The White House fact sheet about the Presidential Plan for Connecting All Schools to the Digital Age is a lovely document. But then, I like the Lord of the Rings trilogy, too, and I will gladly recommend Mervyn Peake's glorious Gormenghast books as well. As with all works of literature, the challenge is in teasing out the connections to reality, and all three of these works present some challenges. But time is short, so let's focus on the ConnectED plan.
First, the challenge:
Driven by new digital technologies, the future of learning is increasingly interactive, individualized, and full of real-world experiences and information. Unfortunately, the average school has about the same connectivity as the average American home, but serves 200 times as many users, and fewer than 20 percent of educators say their school’s internet connection meets their teaching needs. And our teachers do not get enough training and support to integrate technology in their classroom and lessons, despite the fundamental and increasing importance of those skills.
So many questions here, such as what is meant by saying schools have "the same connectivity." Same bandwidth? Same access to the same internet? I'm not sure. But I'm really wondering about that first sentence-- if being "interactive, individualized, and full of real-world experiences and information" are the future of education, what was in the past? And what about any of those qualities leads us directly to a need for internet technology in schools? Are those features beyond our reach without broadband wifi?
And now, the solution:
Today, President Obama called on the Federal Communications Commission to take the steps necessary to build high-speed digital connections to America’s schools and libraries, ensuring that 99 percent of American students can benefit from these advances in teaching and learning. He is further directing the federal government to make better use of existing funds to get this technology into classrooms, and into the hands of teachers trained on its advantages. And he is calling on businesses, states, districts, schools and communities to support this vision.
The sheet focuses on three areas of super-duperosity. And it is nothing if not bold.
First, we're going to get connectivity to 99% of America's students using next-gen broadband and hot wifi in their schools and libraries. As a teacher in a fairly rural school district, I think this would be an awesome thing indeed, but it clearly involves enough detail-based underbrush to hide a million devils.
I should probably take a moment to note that I am completely un-Ludditish in my technoattitudes, and have been one of the most aggressively pro-computer tech guys in my district for a the last two decades. But I don't think tech is magical. I don't over-estimate its capabilities, and I don't under-estimate its challenges.
If there's one thing I've learned, it's that people who don't get out of the city much really don't get the tech challenges of rural life. This first goal would inspire me a great deal more if I believed that the feds really knew what they were proposing to do. They do name-check "leveling the playing fields for rural students," but blah blah funds and argle bargle transformative.
Second, the initiative proposes to train teachers so that we can "use technology to help improve student outcomes." Because what good is the internet if it doesn't bring test scores up. The Department of Ed will use existing funding and strategically invest and blah blah blah they want this to happen but they aren't really going to fund it. Thanks, guys.
Third, build on private-sector innovation. Ah, here's the pay-off. The feds are going to transform schools into massive markets for hardware and software. They would like us all to use
feature-rich educational devices that are increasingly price-competitive with basic textbooks and high-quality educational software (including applications) providing content aligned with college-and career-ready standards being adopted and implemented by States across America.
We'll be able to get this stuff from "leading companies" because "a robust market in educational software can unlock the full educational potential of these investments and create American jobs and export opportunities in a global educational marketplace of over $1 trillion." So, again, not so much about educational quality as about opening up markets for corporate sales.
The implication here is that "feature-rich" devices can be used to replace textbooks, and that's a pretty thought. And those devices might well be cheaper than textbooks-- if I were assuming that we had to replace textbooks every two-to-four years. For purposes of price comparison, I will also need to assume that I don't have to pay any license fees for the digital content I'm accessing with my feature-rich device. I'm pretty sure that once we factor in replacement costs and frequency for the devices and add on the license costs for the content, this is not going to be an economic win for schools.
And that's before I even begin to look at whether it's actually a good idea or not educationally. You can look at the early research suggesting that e-reading is not so great as book reading, or you can come talk to my students. We've been a one-to-one school (we give every single student a netbook) for about five years, and they still mostly hate having to read anything on their feature-rich device.
But of course we're not really looking at the educational advantages of this system. Like Kodak confronting digital photography, the book publishers response to their digital competition was both slow and dumb (at one point you could only buy a digital textbook if you would also buy the corresponding number of paper ones). Common Core and the digitizing of American education is supposed to save their bacon, and part of that porcine preservation includes opening some huge markets.
Beware! Falling sky!
Finally, no reformy appeal would be complete without the terrifying news that we are in danger of being internationally outstripped.
