Charters: Diminishing Returns and Just Good Enough

I suspect many of us will be returning to the fascinating-in-a-car-crash-way transcript of the K12 Fiscal Year 2015 Guidance Conference Call transcript. But for the moment, I want to concentrate on just this one question from one of the conference call participants

Jeffrey P. Meuler - Robert W. Baird & Co. Incorporated, Research Division

So this is a related big-picture question. I mean, you're framing it up that mission #1 is always improving academic outcomes, which -- it's the good and noble thing to do, absolutely, no disagreement there. But I'm just wondering, is your view that -- you guys are deploying a lot of capital. Is this a business that is capable, while investing in academics at the necessary level, that you can return -- generate returns on capital in excess of your cost of capital? I just -- if you could comment on how you're thinking about that as you deploy a lot of capital and as you invest in academic outcomes.

What Meuler seems to mean is this:

It's nice that a school is interested in academic achievement and all, but you're not going to spend so much money on it that you cut into that sweet, sweet pile of money, are you?

Here are two major ways in which the free market is incompatible with public education.

Diminishing Returns and Just Good Enough

Any operator of a business has to look at cost-benefits analysis. As the operator of a widget business, I look at my widget manufacturing and look not just at ways to improve the widgets, but ways to improve the widgets that will pay me back in revenue.

Ford could make cars that are objectively "better" by having all the upholstery hand-stitched with gold-infused thread. But that improvement would not allow the company to make more money from car sales-- certainly not in comparison to the additional production costs. So that improvement (and many others) will not make it into production.

Wal-Mart could have greeters who hand you a cup of cocoa and a scone when you walk in, and that would definitely make the experience of shopping there "better," but it wouldn't make Wal-Mart more money-- certainly not in comparison to the cost of cocoa and scones. So that's not happening any time soon.

Part of marketing is making a product that is Just Good Enough. Make it too crappy and people won't buy it. Make it too awesome and you won't be able to make money selling it. It has to be Just Good Enough, so that you can still market it effectively without cutting into your revenues. Excellence is expensive, but Pretty Good leaves lots of room to make a profit.

So what Meuler wants to know is, "You're not going to pursue academic excellence to the detriment of finances, are you?"

At some point, a school that doggedly pursued top academic achievement for all its students would become financially unsustainable (unless it were a select private prep school that could charge Philips Academy style tuition). Charters need achievement numbers good enough to stay in the market, but not so good that they're spending too much money to get them.

The Enemy

In marketing there is sometimes a reverse boiling frog pot effect that kicks in. Can we lower the Just Good Enough bar without ill effects on market share? Customers will pay two dollars for a ten ounce box of Frosted Sugar Bombs. Will they readily pay the same if there are only nine and a half ounces in there? We all know this process-- I fully expect that my grandchildren will buy potato chip packages that are the size of a small labrador retriever but which contain one single potato chip. The product is the enemy of profit.

This is more true in education than in any other enterprise. Every dollar I put into the classroom is a dollar that does not go into my pocket. That's fine for public schools-- they don't need to have a penny left over at the end of the year. But if I'm working a for profit or a semi-hidden profit or just trying to pay my $500K CEO, every cent I spend on the students is a cent taken away from my backers, investors, owners, and other financially interested parties.

In free market schooling, students will not be the point. They will be an obstacle. In this model we often compare them to widgets or products, but actually, in the free market charter system, students are also the employees. Their job is to produce good data that can be used for marketing so that the revenue stream can be maintained, and so to that extent, spending money to teach them makes some business sense. But when they start clamoring for art classes or nicer lunches or more tutors, they are on the same footing as assembly line workers agitating for nicer food in the break room. They are asking the company to spend money on something that will not help the company make money.

An A+ student doesn't bring in more money than an A- student. The state pays a flat rate for all students, so past a certain point, spending more to get higher achievement is just throwing money away without hope of increased returns. The free market imperative is to find ways to do less and less for the students. The students don't need to be excellent. Just good enough.

Nothing Nefarious Here

It's typical to want to paint the businessmen in these free market charter scenarios as evil villains, and that's a mistake.

First, it's unfair, because I have no doubt that many if not all of them are reasonably decent human beings.

Second, it implies that if we installed virtuous morally upright CEOs at the top of this pyramid, everything would be okay. That's not true.

It's important to realize that asking the question about investment, trying to get to Just Good Enough, making sure that we're not spending too much money on the education part of the school-- those are all responsible behaviors for people in the investing and management world. Somewhere there are people managing your retirement portfolio, and you would be royally pissed if they weren't paying attention to these kinds of issues.

No, the takeaway here is not that businessmen are evil. The takeaway is that a free market is fundamentally incompatible with a public school system. Putting on pads and slamming other people to the ground is very appropriate on a football field; it's not so great in a China shop. Free market business guys in the world of education are fullbacks body-checking the China, and while it's perhaps frustrating for them, it is positively destructive for the China.

