A Note To Your Hero

I've been a local newspaper columnist for almost sixteen years, and every year at this time, I write a column about heroes. I thought I'd carry that on here.

The premise is this: take out a piece of paper, and write a note of appreciation and send it to one of your heroes. I always think this is the perfect time-- just before the onslaught of the holiday season. It has become a small tradition here, and many of my colleagues use it as an i class writing assignment (so if you want a connection to education, I guess there it is). Here's how I explained it a few years ago:

We all have our heroes—people we admire, people who we think are examples of what’s good about humans. And yet somehow, we never get around to telling them how much we appreciate them.

You know when we finally get around to talking about all the great things we really loved about them? After they pass away. After they could actually get to hear how much they are appreciated.

Why do we wait?

Sometimes we wait because we think we have all the time in the world. We really ought to know better. Tomorrow is not guaranteed for anyone.

Sometimes we refrain from praise because the act we admire seems like a small thing. But you don’t have to save the entire world to make your corner of the planet a better place. Every little bit helps.

Sometimes we hold back because our heroes are not perfect. I don’t mean quirky movie-style minor flaws, like Indiana Jones and his fear of snakes or Patrick Dempsey and his fear of shirts. Real people can come with pretty significant flaws. Our own founding fathers were loaded with them, from Thomas Jefferson and his slaves to John Adams and his mega-jerkiness.

We struggle with the brokenness of human nature. If someone behaves like a hero on Monday and a terrible person on Tuesday, what do we call him on Wednesday? We keep waiting for a perfect person to elevate to hero status, and it never happens.

We could pull lots of lessons from that, but here’s the one I prefer to focus on: everything great ever done was done by somebody with flaws, but it was still great.

We can wait for our heroes to be perfect, or we can wait until they’re dead and their flaws suddenly don’t seem so awful. Or we could honor their best stuff while we still have the chance.

If you want to strengthen your world and make it even a marginally better place, you give your strength and support to the things you want to see more of. Honoring someone for the good they do is not the same thing as applauding their mistakes and messes. If anything, it can lend a compass to people who might be having trouble finding their way. When they are standing puzzled at a crossroads, it’s a way to say, “This. This is what is best in you. This is what you should trust about yourself.”

So once a year, I give you homework. Here it is.

Write a letter to one of your heroes. It doesn’t have to be complicated (even if your feelings are). It doesn’t have to be long. It can follow this simple formula:

Dear [insert name here], You are my hero because

Fill in the blank with just a sentence or two. Do not add a “but” or an “even though” or some account of a time they let you down to “balance” things. You can work that out some other day, if you must. Your assignment here is to focus only that quality that you admire.

It has to be a letter. You can’'t just send an email or make a phone call. A letter is something your hero will be able to get out and read, more than once, over the days or weeks or years ahead. Letters have permanence. My elementary phys ed teacher Lou Slautterback still has a thank you note from my folks. Write a letter.

It may feel awkward or odd to write something so directly positive. Trust me. You’ll feel better once you’ve done it. One of the best pieces of advice I ever heard was given to a woman who was having trouble figuring out how to handle a difficult relationship in her life. “Imagine that the person has died,” the advice-giver said. “Think about what you would regret not having done or said. Now go do that.”

We all have heroes, and we all too rarely tell them why they are heroes to us, why they are valuable and important people in our lives. They deserve to know why they matter, how they inspire you, what they do to make the world a better place, even if their heroics happen in small ways. You have your assignment. Write a letter.

Bush: Nuanced and Wrong

As Jeb Bush's Reformapalooza gets under way, Bush himself is tap-dancing carefully to stick with his beloved Common Core without letting it actually stomp on the toes of his Presidential hopes.

At the Washington Post, Lyndsey Layton gives us a look at his opening speech and gives him credit for slathering on the nuance. Perhaps. Let's look.

Bush includes a comparison to the Chinese, because when it comes to cultures we want to emulate, you can't beat the Chinese. This is one of the wonders of modern education reform-- that we've come to a place where some conservatives idolize the world's largest repressive Communist regime. Anyway, he compares this to his mischaracterization of the Florida district that imposed a 50% floor for grades (I'll tackle that subject another day). Shanghai gets higher scores than we do, says Jeb, "So let's get real." If we're talking about ways to emulate the production of high test scores, Bush may be suffering from a little reality disconnect himself.

