notes while steering clear of the uglier politics of the situation. It was a send-off that any teacher would be honored and pleased to receive from her students. It is possible that I even cried a little, possibly.
The students talked about choir being a family, about the ways their teacher had touched their lives, changed them personally, helped them grow into better people, stronger people, more capable, knowledgeable and talented people. It was about relationships. It was about how those young people will carry the experiences on into the rest of their lives.
It was, in short, a thousand world's away from talk of testing and standards and competencies and test preparation. I don't think you could have gathered many dry data points in the room, nor do I think there was much to be gained by arranging the choir members into some sort of bell curve.
It was so clearly the sort of thing that can only happen in school, that should happen in school, and yet which the Reformster concept of school doesn't even imagine would happen in school.
They are so far off track. So far. And they continue to insist on dragging the rest of us with them, toward some imaginary land where students compose songs to commemorate the growth experiences they had in front of a computer screen, answering rigorous multiple choice questions. "Oh," they will sing, "the way you implemented that scripted program with its standardized exercises will stay with me for the rest of my life."
So far off track. So far.
Common Core Cement
It's easy to get lost in the big picture or the strained minutia of Common Core, so let's for a moment just focus on one simple, clear, fatal flaw in the CCSS. If your civilian friends can't understand anything else about the fuss, help them understand this.
The Common Core State Standards are set in stone.
Not just stone, but stone mounted in cement crazy-glued to bedrock all sealed in amber.
Let's really, really look at this, because it's an aspect of the Core that civilians tend to assume is just not true, because it's so unbelievably dumb.
But the Core are copyrighted, and if you want to use them, you must do so as is, with not a single change. States may add up to 15% on top of what's there, but they may not rewrite the CCSS in any way, shape, form, jot, tittle, or squib. States cannot adjust the standards a little to suit themselves. They cannot adapt them to fit local needs. They can't touch them.
Even more importantly (and incredibly) there is NO process for review and revision.
This is the part that I think people just assume isn't so, because it's just not how anybody does anything.
All business plans and procedures and policies are set up with a mechanism for internal review. If you want to earn your ISO 900000000 Six Sigma Star Corporate Black Belt, the documentation that you submit a process for the review and revision of your policies and procedures. It is taken as an article of faith that any set of plans and policies will contain problems that will come to light after implementation, and there must be a method for course correction. Plus, a robust system must have a means of adjusting to new realities.
Every system includes measures for adjusting and changing and correcting. School district strategic plans have processes in place for review and revision. IEPs for students have multiple methods for evaluating and adjusting process. The Reformsters like the idea that students will take tests and teachers will absorb the data in order to immediately revise and adjust instruction. Heck, the damn Constitution of the United States of America has a provision for proposing and implementing corrections and changes.
The Common Core State Standards might be the only major controlling plan in the world to NOT include ANY means of correcting, appealing, adjusting, or appealing.
If you found what you considered to be a terrible mistake in the CCSS, there is no place you can call, no office you can contact, no form you can fill out, no appeal process you can appeal to, no meeting of the board you can attend to submit your comment, no set of representatives you can contact with your concern. There is nothing. The CCSS cannot be changed.
Even if your civilian friends are right when they say, "Oh, it can't be that bad," please point out to them that no matter how "not bad" the Core is, it can never, ever get any better. Ever.
P.S. Two Reasons That The Above Only Sort of Matters
Number one. At this juncture, should a state violate the precious copyright or "Do Not Touch" order on the standards, I don't believe for a second that the copyright holders will dispatch the Common Core police.
Number two. The standards don't matter. Only one thing matters, and that's the Big Test. At the end of the day, test prep for that will take precedence over everything else, including whatever folderol is in the standards.
The Common Core State Standards are set in stone.
Not just stone, but stone mounted in cement crazy-glued to bedrock all sealed in amber.
Let's really, really look at this, because it's an aspect of the Core that civilians tend to assume is just not true, because it's so unbelievably dumb.
But the Core are copyrighted, and if you want to use them, you must do so as is, with not a single change. States may add up to 15% on top of what's there, but they may not rewrite the CCSS in any way, shape, form, jot, tittle, or squib. States cannot adjust the standards a little to suit themselves. They cannot adapt them to fit local needs. They can't touch them.
Even more importantly (and incredibly) there is NO process for review and revision.
This is the part that I think people just assume isn't so, because it's just not how anybody does anything.
All business plans and procedures and policies are set up with a mechanism for internal review. If you want to earn your ISO 900000000 Six Sigma Star Corporate Black Belt, the documentation that you submit a process for the review and revision of your policies and procedures. It is taken as an article of faith that any set of plans and policies will contain problems that will come to light after implementation, and there must be a method for course correction. Plus, a robust system must have a means of adjusting to new realities.
Every system includes measures for adjusting and changing and correcting. School district strategic plans have processes in place for review and revision. IEPs for students have multiple methods for evaluating and adjusting process. The Reformsters like the idea that students will take tests and teachers will absorb the data in order to immediately revise and adjust instruction. Heck, the damn Constitution of the United States of America has a provision for proposing and implementing corrections and changes.
The Common Core State Standards might be the only major controlling plan in the world to NOT include ANY means of correcting, appealing, adjusting, or appealing.
If you found what you considered to be a terrible mistake in the CCSS, there is no place you can call, no office you can contact, no form you can fill out, no appeal process you can appeal to, no meeting of the board you can attend to submit your comment, no set of representatives you can contact with your concern. There is nothing. The CCSS cannot be changed.
Even if your civilian friends are right when they say, "Oh, it can't be that bad," please point out to them that no matter how "not bad" the Core is, it can never, ever get any better. Ever.
P.S. Two Reasons That The Above Only Sort of Matters
Number one. At this juncture, should a state violate the precious copyright or "Do Not Touch" order on the standards, I don't believe for a second that the copyright holders will dispatch the Common Core police.
Number two. The standards don't matter. Only one thing matters, and that's the Big Test. At the end of the day, test prep for that will take precedence over everything else, including whatever folderol is in the standards.
EWA Holds Common Core Pep Rally
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.
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.
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.
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