Many of our leading competitors are moving forward with aggressive investments in digital learning and technology education. In South Korea, all schools are connected to the internet with high-speed connections, all teachers are trained in digital learning, and printed textbooks will be phased out by 2016.
Because if there's any culture and country that embodies everything America wants to be, it's South Korea.
Here's a pro tip for racing-- there's no point in chasing somebody if they aren't running in the right direction. There's no reason to get excited about lagging "behind" South Korea is they are in fact running toward the edge of a cliff.
What's the goal?
I am a huge fan of modern tech. I use it without hesitation every time it offers some advantage in pursuing a worthwhile educational goal. I even tolerate the massive level of unreliability that comes with it (in five years I'm pretty sure I've never had a class in which every single student's tech worked as it was supposed to at once).
But if our goal is to be the next South Korea so that we can better fill corporate coffers and, oh yeah, maybe educate some students along the way, then I'm not excited. I am also not excited if what we're really salivating over here is the opportunity to plug students in so that we can collect an ocean of data from each and every one.
Let's use, for instance, the massive bulk buying power of states to get an enormously cheap rate from all of these folks, and let's not just figure that since it's tax dollars at work, we can pay top dollar for all of this technoeduparaphenalia. If we must have a government initiative in this arena, let's have government approach businesses as a representative of public interests, instead of acting as a corporate representative in the business of milking the public interest for all it can.
Monday, December 15, 2014
Duncan in Denial
There are many portions of Arne Duncan's educational policies that are... what's the word? Counter-intuitive? Not aligned with reality as experienced by most sentient beings? Baloney? There are days when I imagine that the energy Duncan expends just holding cognitive dissonance at bay must be enough to power a small country (like, say, Estonia).
But nowhere are Duncan's powers of denial more obvious than in his deep and abiding love for Value Added Measures. Arne loves him some VAM sauce, and it is a love that simply refuses to die. "You just don't know her the way I do," he cries, as the rest of us just shake our heads.
At this point, VAM is no spring chicken, and perhaps when it was fresh and young some affection for it could be justified. After all, lots of folks, including non-reformy folks, like the idea of recognizing and rewarding teachers for being excellent. But how would we identify these pillars of excellence? That was the puzzler for ages until VAM jumped up to say, "We can do it! With Science!!" We'll give some tests and then use super-sciency math to filter out every influence that's Not a Teacher and we'll know exactly how much learnin' that teacher poured into that kid.
The plan is simple and elegant. All it requires is two simple tools:
1) A standardized test that reliably and validly measures how much students know
2) A super-sciency math algorithm that will reliably and validly strip out all influences except that of the teacher.
Unfortunately, we don't have either.
We know we don't have either. We are particularly clear on the degree to which we do not have the second. Scan the list of reformster programs, and while you can find plenty of principled disagreement on most points, there is no part of the reformster education platform that has been so thoroughly, widely debunked as VAM-for-teacher-evaluation. The National Association of Secondary School Principals has taken a stand, and if you read their resolution, you'll find not just a philosophical argument, but a list of striking debunkers. The American Statistical Association has made its own statement in opposition. A peer-reviewed study paid for by the Gates Foundation itself, the grand-daddy of all reformster backers, declared in no uncertain terms that VAM tells us nothing about teacher quality. The blog Vamboozled (by Audrey Amrein-Beardsley) provides unplumbable depths of VAM-busting research and essays.
At this point, even the Flat Earth Society would be reluctant to endorse VAM as a measure of teacher effectiveness.
NO portion of his policy has been so thoroughly disproven, and yet no portion of his policy has earned more of Duncan's loyalty. He stopped saying "Common Core" out loud. He at least pretends to be cooling off on testing. Even he has to admit that some charters have issues. And data collection has become the love that dare not speak its name. But VAM still owns a place close to Arne's heart.
Witness the most recent doubling down on VAM, in which Duncan not only pledges his allegiance to the flagging monster, but announces his intention to extend its reach, taking the already invalid VAM ratings of individual teachers and taking a giant leap backwards to use them to evaluate the college that trained that teacher. Is there anybody else who can present this idea with a straight face? Read Anthony Cody here as he takes this proposal down, then note that you have over a month to register your disagreement wit the feds, and do it.
Why would someone who professes such love for data and critical thinking stay so attached to a policy that is supported by neither? Why does Duncan insist on such a mountain of denial?