Crossposted from my "other" blog, View from the Cheap Seats

Media and Eyeballs

I'm cleaning up some scraps in the bloggy attic this morning, and some of them took me back to the Time magazine flap of last fall.

There are several chunks of experience that factor into my views of media. I've been a weekly newspaper columnist for almost sixteen years. I was the media "face" of my striking union a little over a decade ago. I teach journalism sometimes, and I have friends and former students in the business.

So I think there are some mistakes that people pretty routinely make when they think about, or deal with, media.

People grossly over-estimate media's investment in a particular point of view. While people may believe that a media outlet is deeply committed to a pro-mugwump or anti-ooblek position, mostly what media are deeply committed to is eyeballs. Lots and lots of eyeballs. Following close behind the eyeball commitment is a commitment to maintaining stature-- which is important because it helps attract eyeballs. If people don't believe you know what you're talking about, they won't come when you call. So, eyeballs.

Media make money by collecting eyeballs and then selling access to those eyeballs. That's the business model. The two big shifts of that model in the last few decades are 1) huge competition for the eyeballs and 2) moving from targets of "enough money to keep lights on" to "enough money for a second Lexus and a vacation home in Spain for the top brass."

With my newspaper gig, I periodically get Letters to the Editor taking me to task for one thing or another (the rule of op-ed is that if I compare, say, a political office to a herd of confused rhinos, I will get nothing from the office and several letters from angry rhino fans). People sometimes ask, "Boy, was your editor upset that Grumpy McSpewsalot chewed you out yesterday." The answer is that no, my editor is actually delighted, because the commotion will sell papers.

However, don't overestimate the excitement of selling single copies. At its 2005 peak, advertising revenue was 82% of total revenue for a newspaper. Today advertising accounts for about 69% of revenue for traditional news media. Subscriptions are great because they represent pre-commited eyeballs. And advertising revenue is driven by the number of eyeballs, which means that media want to get a high number of eyeballs, even if those eyeballs aren't actually paying to see the media.

That's why "I'm cancelling my subscription (and reducing your circulation numbers)" is far more compelling than "I'm not going to buy this at the newsstand."

The internet has both simplified and complicated the picture. Paper copies are hard to really track, but the internet knows exactly how many times you clicked on that picture of Kim Kardashian's boobalicious dress, you naughty boy. If you're tired of reading about Ann Coulter, stop reading about Ann Coulter. She may be full of crap, and there may be few people who take her seriously, but she is reliable click bait.

The internet is perfect democracy, perfect free market in action. And every click is a vote for what you would like to see more of. And every mention of something gives it more presence in the giant google bowl o' internet fun. See, when I refuse to use She Who Will Not Be Named's name, or post links to certain odious websites, it's not just pique. I'm doing my teensy part to give those things less presence on the interwebs.

So if you think for one minute that Time's editorial board was shaking in their office suites, crying, "Oh no-- all the angry teachers are flooding our site with thousands and thousands of views of our controversial article, which is now linked all over hell and back!" you are kidding yourself. The response to the cover story gave Time the kind of click traffic, ad revenue, and web presence that sites dream about. The challenge for them was to maximize the impact of the controversy without actually pissing anybody off who could really hurt them. It's tricky, but it has nothing to do with taking sides, pushing point of view, or taking an ideological stand. It's all about the eyeballs, and at the end of the day, Time made out just great. People who imagine that they are now sad and chastised by the show of teacher might are kidding themselves. Time is circling the bowl, hanging on to relevance by a thread (and being relevant only matters because it keeps you in the business), and for a week or so, they had the coveted spot of Thing People Are Talking About. The great cover story tempest was a win for Time.

Not that I disagree with the loud angry teacher response. I signed the petition that was eventually used as an awkward photo op, and I would do it again. But there's a reason that Randi Weingarten could publicly spank Time in a way that she is apparently unwilling to do with the far more threatening and dangerous Andrew Cuomo-- because Time didn't really mind the petition thing at all. That piece of performance art got the magazine one more day of a free spot in the news cycle.

There was no way that Time's odious cover could go unanswered, just as sometimes you have to ignore the internet wisdom of Don't Feed the Trolls. The rest of the world was watching, and if teachers had let the whole business go by unremarked, it would have hurt in the broader community of opinion. Sometimes you can't let people jerk you around in front of an audience. But we should not pretend that we have just slain a dragon when we just fed it a side of beef and sent it back to nap.

We can do better.

People have a terrible addiction to the Narrative of Overwhelming Righteous Outrage. In their heads, they envision really letting the opposition have it, unleashing righteous rage so great that the opponent falls to his knees and cries out, "Oh lordy I have been so wrong! I repent. The power of your shining words turn my eyes into my soul and there I see such yuckiness that I feel terrible, and want to make things right by doing as you say and confess my wrongness before the world!" This is really satisfying inside your head, and it happens exactly never in the real world.

