When the Washington Post ran an essay by Zephyr Teachout, they prefaced it by observing that she is "to say the least, not the kind of person you'd expect to run for office."
That seems fair. Teachout is a Vermont-born law professor. In profiles of her by those who know her, she comes across as humble. In her own writing and speaking, she comes across as supremely capable. And she is shaking up the race for New York's governor's seat.
While the GOP has been wrestling visibly and noisily with battles between True Believers and RINOs, the Democratic Party has quietly divided into a party of traditional Democrats and corporate operatives. Arguably, Corporatism has become a third party in American politics that has embedded itself in both Republican and Democratic camps.
Nobody typifies the Corporate Democrat brand better than Governor Andy Cuomo. The playbook is remarkably similar to the Corporate Republican playbook-- if you make the right moves on some splashy social issues, your constituents won't pay much attention to what you're doing on the wonkier issues of money and power. The down side is that every once in a while, somebody emerges who makes a clearer case to your party base, and you have to put a little more effort into looking like an actual member of your alleged political party. And so now Cuomo, who has made occasional Democrat noises while governing as a corporate conservative, finds himself running against an actual Democrat.
This wasn't how it was supposed to work. Cuomo was supposed to win in a landslide so convincing that he would emerge as a national player, maybe even a 2016 prospect. That means that Teachout doesn't have to beat him to hurt him. Even in defeat, Teachout can make Cuomo look a not-so-special governor with political liabilities both to the right and to the left.
Teachout is not some crazy old guy with a beard and a stunt candidacy. Both New York and national media are paying attention, from the Daily Kos to The Nation to David Weigel at Slate. Cuomo took her seriously enough to stage an eleventh hour bid for the support of the Working Families Party. It was an ugly deal that drew a promise-ish statement to act more or less like a Democrat (and it held up for just a few hours), but it was also a signal that Cuomo knows he has a problem.
So Teachout is a threatening candidate for Cuomo. But is she a credible candidate for the voters of New York in general and teachers in particular? What does she have going for her?
She's smart. She has an understanding of issues that is both nuanced and clear. For instance, she gets what the Supreme Court apparently does not get about corruption and the ways in which money has eroded the integrity of our political system. She gives every appearance of a person who figures out what is right to do based on core principles, rather than a politician who figures out how to make what she wants to do anyway appear to fit her alleged principles. She has, for me, some of the same appeal as Ron Paul-- regardless of how you feel about her principles, you admire that she has some and lives by them.
She's an experienced activist. She helped the Howard Dean campaign pioneer some tech methods for their groundbreaking run. She has worked with the Occupy folks. And unlike some activists (yes, even some education activists) she appears to do her work without much concern for her own ego or garnering attention. I mean, surely if you had heard her name before, you'd remember it. Her low profile and high activity suggest a person who is more concerned about results than attention.
Her running mate. Less attention has been paid to Teachout's running mate, Tim Wu. But Wu, the father of net neutrality, has a history of real activism of his own in addition to a career of tech and media scholarship. He's no lightweight.
She lacks one of the Democratic Party's less attractive qualities. At their worst, the Democratic Party embraces an attitude of "Just sit down and shut up while the best and the brightest tell you what's best for you." Reading about Teachout, one frequently encounters a thread of people empowerment-- the idea that people have been shut out. In her "Five Questions" interview on USA Today, one finds this quote:
People are out of power now, not just in their politics where they feel
that their voices don't matter, but in their workplace and in the
marketplace. I want to revive the old American belief -- exemplified by
Jefferson (who wanted an anti-monopoly clause in the Constitution), Teddy Roosevelt and FDR -- that concentrated private power threatens democratic institutions.
She understands the big picture. Teachout certainly has something to say directly to teachers under fire from Common Core and other reformster initiatives. But in discussing these issues, she ends up here:
Bill Gates' coup is part of a larger coup we're living through today –
where a few moneyed interests increasingly use their wealth to steer
public policy, believing that technocratic expertise and resources alone
should answer vexing political questions. Sometimes their views have
merit, but the way these private interests impose their visions on the
public – by overriding democratic decision-making – is a deep threat to
our democracy. What's more, this private subversion of public process
has come at the precise time when our common institutions, starved of
funds, are most vulnerable. But by allowing private money to supplant
democracy, we surrender the fate of our public institutions to the
personal whims of a precious few.
Yes, Teachout is a credible candidate and a real choice for the people of New York State.
Can she win? Weeellllllllll.......... She is going to be up against a mountain of money, and she's going to be swimming in the shark-infested swimming pool that is New York politics. So it's admittedly a long shot. And yet it's a valuable long shot. Here's why.
Democrats need to learn a lesson. Lordy, lordy, lordy am I tired of a Democratic Party whose slogan is, "We may screw you over and stink to high heaven, but you know you're going to vote for us rather than a GOP candidate." The Democratic Party has taken its constituent groups for granted so long it has completely forgotten that it earned those constituencies by actually listening to them and considering their concerns. The Democratic Party-- particularly the Democratic Party of New York State-- needs a serious wake-up call.
New York State voters need to learn a lesson. You know what one of the raps on teachout is going to be, sooner or later? "How can an honest person hope to get anything done in our corrupt system?" It will be phrased as questions about her ability to "play ball" or "get things done," but with any luck, NYS will get around to asking itself the big question-- "Are we so resigned to having a corrupted system that we will only consider electing corrupt officials to work with it?" That would be a good question to think long and hard about.
Cuomo needs some help writing policy. The governor has forgotten an awful lot about being a Democrat. Even if he has to move and co-opt Teachout's platform to defang her, that's a win for the state. Granted, Cuomo has proven highly adept at making promises he won't deliver on. But he can't be held accountable for promises he doesn't make.
I think Zephyr Teachout is the real deal, a candidate who can mount a credible shot at the governor's mansion that, at a bare minimum, forces state government to address some of the issues that Cuomo has left sitting in a rolled up carpet on the back porch.
You can follow the campaign here.
More importantly, you can donate to the campaign here. You know money is going to be pouring into Cuomo's coffers from all around the country. But even for those of us not in the Empire State, Teachout's campaign is going to send a message that will resonate across the nation. So chip in. Heck, you'd spend twenty bucks just to take a date to a lousy Transformer's movie, and this campaign is going to be way more entertaining that that.
Sunday, July 20, 2014
Saturday, July 19, 2014
Picking Your Fights
"It's easy for the AFT to tell teachers not to shop at Staples. It would
take guts to tell teachers, 'Don't give the tests!' How can you condemn
the tests--and continue giving them? Wasn't 'just following orders'
soundly discredited long ago? "
—Susan Ohanian, Hemlock on the Rocks, July 14, 2014
This quote has been bouncing around the eduwebs for almost a week, and it has engendered quite a discussion, and it's a discussion worth having.