Well, I can't pretend to see into his brain. But I can see that if Duncan were to admit that his beloved VAM is a useless tool, a snub-nosed screwdriver with a briar-encrusted handle, then all his other favorite programs would collapse as well.
Everywhere we turn in reformsterland, we keep coming back to teacher effectiveness. Every one of the policies and programs either begins or ends with measuring teacher effectiveness. Why do we give the Big Test? To measure teacher effectiveness. How do we rank and evaluate our schools? By looking at teacher effectiveness. How do we find the teachers that we are going to move around so that every classroom has a great teacher? With teacher effectiveness ratings. How do we institute merit pay and a career ladder? By looking at teacher effectiveness. How do we evaluate every single program instituted in any school? By checking to see how it affects teacher effectivesness. How do we prove that centralized planning (such as Common Core) is working? By looking at teacher effectiveness. How do we prove that corporate involvement at every stage is a Good Thing? By looking at teacher effectiveness.And by "teacher effectiveness," we always mean VAM (because we don't know any other way, at all).
If our measure of teacher effectiveness, our magic VAM sauce, is a sham and a delusion and a big bowl of nothing, then a critical piece of the entire reformy puzzle is missing. We have no proof that we need reform, and we have no method of proving that reform is working (we already have means of measuring reform's effects, but we don't like those because the answers are not the ones we want).
Duncan has to hold onto his belief in VAM because without it, the whole ugly sweater of reform starts to unravel even faster than it already is.
VAM is the compass by which reform steers. To admit that it is random and useless would be to admit that our political leaders have been piloting the ship of education blindly, cluelessly, haplessly, that they are steering us onto the rocks and that they have no idea how to get us anywhere else. Either that, or they would have to admit that they've known all along exactly where they were taking us, and the VAM compass has just been a big fat lie to keep the passengers quiet and calm. Either way, admitting VAM is a fraud would be inviting (further) mutiny, and Duncan can't do that any time soon.
But nowhere are Duncan's powers of denial more obvious than in his deep and abiding love for Value Added Measures. Arne loves him some VAM sauce, and it is a love that simply refuses to die. "You just don't know her the way I do," he cries, as the rest of us just shake our heads.
At this point, VAM is no spring chicken, and perhaps when it was fresh and young some affection for it could be justified. After all, lots of folks, including non-reformy folks, like the idea of recognizing and rewarding teachers for being excellent. But how would we identify these pillars of excellence? That was the puzzler for ages until VAM jumped up to say, "We can do it! With Science!!" We'll give some tests and then use super-sciency math to filter out every influence that's Not a Teacher and we'll know exactly how much learnin' that teacher poured into that kid.
The plan is simple and elegant. All it requires is two simple tools:
1) A standardized test that reliably and validly measures how much students know
2) A super-sciency math algorithm that will reliably and validly strip out all influences except that of the teacher.
Unfortunately, we don't have either.
We know we don't have either. We are particularly clear on the degree to which we do not have the second. Scan the list of reformster programs, and while you can find plenty of principled disagreement on most points, there is no part of the reformster education platform that has been so thoroughly, widely debunked as VAM-for-teacher-evaluation. The National Association of Secondary School Principals has taken a stand, and if you read their resolution, you'll find not just a philosophical argument, but a list of striking debunkers. The American Statistical Association has made its own statement in opposition. A peer-reviewed study paid for by the Gates Foundation itself, the grand-daddy of all reformster backers, declared in no uncertain terms that VAM tells us nothing about teacher quality. The blog Vamboozled (by Audrey Amrein-Beardsley) provides unplumbable depths of VAM-busting research and essays.
At this point, even the Flat Earth Society would be reluctant to endorse VAM as a measure of teacher effectiveness.
NO portion of his policy has been so thoroughly disproven, and yet no portion of his policy has earned more of Duncan's loyalty. He stopped saying "Common Core" out loud. He at least pretends to be cooling off on testing. Even he has to admit that some charters have issues. And data collection has become the love that dare not speak its name. But VAM still owns a place close to Arne's heart.
Witness the most recent doubling down on VAM, in which Duncan not only pledges his allegiance to the flagging monster, but announces his intention to extend its reach, taking the already invalid VAM ratings of individual teachers and taking a giant leap backwards to use them to evaluate the college that trained that teacher. Is there anybody else who can present this idea with a straight face? Read Anthony Cody here as he takes this proposal down, then note that you have over a month to register your disagreement wit the feds, and do it.
