Why do we have these policies that don't make sense? Why does it seem like this system is set up to make schools fail? Why do states pass these laws that discourage people from becoming teachers?
My friends, colleagues and family ask these kinds of questions all the time. So my goal today is to step back and try to fit the pieces into the larger picture. If you have been paying attention, you already know this stuff, but perhaps this post will help someone you know who's trying to make sense of reformsterdom. Here, then, is my attempt to show the big picture.
The Perfect Storm
The Current Education Reform Wave is driven by a joining of two major impulses in the US. Neither of them are new, but over the past decade they have come together in ways that are proving powerful.
Growing steadily (at least since A Nation at Risk) has been a desire for Centralized Efficiency in education. Their basic narrative has always been that American schools are failing, and what is needed is strong, clear-headed, direction from People Who Know Better. The rise of massive computer based data capabilities and the internet's ability to lock together widespread organizations first led the CE folks to believe they could actually do it.
And then, they realized that they could do even more. The infamous Marc Tucker letter lays it out as clearly as anything-- we could create a cradle-to-career pipeline, a massive planned track fed by mountains of data. Through computer-based testing and data gathering, we could track each individual starting shortly after birth, so that we could design an educational program that would perfectly prepare each person for a productive place in society.
To do that, we'd need to get every possible data source plugged in, and for the data to mean anything, we'd have to have all schools doing basically the exact same thing. Standards could be used to tag and organize every piece of data collected about every student. This suited people who see US education as a slapdash, sloppy, disorganized mess of many different schools doing many different things (this bothered them as much as your pictures hanging cockeyed in the den drive your OCD aunt crazy). But all of that would require massive planning and infrastructure far beyond what government could politically or financially manage.
This dovetailed perfectly with the other powerful impulse-- the desire of Educational Privatization. Public education represents a huge, huge mountain of money that has historically been unavailable to corporate interests. Companies have been forced to jockey for the crumbs of book contracts here and there, or occasional consultant work. Now, making the Centralized Efficiency dreams come true would also provide corporations with unprecendented access to that mountain of money. This was also appealing because many business-folks find their sensibilities offended by the unbusiness-like running of US education.
Combining these two impulses finally opened up the possibility of remaking the entire US education system in a new image. Just as Rockefeller had brought vertical integration to the oil industry by owning everything step of the process from oil wells to consumer marketing, reformers envisioned a fully integrated system that generated financial returns at every step of the educational process while simultaneously organizing education around a centrally planned and controlled system. It is an unholy marriage between the worst aspects of socialism and capitalism, but to make it happen, certain steps must be taken.
Opening the Supplier Markets: The Mystification of Education
Producers of educational materials have long had to live on the fringes of education, subject to the individual preferences of thousand upon thousands of individual school districts. Texas was a hint of how sweet life could be-- a place where you just had to make a textbook sale to one central authority. Could the whole country become Texas?
Well, yes, kind of, and Common Core was key. Get everybody on the same page, and everybody needs to buy the same books. Common Core was envisioned as a way to get everyone teaching the same stuff at the same time, and therefor content providers need only align themselves to one set of expectations. Instead of trying to sell to thousands of different markets, they could now sell to a thousand versions of the same basic standardized school district.
The less obvious effect of the Core was to change the locus of educational expertise. Previously teachers were the educational experts, the people who were consulted and often made the final call on what materials to buy. But one message of the Core was that teachers were not the experts, both because they had failed so much before and because Common Core was such a piece of "high standards" jargon-encrusted mumbo jumbo that you needed an expert to explain it. (Here's just one example of the genre)
Educational experts were no longer found in the classroom. Now they are in corporate offices. They are in government offices. Textbook creators now include "training" because your teachers won't be able to figure out how to use teaching materials on their own. More importantly, teachers can no longer be trusted to create their own teaching materials (at least not unless their district has hired consultants to put them through extensive training).
Meanwhile, testing programs, which would also double as curriculum outlines, were also corporate products (which require such expertise that teachers are not allowed to see or discuss their contents), and every school must test as part of an accountability system that will both force schools to follow the centralized efficiency program and label them as failures when their test scores are too low, as well as feeding data into the cradle-to-career pipeline.
The entire supplier market for education had become the sole property of the book publishers, who could market more efficiently while reinforcing the Centralized Efficiency picture of exactly what should happen in schools. And teachers were shut out of the process because they would only gum up the works.