Susan Ohanian is someone who deserves to be taken seriously, if for no other reason than she started ringing the alarm bell on the modern era of school reform well before most other people were even paying attention. It has been over a decade since she won the National Council of Teachers of English Orwell Award for Distinguished Contribution to Honesty and Clarity in Public Language, and she is still crystal clear when she writes. Her site should be on your list.
Simply put, I have huge respect for Ohanian and what she has to say. But this time, I disagree.
I don't disagree with the notion that AFT and NEA have failed to provide strong and courageous leadership in these challenging times. From Van Roekel's 2013 "Well, if you don't like Common Core, what should we do instead" to Weingarten's 2014 "Well, then, just rewrite the Core yourself to show them how the standards should look," the national unions have not been champions of American public school teachers.
But this advice would be irresponsible. Worse, in some places, it would be useless to teachers and helpful to their opponents.
For instance, in Cleveland, where the district is already trying to get rid of teachers to make room for racks of TFA temps, a direct refusal to administer tests would have reformsters cheering. The teachers could all be fired for insubordination, and the replacement process greatly simplified and accelerated. The teachers would lose their jobs, and their replacements would gladly continue with the testing before the seats were cold.
One of the challenges we face on the national level is that different districts are in different stages and present different climates. What is a bold and important stand in one district is a foolish way to shoot yourself in the foot in another. What might engender public support in one location might draw public scorn in another.
One of the things we're fighting against is One Size Fits All Schooling. Does it not make sense that we will not best oppose it with One Size Fits All protesting?
I am not suggesting that we all sit fat and happy and comfortable. If you aren't doing something at least a little bit uncomfortable in this struggle, you probably aren't helping. If your technique de resistance is to sit at home and wait for the day when the people in power wise up and make everything okay again, you are part of the problem.
But for most of us who are not in the big marquee districts like NYC or LA or Philly, the national unions are not going to be our salvation. Yes, it sure would be nice if they were supportive and helpful, but we're all going to have to develop our own strategy on the local level.
Yes, refusing to give the test is a great, great move-- IF you are in district where you will not immediately be fired for insubordination. You may have an administration that is allied with the foes of public ed, some TFA stooge who wouldn't know pedagogical idea if it bit him on the butt. Or you may have an administration that is just as frustrated and angry with the high-stakes test-driven status quo as you are. Your parents may be clueless and unaware of anything that's going on ("So what's that Common Core thingy?") or they may be fully educated and ready to fight. It makes a difference.
In a way, I can see an up side to the utter uselessness of the national unions at this point. If they were involved and leading, I suspect many locals and teachers would be sitting comfortably, waiting for the national to save the day. But we know that Superman not only isn't coming, but might well not be on our own side if he did show up. So we need to depend on ourselves, and our allies and resources, and we need to fight wisely and pick the battles that would do the most good where we are. And we need to pay particular attention to marshaling, saving and preserving those resources, because this is a marathon, not a sprint, so we need to stay tough for the long haul, and not flame out in the first mile.
—Susan Ohanian, Hemlock on the Rocks, July 14, 2014
This quote has been bouncing around the eduwebs for almost a week, and it has engendered quite a discussion, and it's a discussion worth having.
Susan Ohanian is someone who deserves to be taken seriously, if for no other reason than she started ringing the alarm bell on the modern era of school reform well before most other people were even paying attention. It has been over a decade since she won the National Council of Teachers of English Orwell Award for Distinguished Contribution to Honesty and Clarity in Public Language, and she is still crystal clear when she writes. Her site should be on your list.
Simply put, I have huge respect for Ohanian and what she has to say. But this time, I disagree.
I don't disagree with the notion that AFT and NEA have failed to provide strong and courageous leadership in these challenging times. From Van Roekel's 2013 "Well, if you don't like Common Core, what should we do instead" to Weingarten's 2014 "Well, then, just rewrite the Core yourself to show them how the standards should look," the national unions have not been champions of American public school teachers.
But this advice would be irresponsible. Worse, in some places, it would be useless to teachers and helpful to their opponents.
For instance, in Cleveland, where the district is already trying to get rid of teachers to make room for racks of TFA temps, a direct refusal to administer tests would have reformsters cheering. The teachers could all be fired for insubordination, and the replacement process greatly simplified and accelerated. The teachers would lose their jobs, and their replacements would gladly continue with the testing before the seats were cold.
One of the challenges we face on the national level is that different districts are in different stages and present different climates. What is a bold and important stand in one district is a foolish way to shoot yourself in the foot in another. What might engender public support in one location might draw public scorn in another.
One of the things we're fighting against is One Size Fits All Schooling. Does it not make sense that we will not best oppose it with One Size Fits All protesting?
I am not suggesting that we all sit fat and happy and comfortable. If you aren't doing something at least a little bit uncomfortable in this struggle, you probably aren't helping. If your technique de resistance is to sit at home and wait for the day when the people in power wise up and make everything okay again, you are part of the problem.
But for most of us who are not in the big marquee districts like NYC or LA or Philly, the national unions are not going to be our salvation. Yes, it sure would be nice if they were supportive and helpful, but we're all going to have to develop our own strategy on the local level.
Yes, refusing to give the test is a great, great move-- IF you are in district where you will not immediately be fired for insubordination. You may have an administration that is allied with the foes of public ed, some TFA stooge who wouldn't know pedagogical idea if it bit him on the butt. Or you may have an administration that is just as frustrated and angry with the high-stakes test-driven status quo as you are. Your parents may be clueless and unaware of anything that's going on ("So what's that Common Core thingy?") or they may be fully educated and ready to fight. It makes a difference.
In a way, I can see an up side to the utter uselessness of the national unions at this point. If they were involved and leading, I suspect many locals and teachers would be sitting comfortably, waiting for the national to save the day. But we know that Superman not only isn't coming, but might well not be on our own side if he did show up. So we need to depend on ourselves, and our allies and resources, and we need to fight wisely and pick the battles that would do the most good where we are. And we need to pay particular attention to marshaling, saving and preserving those resources, because this is a marathon, not a sprint, so we need to stay tough for the long haul, and not flame out in the first mile.
Going into Gates Territory
Over in Seattle center you'll find fun things like the famous space needle, the EMP (a sort of SF museum housed in a 1950s vision of what 1990 would look like), and across the street from the EMP, an unassuming little building that houses the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation Visitors Center. I sometimes tell you that I've read or watched something so you don't have to. Well, this time, I visited a place so that you don't have to.