In the real world, it works differently. And I am sad to tell you that one group that gets it is TFA. Some people were upset that part of TFA's leaked rapid response memo discussed building relationships with certain media outlets. But that's pretty much how it works. Journalists and media people are just like everyone else-- they like dealing with people they know and understand, even trust. Having a relationship with a journalist does not necessarily mean she'll just run whatever you hand her (though there are such relationships built on a currency of money or access). But it does mean that you'll be heard, and it can mean that when the journalist needs a spokesperson for a particular point of view, she'll think to call you.

Journalists have a job to do, and some of them do it pretty well, some do the best they can, and some kind of suck. They have editors to keep happy and a need for sources of information and material that they can feed their editor so that their editor can go collect eyeballs. Anybody who wants to foster relationships with journalists will do better with "I can help you collect some eyeballs" than with "Bend before my awesome wrath!"

This is a tricky dance. There's a fine, fine line between "I've put something together to make covering this easier for you" and "I was hoping you would just work as our unquestioning PR flack in the press." Therefor, relationships. The greatest interviewers have the ability to build an instant relationship with their subjects. News subjects who get lots of good press often turn out to have that same ability. Rich and powerful media people have lots of rich and powerful friends; those relationships are in the mix as well, and it's complicated because you don't believe your friends because they pay you to, but because they're your friends, and you like and trust them.You share a world view, and that world view colors what you see as True.

The best path to becoming a Recognized Spokesperson for A Group is to travel with your own large reserve of eyeballs. That is how Ann Coulter and the Kardashians get to be Famous-- they have collected a vast army of eyeballs that they bring with them to whatever media outlet they grace with their presence. Justin Bieber stopped appearing on magazine covers not because editors decided they didn't like him, but because his covers stopped collecting eyeballs.

Do editors and journalists sometimes throw agendas around because they just want to? Sure. There's certainly something attractive about being a Very Rich Guy and using that wealth to build a media empire with which to foist your ideas on the world. But even war-manufacturing William Randolph Hearst kept his eye on those circulation numbers and his status in the halls of power. I can't think of a single example of a media outlet choosing principle over business, even if it meant going broke. Even Fox will drop people who are ideologically pure if they can't bring the eyeballs or maintain stature any more (looking at you, Palin and Beck). Yes, we have the inspiring stories of journalists who stood up for What Was Right, wielding their Davidian pens against powerful Goliaths. Those stories are rare and celebrated because they aren't the norm.

So in teachers vs. Time, taking our eyeballs and going home after telling Time why we were doing it = excellent plan. Encouraging everybody to click their eyeballs on over to reread the article and then again to read all the responses = not so effective. Calling the writer names (even after it turned out she's actually married to a teacher) = not a great plan. Talking to her so that she knows she has some new education contacts next time = good plan. Expressing honest outrage and sharing information from our side (aka reality) = useful means of educating journalists. Trying to punch them in their metaphorical nose because they didn't already know these things = not so useful. Time is small potatoes these days; only a couple million subscribers and fairly tiny number of single copy buyers. But we'll be more prepared the next time this sort of thing inevitably happens.

The media like a good story. Some media like the same basic story over and over again. And some media like a good story so much they'll not let facts get in the way. It helps anyone who deals with media to remember that they have a job to do-- and that job is gather eyeballs. 

Meanwhile, one last point-- as we often note with our own students, rewards can be better motivation than punishment. During this same time frame both Forbes and The Atlantic published articles that did a much better job of capturing some True Things about the battle for US public education. We should all make certain that we do our part to make those pieces successful. Reading, liking, saving, sharing-- in other words, making good use of our eyeballs-- can show editors and publishers that a more accurate and true depiction of the issues will draw a nice sized crowd. It's not an epic, cathartic battle, but it's still a win-win.

Maybe DC Dems Should Just Shut Up

For the love of God, Washington Democrats. Many's the time I've tried to defend you to my conservative friends and family, but sometimes you seem so hell-bent on acting like cartoon Democrats, you make it nearly impossible.

This week, the President went to Rhode Island and said this:



The now-infamous quote is “Sometimes, someone, usually mom, leaves the workplace to stay home with the kids, which then leaves her earning a lower wage for the rest of her life as a result. And that’s not a choice we want Americans to make. So let’s make this happen: By the end of this decade, let’s enroll 6 million children in high-quality preschool, and let’s make sure that we are making America stronger.”


Maybe that's a verbal fumble. Maybe he wanted to say that he didn't want women to have to make that choice. But the six million preschool enrollees line kinda makes that unlikely. (It also represents a jump up from the 2.2 million that he previously wanted to hit by decade's end.)