“We have built a nationwide reform movement based on a set of proven principles,” Bush told the gathering of several hundred state policy leaders, charter school managers and executives from education companies.

 “Of course, choice is at the center of our reform efforts. But there are others: High standards. Rigorous, high-quality assessments. Accountability for school leaders. Early childhood literacy and ending social promotion. Digital and distance learning. Transparency for parents to see whether their schools are getting better or getting worse.”

Speaking of getting real, Bush might want to reconsider calling anything on his wish list a "proven principle." None of those have been proven to be effective.

“If we were designing our school system from scratch, what would it look like? I know one thing: We wouldn’t start with more than 13,000 government-run, unionized and politicized monopolies who trap good teachers, administrators and struggling students in a system nobody can escape. We would be insane if we recreated what we have today.”

That's an interesting way to approach it. It would be interesting to see him finish the thought. Would we be insane to try to create a system that provides a free education for every single child in the United States as long as the country exists? Does he imagine that a free market choice approach could do that? Because if he does, I believe he's nuts. A free market will gladly provide an education for the students who can be profitably served, for as long as it pleases the vendor to do so. A free market will gladly discard any children it doesn't think it can make a buck educating. That would be an insane system.

“In my view, every education dollar should depend on what the child needs, not what the federal bureaucrat wants,” he said. “Where the child goes, the dollars should go as well. When that happens, we’ll see major reforms and major gains for America’s children and the federal government will go back to playing the supportive and completely secondary role it should be playing.”

A talking point straight from the charter school marketing bible. It makes two hugely incorrect assumptions:

1) It costs no more to educate 100 students in 100 schools than it does to educate 100 students in a single school. This is self-evidently bunk.

2) That the only two parties with a stake in education are the child and the federal government. School tax money is not a stipend paid to each individual child. It is an investment by the community in the community. I agree-- the feds should play a secondary, or even quaduciary role, in education. Particularly when federal ed policy is being dictated by the kind of anti-public-ed amateurs we've been subjected to for at least two administrations (and probably the next one, too). But local communities and, to a lesser extent, states should be hugely involved.

Choice and charters are, of course, all about cutting local control and community investment out of the picture. That is simply wrong, and bad for education as well.

Bush may be nuancing himself from CCSS cheerleading back to charter champion, but he's still bad for education.

Questions for Professional Development

Originally posted at View from the Cheap Seats

Once upon a time, when teachers and outside presenters gathered together for PD, there was a sense that we were All In This Together. We were there, as teachers, to provide a public service through educating students, and the presenters at PD were there to give us some tools to help do that job.

Those days are gone.

Now we are surrounded by people who view public education not so much as a public service but rather as a giant money tree waiting to be pruned, and here they come to professional development sessions, shears in hand. We've always had our share of PD run by people who served up heaping plates of condescension with a side of contempt sauce, but PD increasingly resembles a sort of unarmed assault on teaching staffs.

This creates a new professional dilemma for teachers. Instead of asking "How can I apply this in my classroom," teachers are asking themselves, "How much longer can I keep from saying something unprofessional and rude?" Unfortunately, some teachers don't want to be impolite, and so PD behavior often runs to vacant smiling and nodding, with honest reactions to be reserved till afterwards.

Some presenters are just trying to do a job, but others really are the barbarians at the gate who deserve to be met with resistance. Here are some questions to ask in PD to separate the wolves from the sheep.

Which company is producing this product, and how do they expect to make money from it?

It's not that the desire to make money is automatically evil. This is not a gotcha question. But the question goes to motivation and long term costs. We used to  assume that programs and materials came from kindly gnomes that created it all in workshop somewhere and gave it away because it made them happy to do so. Nowadays virtually every program or tool that comes into a district  is somebody's proprietary product, and we need to remember that their primary purpose is not to make our lives swell, but to make enough money to make the business worthwhile.

If you are making money from the sale of widgets, I have to cast a dubious eye on your claim that it's really the widgets that will revolutionize learning. If you're giving me free software that will require us to renew licensing every two years at full cost, you're not really giving me free anything.

If you're here to help, that's great. If you're pretending to help when you're just here to sell us something (or to sell us on something the district already bought), I reserve the right to treat you like the huckster you apparently are.

What is your teaching background? Do you have any other special expertise in the material you're presenting?