Why would someone who professes such love for data and critical thinking stay so attached to a policy that is supported by neither? Why does Duncan insist on such a mountain of denial?
Well, I can't pretend to see into his brain. But I can see that if Duncan were to admit that his beloved VAM is a useless tool, a snub-nosed screwdriver with a briar-encrusted handle, then all his other favorite programs would collapse as well.
Everywhere we turn in reformsterland, we keep coming back to teacher effectiveness. Every one of the policies and programs either begins or ends with measuring teacher effectiveness. Why do we give the Big Test? To measure teacher effectiveness. How do we rank and evaluate our schools? By looking at teacher effectiveness. How do we find the teachers that we are going to move around so that every classroom has a great teacher? With teacher effectiveness ratings. How do we institute merit pay and a career ladder? By looking at teacher effectiveness. How do we evaluate every single program instituted in any school? By checking to see how it affects teacher effectivesness. How do we prove that centralized planning (such as Common Core) is working? By looking at teacher effectiveness. How do we prove that corporate involvement at every stage is a Good Thing? By looking at teacher effectiveness.And by "teacher effectiveness," we always mean VAM (because we don't know any other way, at all).
If our measure of teacher effectiveness, our magic VAM sauce, is a sham and a delusion and a big bowl of nothing, then a critical piece of the entire reformy puzzle is missing. We have no proof that we need reform, and we have no method of proving that reform is working (we already have means of measuring reform's effects, but we don't like those because the answers are not the ones we want).
Duncan has to hold onto his belief in VAM because without it, the whole ugly sweater of reform starts to unravel even faster than it already is.
VAM is the compass by which reform steers. To admit that it is random and useless would be to admit that our political leaders have been piloting the ship of education blindly, cluelessly, haplessly, that they are steering us onto the rocks and that they have no idea how to get us anywhere else. Either that, or they would have to admit that they've known all along exactly where they were taking us, and the VAM compass has just been a big fat lie to keep the passengers quiet and calm. Either way, admitting VAM is a fraud would be inviting (further) mutiny, and Duncan can't do that any time soon.
Sunday, December 14, 2014
Schools, Transparency, and the Free Market
Scoop of the Week award goes to Stephen Dyer, who reported on his blog the surprising words of CREDO charter fan Margaret Raymond, who was speaking in Cleveland when she said
I actually am kind of a pro-market kinda girl. But it doesn’t seem to work in a choice environment for education. I’ve studied competitive markets for much of my career. That’s my academic focus for my work. And (education) is the only industry/sector where the market mechanism just doesn’t work. I think it’s not helpful to expect parents to be the agents of quality assurance throughout the state. I think there are other supports that are needed… The policy environment really needs to focus on creating much more information and transparency about performance than we’ve had for the 20 years of the charter school movement. We need to have a greater degree of oversight of charter schools. But I also think we have to have some oversight of the overseers.
This is not surprising in a "Gee I never thought of that" way. It's surprising in a "consider the source" way, coming from someone who works with a raftload of people who believe in the Invisible Hand and its magic powers.
Now, I disagree with her about education being the only sector where market mechanism doesn't work-- health care comes rapidly to mind followed by the food industry and by the military-industrial complex and by, well, almost everything. The free-ish market in this country is heavily bound up in regulation and government control, and much of that is not exerted on behalf of citizens, but on behalf of corporations for whom government regulation is just one of the avenues for using giant piles of money to tilt the scales. From Vanderbilt to Carnegie to Gates, rich folks just love the free market until they're winning, at which point they aren't so keen on the "free" part.
But you can get her point, particularly in follow-up comments that she sent to Valerie Strauss at the Washington Post.
In other industries, real markets are able to develop and function because suppliers and consumers get to meet each other in an unfettered set of offers and demands for goods or services. There are no intermediary agents who guard access to supply or who aggregate demand and thus sway the free exchange of supply and demand. Part of that free exchange relies on complete transparency about the attributes of the goods on offer and their prices, and the transactions are “known” by the participants in an open and complete way.
Again, I think she overestimates how many real markets work like this, but her point is well taken. To have a free market, you have to have transparency about all aspects of the transaction.
You also have to have some agreed-upon vocabulary. If I'm trying to sell you a "luxury" automobile or "good" maple syrup, we both have a pretty good idea of what I mean. But if I'm trying to sell a "good" school, nobody is sure what the heck I mean. The reformsters have tried to clear this up by imposing a definition of "good" on schools and teachers, but that definition is "high scores on a couple of standardized math and English tests" and nobody really believes that it's correct.