Opening the Provider Markets: Breaking the Government Monopoly
But owning the entire supply chain was not enough. There was a ton of money to be made by running the schools themselves. Attempts to bleed money from the system by the use of vouchers had been repeatedly slapped down by the courts and simply not borne fruit
But another mechanism was already in place-- charter schools. Charter schools have been a way of using public tax dollars to finance an independent school for ages. Now the privatization crowd could harness this business model. It was ripe and ready; Clinton-era tax laws made the ROI from investing in charters wondrous. Charters were a ready-made tax shelter, a way to get solid investment results while looking like a do-gooder to boot.
But the market for schools was covered and controlled by the public school system (except for Pre-K, which was ripe for the plucking). So that nut had to be cracked. The government "monopoly" on schools had to be broken.
First, it had to be shown that public schools were failing. That job was half done, because Schools Are Failing had been the mantra since Nation at Risk. But people still tended to believe that their own local school was pretty good. We needed more proof. Common Core has been used as its own proof-- we need these "higher standards" because schools suck, and teachers never teach reading or critical thinking and look how bad our test scores are. Standardized testing, particularly testing that was poorly done, instigated before the actual standards that it was supposed to measure, and using cut scores set politically rather than educationally, could help "prove" that schools were failing. There was also a focus on how college unready students are.
The beauty of testing is that since test results generally line up with economic class, the schools that would fail would be the schools of the poor-- the people also least able to muster resistance to school takeovers. The discovery of failing schools for the poor also allowed reformers to adopt the language of the civil rights movement (and in a bold move by the Obama administration, to use civil rights law to enforce school reform). Real school failure could also be hastened by simply cutting money and resources for poor schools.
There have been attempts to create other means of failing schools. (The parent trigger law was one that never quite worked out.) But the result is always the same-- the discovery that a school is failing does not lead to meetings with the parents, teachers and administrators, but instead leads to hiring turnaround experts or charter operators or consultants. When a school "fails," somebody is going to make money from it. The more schools we can prove are failing, the more money somebody can make. And of course the rising tide of school failure has been the excuse for the Obama administration to make "open more charters" a requirement of waivers. And when more charters open, more resources are taken from public schools, adding to the ways in which they can fail.
Opening the supplier market also means breaking the geographical limits. The rhetoric of making sure that students are victims of their zip code is about opening up markets, about making it possible for charters to recruit from outside a defined geographical area.
Opening the Teaching Market: The De-professionalizing of Teaching
It drives corporate privatizers crazy that A) the biggest operating expense in schools is staff and B) that they can't simply hire and fire as they wish. It drives central planning fans crazy that teachers insist on doing whatever they feel like doing instead of all teaching the same things the same way at the same time. How could both groups effect change?
One step we've already discussed. By creating a system in which teachers are no longer the experts on what they teach or how to teach it, reformsters turn teachers from educated professionals into content delivery workers. You don't need a building full of education experts-- just one or two to direct the rest of a staff of drones. Use a boxed program like engageNY-- anybody who can read the script and the instructions can teach students.
Teachers frequently scratch their head and ask, "Are they TRYING to drive people out of the profession? " Well, probably, yes. Teach for America "teachers" are not a stop-gap measure-- they're the ideal. They don't stay long enough to get raises, and they don't saddle the district with any expensive pension costs. And they're young and healthy, so even insurance costs are low. Teachers who spend a lifetime in the profession are an expensive nuisance; what we need are a regular supply of compliant short-timers.
We can facilitate that by, of course, doing away with tenure and any other job protections. And systems like merit-based pay allow us to manage costs effectively and limiting the amount of pay that will be handed out. A low-paid, easily-replaced staff that serves at the pleasure of management provides optimum control of expenses and "human capital." These reforms can be applied to public schools as well, forced by budget cuts.
We can accelerate the process by taking the failure we are imposing on schools and blaming it all on teachers. The low scores that poor students always get-- teachers' fault. We can keep framing it as praise (teachers are the most important part of schools), but what's really being said is that everything that goes wrong is a teacher's fault. If there's a lot of failure, it must be caused by bad teachers-- and that's why school leaders must have the tools for hiring and firing at will.
And we can turn schools of education training into parking lots or basic training for delivering teacher-proof programs.
Is this some sort of conspiracy?