There is apparently some sort of law requiring all PD presenters to work the phrase "when I was in the classroom" into their presentation, as well as some claim to having been a teacher at some point. Unfortunately, those phrases can be thrown around by both of the following presenters:

Presenter A: Taught a couple of years, possibly as TFA temp. Couldn't hack it. Couldn't wait to get out and start real job.
Presenter B: Taught for a couple of decades. Enjoyed the work but eventually decided to move on to a new career.

The distinction is important, because Presenter A doesn't know what the hell she's talking about. Furthermore, Presenter A has tried to claim a kinship with the audience of teachers that she hasn't earned. Put these together and you get Presenter Whose Word Cannot Be Trusted.

What proof can you offer that these techniques/programs/materials are actually effective?

If you can't get a straight answer to this, that's because the straight answer is most likely, "None." If you get an answer such as "research says," it's fair to ask exactly which research and exactly how did the researchers arrive at this conclusion.

The other teachers in the room may hate you for prolonging the session. Tough. Too many teachers still think that if something's being pitched in PD, it must be legit good practice. Hell, there are too many teachers who still think that the Common Core was written by teachers and based on solid educational research. One of the side effects of reform has been the removal of any sort of quality-based filter between profiteering companies and the rest of us.

If we are going to be champions for our students and their educations, we have to stop accepting the judgment of people with barely an iota of our professional expertise. We have to start casting a critical eye on every program that tries to slink through the door.

Why don't you answer that question now?

This must be part of PD 101. When somebody asks a difficult question or raises an issue that the presenter was hoping wouldn't be brought up, just say, "That's a really good question, and I'd like to talk to you more about that at the break." The goal is to avoid dealing with any contentious issues in front of the whole group. They might get the wrong idea, you know.

A person who can't give you a clear answer either doesn't have one or doesn't want to. Neither is acceptable. If you want to implement your stuff in my classroom, you need to give me an answer.
In many schools, PD has become an assault on teachers' standards and practices, and we should no more sit politely through the worst of it than we would politely sit through an explanation of why our minority students are inferior. Simply ignoring the people who come to coach teachers in educational malpractice isn't working. Standing up and telling them to go to hell is probably a poor employment choice.

But we can always ask questions, and we should, pointedly and repeatedly. If that makes PD sessions a little uncomfortable, so be it. We have a responsibility to our profession and our students to call out powerful baloney when it presents itself.

It may not stop the baloney advance. Pennsylvania years ago shifted state level PD from an attitude of "We want to win hearts and minds" to one of "Sit down, shut up, and do as you're told." It's hard to slow down a steamroller, but we don't have to lie down and make it easy on the destruction crew.

Ask the questions.

Brookings to Poor: Stop Fornicating, Dammit

Oh, Brookings. Some day I want to travel to the happy, warm, comfortable planet that your institute headquarters sit upon.

Yesterday Ron Haskins, Co-Director of Center on Children and Families (not "for," but "on") and a senior fellow of economic studies in Brookingsland, dropped some wisdom about income inequality ("about," not "on"). You will never guess whose fault it is.

Okay, it's Brookings so you probably will. The income gap is the fault of the poor. Honest to goodness, the Onion could not write this stuff.

First, Haskins notes that while, yes, the figures about how the top 1% saw their share of the wealth pie jump from 10.5% in 1979 to 21.3% in 2007 (Why he stops in 2007 I don't know? Has anything significant happened since then? Like, I don't know, an economic crash that wrecked the poor but from which the wealthy bounced back stronger than ever? Anybody? I'm sure there must be something I could find with a two-second google.)

But-- not so fast, young whipper-snappers. Those figures fail to account for the effects of wealth distribution by Uncle Sugar, which made the poor practically wealthy and serious cut into the wealth of the actually wealthy. So, you know, income gap so not wide, really. Great news for everyone in the bottom 90%.

But Haskins is just warming up. He correctly notes that A) nobody really knows what an optimal wealth redistribution would be and B) the Republicans are in charge so talking about how to redistribute wealth is like talking about the best way to shine unicorn horns. He mentions that the GOP will use current high tax rates on the rich to justify their stance. Hmm. If only there were some way to add some context to that claim, just in case it's, you know, bogus.

So, Haskins says, since DC won't be doing anything about the gap, there are only two things to fix it.