In that case, there's no good way to spin this. It could mean that the President thinks preschool programs can do a better job of raising kids than mom, or that making money is more important work than staying at home with the kids. It could mean-- no, sorry, there's just no way to spin this that isn't a slap in the face for stay-at-home moms.

This pairs up badly with comments like Arne Duncan's June 2014 observation that Hispanic families suffer from a "cultural hesitation" about putting their kids in preschool. "Sometimes you have a cultural piece where people are scared to put their kids in more formal care and they prefer, you know, to do the grandmother, the neighbor, whatever," said Arne. Yes, those crazy people wanting to keep their small children in the care of immediate family. What the hell are they thinking?

In that same clusterfarfenugen, HHS Secretary Kathy Sibelius observed that "pre-school could make Hispanic children 'culturally comfortable' with entering public schools as kindergartners." So remember boys and girls-- the school is not there to serve and adjust to you and your culture. Instead, you need to be properly assimilated.

If administration members and supporters wonder why folks on the hard right keep blathering about crazy commie plans to separate children from their parents as quickly as possible for government indoctrination, it could be because administration figures keep saying things that make it sound as if that's exactly what they want to do!

The GOP suffers from many loud voices that seem to have lost all contact with traditional conservative values in their pursuit of electoral wingnuttery. But many leading Democrats have also lost all contact with traditional Democratic values. This feeds the cycle of strident argument because these days, it's not even necessary to create a straw man version of the opposing side because somebody on that side is already acting far worse than the straw man you were about to manufacture.

So if the administration does not really believe that it knows better how to raise small children than their own parents, they should choose their words and their policies more carefully. If they do actually believe that government knows best, then they deserve every accusation of being over-controlling, meddling, nanny-statists that they get.

So Sorry, Minneapolis Teachers

As promised, this morning brought the publishing of teacher ratings, including VAM scores, with a map and a pearl-clutching interview with the district's superintendent. The gap is shocking, alarming, inexplicable.

I'm speaking of course of the apparent gap between Superintendent Bernadeia Johnson's brain and reality. How does somebody with this gigantic an inability to process data end up as a superintendent of a major school system?

Superintendent Johnson is shocked-- shocked!!-- to find that under this evaluation system, it turns out that all the worst teachers are working in all the poorest schools! Hmmm-- the poorest schools have the worst results. What's the only possible explanation? Teachers!! [Pause for the sound of me banging my head on the desk.]

“It’s alarming that it took this to understand where teachers are,” Superintendent Bernadeia Johnson said Friday. “We probably knew that, but now have the hard evidence. It made me think about how we need to change our staffing and retention.”

No, Superintendent Johnson. What's alarming is that you don't understand a damn thing.

Here's what you have "discovered." If you rip the roof off a classroom, the teachers that you send to teach in that classroom will get wet when it rains. You cannot "fix" that by changing the teacher.

But apparently that's the solution being considered. "Okay," says Superintendent Johnson. "Over here we have teachers who stay dry and their students stay dry, so we'll put this dry teacher in the classroom without a roof and have a dry teacher for the wet rooms. That'll fix it."

And Superintendent Johnson appears willing to go further. "Maybe we just need to fire the wet teachers and replace them with new, dry ones," she may be thinking. [Sound of me banging my head against the concrete slab of my basement floor.]

If you want a dry teacher in the room, build a damn roof on it.

Look. Look look look look look. We already know that poverty absolutely correlates with test results. Show me your tests results and I will show you where your low-income students are. Poverty and lack of resources and underfunding put these students in a classroom without a roof, and anybody you put in there with them will be a wet teacher.

Build a damn roof.

Minneapolis public school officials say they are already taking immediate action to balance schools’ needs with teachers’ abilities. The district has created programs to encourage effective instructors to teach at high-needs schools and mentor the newest teachers. District officials say they are providing immediate training for teachers who are deficient. And last year, the district fired more than 200 teachers, roughly 6 percent of its teaching staff.

Wrong. All wrong. In fact, worse than wrong, because you are now in the position of saying, "Hey, over here we have a room with no roof on it, and if you teach in there and get wet when it rains, we intend to punish you. Now-- who wants to volunteer to teach in the roofless room??  Also, we'll probably smear your good name in the local paper, too. Any takers?"

And to the students, sitting in that roofless room day after day, shivering and wet as poverty and lack of resources and insufficient materials and neglect by the central office rain down on them, this sends a terrible message. "We know you are sick and wet in your roofless room," says the district. "So we are not sending a roof or even ponchos or an umbrella. We're not going to spend a cent more on you. We're just going to stand a different teacher up in front of you, to see if she gets wet when it rains."