Some markets have taken years, decades to create that shared vocabulary. For instance, most of the market agrees that "good" maple syrup is "rich and thick." Except that if you grew up around actual maple syrup, you know that it's thinner and slicker than water and cuts into your food like the sweetest battery acid ever imagined. Marketers had to train the public to associate rich and thick with maple syrup, just as marketers taught us that breakfast is the most important meal of the day.
The American free market doesn't run much on transparency. For some products, like cigarettes and beer, the market depends on a definite lack of transparency. We Americans are hustlers. We like smoke and mirrors. We expect to hear and see bullshit, and we deal in a little bit of it ourselves from time to time. I'll repeat myself here-- the free market does not foster excellent products; the free market fosters excellent marketing.
When it comes to education, the general public does not agree on what they want, how to get it, or how to recognize it when they see it. Add that education is a product that every citizen is required by law to purchase, putting educators in the unique market position of having to market a product to people who do not want that product. And that education is a product that everybody thinks they are qualified and capable of producing. Open the market, as the Obama administration and various state governments, and you have a market that is absolutely ripe for charlatans, humbugs, and well-meaning incompetents.
Finally, layer on our love of invisible regulation. We hate regulation, but we take for granted that nothing we buy in a store could actually hurt us. We hate regulation, but we never check our groceries for possible poisons, and we assume that any electrical appliance we bring into our home will not electrocute us. We like to believe that our world is just naturally safe in some magical unregulated way.
In that same way, people in the education marketplace have just assumed that some place that calls itself a school must automatically have certain programs in place, must address certain student concerns, must have some actual commitment to staying open. As many many many folks in Ohio can now tell you, making assumptions about what a charter is going to do (or not do) turns out to be a huge mistake.
I think Raymond's love of the free market blinds her to many hard truths about it. But as with any bad relationship, it's great to see her at least recognize that things aren't working out now. I believe that her faith that things can some day work out between the market and education is misplaced, but baby steps. Baby steps.
I actually am kind of a pro-market kinda girl. But it doesn’t seem to work in a choice environment for education. I’ve studied competitive markets for much of my career. That’s my academic focus for my work. And (education) is the only industry/sector where the market mechanism just doesn’t work. I think it’s not helpful to expect parents to be the agents of quality assurance throughout the state. I think there are other supports that are needed… The policy environment really needs to focus on creating much more information and transparency about performance than we’ve had for the 20 years of the charter school movement. We need to have a greater degree of oversight of charter schools. But I also think we have to have some oversight of the overseers.
This is not surprising in a "Gee I never thought of that" way. It's surprising in a "consider the source" way, coming from someone who works with a raftload of people who believe in the Invisible Hand and its magic powers.
Now, I disagree with her about education being the only sector where market mechanism doesn't work-- health care comes rapidly to mind followed by the food industry and by the military-industrial complex and by, well, almost everything. The free-ish market in this country is heavily bound up in regulation and government control, and much of that is not exerted on behalf of citizens, but on behalf of corporations for whom government regulation is just one of the avenues for using giant piles of money to tilt the scales. From Vanderbilt to Carnegie to Gates, rich folks just love the free market until they're winning, at which point they aren't so keen on the "free" part.
But you can get her point, particularly in follow-up comments that she sent to Valerie Strauss at the Washington Post.
In other industries, real markets are able to develop and function because suppliers and consumers get to meet each other in an unfettered set of offers and demands for goods or services. There are no intermediary agents who guard access to supply or who aggregate demand and thus sway the free exchange of supply and demand. Part of that free exchange relies on complete transparency about the attributes of the goods on offer and their prices, and the transactions are “known” by the participants in an open and complete way.
Again, I think she overestimates how many real markets work like this, but her point is well taken. To have a free market, you have to have transparency about all aspects of the transaction.
You also have to have some agreed-upon vocabulary. If I'm trying to sell you a "luxury" automobile or "good" maple syrup, we both have a pretty good idea of what I mean. But if I'm trying to sell a "good" school, nobody is sure what the heck I mean. The reformsters have tried to clear this up by imposing a definition of "good" on schools and teachers, but that definition is "high scores on a couple of standardized math and English tests" and nobody really believes that it's correct.