Education

Education has always been a major key to economic mobility for individuals and demographic groups, but despite almost permanent reform since publication of the Nation at Risk report in 1983, schools are doing little to equalize opportunity across income groups. Recent research shows that children from poor and minority families come to school already behind their classmates from more affluent homes, and the schools actually increase these differences in achievement.

I had to emphasize that last part. Yes, schools cause students to fall behind and not learn stuff. Also, having firemen come to your house increases the likelihood that your house will be on fire, so if you want your house to never catch on fire, make sure that firemen never, ever come there.

Poor People Should Make Better Choices

Do you know how I found this article in the first place? Because Brookings put the following quote in a graphic on twitter, because apparently they are actually proud they said this!!

Inequality and poverty could both be substantially reduced if more adults were married and had two incomes, but the trends in declining marriage rates and growing rates of nonmarital births have been progressing for four decades with no reversal in sight.

Yes, you lazy fornicating poor people! You would have more money if you were properly married. From this one can only assume that every single member of the 1% is currently married-- and not just married, but married to somebody who also works, because that is the road to prosperity! Haskins does not comment on whether the rise of gay marriage might offset some of this; now that The Gays can all get married, I can only assume they will also get rich. Good for you, The Gays!

Nothing Else?

That's it. Haskins figures that unless education can suddenly propel lower-wealth people up into (not "onto") the non-existent middle class, or "unless individuals and families can make better choices about their own education, work, and marriage," this massive income inequality will continue and the government won't be able to do a damn thing about it. Sorry, irresponsible fornicating poor people.

As God is my witness, he actually said this stuff.

Somehow this economist, this senior fellow at the Brookings Institute, seems to have overlooked the possibility that other factors could influence the distribution of wealth in this country. I mean, I'm just an English teacher, but isn't the whole corporate-business-employment-wages thing supposed to be a natural engine for moving money around? I feel like we're overlooking some obvious ideas, like if Glut-Mart paid its workers enough to shop at Glut-Mart, Glut-Mart would sell more stuff and have to hire more people and then more wages would be paid etc etc etc.

I don't expect a Brookings economist to suggest things like getting the government involved in business matters, but couldn't he even muster a simple, "If corporate leaders would start pumping some of their huge profits back into the economy instead of jamming coin into their already stuffed pockets, that might help."

Instead we've got to go with the Magic of Education! Yes, if we just got poor kids to do better on standardized tests, they could go to college, rack up some massive debt, and find out that nobody is hiring in their field. If I just teach harder, companies will just start hiring more people and paying them more? Try as I might, I just can't figure out the cause and effect on this one.

I mean, I believe in education. I believe in it big time. Kind of why I went ahead and became a teacher and, like some kind of sucker, stuck with it for decades instead of quitting after two years to go work in a brokerage firm. But how can an actual economist for a living look at the vast complex engine that is our economy and conclude that the only thing wrong here is Not Enough Education and Too Many Poor Fornicators. I'm beyond amazed (that's "beyond," not "beneath.")

PA Cyber Charters Failing

Let me be clear up front-- I reject the use of standardized tests to measure the education of students, the effectiveness of teachers, and the quality of schools. The best predictor of student results on standardized test remains their socio-economic class.

Oh, no, wait. In Pennsylvania, there is apparently one other factor that can predict how poorly a student will do on the Big Test.

Whether or not he attends a cyber charter.

Here's a chart that tells the story

SPP stands for School Performance Profile, the data that the state keeps to judge the schools within the Commonwealth. The "quality threshhold" is 70 or higher.

Research for Action did some number crunching for a report about charter performance in PA.

The validity of SPP as a measure of school quality is suspect due to its heavy reliance on test scores that are highly correlated with socioeconomic characteristics of students that are beyond the control of schools. Indeed, RFA’s analysis of the 2012-13 SPP scores revealed that SPP scores were heavily correlated with the percentage of economically disadvantaged students in a school building.

And yet, cyber charters still couldn't outperform the brick-and-mortar schools-- even those serving large low-income populations. And cyber-charters low-income population percentages are lower than even the charter school numbers.

The RFA report notes that while cyber-charters hit low percentages for English Language Learners, they have grown significantly in special education population. Perhaps that is related to the fact that cyber charters get about $8K for regular students and $23K for special education students. Do you suppose that has affected their marketing and recruiting at all?