It is absolutely mind-boggling that a group of presumably educated allegedly intelligent adults can look at data and get the interpretation of it exactly completely backwards. Minneapolis school leaders are looking at data that tells them exactly where they need to focus resources, support, funding, and build a roof. Instead, they are going to blame the whole complex of information on teachers.

They are going to blame teachers for getting wet in the rain.

I'm so sorry Minneapolis teachers. Apparently you work for dopes, and given the publishing of your ratings in the morning paper, fairly malicious dopes at that.

This is the worst. This is the absolute worst version of reformster foolishness, slandering and upending an entire city's worth of teachers. I don't know any Minneapolis teachers, have never met any, but even sight unseen, I know they-- and their students-- deserve better than this.

KnowledgeWorks: Your Large, Friendly Sibling

Today we'll be looking at KnowledgeWorks, yet another of the vast web of reformy foundations funded by the Gates et al. Their aspirations are high, as you can spot from the various self-descriptions peppered about their materials.

KnowledgeWorks is a social enterprise focused on ensuring that every student experiences meaningful personalized learning that allows him or her to thrive in college, career and civic life. By offering a portfolio of innovative education approaches and advancing aligned policies, KnowledgeWorks seeks to activate and develop the capacity of communities and educators to build and sustain vibrant learning ecosystems that allow each student to thrive. Our portfolio includes EDWorks and StriveTogether.

These guys do not think small, like TNTP's simple goal of gutting the teaching profession. And you can experience the full not-smallness of their vision in their October 2014 report, "Improving Student Outcomes Through COLLECTIVE IMPACT." My typographic choices are meant to capture the report's cover, which hides the first four words in smaller typeface while the last two come out with gusto and largeness. Let's also note that the report is co-produced by a KnowledgeWorks subsidiary, StriveTogether (motto "Every child. Cradle to career.")

StriveTogether, a subsidiary of KnowledgeWorks, works with communities nationwide to help them create a civic infrastructure that unites stakeholders around shared goals, measures and results in education, supporting the success of every child, cradle to career. Communities implementing the StriveTogether framework have seen dramatic improvements in kindergarten readiness, standardized test results, and college retention.

Well, that doesn't sound creepy at all. Strive is in Dallas, Boston, Seattle and Cincinnati, but we let's not get too sidetracked here. We'll turn to the report in a second, but first-- Where did these guys come from?

Some Brief History

KnowledgeWorks is not new to the game. They were founded in Ohio in 1998, with an initial mission of "increasing access" to educational opportunities mostly for poor students and poor working class adults. In 2004 they got on the Gates Small School gravy train and helped create some of those smaller high schools that were Gates' previous theory about how to fix education. In that initiative, they used another subsidiary, EDWorks, who "optimized the school improvement models behind this success by providing curriculum and instruction, supportive high school culture, aligned assessments and comprehensive student support."

In 2009, they switched nimbly to the new Gates gravy train-- college and career readiness; at that time, they also glommed up Napa Valley company New Tech Networks (at least one source says KnowdgeWorks founder built it), a group specializing in transforming schools through blah blah argle bargle my lord in heaven, but these guys soak all of their materials in some sort of corporate word soup that drowns a lot of sense.

The organization was founded by Chad P. Wick (age 72) who has been a CEO of various commercial banks in and around Cincinnati, served on some insurance company boards, and had his hand in Ohio politics one way or another. He seems well-connected to both important people and money, and that has dovetailed nicely with a philanthropic (in the modern sense) career. Wick also co-founded MAYWIC Select Investments, an investment group that bases a lot of its work on "deep relationships" and includes in its portfolio Abe's Market, goldieblox, and One Hope. Over the past several years, Wick has transitioned out of running KnowledgeWorks and into running ACT (yes, the test people).

So that's your short, simple intro to KnowledgeWorks. I've also read their creepy, creepy report so that you don't have to.

Collective Impact-- What Is That?

[Insert standard introduction about how US education is a terrible mess blah blah test scores argle bargle hodgepodge of standards.] Is it possible that these guys know of a solution to all that educational skyfall?

A promising approach to education reform has emerged in more than 100 communities across the country where partnerships of cross-sector leaders are using evidence based strategies and existing resources to improve outcomes for students. This approach, called collective impact, replaces competing agendas, siloed funding streams, and duplicative programs with a shared vision for education reform. 

I'd better explain before we go any further that I don't think of myself as an ideologue, and I don't automatically experiencing jerking of the knee regarding any political systems. So when I comment that this sounds kind of like a call for central planning of the collective, I'm not so much saying, "You mean that evil Communism that come straight from Satan." I'm more saying, "Oh, that central government planning model that keeps failing in almost every place it's attempted."