Out front the sidewalk has some sculptures of books, vaccines and other good things, with quick data points on the big windows.
The center is free, and there's a front desk and pleasant welcome lady right there once you enter.
Then there's an entire room that's pretty much devoted to faces.
This face motif runs through the entire rest of the center. The entire space is open and clean, separated more into different sections than actual rooms. Each section has a family of displays, like this one
There's even a piece of display addressing the question of disagreement with the foundation's work, though it doesn't specifically name their education initiatives
One display focuses on education and vaccination. It includes one of several panels that can be toggled back and forth between two different talking heads.
In this case, we have a choice between Melinda Gates on vaccinations or this guy on education (specifically, teacher effectiveness).
There were several panels that rotated quotes. I snapped shots of several of the education quotes.
Are students happy? Are they getting something of value? That's a really interesting pair of questions to answer, both relying on hugely subjective judgments. Happy by whose standards? Value as assigned by whom?
Well, that was back in 2012. I don't think charter operators ever got the memo.
Yes, projector Bill Gates is still saying this, even though real Bill Gates has since dropped the idea.
As is often the case, the key here is some form of standardization of students.
Interesting word here-- "assigned." Some Higher Authority just needs to put teachers where they should be (and the Higher Authority knows where that would be).
There are also several displays dedicated to getting drinkable water for folks all over the world, and some interactive displays for all ages. One offers folks a chance to offer their ideas about improving education. I admit that it was pure snark that led me to photograph this one, which was not working when we were there.
The place in its entirety can be toured pretty quickly. It's modestly sized, not glitzy, and a little bit retro in style. It's hard to gauge whether it's the product of someone close to the Gates or a group of summer interns.
So, no, the visitors' center did not look like Darth Vader's lair or an evil mind-control facility. And I'm sure I could slam it for being a self-aggrandizing ego shrine, but if it didn't exist, I could slam the foundation for their secrecy or lack of transparency. So let's stipulate that if you hate the Gates Foundation, it's easy to spin the center to prove how awful they are, and move on.
It didn't particularly change my perception of Gates, which has never been that he is some sort of evil nefarious genius. When I read his writing and watch videos of him, I'm always left with two impressions:
1) This is a man who has been completely in charge of a large operation for basically his entire adult life. He literally has no idea how things work in a setting which people him aren't automatically going to follow his instructions. And he's pretty sure that people do as he says because he's right. I get no sense of a man who pays people to agree with him-- he pays people to get things done, and he knows what things need to be done. I think he's ruthless, but I don't think he's power hungry for the same reason that I am rarely food-hungry-- he has always had power, and when things interfere with it, it's like when you or I get a sleeve snagged on the corner of a desk. Just yank it free and move on.
It's instructive to look at his first run-in with DC (over the Microsoft monopoly issue). He's not outraged that he's being questioned. He's more puzzled-- I'm right, so why can't you guys see that I'm right? He's learned a lot since then about how to smooth his path, but he's not trying to take over the world-- he's just trying to get the world to see that he's right about what the world should do.
The critical thing about people like this (and Gates is not the only one who exists) is that they do not believe they are being selfish. They are trying to help. They are trying to Make Things Right. Can they help it if they happen to have a vision of how to do that? You can see it in his flummoxed reaction to Lindsey Layton's interview question. Gates is just different from other People of Vision in that he has always possessed the resources to pursue his vision and people who are disinclined to tell him his vision is faulty.
The visitors center reflects all of that. It really isn't about how great Melinda and Bill are, but how great their vision for Making the World Right is.
2) Gates is a systems guy. I've written about this before, but here's the basic idea. Systems guys like nice neat systems, and they will give you one that works properly just as soon as they get all the parts lined up and in their places.
Hence the quest for scalable standardized solutions. If everybody would just act the right way, the system would work. If we could find a way to remove all the individual variation, the system should run smoothly. If every cog in the machine is properly manufactured and installed, the machine should hum along and do just what it needs to do.
The old education was so messy, had so many non-standardized parts. That sort of thing bothers systems guys just like a persistently out-of-tune singer makes a perfect-pitch musician nuts. It's like riding in a car while your grandmother drives. Good lord in heaven, if you would just let me fix this thing right here!!!
Again, it's not "I want this so I'm going to get it." It's "Can't you see how wrong this is??"
Now, I think these two aspects of Gates make him blind to many things, including the motives of some of the people who have hopped on his school reform gravy train. And those blind spots are potentially highly corrosive to someone's moral center. They also make someone more potentially destructive than an authentically evil person, because someone who's on a Righteous Crusade neither listens to nor stops for anyone who disagrees with them, and they're usually plenty comfortable with all manner of collateral damage in pursuit of a Higher Good, while authentic evil tends to pay attention to cost-benefits analyses.
And I am acutely aware that I am making huge suppositions on the basis of exactly zero firsthand knowledge. But what's a blog for, if not for WAGs? Still, I could be dead wrong. Gates could be Darth Vader with a goofy smile or the most evil, manipulative, power-hungry bastard ever or a completely misunderstood guy. If you're ever in Seattle, take a look yourself.
Charter Conversations
Over at the Fordham Institute blog, Andy Smarick dissects and critiques the current state of dialogue regarding charter schools.
What's the problem?
He starts by observing that there are really two conversations going on.
The first "presupposes (or, at minimum, concedes) the legitimacy of chartering and then explores how to make it better." Smarick believes that these nuts-and-bolts, sizzle-free conversations are worthwhile, but undervalued and insufficiently publicized. That's because of the second conversation.
The second, about philosophy and politics, is essentially about whether chartering is good or bad. Participants are interested in basic questions such as, “Should charters exist?” and “What does chartering mean for public education?” This conversation, which typically emanates from deeply held principles and big ideas, seems to attract the scholarly, the idealistic, and the impassioned—but also the certain and the dismissive.
Smarick's concern is that the impassioned side of the conversation attracts too much name-calling and sensationalism. If you want attention and press, he says, use name calling like "privateers" or “corporate interests, hedge fund managers and billionaires starve public schools and services of resources and suck up as much profit as they can." He's also not fond of long-form pieces like the New Jersey article that focused on the web of corruption and general misbehavior that characterizes the charterward shift of New Jersey schools. He thinks the Detroit Free-Press series on corruption and general misbehavior in the Michigan charter missed a chance to examine charter relations to public school and instead focused on scandal and intrigue.