Data is no longer available on turnover rates at cybers in PA, but the RFA report concludes that given cyber-charter's consistently terrible performance by the state's standards, the state would be crazy to authorize further cyber charter operations in the state. As I said, I reject SPP as a true measure of education quality, but if that's the rule we have to play by, then cyber charters have earned a severe benching.

The report is a good one, with more charts for those who like such things. Follow the link and read the whole thing.

Ohio: CCSS on the Ropes, Maybe

The Ohio PTA has called an all-hands-on-deck because it looks like HB 597, the "Get That Damn Commie Core Out of Our Schools" bill is rumored to be on the lame duck legislature's plate.

It is possible that this is all part of an Ohio scheme to put on a last-minute surge to try for the 2014 State Most Hostile to Public Education medal. They've been really working it, from the attempt to cut elementary specialists off at the knees to the proposal to trash teacher pay scales. So how did this bill end up back on the big pile of crazy?

HB 597 has been around since the summer, pitting the two wings of the GOP against each other. Its sponsors come from Glen Beck wing of the party. The bill's stated intention is to rid Ohio of the Common Core, which is embedded somewhere within Ohio's more expansive more-than-just-ELA-and-math standards.

But the bill has turned out to come with plenty of fun extras. Originally it included a provision that 80% of all works taught in 8-12 English classes be from English and American authors prior to 1970. The sponsors called that a "drafting error" which I suppose means "crazy thing we decided to take out before we submitted this." The bill also required phonics and... oh, did I forget to mention that this didn't just remove the Common Core, but replace it with a new set of standards. Those appear to be based somewhat on the old Massachusetts standards, but include some tweaks. So something pretty much like CCSS, only with some cool chrome accents.

One controversial tweak is a replacement of old science standards with standards that include a provision to "prohibit political or religious interpretation of scientific facts in favor of another." Some people, including, apparently the bill's sponsors, seem to think the new science standards open the door to teaching intelligent design. It also bizarrely restricts science teaching to scientific facts, but puts the kibosh on teaching scientific method. Apparently, science teachers are supposed to just teach facts and leave students to assume that these facts were delivered in a vision or straight from wikipedia.

Social studies would be restricted to "real" knowledge, which-- what the hell? Since we're no longer aware of the scientific method, I'm not even sure how real knowledge is constructed. One thing it apparently is not is "designed to avoid perpetuating gender, cultural, ethnic or racial stereotypes" because that language was scraped off the MA standards when they came to Ohio.

Then there's the provision that says that the state cannot impose any financial penalties on a school district just because it chooses to ignore the state's standards. Which of course means that the local districts could adopt any damn standards they want. When these guys say "local control," the by damn mean it. 

The Republican head of the Senate education committee, State Senator Peggy Lehner has characterized the repeal attempt as "a circus." Before you start cheering for her, note that she thinks the repeal effort is terrible because the Common Core are the greatest thing since critical thinking was used to slice a loaf of bread into a state of college and career readiness.

Jessica Poiner, writing over at the Fordham blog in the summer, noted with alarm the lack of any state control of districts under this bill. She also unfurled one of the Fordham's favorite talking points from the summer-- it would be really expensive to throw away all those fine investments made in the Core and start over. You can call this the "stay the course" talking point, or the "throw good money after bad" talking point.

It is, in short, a stupid reason for sticking with the Core. "We spent a bunch of money on a bad piece of equipment that doesn't do what it's supposed," is not logically the first part of a sentence that ends with "so let's spend even more money on it and never replace it." When the engine in your car blows up, you don't say, "Well, let's buy new tires for it."

So what's a supporter of public education to do? Well, for one thing, the kerfluffle is a fine reminder that in all things political, sometimes the enemy of my enemy is still my enemy, too. Also, when educational amateurs go head to head with educational amateurs, it's education that gets punched in the face.

The Ohio PTA wants everyone to call and write their legislator and tell it to vote no (a sample letter template appears below), and I think that's maybe probably the correct answer, though passage of the bill would inevitably result in such a massive crash-and-burn debacle that the Ohio legislature might be forced to get help from actual grown ups and professional teacher persons. The letter is not a winner because it is A) making the stay-the-course money argument and B) suggesting that educational experts really want to protect the lovely Core. I wouldn't send the damn thing without rewriting it. Something simple like "Dear legislator: Common Core is terrible crap, but this bill probably makes matters worse. And if anybody over there has any more stupid ideas about screwing with public education, please just keep them to yourself until forever."