Well, these guys would like the "community partners" to come together in "an accountable way" (which always makes me ask-- accountable to whom) to implement these four super-swell ideas:

1) Shared community vision. Specifically, a vision for each child's life from "early learning" through entering the workforce.The sharing part means, among other things, no calling out partners in public. Let's just keep disagreements in house, shall we. Public disagreement is so confusing for the public. We want to keep everyone on exactly the same page.

2) Evidence based decision making. "Integrate professional expertise and data" to decide how the community is going to use its resources to "improve student outcomes." We should share data, a lot, and disagregated, too. Just hoover up that data and hand it to anybody in the community so that everybody, from the boss of the widget factory to the boss of the slumgullion factory can have better tell educators what they need to be fixing.

3) Collaborative action. Cross-section systems for so that " networks of appropriate cross-sector practitioners use data to continually identify, adopt and scale practices that improve student outcomes." Also, little focused action groups can Come Together to Do Stuff.

4) Investment & Sustainability. "Demonstrate broad community ownership for building civic infrastructure through committed resources to sustain the work of the partners and improve student outcomes."  Infrastructure's meaning is unclear, although the report proudly notes that fifty communities have joined the StriveTogether Cradle to Career network. I'm wondering if infrastructure isn't related to data sharing, but it also seems to include some helpful offers from the widget factory to help shape up your math teachers.

So that gobbledygook gives us a somewhat vague and wispy picture of what we're after. It's the kind of language that usually signals one of two possibilities. Either A) they don't know how to speak plain English and don't really know what they want to do or B) they know exactly what they want to do, and they'd rather the rest of us didn't get a plain picture of it.

But this report is directed at the feds and their role in all of this, so let's just see what that federal role is supposed to be.

Align Federal Grant Stuff with Local Efforts

This appears to mean that the feds should organize all their granty stuff and award money amounts based on how well the local folks are accomplishing the goals that KnowledgeWorks thinks they should be accomplishing. Do you suppose that list of localities would look a lot like the list of KnowledgeWorks clients?

But, seriously, there's too many funding streams and different applications to fill out with too many different measures of what success for that particular grant would look like. Could we just whittle that down to one grant stream with one application and just one way of measuring success.

Also, they'd like to see "shared accountability incentivized" at the local level, so that everyone will stick around past the paperwork part of the grant. Correct me if I'm wrong, but that kind of local accountability would mean that somebody local would basically have to be in charge of all the local stakeholders. I wonder who would be available to be the local accountability oversight management guys.

Bang for the Buck

The foundation has some ideas about how to organize the management of these improvements, and how to cross-reference that with the four Important Things listed above, and even some ideas of the dollar amounts that should be attached. See, if we can just get everybody to approach it this One Correct Way (that we are experts in because we made it up, so, you know, if anyone needs a consult...) everything will just be awesome and you will get banged for your buck.

The Definition of Success

Well, you didn't think they were going to stop at telling the feds how every school system should be organized, measured and funded according to the One Correct Way, did you? KnowdgeWorks will now go on to tell the feds what they should consider the definition of success for schools. They list six measures:

Kindergarten readiness
Early grade reading
Middle grade math
High school graduation
Postsecondary enrollment
Postsecondary employment

You may have heard that kindergarten is the door to all future success and happiness. It's true! If you're in Cincinnati, you know that these guys helped develop a Pre-K readiness test that can predict whether the child will be able to read in Third Grade. The whole community is now working on test prepping four year olds helping children meet that benchmark before entering kindergarten.

Reading in third grade is a big deal. They hear some states are holding students back who don't pass that reading test. Just sayin', that's all. For middle grade math, they've got even less. "Middle grade math has become an important milestone..." And those are the three points at which success is clearly measured by a student's ability to pass a standardized test. Because, data.

High school graduation leads to more money! Did you know that? Did you also know that 84% of all reformsters are unable to distinguish between correlation and causation? Also, lots of poor students don't go on to college, the next important corner in the pipeline. And graduating from college is good, we hear, though nobody really knows how to measure how successfully that's happening.

The report even offers a handy "dashboard" for entering all the data for handy display and sharing by policy makers. Because the best management is done by people sitting in offices looking at screens.

On the Horizon: Thought Police

I once read Moby Dick. It wasn't fun. I've read the Fountainhead and Atlas Shrugged, too. This report is providing a similar experience, but dammit, I'm sticking through to the end. I pledge allegiance to the flag. Ha! Just seeing if you're still there, reader. God bless you, there's even creepier stuff to come.

Anyway. While KnowledgeWorks knows that academic indicators are important, they also know that people watching the cradle to career pipeline would really like a peek at "social and emotional indicators." Good news!! The Strive wing is totally working on ways to measure those competencies, and they've identified the areas that require further research.

These include the creation of measurement tools that assess more than one competency, a clearer understanding of how the various competencies affect each other, and greater clarity and consistency on names, definitions and categorization of competencies. There is also a strong interest and desire in connecting these outcomes to workforce needs, particularly in high-demand careers.