Am I suggesting that there is some sort of vast conspiracy? No. I'm not a believer in vast conspiracies. Hard to organize. Cumbersome. But all it takes for all of this to happen is people in power who believe that applying free market business principles are innately good, teamed up with people who believe that centralized standardization.and efficiency are innately good. There's a network of such people in power, and while some of them undoubtedly are motivated by greed and ambition, I believe that some of them simply believe they are giving schools a good hard dose of reality, of How The World Really Works.
The end effect is the same. Ignore the rhetoric. Watch what they do and what the effects are. Everything happening in education reform is about 1) reducing the autonomy and local control of schools and 2) mining the school system for every cent of economic advantage. Education reform has literally nothing to do with providing quality education for America's children.
Sunday, November 23, 2014
Friday, November 21, 2014
Principals vs. VAM
The National Association of Secondary School Principals issued a statement on November 7 that it intended to adopt a policy statement regarding the use of Value-Added measures in teacher evaluation. The policy statement is currently in its 60-day comment period, with final deliberation on the policy at the February meeting.
You can read the whole thing here, and you should. But let me run through the sparknotes version for you.
The Challenge
States are adopting new VAM measures that count for up to 50% of teacher evaluation scores in some states. At the same time, states were adopting certain "more rigorous college- and career standards. These standards are intended to raise the bar from having every student earn a high school diploma to the much more ambitious goal of having every student be on-target for success in post-secondary education and training."
Do you detect a whiff of feistiness in the NASSP language? It's subtle, but I think I can scent it on the breeze.
For instance, the statement notes that the new standards require a departure from the "old, much less expensive" tests. "Not surprisingly," raising the bar and adding new assessments results in far fewer "proficient" students.
Herein lies the challenge for principals and school leaders. New teacher evaluation systems demand the inclusion of student data at a time when scores on new assessments are dropping. The fears accompanying any new evaluation system have been magnified by the inclusion of data that will get worse before it gets better. Principals are concerned that the new evaluation systems are eroding trust and are detrimental to building a culture of collaboration and continuous improvement necessary to successfully raise student performance to college and career-ready levels.
And then there's VAM.
The Trouble With VAM
Given what VAM claims it can do, "at first glance, it would appear reasonable to use VAMs to gauge teacher effectiveness." But the statement continues-- "Unfortunately, policy makers have acted on that impression over the consistent objections of researchers" who have said it's a bad idea. And then they start ticking off the VAM objections.
They cite the 2014 American Statistical Association report urging schools not to use VAM to make personnel decisions. They offer some strong quotage from the ASA report.
They cite the "peer-reviewed study" funded by Gates and published by AERA which stated emphatically that "Value-added performance measures do not reflect the content or quality of teachers' instruction." This study went on to note that VAM doesn't seem to correspond to anything that anybody considers a feature of good teaching.
They cite the objections of researchers Bruce Baker and Edward Haertal. They move on to Linda Darling-Hammond. They include plenty of well-researched, clear but not inflammatory language that hammers away at how VAM simply can't be used to evaluate teachers in any real or meaningful way. It's very direct, very clear, and kind of awesome.
Their Recommendations
I'll compress here.
NASSP recommends that teacher eval include multiple measure, and that Peer Assistance and Review programs are the way to go. Teacher-constructed portfolios of student learning are also cool.
VAMs should be used to fine tune programs and instructional methods as well as professional development on a building level, but they should not be "used to make key personnel decisions about individual teachers." Principals should be trained in how to properly interpret and use VAMmy data.
And they have footnotes.
If you are looking for a clear-headed professional take-down of the idea that VAM should be used for personnel decisions by the people who have to help make those decisions, here it is. As many reformsters on the TNTP-Fordham-Bellwether axis of reformdom bemoan the fact that school leaders don't use data to inform their personnel decisions, here is an actual national association of actual school leaders saying why they prefer not to use VAM data to make personnel decisions. Now if only reformsters and policy makers will actually pay attention to the school leaders on the front lines.
You can read the whole thing here, and you should. But let me run through the sparknotes version for you.
The Challenge
States are adopting new VAM measures that count for up to 50% of teacher evaluation scores in some states. At the same time, states were adopting certain "more rigorous college- and career standards. These standards are intended to raise the bar from having every student earn a high school diploma to the much more ambitious goal of having every student be on-target for success in post-secondary education and training."
Do you detect a whiff of feistiness in the NASSP language? It's subtle, but I think I can scent it on the breeze.
For instance, the statement notes that the new standards require a departure from the "old, much less expensive" tests. "Not surprisingly," raising the bar and adding new assessments results in far fewer "proficient" students.