I'm not sure I'm rooting for either side in this clusterfinagle; there are no heroes here. I have a hard time imagining the legislature passing this, even if some GOP folks were spanked in the election for not hating Common Core enough. It's hard to envision a responsible government leaping into such a stupid set of rules, but for the past few years, every time I've "Surely they wouldn't do something that stupid" I've turned out to be wrong. Best wishes to Ohio on their medal quest. May you do your teachers and children a favor and lose.





Sample letter:

Dear Representative _____________

I live in _____________ and I urge you to oppose H.B. 597.

Our local school district, like many other districts across the state, has invested a significant amount of time, effort, teacher education, and money toward the implementation of Ohio’s New Learning Standards since 2010.

If Ohio halts the implementation of Ohio’s Learning Standards, this investment will be lost in more ways than monetary! H.B. 597 jeopardizes the future of Ohio’s public schools and educational opportunities for Ohio’s children.

Forcing an ongoing upheaval in Ohio’s academic standards is reckless and is in no one's best interests. This legislation is bad for Ohio and is bad for our schools.

Please listen to the education experts in your constituent school districts and oppose H.B. 597.

Next Generation Accountability: A Misbegotten Heritage

Last summer, the Center on Reinventing Public Education and the Fordham Institute had a little get-together to discuss accountability systems for public education. The conversation involved charter school mavens, a law firm, some college folks (like Morgan Polikoff), more charteristas, and not a single person directly connected to public schools. Just so you know, right up front, what we're in for here.

The results of this conversation were boiled down into eight pages. It's an interesting read if you want to get a sense of where the big chartery mess is headed.

The Problem

Give these folks partial credit for sort of facing reality. After looking back to the National Governor's Association accountability summit twenty five years ago, we survey the crossroads:

Skepticism and political pushback have emerged from the left and the right as state accountability systems, school turnaround strategies, teacher evaluation, the Common Core, and standardized assessments have been conflated by skeptics into one overwhelming, unwieldy system with limited results and a host of unintended consequences.

Whether critics’ perceptions are right or wrong, growing criticism—including an emerging “mom and dad revolt”—may undermine and ultimately upend the entire concept of state-based accountability unless responsible changes are made, and made quickly. As one policy expert lamented, “We could lose this thing.”

"This thing." Hmmm. At any rate, these are practical people who recognize the optics are killing them. On the other hand, these are also severely deluded people who believe that "first-generation accountability systems" have accomplished the following things:

* contributed to improved academic outcomes for all students
* "provided unprecedented school-, teacher-, and student-level data that has been brought to bear on interventions in schools with the highest needs, and broader instructional improvement elsewhere."
* led to "understanding" that teachers are "the key levers of school improvement."

So, on the one hand, they are ready to face cold, hard reality. And on the other hand, they are entertaining fantasies about what accountability has accomplished so far. The first two "achievements" are bunk. And I'm pretty sure the third one just means "we've sold the public on the idea that everything that goes wrong in a school is the teachers' fault."

They've broken down the conversation into several topics. Let's take a look.

Limitations, Contradictions, and Unintended Consequences

Systems are supposed to drive school improvement and inform the public. Doing both at once is hard.
Test fatigue is a key driver of public crankiness with the whole mess, which makes improving the system hard.

"Teachers don't consider annual standardized tests helpful in improving instruction," which is true in the same way as "Teachers don't consider unleashing rabid bats in the classroom helpful in improving instruction" or "Humans don't consider being shot at close range helpful in maintaining health."

To get the kind of granular data that our Data Overlords claim, really, really complex instruments are needed, which may reduce the degree to which anyone is willing to take either the collection process or its results seriously.

States lack capacity for these systems, because states aren't as rich as, say, Pearson. So states just do the bare minimum. The conversants seem to have missed another important part of this-- when you force either a person or a state to do something through extortion (aka Race to the Top), they don't really put their whole heart and soul into it. Go figure.

Unintended consequences include driving compliance rather than innovation. Somebody said, "Being overly directive will lead to teachers who want to follow steps and mandates, not innovate. It cascades down and looks like a lack of creativity from here, but it's a direct response to the regulatory environment." Correct, anonymous person.

The summary writer concludes "Top-down accountability systems may not be the appropriate way to encourage innovation and ground-level improvements." Yes. Also, violent threats may not be the appropriate way to make someone love you. An insight so blindingly obvious that it has even penetrated the veil of fog that surrounds reformsters. Yes, yes, and yes.