Yes, there's a strong interest in being able to check those childhood test results so that future employers can get their workers to order straight out of the collective creche. After all, what is the point of having a tightly organized educational pipeline if employers can't use it to mold and select the most desirable qualities. I'm sorry-- did you think that education had some purpose other than to provide employers with workers? Silly you.

White Whale, My Ass

Sorry, but that's as far as I go. There's a page or two of stuff from Dallas showing how well they've engineered test results for small future drones. There's also a page of endnotes which I haven't bothered with because, as is generally the case with these "reports," the notes are just to other self-created pieces of unsupported non-research advocacy PR.

The Cradle To Career Pipeline idea has been around for a while. I had no idea that there was a group out there working so hard to make it real. It's creepy. It's Big Brothery. It hands over control of education to all sorts of people who don't know what the hell they're talking about. It treats education as nothing more than a vocational training system. It reduces the educational path to a one-size-fits-all measured-by-testing track. It opens that track to being directed by people who may or may not be able to successfully predict what job will be there in four, eight, ten years from now. It makes the lives of students an open book to all sorts of people whose right to violate student privacy isn't even questioned in such a program.

I had an idea that it could be this bad, but I didn't realize the infection was so advanced and in so many cities. To those of you living with this, my condolences.

The Real Secret of Grit

Grit is a great thing. Of all the various rhetorical footballs that get kicked around in education debates, grit is one that everybody loves. Reformsters love to talk about it, and nobody that I can think of in the Resistance is out there bad-mouthing it. Nobody is saying, "We need wimpier kids with less toughness and resilience. We need kids who will fold under pressure and buckle when things get tough." Well, at least not out loud or on purpose.

We do have confusion and disagreement about where grit comes from and how it works.

Grit is not self-esteem. Self-esteem is about what you think you deserve. Grit is about what you think you can handle.

All of our concerns, all of our worries, all of our fears, anxieties, distress about the future-- they all come down to grit. Every statement we make about a Bad Thing That Could Happen has an unspoken coda. "I might lose my job" or "The house might burn down" or "I might not get into college" or "I might get stranded on an ice floe with a brace of rabid arctic ferrets"-- every one of them is followed by an unspoken "and I wouldn't be able to handle it."

Think about it. All the things you don't worry about, you don't worry about because you know that you can handle them. "The point on my pencil might break," you say without fear because it's followed by, "and then I would sharpen it." But even good things like graduation and marriage can trigger stress, because they trigger the sme question-- "Can I handle what happens next?"

So building grit is about just one thing-- learning that the answer to "Can I handle what comes next?" is "Yes. Yes, I can."

Some grit proponents like to talk about it as a personal quality, by which they seem to mean that you either have grit or you don't. And some grit fans believe that grit emerges magically from the hard dirt of tough times. Just keep punching someone in the face, and if they have what it takes, they'll develop grit.

This is incorrect. Adversity can be part of the mulch from which grit grows, but it's not the whole part. It's not even the most important part (which is why some people who have had soft, cushy lives still manage to be gritty as hell).

The important part of developing grit is becoming convinced that you can handle whatever it is. Developing grit is becoming convinced that, "Yes. Yes, I can." is your answer. And most often our students get that convincing from another human being. And not because that human being keeps punching the student in the face. Every story of grit emerging from adversity includes one common feature-- a person who said, "Stand up. You can do this."

You develop grit in students by standing with them and saying, "You can do this."

Now, that can be tricky business. Different teacher-student combinations require different styles of interaction. In one case, soft, gentle hand-holdy support may be just the thing, but in another case being all soft and gentle may actually communicate, "You are weak and fragile and can't really handle this." Tough love, even when seemingly harsh, can be just the thing because it communicates, "Well, of course you can handle this. I'm so certain of it that I find it ridiculous to suggest otherwise."

You do not help students succeed by making them feel small. You help students succeed by helping them see themselves as bigger than their challenges. How you do that depends on you and the student you're dealing with, but the key is the focus-- helping that student be big. But you don't do it by making them small, by focusing your attention on all the ways they aren't enough. You do not make them gritty by smashing them down.

The concept of grit is too often used as excuse not to help, treating a challenge in life as a test to which grit is the answer, and if you don't have it, well, no cheating and it sucks to be you. But we have a responsibility to help others-- particularly young others-- develop grit. And sometimes we can do it in a moment. Neil Degrasse Tyson talks about the grit and toughness and resilience it took for him to grow up African-American with dreams of becoming a physicist. And he speaks glowingly about how the great scientist Carl Sagan met him, talked to him, and cemented the idea that he could absolutely do it-- that he was just as big and tough as his dreams. Sagan made him feel big enough.

That should be the goal for all of us (and not just teachers)-- to help others be big enough. If we want grit to grow in the garden, we have to tend it-- not just walk away and insist that it somehow grow itself.