There's a faint smell of flop-sweat around Smarick's complaints, like a Nixon aide complaining that Watergate coverage is failing to mention all the great things the President did in China. But Smarick is generally a serious guy, so I'm going to address his concern seriously here.
What does he want to see?
Here’s my request. If you think chartering is, at root, a threat to public education and believe that it must be brought to an end, please make that case publicly and straightforwardly, with conviction and tact. You’ll find a more receptive audience than you might suspect. If you aren’t obdurately anti-charter but think there are aspects of chartering that need serious improvement, marshal the data and make your case.
I think there a couple of problems with this request.
Smarick's two-conversations model misses a third conversation that's going on. That's the conversation not about charters in the abstract large-scale policy sense, but in the specific let's-talk-about-the-charter-in-my-neighborhood sense.
Many of the people who have found themselves embroiled in charter debates are there because, like folks in NOLA or Detroit or Chicago or NYC etc etc etc are there because they are dealing with the very specific behavior surrounding very specific charters. The stories he cites about Camden and Michigan are not policy stories-- they are local news stories.
The charter movement's problem is not a policy-and-philosophy problem. It's a too-many-instances-of-specific-crooked-behavior problem. That problem points to some policy and philosophy issues, but those aren't what are driving press coverage and public crankiness.
What's driving the bad press?
Inside Philanthropy ran a piece Friday looking at how Charles Schwab is heavily into charter school investing.
A $1 million gift to the Charter School Growth Fund in 2011 stands out, not only because of the size of the gift but also because of its destination. Founded in 2005, the Charter School Growth Fund (CSGF) is a bit like the mother ship of the charter school movement, working to grow and professionalize this alternative ed sector. A lot of the major players in the charter school funding world have given to CSGF, including Walton, Gates, Dell, Bradley, and Fisher.
It is no mystery why so many finance guys are interested in the charter movement. Forbes (not exactly liberal tools of the public school establishment) reported back in September of 2013 that investors were flocking to charters because Clinton-era tax laws made such investments very attractive, possibly allowing investors to double their money in seven years (and that includes plenty of foreign investors, which is its own kind of troubling).
Charter schools are not new at all. But the influx of hedge fund managers and rock stars and all manner of people whose motivation is not quality education but ROI is a recent development that has shaped the charter movement, and not in a good way. In state after state, money has greased the wheels of charter regulation (or lack thereof) and the results are fairly predictable.
But people are not waking up to these issues because of some burning interest in educational philosophy or public-private education policy. They are waking up because their own neighborhood schools are being shuttered and replaced by charters that handle them with the same kindness and consideration as the phone company or the DMV.
In my own small ruralish town, people used to not care about PA's cyber-charter laws. Then our school district shuttered two elementary schools to save around 800K in the same year that they had to pay out about 800K for seventy-some students to attend cyber-charters. That, not some philosophical interest in policy-wonkery, is what had taxpayers saying, "Well, that can't be right" and a school board president saying, "You all need to call your congressman today."
Three days after Smarick posted his piece, the Hartford Courant was reporting on the FBI serving subpoenas to FUSE, a Connecticut charter operator. Reporters who went to FUSE offices found a receptionist shredding papers. This sort of story has reached the level of "dog bites man" for its shock and surprise value, so in that sense, Smarick is correct in saying these stories might get too much attention.
But his straining to suggest that coverage of charter misbehavior is exaggerated is off base. For instance, the coverage of Tony Bennett's misbehavior was consistent with the level of misbehavior he displayed and was, again, a local story, particularly for the schools that might have stayed open had they received the same largesse Bennett extended to others. His "exoneration"is not particularly credible nor convincing.
When all is said and done, I'm not sure exactly what Smarick wants. Facts? The stories that he objects to are all loaded with carefully and responsibly researched facts. Make the anti-charter case with tact? Personally, I've made the case both with tact and without. But there are more gifted writers than I who have made the charts and graphs and fact-based arguments about charters in their neck of the woods (Jersey Jazzman pulls off that trick regularly).
Less inflamatory rhetoric? That's not an unreasonable request, though people who are fighting for the life of a local school district that they value are often rather inflamed. Particularly when it turns out they are being shut out of policy decisions that A) have a huge effect on them and B) turn out to have been made for financial, not educational, reasons. It only gets worse if it turns out that some sort of misbehavior is also involved.
Sometimes you have a PR problem because of perception unrelated to reality. Sometimes you have a PR problem because your client keeps doing bad things. That seems to be the plight of the modern charter. Old-school charters, the kinds started by teachers and local people and persons who were generally on an educational mission-- these charters did not give rise to large conversations about the value of charters. But the modern 500-pound-gorilla mega-chain ROI charters are a different animal.
Remember that old Ann Landers column?
Dear Ann Landers: I`m a 16-year-old girl who is a nervous wreck from getting yelled at. All I hear from morning till night is, ``Stop smoking, get off the phone, hang up your clothes, do your homework, clean up your room.`` How can I get them off my case?
Sick of Parents
Dear Sick: Stop smoking, get off the phone, hang up your clothes, do your homework and clean up your room.
If charters are tired of press about how they get sweetheart deals with politicians to strip resources from public schools in order to enrich themselves, if they're tired of stories about how some charter operator got caught in crooked deals, if they're tired of being raked over the coals for using politics to grease some moneyed wheels-- well, their best move would be to stop doing those things.
If charters are tired of being attacked, they could stop attacking public education, as in the recent charter gathering in which the recurring theme was "Charters are great because public schools suck." I'm not a fan of "they started it" as an argument, but it's also specious to declare "all I did was keep calling him names and stealing his lunch, and then he just hit me for no reason!"
I'm not a fan of Smarick's first posited conversation (let's just assume charters are great), I think the second one is valuable (let's talk about how and if charters can work), but I think both are being drowned out by the third conversation, which is a mass of local conversations about the damage being done and the attacks on local schools that people feel they are suffering through. That conversation is, I believe, a direct result of the injection of huge amounts of money into the process. It's hard to have the conversation because the stakes on all sides are so high (ROI vs. local concerns for children).
I'm actually a fan of old-school charters, and it makes me sad that their promise has been swept aside by the current wave of money-driven charter chains. But asking people to please be more polite and reasonable and please stop pointing out where we've screwed you over is not likely to get the conversation back on track or reclaim the benefits that charter schools could provide.
What's the problem?
He starts by observing that there are really two conversations going on.
The first "presupposes (or, at minimum, concedes) the legitimacy of chartering and then explores how to make it better." Smarick believes that these nuts-and-bolts, sizzle-free conversations are worthwhile, but undervalued and insufficiently publicized. That's because of the second conversation.