Some markets have taken years, decades to create that shared vocabulary. For instance, most of the market agrees that "good" maple syrup is "rich and thick." Except that if you grew up around actual maple syrup, you know that it's thinner and slicker than water and cuts into your food like the sweetest battery acid ever imagined. Marketers had to train the public to associate rich and thick with maple syrup, just as marketers taught us that breakfast is the most important meal of the day.
The American free market doesn't run much on transparency. For some products, like cigarettes and beer, the market depends on a definite lack of transparency. We Americans are hustlers. We like smoke and mirrors. We expect to hear and see bullshit, and we deal in a little bit of it ourselves from time to time. I'll repeat myself here-- the free market does not foster excellent products; the free market fosters excellent marketing.
When it comes to education, the general public does not agree on what they want, how to get it, or how to recognize it when they see it. Add that education is a product that every citizen is required by law to purchase, putting educators in the unique market position of having to market a product to people who do not want that product. And that education is a product that everybody thinks they are qualified and capable of producing. Open the market, as the Obama administration and various state governments, and you have a market that is absolutely ripe for charlatans, humbugs, and well-meaning incompetents.
Finally, layer on our love of invisible regulation. We hate regulation, but we take for granted that nothing we buy in a store could actually hurt us. We hate regulation, but we never check our groceries for possible poisons, and we assume that any electrical appliance we bring into our home will not electrocute us. We like to believe that our world is just naturally safe in some magical unregulated way.
In that same way, people in the education marketplace have just assumed that some place that calls itself a school must automatically have certain programs in place, must address certain student concerns, must have some actual commitment to staying open. As many many many folks in Ohio can now tell you, making assumptions about what a charter is going to do (or not do) turns out to be a huge mistake.
I think Raymond's love of the free market blinds her to many hard truths about it. But as with any bad relationship, it's great to see her at least recognize that things aren't working out now. I believe that her faith that things can some day work out between the market and education is misplaced, but baby steps. Baby steps.
Punishing Teachers More Effectively
David Brooks' column praising small miracles made note of a new piece of research from Harvard that argues that while carrots may work better than sticks, the best way to use the carrot is to jam it into the horse's eyeball. (h/t to edushyster for the tip, not the carrot)
Our magic term for the day is "loss aversion," which is a fancy term for "people hate to give stuff up." The paper we'll be looking at is "Enhancing the Efficacy of Teacher Incentives through Loss Aversion:A Field Experiment" written by Roland G. Fryer, Jr. (Harvard University), Steven D. Levitt (The University of Chicago), John List (The University of Chicago), and Sally Sadoff (University of California San Diego). Let's learn some stuff, shall we?
Intro
Sigh. We know we're in just great shape when we lead with references to the baloneyfied research that "proves" that a measurable improvement in teacher quality creates the same measurable improvement in student achievement as a decrease in class size (the old "we don't need small classes-- just great teachers" research) and follows it up with Chetty's silly "a good teacher means your kid will grow up to make more money" research. And that's just the first paragraph.
In the second, we get the sideways assumption that VAM is a good measure of teacher quality and that unions make it too hard to get rid of bad teachers. In the third, we lament that merit pay hasn't done any good. "Good" of course means "has students with high test scores." Because when people talk about "good teachers," all they're thinking of is students scores on standardized tests. That's all we want from teachers, right?
On this foundation of sand and jello, our intrepid researchers set out to build a mansion of teacher improvitude.
The experiment (oops-- "field test") was performed in Chicago Heights. Teachers were randomly assigned to one of two groups-- either they were in the Gain group, working toward a possible end-of-year bonus, or they were in the Loss group, receiving a bonus up front which they would lose if their students didn't achieve bonus-worthy results. Bonuses for both groups were the same. Additionally, the researchers used the "pay for percentile" method developed by Barlevy and Neal, which is basically a stack and rank system where there are winners and losers. One would think that might have some significant effects on the field test, but apparently we're just going to barrel on assuming that it's a great idea and not a zero-sum dog-eat-dog approach that might shade the effects of a merit pay system.
Their findings were that there was a significant gain in math scores for Loss teachers' students (the significance was between 0.076 and 0.129, so make of that what you will) and, as expected, no significant affect for Gain teachers' students.
To the library
Part two of the paper is the review of the literature. If you're interested in this, you're on your own.