Journeys and Destinations

Yesterday was, of course, Halloween Party day in my wife's classroom. My wife teaches first grade, which is one more reason that I suspect she is some sort of earthbound goddess, except that there couldn't possible be enough earthbound gods and goddesses to account for all the elementary teachers out there.

As with most days, her job yesterday seemed to involve lots of Reassurance. Her students made a ghost out of paper plates and crepe paper strips, and where six year olds with scissors go, disappointment follows. And so, reassurance. Your ghost's mouth didn't turn out the way it was supposed to? It'll be okay. The strips somehow ended up different lengths? It'll be okay. You glued your ghost's arms where his hair is supposed to be? It'll be okay. And that's before she even gets to the Big Stuff-- a little guy was dropped at school without his costume for the big Costume Parade. His mom promised she'd drop it off at the school later. And he waited. And she didn't.

We're extra careful with newborns because their skulls aren't fully formed. Eventually those plates will become hardened and tough and fully protective, but for a while their little brains are just hanging out there, unprotected, vulnerable, and easily hurt.

Well, the same things is metaphorically true of young hearts, but the time frame is much longer. Eventually their protective covering will get hard and tough, but for the time being, their hearts are just hanging out there, unprotected, vulnerable, and easily hurt.

Some of her students arrive already equipped with a powerful fear of Being Wrong, and so she has to reassure them (because when six year olds have soooo much to learn, they do make mistakes). Because when you're afraid to make mistakes, you're afraid to try. It's a long journey, and if you have to stop and fret over every single step, the journey is awfully difficult.

So, reassurance. It's okay to make a mistake. It's okay to be wrong. We just keep trying. We haven't figured it out yet. We don't have it yet. We'll get it. It'll be okay. We're still growing.

It seems natural to explain that a wrong answer or a mistake or a scissor cut that doesn't go according to plan-- none of these things are the end of the world or an unbearable disaster. We'll pull ourselves together. We'll try again. We'll learn from this setback. Doesn't that sound like the message we'd want any six year old child to absorb?

It'll be okay. Let's pick ourselves up, dry our tears, try this again until we figure it out and make it work.

But it is, of course, the exact opposite of what is hard-wired into the test-and-punish regimen that reformsters are installing in schools. The gods and goddesses like my wife are picking kids up, setting them on their feet, drying their tears, telling them that they are alright and they can keep moving forward on their journey, but the reformsters are in these children's faces snarling, "Here's a test. You get one try. Get it right or you're a big fat failure." By the time they're eight, some states want to punish those kids with (proven ineffective) consequences for one set of wrong answers on a single standardized reading test.

It's not just educationally unsound. It's mean, hard-hearted unkindness meant to break children down instead of building them up.

It's not that I want to value the journey to the exclusion of the destination. Those of us who teach writing wrestle with this balance-- it's good to work on your process, your technique, your journey; but ultimately you have to produce a piece of writing and be judged on that result. I don't post rough drafts on this blog.

But when we're talking about fostering the growth of little humans, I believe we must value the journey over the destination, because that's life. Life is mostly journey, and what we think of as destinations are little rest stops along the way. Those stops, those achievement, those checkpoints are great and important and lord knows we don't want to drive around aimlessly and never arrive anywhere, but life is mostly the journey. Where we get is important; I'm not so sure that it's more important than how we get there.

So we have a duty to teach young humans about how to journey through life with strength and confidence and skill. We need to teach them how to grapple their way to solutions, how to attack and attack and attack again whatever problem faces them. And you know-- I don't even think that many reformsters disagree with what I'm saying. But you do not measure any of this with a single one-and-done one-right-answer-for-everyone standardized test. A snapshot test is all destination and no journey.

Despite test boosters claim to the contrary, there is nothing in life-- nothing-- that resembles the standardized test model. Your boss does not walk into your office and say, "Okay-- here's a problem I want you to solve. You have ten minutes. Your solution will determine whether I promote you or fire you." Someone does not walk up to you and say, "Hi, stranger. You have ten minutes to decide whether we should remain strangers or get married."  All right-- I take it back-- there are some things like a standardized test. We call them disasters, or tragedies. A dam breaks .A car crashes. A gunman walks into your school. Is that what standardized tests are supposed to prepare students for?

This is just one more way in which standardized tests utterly fail to measure any of the things we say we care about. Attaching high stakes to them only make them worse. When everything is riding on one set of answers to questions that you only get to wrestle with once, there is no absorbing data from the results and attacking again. There is no learning to grow from that moment. There's nothing but a declaration of winners and losers, and nothing that even the most powerful goddess can tell the losers that blunts the standardized stab at their open hearts.

The standardized test and punish system is not just anti-education. It's anti-human. Our children deserve better.