An Emerging Framework for Change

If the accountability monkey is to stay balanced on the back of public education, it will have to make some adjustments. The broad consensus was that the next-generation accountability system should have the following traits:

* Be built around the child and his/her family
* Keep beating the equity drum
* Emphasize objectives for schools and opportunities for students
* Also beat the "schools are accountable to government for tax dollars spent" drum
* Emphasize information that drives student choice and improvements in teacher instruction and capacity
* Be transparent, fair, valid
* Be a means to driving motivation and learning
* Come with infrastructure for supporting struggling schools and creating options for students

Let's be clear-- this is not a framework for a good accountability system. This is a framework for using accountability as a means of marketing charters and choice. It could not be any clearer-- we are not talking about how to hold schools accountable for quality education. We are talking about how to frame the system so that it fosters charter school proliferation, marketing and access to the market.

In keeping with that, participants also argued for a lighter touch from the state. "Let's make most of the decisions at the building level," said a room full of charter operators. They would like the power and information to make "human capital decisions" at the building level. They want lots of measures and data, and they are of the opinion that assessments drive curriculum and instruction, and so should drive it towards good stuff. Common Core was used as an example, because gaming it apparently involves writing research papers. Also, participants paused for a break while pigs flew out of their butts.

Resolving Key Issues

If there is a time to suggest sweeping changes to accountability systems, it may be now, as the Common Core and the upcoming round of ESEA waivers provide unprecedented opportunities for states to reframe accountability around providing support to their schools.

These immediate needs mirror a broader, long-term vision of an effective next-generation accountability system in which states provide a formal structure for a far richer decisionmaking process, often led by those who know each school—and the capacity of its leaders to bring about change—best. 

In other words, we have a chance to get the state to back charters' play while giving charters freedom to do whatever the hell they want. Particular issues of concern:

Should states focus accountability efforts on all schools, or just the suckiest ones? If we focus on school-level accountability, what does that mean to district administrations that make the decisions that help or hurt on the building level (good question, actually)? Will local leaders make the right kind of "human capital decisions" about their ineffective teachers (because we're sure they're everywhere, and responsible for all school failures)? How do we work out the mechanics of choice or vouchers-in-everything-but-name (because clearly it's not "if" or "why," but "how")?

Are we collecting data for informational purposes or as a trigger for consequences? Should we publish everything, or just the simplified data that won't confuse people?

How do we handle goal setting? Good quote here-- “We confuse aspirational goals—all kids will be career and college ready—with achievable goals,” one participant said. Good job, anonymous participant. Can we really talk about growth goals? “I’m deeply suspicious of growth measures that don’t end up at the point of college readiness,” one participant said. Go to the back of the class, less wise anonymous participant.

Participants hated the idea of sampling-- testing only occasionally-- because then you lose the ability to track students and rank and sort individual teachers and programs. Apparently those are "must-haves" for this crowd. Current tests may not be great, but they're what we've got, said some. Others felt that more complex tests would be worth it because they would drive instruction in the right direction. You really cannot read this report without being hit in the face with the idea that standards are to drive tests and tests are to drive curriculum. Nobody here was even pretending to pretend that "Common Core is not curriculum" baloney.

Their Conclusion

Next-generation systems can give us the opportunity to return the focus of accountability to students, families, and the public good. They can move states and districts away from checklist compliance and toward fostering innovative approaches to improving teaching and learning.

My conclusion

What we're talking about here is top-down imposed punishment-enforced accountability. As long as your goal in accountability management is to control curriculum and instruction and the make decisions (aka hiring, firing and pay) about your "human capital" you will never foster anything except By The Numbers compliance.

There are clearly portions of this conversation that were insightful and potentially useful, but the degree of delusion seriously interferes with any functional outcomes here. There is no real way to say, "Okay, you must follow the programs I'm imposing on you and hit the numbers that are being set for you, and if you don't there will be consequences, and by the way, be creative and innovative."

You can force compliance. You cannot force creativity and innovation, nor can you coerce enthusiastic embrace of your programs. The "tensions" that this report keeps referring to are the tensions between "How you want to make people behave" and "How live humans actually behave." When I read reports like this, I'm forced to conclude yet again that while many of these folks may have the power and the money, they are not snarling villains or towering evils, but simply garden variety bad managers.