The second, about philosophy and politics, is essentially about whether chartering is good or bad. Participants are interested in basic questions such as, “Should charters exist?” and “What does chartering mean for public education?” This conversation, which typically emanates from deeply held principles and big ideas, seems to attract the scholarly, the idealistic, and the impassioned—but also the certain and the dismissive.
Smarick's concern is that the impassioned side of the conversation attracts too much name-calling and sensationalism. If you want attention and press, he says, use name calling like "privateers" or “corporate interests, hedge fund managers and billionaires starve public schools and services of resources and suck up as much profit as they can." He's also not fond of long-form pieces like the New Jersey article that focused on the web of corruption and general misbehavior that characterizes the charterward shift of New Jersey schools. He thinks the Detroit Free-Press series on corruption and general misbehavior in the Michigan charter missed a chance to examine charter relations to public school and instead focused on scandal and intrigue.
There's a faint smell of flop-sweat around Smarick's complaints, like a Nixon aide complaining that Watergate coverage is failing to mention all the great things the President did in China. But Smarick is generally a serious guy, so I'm going to address his concern seriously here.
What does he want to see?
Here’s my request. If you think chartering is, at root, a threat to public education and believe that it must be brought to an end, please make that case publicly and straightforwardly, with conviction and tact. You’ll find a more receptive audience than you might suspect. If you aren’t obdurately anti-charter but think there are aspects of chartering that need serious improvement, marshal the data and make your case.
I think there a couple of problems with this request.
Smarick's two-conversations model misses a third conversation that's going on. That's the conversation not about charters in the abstract large-scale policy sense, but in the specific let's-talk-about-the-charter-in-my-neighborhood sense.
Many of the people who have found themselves embroiled in charter debates are there because, like folks in NOLA or Detroit or Chicago or NYC etc etc etc are there because they are dealing with the very specific behavior surrounding very specific charters. The stories he cites about Camden and Michigan are not policy stories-- they are local news stories.
The charter movement's problem is not a policy-and-philosophy problem. It's a too-many-instances-of-specific-crooked-behavior problem. That problem points to some policy and philosophy issues, but those aren't what are driving press coverage and public crankiness.
What's driving the bad press?
Inside Philanthropy ran a piece Friday looking at how Charles Schwab is heavily into charter school investing.
A $1 million gift to the Charter School Growth Fund in 2011 stands out, not only because of the size of the gift but also because of its destination. Founded in 2005, the Charter School Growth Fund (CSGF) is a bit like the mother ship of the charter school movement, working to grow and professionalize this alternative ed sector. A lot of the major players in the charter school funding world have given to CSGF, including Walton, Gates, Dell, Bradley, and Fisher.
It is no mystery why so many finance guys are interested in the charter movement. Forbes (not exactly liberal tools of the public school establishment) reported back in September of 2013 that investors were flocking to charters because Clinton-era tax laws made such investments very attractive, possibly allowing investors to double their money in seven years (and that includes plenty of foreign investors, which is its own kind of troubling).
Charter schools are not new at all. But the influx of hedge fund managers and rock stars and all manner of people whose motivation is not quality education but ROI is a recent development that has shaped the charter movement, and not in a good way. In state after state, money has greased the wheels of charter regulation (or lack thereof) and the results are fairly predictable.
But people are not waking up to these issues because of some burning interest in educational philosophy or public-private education policy. They are waking up because their own neighborhood schools are being shuttered and replaced by charters that handle them with the same kindness and consideration as the phone company or the DMV.
In my own small ruralish town, people used to not care about PA's cyber-charter laws. Then our school district shuttered two elementary schools to save around 800K in the same year that they had to pay out about 800K for seventy-some students to attend cyber-charters. That, not some philosophical interest in policy-wonkery, is what had taxpayers saying, "Well, that can't be right" and a school board president saying, "You all need to call your congressman today."
Three days after Smarick posted his piece, the Hartford Courant was reporting on the FBI serving subpoenas to FUSE, a Connecticut charter operator. Reporters who went to FUSE offices found a receptionist shredding papers. This sort of story has reached the level of "dog bites man" for its shock and surprise value, so in that sense, Smarick is correct in saying these stories might get too much attention.
But his straining to suggest that coverage of charter misbehavior is exaggerated is off base. For instance, the coverage of Tony Bennett's misbehavior was consistent with the level of misbehavior he displayed and was, again, a local story, particularly for the schools that might have stayed open had they received the same largesse Bennett extended to others. His "exoneration"is not particularly credible nor convincing.
When all is said and done, I'm not sure exactly what Smarick wants. Facts? The stories that he objects to are all loaded with carefully and responsibly researched facts. Make the anti-charter case with tact? Personally, I've made the case both with tact and without. But there are more gifted writers than I who have made the charts and graphs and fact-based arguments about charters in their neck of the woods (Jersey Jazzman pulls off that trick regularly).
Less inflamatory rhetoric? That's not an unreasonable request, though people who are fighting for the life of a local school district that they value are often rather inflamed. Particularly when it turns out they are being shut out of policy decisions that A) have a huge effect on them and B) turn out to have been made for financial, not educational, reasons. It only gets worse if it turns out that some sort of misbehavior is also involved.
Sometimes you have a PR problem because of perception unrelated to reality. Sometimes you have a PR problem because your client keeps doing bad things. That seems to be the plight of the modern charter. Old-school charters, the kinds started by teachers and local people and persons who were generally on an educational mission-- these charters did not give rise to large conversations about the value of charters. But the modern 500-pound-gorilla mega-chain ROI charters are a different animal.
Remember that old Ann Landers column?
Dear Ann Landers: I`m a 16-year-old girl who is a nervous wreck from getting yelled at. All I hear from morning till night is, ``Stop smoking, get off the phone, hang up your clothes, do your homework, clean up your room.`` How can I get them off my case?
Sick of Parents
Dear Sick: Stop smoking, get off the phone, hang up your clothes, do your homework and clean up your room.
If charters are tired of press about how they get sweetheart deals with politicians to strip resources from public schools in order to enrich themselves, if they're tired of stories about how some charter operator got caught in crooked deals, if they're tired of being raked over the coals for using politics to grease some moneyed wheels-- well, their best move would be to stop doing those things.
If charters are tired of being attacked, they could stop attacking public education, as in the recent charter gathering in which the recurring theme was "Charters are great because public schools suck." I'm not a fan of "they started it" as an argument, but it's also specious to declare "all I did was keep calling him names and stealing his lunch, and then he just hit me for no reason!"