Herein lies the challenge for principals and school leaders. New teacher evaluation systems demand the inclusion of student data at a time when scores on new assessments are dropping. The fears accompanying any new evaluation system have been magnified by the inclusion of data that will get worse before it gets better. Principals are concerned that the new evaluation systems are eroding trust and are detrimental to building a culture of collaboration and continuous improvement necessary to successfully raise student performance to college and career-ready levels.
And then there's VAM.
The Trouble With VAM
Given what VAM claims it can do, "at first glance, it would appear reasonable to use VAMs to gauge teacher effectiveness." But the statement continues-- "Unfortunately, policy makers have acted on that impression over the consistent objections of researchers" who have said it's a bad idea. And then they start ticking off the VAM objections.
They cite the 2014 American Statistical Association report urging schools not to use VAM to make personnel decisions. They offer some strong quotage from the ASA report.
They cite the "peer-reviewed study" funded by Gates and published by AERA which stated emphatically that "Value-added performance measures do not reflect the content or quality of teachers' instruction." This study went on to note that VAM doesn't seem to correspond to anything that anybody considers a feature of good teaching.
They cite the objections of researchers Bruce Baker and Edward Haertal. They move on to Linda Darling-Hammond. They include plenty of well-researched, clear but not inflammatory language that hammers away at how VAM simply can't be used to evaluate teachers in any real or meaningful way. It's very direct, very clear, and kind of awesome.
Their Recommendations
I'll compress here.
NASSP recommends that teacher eval include multiple measure, and that Peer Assistance and Review programs are the way to go. Teacher-constructed portfolios of student learning are also cool.
VAMs should be used to fine tune programs and instructional methods as well as professional development on a building level, but they should not be "used to make key personnel decisions about individual teachers." Principals should be trained in how to properly interpret and use VAMmy data.
And they have footnotes.
If you are looking for a clear-headed professional take-down of the idea that VAM should be used for personnel decisions by the people who have to help make those decisions, here it is. As many reformsters on the TNTP-Fordham-Bellwether axis of reformdom bemoan the fact that school leaders don't use data to inform their personnel decisions, here is an actual national association of actual school leaders saying why they prefer not to use VAM data to make personnel decisions. Now if only reformsters and policy makers will actually pay attention to the school leaders on the front lines.
Charters Make Money. So What?
It's a response that comes frequently to the charge that modern charter schools have become all about grabbing large piles of money for their backers and operators.
"I don't care if they are making a pile of money," is the response. "If they're getting the results, what difference does it make?"
It's a response that bugs me, and it has taken me a while to figure out exactly why. You know I love a good illustrative analogy. I'm going to give you the following analogy instead.
That response makes the same sense as saying, "I don't care if I'm going to bed with a person who's committed to a loving, long-lasting relationship or if I'm going to be with a hundred dollar an hour hooker. As long as the sex is good, what difference does it make?"
I might argue that it ultimately makes a difference because sex is better within a committed relationship with someone you love than a stranger paid to fake affection. I might also argue that absent a more stable relationships, you don't really know what other factors, concerns, agendas and second-hand biological effluvium are in bed with you.
But even those arguments assume that you're using the right metric, and maybe comparing the quality of the sex is not the only way to weigh the relative merits of a long term committed relationship versus the merits of hiring a hundred dollar hooker. Maybe we should be comparing on the basis of other, deeper, ultimately more important considerations. I mean, if the quality of the sex is the only thing you care about, then maybe the hundred dollar hooker is the best choice for you. But I'm pretty sure that is not the prevailing metric for most people.
In particular, I would argue about the "long term commitment" part. Your hundred dollar hooker will only be around as long as you can come up with a hundred dollars, whereas in a long term committed relationship, the idea is to stick around for the long term. The hundred dollar an hour hooker is not worried about your needs or concerned; the hooker is just watching the clock and the money, and not because the hooker is a wretched evil awful human being but because that's just the nature of the transaction. Yes, many LTR and marriages are miserable or unsuccessful or fall apart. Even then, I don't believe the most commonly suggested solution is hundred dollar hookers.
Yes, yes, yes. I'm aware that this analogy is imperfect, and I don't mean to suggest that all charter school operators are prostitutes (some classic charters are like, I don't know, Mother Teresa), and I certainly don't mean to suggest that standardized tests and the results thereof are like sex. And, no, I haven't really figured out where charter teachers or students themselves would fit in this analogy.