Program details
Chicago Heights is about thirty miles south of Chicago. They have a 98% free and reduced lunch population in elementary and middle school. The program was implemented with the cooperation of both the superintendent and the union. Of 160 teachers, 150 opted in. Maximum possible bonus pay was $8,000.
Working out the assignments of teachers was hard. So hard that apparently the researchers kind of gave up on tracking the reading side of this experiment and focused on the math. This was further complicated in that the design called for some teachers to be up for bonus on their own, while others were bonusing it up in team fashion.
And while the researchers keep saying that the teachers were assigned randomly, it turns out they were re-randomized with an algorithm that kept swapping teachers based on a set of rules until they were best aligned with the selection rules. So, unless I'm missing something, this was kind of like saying, "We randomly assigned people to groups of people with identical hair color and gender. So, we put all the blond women randomly in one group."
Teachers in the Loss group were given $4,000 at the beginning of the year and signed a contract stating they would give back the difference if their earned bonus came in below that amount. If they earned more, they got more. The tests used were the ThinkLink tests, which are described as otherwise low stakes tests, which again strikes me as a fairly critical factor that the researchers breeze right past.
Data and research design
Basically, these guys went in the back room and whipped up a big kettle of VAM sauce. You know. The same kind of thing that has been so widely discredited that the National Association of Secondary School Principals has come out against using it as a means of evaluating individual teachers. Also, they use some more math to deal with the event of a student having mixed teachers (on Loss group, one Gain group) during the day.
Results
You've already heard the big take-away. Other interesting bits of data include a much higher effect for K-2 students (though, since the VAMsauce depends on data going back four years, I'm wondering how exactly we crunched the little kids' numbers). There is a bunch of statistics-talk here as well, but much of it boils down to fancily-worded "Nothing to see here." There are charts for those who enjoy charts.
Interpretation and pre-emptive kibbitzing
The interpretation is simple. Merit pay will yield better test results if you let teachers hold it in their hands for nine months and threaten to take it back if their students don't do well on the Big Test.
The researchers anticipate three areas that might be used to dispute their results, so they address them ahead of time.
First, attrition. They anticipate the complaint that teachers will find other ways to improve their test scores including getting Little Pat McFailsalot out of their classroom, at least on test day. They tran some numbers and decided this didn't happen to any notable degree.
Second, liquidity restraints. We're talking about teacher money here. Teachers might spend their own money in the classroom to improve their bonus-earning chances, which would be a level playing field if all teachers were wealthy, but in a world where teachers have very little extra money to spend in the classroom (or Wal-mart or anywhere else), an extra $4K in September might tilt the field. In other words, did the group that got a $4K run out and spend it to make sure they kept it? Survey says no. Interesting sidelight-- when asked in March, 69% of the Loss teachers had not cashed their bonus checks yet.
Third, cheating. They decided that wasn't a factor because, reasons. Seriously-- isn't the whole hypothesis here that the bonus will motivate teachers to raise test scores any way they can? I have no reason to believe these teachers were cheating, but if this were my experiment, that would certainly be something I'd look for. What kind of pressure and temptation do you suppose will will be felt by a teacher who has already spent his "bonus" on house payments and groceries?
But it gets better. They argue that the proof that no cheating occurred is that results on the state test-- which had nothing to do with their incentive program-- came out about the same. So, the test results from the incentivized program were pretty much the same as the results that they got with no incentives at all. Maybe that means that test prep for the one test is also good test prep for the state test. Or maybe it means that the incentive program had no effect on anything.
Wrapping it up
I see enough holes in this very specific research to drive a fleet of trucks through. But let's pretend for a moment that they've actually proven something here. What would we do with it?
First, we'd need to convince a school district business office to let teachers hold a big pile of district money for nine months, thereby giving up a bunch of interest income and liquidity. At the same time, we'd have to get the administration and board to budget a merit pay line item for "Somewhere between a small amount and a huge mountain." These are great ideas, because if there's anything business managers love, it's letting someone else hold their money, and they only love that slightly less than starting a year with an unknowable balloon payment of indeterminate size next June.
When school districts talk about merit pay, they talk about a merit lump sum set aside at the beginning of the year so that teachers can fight over a slice of the already-set merit pie. As I've said repeatedly, no school board in this country is ever going to say to the public, "Our teachers did such a great job this year that we need to raise taxes to cover all the well-earned merit pay bonuses we owe them."
Of course, somebody would have to figure out the merit system. How many Harvard grad students work in your district? And how exactly will you figure out the math score bonus for your phys ed teacher?