I'm not a fan of Smarick's first posited conversation (let's just assume charters are great), I think the second one is valuable (let's talk about how and if charters can work), but I think both are being drowned out by the third conversation, which is a mass of local conversations about the damage being done and the attacks on local schools that people feel they are suffering through. That conversation is, I believe, a direct result of the injection of huge amounts of money into the process. It's hard to have the conversation because the stakes on all sides are so high (ROI vs. local concerns for children).
I'm actually a fan of old-school charters, and it makes me sad that their promise has been swept aside by the current wave of money-driven charter chains. But asking people to please be more polite and reasonable and please stop pointing out where we've screwed you over is not likely to get the conversation back on track or reclaim the benefits that charter schools could provide.
Friday, July 18, 2014
AFT Spanks Duncan (Sort Of)
I know this is old news, but I've been out of town. On Sunday, July 13, I was in the air flying toward the very city where the AFT was kind of taking a stand.
The NEA had taken similar steps earlier by calling for the ouster of Arne Duncan, though outbound president Dennis Van Roekel immediately chalked it up to members just being, you know, cranky or in a bad mood, so they just took it out on Arne Duncan. So, to summarize, NEA members called for Duncan's ouster, Duncan indicated that he wasn't going to pay attention, and the president of NEA said that Duncan really didn't need to take it seriously. So, you know, earth-shattering stuff there.
The AFT resolution was marginally more interesting, although, like the NEA resolution, has ceased to matter to anyone at all in less than a week.
Union politics are a fascinating study for anyone who is intrigued by things that call themselves democratic and yet aren't particularly so. All union members are equal, but some are more equal than others, and not much happens at these conventions that isn't carefully stage managed by the most equal union members of all. The AFT is particularly confusing because 1) there are unions within the union and 2) there are loyalty oaths involved that amount to "agree to be assimilated."
I understand the urge to exert these high levels of control over members. I was a union president of a relatively small local, and the Herding Cats aspect can become stressful really quickly. I can easily imagine being a national leader, looking at the giant masses of people coming together from every corner of every point of view and thinking, "Damn, if we don't take some control, this will just be a hellish mess of gooey anarchy" (and, yes, "Hellish Mess of Gooey Anarchy" would be a great band name). I can even understand the feeling of "We are so close to getting Great Things done and we can't let that get derailed" as well as the feeling of "Boy, do I like having power."
But let all those feelings get control of you, and pretty soon you're acting like a representative group that doesn't have much respect for the people it's supposed to be representing. Or you start saying things like "I'll punch you in the face if you try to take away my Common Core,"a statement that really ought to come from someone other than a teacher/union leader.
So AFT's call for President Obama to put Duncan on an improvement plan comes with an interesting backdrop. According to Stephen Sawchuk at EdWeek, some union leaders didn't want to go all in with the NEA's Throw the Bum Out resolution, viewing it as silly and pointless. Michael Mulgrew, who allegedly made to offer to punch people in the face over CCSS, thought that the NEA resolution was beneath him, which raises some questions about how he draws the Beneath Me line.
The AFT resolution has the virtue of setting an example by calling for due process, and I give it points for ignoring the fiction that Obama is somehow disconnected from his own education policies.
On the other hand, it is ineffectual. And AFT president Randi Weingarten echoed Van Roekel in explaining that it basically just meant that teachers are really hurt and pissed off. As Arthur Goldstein tweeted, "I certainly hope they follow this non-demand with a strongly worded letter. That'll show 'em."
And Weingarten went one worse, with a call for teachers to leap on in there and rewrite the Core to show "them" how it should be. This is just an artfully reworded version of Van Roekel's odious comment to the NEA's 2013 convention-- "If you don't like the Common Core, then what do you want to do instead?" I called for Van Roekel's resignation over that one (an act every bit as effective as the NEA and AFT resolutions) because I think it's an indefensible thing to come from a national union leader.
To accept and embrace the Common Core is to accept and embrace the premise of its creation-- that US schools are in trouble because US teachers are lost and ineffectual. If there's anyone who shouldn't be agreeing with that, it's the folks who represent the millions of teachers that the Core is intended to "fix."
Like the NEA, AFT leadership appears to have decided to see if they can't bleed off all that teacher anger about CCSS and the rest of the corporate high-stakes test-driven status quo by focusing it on Arne Duncan (who, after all, won't be damaged by it a bit) so that the precious cargo of Common Core Swellness will remain unthreatened. "Look at that scary thing over there! Go get it! Go stomp on it! No need to look behind this curtain here."
This blog piece is somewhat pointless. Five days later, the AFT resolution is an unimportant gesture of no real importance. What's sad is that leaders had to know that was the case when they let the thing pass in the first place.
The NEA had taken similar steps earlier by calling for the ouster of Arne Duncan, though outbound president Dennis Van Roekel immediately chalked it up to members just being, you know, cranky or in a bad mood, so they just took it out on Arne Duncan. So, to summarize, NEA members called for Duncan's ouster, Duncan indicated that he wasn't going to pay attention, and the president of NEA said that Duncan really didn't need to take it seriously. So, you know, earth-shattering stuff there.
The AFT resolution was marginally more interesting, although, like the NEA resolution, has ceased to matter to anyone at all in less than a week.
Union politics are a fascinating study for anyone who is intrigued by things that call themselves democratic and yet aren't particularly so. All union members are equal, but some are more equal than others, and not much happens at these conventions that isn't carefully stage managed by the most equal union members of all. The AFT is particularly confusing because 1) there are unions within the union and 2) there are loyalty oaths involved that amount to "agree to be assimilated."
I understand the urge to exert these high levels of control over members. I was a union president of a relatively small local, and the Herding Cats aspect can become stressful really quickly. I can easily imagine being a national leader, looking at the giant masses of people coming together from every corner of every point of view and thinking, "Damn, if we don't take some control, this will just be a hellish mess of gooey anarchy" (and, yes, "Hellish Mess of Gooey Anarchy" would be a great band name). I can even understand the feeling of "We are so close to getting Great Things done and we can't let that get derailed" as well as the feeling of "Boy, do I like having power."
But let all those feelings get control of you, and pretty soon you're acting like a representative group that doesn't have much respect for the people it's supposed to be representing. Or you start saying things like "I'll punch you in the face if you try to take away my Common Core,"a statement that really ought to come from someone other than a teacher/union leader.
So AFT's call for President Obama to put Duncan on an improvement plan comes with an interesting backdrop. According to Stephen Sawchuk at EdWeek, some union leaders didn't want to go all in with the NEA's Throw the Bum Out resolution, viewing it as silly and pointless. Michael Mulgrew, who allegedly made to offer to punch people in the face over CCSS, thought that the NEA resolution was beneath him, which raises some questions about how he draws the Beneath Me line.