My point remains. "Who cares if charters make money as long as they get results" fails for the following reasons:
1) "Results" inevitably means "test scores." Test scores are the not the ultimate measure of student achievement, teacher effectiveness, or school quality. You might as well tell me "I don't care if charters make a profit as long as they have pretty door jambs." If by "results" you mean something other than "test scores," we might be able to have a real conversation here. (And if you mean test scores, you need to look at what charter results actually are.)
2) Charters make more money by spending less on students. Charters will always only be able to get more money by taking it away from students. They are not worrying about student needs; they are just watching the money. That is not because they are evil or terrible human beings, but because that is the nature of the transaction.
3) Charter schools will be there only as long as it makes good business sense to be there. If they aren't making enough money, they will close up shop. A public school starts with the premise that the community, through its school, must provide an education. A charter school starts with the premise that it must bank enough money to be viable. Just because a charter school has good (test) results today doesn't mean it won't be a MegaMart parking lot next week. Is that hard on students and the community? See #2.
Public education, like other important relationships in life, is not best served by being re-interpreted as a simple retail transaction. That's my answer to "so what?"
"I don't care if they are making a pile of money," is the response. "If they're getting the results, what difference does it make?"
It's a response that bugs me, and it has taken me a while to figure out exactly why. You know I love a good illustrative analogy. I'm going to give you the following analogy instead.
That response makes the same sense as saying, "I don't care if I'm going to bed with a person who's committed to a loving, long-lasting relationship or if I'm going to be with a hundred dollar an hour hooker. As long as the sex is good, what difference does it make?"
I might argue that it ultimately makes a difference because sex is better within a committed relationship with someone you love than a stranger paid to fake affection. I might also argue that absent a more stable relationships, you don't really know what other factors, concerns, agendas and second-hand biological effluvium are in bed with you.
But even those arguments assume that you're using the right metric, and maybe comparing the quality of the sex is not the only way to weigh the relative merits of a long term committed relationship versus the merits of hiring a hundred dollar hooker. Maybe we should be comparing on the basis of other, deeper, ultimately more important considerations. I mean, if the quality of the sex is the only thing you care about, then maybe the hundred dollar hooker is the best choice for you. But I'm pretty sure that is not the prevailing metric for most people.
In particular, I would argue about the "long term commitment" part. Your hundred dollar hooker will only be around as long as you can come up with a hundred dollars, whereas in a long term committed relationship, the idea is to stick around for the long term. The hundred dollar an hour hooker is not worried about your needs or concerned; the hooker is just watching the clock and the money, and not because the hooker is a wretched evil awful human being but because that's just the nature of the transaction. Yes, many LTR and marriages are miserable or unsuccessful or fall apart. Even then, I don't believe the most commonly suggested solution is hundred dollar hookers.
Yes, yes, yes. I'm aware that this analogy is imperfect, and I don't mean to suggest that all charter school operators are prostitutes (some classic charters are like, I don't know, Mother Teresa), and I certainly don't mean to suggest that standardized tests and the results thereof are like sex. And, no, I haven't really figured out where charter teachers or students themselves would fit in this analogy.
My point remains. "Who cares if charters make money as long as they get results" fails for the following reasons:
1) "Results" inevitably means "test scores." Test scores are the not the ultimate measure of student achievement, teacher effectiveness, or school quality. You might as well tell me "I don't care if charters make a profit as long as they have pretty door jambs." If by "results" you mean something other than "test scores," we might be able to have a real conversation here. (And if you mean test scores, you need to look at what charter results actually are.)
2) Charters make more money by spending less on students. Charters will always only be able to get more money by taking it away from students. They are not worrying about student needs; they are just watching the money. That is not because they are evil or terrible human beings, but because that is the nature of the transaction.
3) Charter schools will be there only as long as it makes good business sense to be there. If they aren't making enough money, they will close up shop. A public school starts with the premise that the community, through its school, must provide an education. A charter school starts with the premise that it must bank enough money to be viable. Just because a charter school has good (test) results today doesn't mean it won't be a MegaMart parking lot next week. Is that hard on students and the community? See #2.
Public education, like other important relationships in life, is not best served by being re-interpreted as a simple retail transaction. That's my answer to "so what?"
Thursday, November 20, 2014
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:
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.
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.
Wednesday, November 19, 2014
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?
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.
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 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.")
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.")
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