The AFT resolution has the virtue of setting an example by calling for due process, and I give it points for ignoring the fiction that Obama is somehow disconnected from his own education policies.
On the other hand, it is ineffectual. And AFT president Randi Weingarten echoed Van Roekel in explaining that it basically just meant that teachers are really hurt and pissed off. As Arthur Goldstein tweeted, "I certainly hope they follow this non-demand with a strongly worded letter. That'll show 'em."
And Weingarten went one worse, with a call for teachers to leap on in there and rewrite the Core to show "them" how it should be. This is just an artfully reworded version of Van Roekel's odious comment to the NEA's 2013 convention-- "If you don't like the Common Core, then what do you want to do instead?" I called for Van Roekel's resignation over that one (an act every bit as effective as the NEA and AFT resolutions) because I think it's an indefensible thing to come from a national union leader.
To accept and embrace the Common Core is to accept and embrace the premise of its creation-- that US schools are in trouble because US teachers are lost and ineffectual. If there's anyone who shouldn't be agreeing with that, it's the folks who represent the millions of teachers that the Core is intended to "fix."
Like the NEA, AFT leadership appears to have decided to see if they can't bleed off all that teacher anger about CCSS and the rest of the corporate high-stakes test-driven status quo by focusing it on Arne Duncan (who, after all, won't be damaged by it a bit) so that the precious cargo of Common Core Swellness will remain unthreatened. "Look at that scary thing over there! Go get it! Go stomp on it! No need to look behind this curtain here."
This blog piece is somewhat pointless. Five days later, the AFT resolution is an unimportant gesture of no real importance. What's sad is that leaders had to know that was the case when they let the thing pass in the first place.
David Coleman To Fix Inequality in America
David Coleman is here (well, not here here-- he's actually in Aspen) to explain how the College Board is going to recapture market share by synergistically monetizing its products break down the walls of inequality in education.
David Coleman (Common Core writer and current president of the College Board) is deeply concerned with fairness. Huffington Post has a report from the Aspen Institute (because "let's solve America's social problems" is so often associated with "let's go to Aspen") on Coleman's "conversation" with Jane Stoddard Williams of Bloomberg EDU, and the excerpts presented give us a picture of how Coleman plans toboost the College Board's bottom line bring educational equality to the US.
He is sure to tout his free test prep deal with Kahn Academy, by which the College Board willget a foot firmly in every door of the market make test preparation available to every student in America. (Perhaps the new SAT will include references to pieces of 21st Century wisdom such as the new idea that when it comes to websites, if you're not paying for it, the product is you.)
But Coleman's not here primarily to tout the new means of amassing data on every college-bound student in America free SAT prep, though he says it's an example of how the College Board is "leaning into" challenges. There's also a hefty chunk of conversation where Coleman artfully inserts himself in an imaginary conversation between imaginary test critics and imaginary test proponents; it's a pretty clever way to position himself as a perfectly reasonable guy trying to find a middle way in the midst of this contentious and imaginary debate. But that's not why he's here. He's here to talk about AP.
When we worry, perhaps rightly, that assessment can discriminate, let's remember that there's another thing that we know ... that can discriminate more, which is adults.
Yup. That's the problem. Because Coleman says he has learned from "my work in K-12" that we've got to change our game. And that test anxiety is bad. And, using one of his newmarketing slogans educational insights, American students don't need more tests, they need more opportunities.
And let's give Coleman credit-- he hasn't said anything that's particularly wrong. What the most capable of reformsters understand is this simple process:
1) Say something true as a premise
2) Do something awful that does not actually follow from #1 at all
Coleman'sgenius marketing idea solution to educational inequality is to take human bias out of the equation and replace it with hidden human bias and testing.
See, he's worried that African-Americans and women and Latinos are missing out on the chance to give College Board their money the opportunity to take AP courses. But it turns out that a great predictor of AP success is the PSAT!! So let's use the previously maligned and increasingly skipped-over PSAT as a marketing booster for AP a means of finding worthy students. AP, we are to understand, is a massive cash cow for the College Board a doorway to opportunity, and if we get more students into AP courses it will be a great payday for the College Board step forward for America.
So let's use the PSAT to generate sales leads AP course recommendations. Let's send letters to parents and lists to guidance departments and let's get students moved into those courses by the carload.
Look, the lack of minorities and women in certain fields is a legitimate problem, and it's a problem the education world should be addressing, and addressing aggressively. But the fact that Coleman can correctly diagnose the disease does not mean we should keep listening when he says, "So you should buy a bottle of Dr. Coleman's Miracle Cure, made of oil squeezed from the finest snakes in Arabia."
We knew this was coming. The Coleman College Board is a business that has leveraged some genius marketing strategies; who else has found the giant brass balls to get their product made part of state policy (well, other than Common Core-- one more reason Coleman's new job makes sense). And if AP were as great as it says, or at least benign, that would be swell. But even as the College Board struggles to regain market share, they are also working feverishly to mess with their products. The SAT has been redesigned to match the Core, and AP courses have begun a transition from loosely structured high-quality courses to CCSS-aligned tightly structured products in a box.
But Coleman's recasting of the College Board quest for new markets as a drive for social justice is the work of a master salesman. Coleman may not know jack about education, but he cansling bullshit like a pro probably change the world with his audacious plan to sell the solution to reviving College Board's revenue stream social and economic justice.
David Coleman (Common Core writer and current president of the College Board) is deeply concerned with fairness. Huffington Post has a report from the Aspen Institute (because "let's solve America's social problems" is so often associated with "let's go to Aspen") on Coleman's "conversation" with Jane Stoddard Williams of Bloomberg EDU, and the excerpts presented give us a picture of how Coleman plans to
He is sure to tout his free test prep deal with Kahn Academy, by which the College Board will
But Coleman's not here primarily to tout the new
When we worry, perhaps rightly, that assessment can discriminate, let's remember that there's another thing that we know ... that can discriminate more, which is adults.
Yup. That's the problem. Because Coleman says he has learned from "my work in K-12" that we've got to change our game. And that test anxiety is bad. And, using one of his new
And let's give Coleman credit-- he hasn't said anything that's particularly wrong. What the most capable of reformsters understand is this simple process:
1) Say something true as a premise
2) Do something awful that does not actually follow from #1 at all
Coleman's
See, he's worried that African-Americans and women and Latinos are missing out on
So let's use the PSAT to generate
Look, the lack of minorities and women in certain fields is a legitimate problem, and it's a problem the education world should be addressing, and addressing aggressively. But the fact that Coleman can correctly diagnose the disease does not mean we should keep listening when he says, "So you should buy a bottle of Dr. Coleman's Miracle Cure, made of oil squeezed from the finest snakes in Arabia."
We knew this was coming. The Coleman College Board is a business that has leveraged some genius marketing strategies; who else has found the giant brass balls to get their product made part of state policy (well, other than Common Core-- one more reason Coleman's new job makes sense). And if AP were as great as it says, or at least benign, that would be swell. But even as the College Board struggles to regain market share, they are also working feverishly to mess with their products. The SAT has been redesigned to match the Core, and AP courses have begun a transition from loosely structured high-quality courses to CCSS-aligned tightly structured products in a box.
But Coleman's recasting of the College Board quest for new markets as a drive for social justice is the work of a master salesman. Coleman may not know jack about education, but he can
Thursday, July 17, 2014
The Limits of Data
There was a moment during a presentation at last weeks' Professional Learning Communities training (institute? gathering? big thingy?) that really illustrated, I think a bit unintentionally, the nuts-and-bolts problems with using data to "analyze" teacher effectiveness.
A chart of data from three classes broken down by three skills was on the screen, presented in student by student format. First, we looked at properly parsing the scores-- count the number of students who don't make the cut score rather than looking at averages for the class. Looked at that was, it was clear that one class had excellent results, one class had middlin' results, and one had lousy results.
And then Dick DuFour started anticipating the explanations.
The classes might have different compositions of students. The classes might include students with learning disabilities. The classes might be at different times of day. Every possible reason you or I might give. And each one, for our example, was explained away. I honestly don't remember whether this was a real case study or a hypothetical example, but the classes were, for all intents and purposes, identical in composition.
The progression of his example was clear. After you have eliminated all other factors as an explanation, only one factor remains. The teacher.
After you have eliminated all other factors.
To make his point, he had to explain away all other variables. And this remains one of the huge limitations of student data. It's basic experimental design-- you have to control for all variables. Otherwise your data tells you nothing. If we design an experiment where plants growing in every different climate of the globe with every possible variation in light exposure, soil types, and types of plants, and then we treat each plant with a different fertilizer, the data we develop will tell us virtually nothing useful about the efficacy of the various fertilizers.
Reformsters have tried to manage the variables in several ways. They insist, for instance, that poverty, language barriers, and learning disabilities are not meaningful variables, that they make no more difference than the color of the wrapper on the fertilizer. They have tried to insist that what we think of as differences between students are not significant differences at all.
The various versions of VAM claim to be able to correct mathematically for the variables. We supposedly know that Level 3.2 squared of poverty affects student achievement by a degree of X sigma over the sine of Y and a half. My question has always been, if we know that precisely what the effects of poverty (or other factors) on student achievement, why can't we design instructional techniques to compensate for that factor. But it doesn't matter-- after we run all students through the VAMinator, they will come out the other side equalized, exactly the same.
PLCs can deal with the data gap simply, because given a good administration, the only people who have to sort out the data are the teachers in the PLC. First, they get to design the data instruments themselves, so they know what the data is supposed to mean-- its not badly written Mystery Crap in a Box. They they get to be the people who crunch the data. They have the power, authority and responsibility to say, "What we have here are apples and oranges, but we know these kids, and we can factor in their differences using our best professional judgment. We know there is more going on here than just pedagogical differences between the four of us."
But on the state and national scale, this insistence that we can explain away all differences between students becomes a large-scale farce handled by people far removed from the actual teachers and the actual students. Under the PLC model, the teachers are the data gatherers, and they are accountable to each other. You don't look your co-worker in the eye and try to sell her some made-up baloney to her face. Under the reformster model, teachers are removed from every single part of the process except the Getting Blamed For Everything part. They get to force-feed their baloney without looking anybody, anywhere in the eye.
A chart of data from three classes broken down by three skills was on the screen, presented in student by student format. First, we looked at properly parsing the scores-- count the number of students who don't make the cut score rather than looking at averages for the class. Looked at that was, it was clear that one class had excellent results, one class had middlin' results, and one had lousy results.
And then Dick DuFour started anticipating the explanations.
The classes might have different compositions of students. The classes might include students with learning disabilities. The classes might be at different times of day. Every possible reason you or I might give. And each one, for our example, was explained away. I honestly don't remember whether this was a real case study or a hypothetical example, but the classes were, for all intents and purposes, identical in composition.
The progression of his example was clear. After you have eliminated all other factors as an explanation, only one factor remains. The teacher.
After you have eliminated all other factors.
To make his point, he had to explain away all other variables. And this remains one of the huge limitations of student data. It's basic experimental design-- you have to control for all variables. Otherwise your data tells you nothing. If we design an experiment where plants growing in every different climate of the globe with every possible variation in light exposure, soil types, and types of plants, and then we treat each plant with a different fertilizer, the data we develop will tell us virtually nothing useful about the efficacy of the various fertilizers.
Reformsters have tried to manage the variables in several ways. They insist, for instance, that poverty, language barriers, and learning disabilities are not meaningful variables, that they make no more difference than the color of the wrapper on the fertilizer. They have tried to insist that what we think of as differences between students are not significant differences at all.
The various versions of VAM claim to be able to correct mathematically for the variables. We supposedly know that Level 3.2 squared of poverty affects student achievement by a degree of X sigma over the sine of Y and a half. My question has always been, if we know that precisely what the effects of poverty (or other factors) on student achievement, why can't we design instructional techniques to compensate for that factor. But it doesn't matter-- after we run all students through the VAMinator, they will come out the other side equalized, exactly the same.
PLCs can deal with the data gap simply, because given a good administration, the only people who have to sort out the data are the teachers in the PLC. First, they get to design the data instruments themselves, so they know what the data is supposed to mean-- its not badly written Mystery Crap in a Box. They they get to be the people who crunch the data. They have the power, authority and responsibility to say, "What we have here are apples and oranges, but we know these kids, and we can factor in their differences using our best professional judgment. We know there is more going on here than just pedagogical differences between the four of us."
But on the state and national scale, this insistence that we can explain away all differences between students becomes a large-scale farce handled by people far removed from the actual teachers and the actual students. Under the PLC model, the teachers are the data gatherers, and they are accountable to each other. You don't look your co-worker in the eye and try to sell her some made-up baloney to her face. Under the reformster model, teachers are removed from every single part of the process except the Getting Blamed For Everything part. They get to force-feed their baloney without looking anybody, anywhere in the eye.
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