Districts could manage the financial challenges of this risk aversion model by pre-determining the aggregate merit pay in the district. This, combined with "pay for percentile," would absolutely guarantee open warfare among staff members, who would be earning their merit bonuses by literally ripping them dollars out of colleagues' hands. Boy, I bet teaching in that school would be fun.
The largest thing they haven't thought through
Instituted, this system will not play out like a merit bonus at all. If I start every year with an "extra" $4K (or whatever amount), I've gotten a raise, and every year I don't make my numbers is a year that I get a punitive retroactive pay cut.
In no time at all, this system morphs from a merit pay bonus system of rewards to a bad score DEmerit system of punishments. Rather than a bonus that really lifts up teachers, these folks have come up with a way to make punishment for low results even more painful and effective. A miracle indeed.
Our magic term for the day is "loss aversion," which is a fancy term for "people hate to give stuff up." The paper we'll be looking at is "Enhancing the Efficacy of Teacher Incentives through Loss Aversion:A Field Experiment" written by Roland G. Fryer, Jr. (Harvard University), Steven D. Levitt (The University of Chicago), John List (The University of Chicago), and Sally Sadoff (University of California San Diego). Let's learn some stuff, shall we?
Intro
Sigh. We know we're in just great shape when we lead with references to the baloneyfied research that "proves" that a measurable improvement in teacher quality creates the same measurable improvement in student achievement as a decrease in class size (the old "we don't need small classes-- just great teachers" research) and follows it up with Chetty's silly "a good teacher means your kid will grow up to make more money" research. And that's just the first paragraph.
In the second, we get the sideways assumption that VAM is a good measure of teacher quality and that unions make it too hard to get rid of bad teachers. In the third, we lament that merit pay hasn't done any good. "Good" of course means "has students with high test scores." Because when people talk about "good teachers," all they're thinking of is students scores on standardized tests. That's all we want from teachers, right?
On this foundation of sand and jello, our intrepid researchers set out to build a mansion of teacher improvitude.
The experiment (oops-- "field test") was performed in Chicago Heights. Teachers were randomly assigned to one of two groups-- either they were in the Gain group, working toward a possible end-of-year bonus, or they were in the Loss group, receiving a bonus up front which they would lose if their students didn't achieve bonus-worthy results. Bonuses for both groups were the same. Additionally, the researchers used the "pay for percentile" method developed by Barlevy and Neal, which is basically a stack and rank system where there are winners and losers. One would think that might have some significant effects on the field test, but apparently we're just going to barrel on assuming that it's a great idea and not a zero-sum dog-eat-dog approach that might shade the effects of a merit pay system.
Their findings were that there was a significant gain in math scores for Loss teachers' students (the significance was between 0.076 and 0.129, so make of that what you will) and, as expected, no significant affect for Gain teachers' students.
To the library
Part two of the paper is the review of the literature. If you're interested in this, you're on your own.
Program details
Chicago Heights is about thirty miles south of Chicago. They have a 98% free and reduced lunch population in elementary and middle school. The program was implemented with the cooperation of both the superintendent and the union. Of 160 teachers, 150 opted in. Maximum possible bonus pay was $8,000.
Working out the assignments of teachers was hard. So hard that apparently the researchers kind of gave up on tracking the reading side of this experiment and focused on the math. This was further complicated in that the design called for some teachers to be up for bonus on their own, while others were bonusing it up in team fashion.
And while the researchers keep saying that the teachers were assigned randomly, it turns out they were re-randomized with an algorithm that kept swapping teachers based on a set of rules until they were best aligned with the selection rules. So, unless I'm missing something, this was kind of like saying, "We randomly assigned people to groups of people with identical hair color and gender. So, we put all the blond women randomly in one group."
Teachers in the Loss group were given $4,000 at the beginning of the year and signed a contract stating they would give back the difference if their earned bonus came in below that amount. If they earned more, they got more. The tests used were the ThinkLink tests, which are described as otherwise low stakes tests, which again strikes me as a fairly critical factor that the researchers breeze right past.
Data and research design
Basically, these guys went in the back room and whipped up a big kettle of VAM sauce. You know. The same kind of thing that has been so widely discredited that the National Association of Secondary School Principals has come out against using it as a means of evaluating individual teachers. Also, they use some more math to deal with the event of a student having mixed teachers (on Loss group, one Gain group) during the day.
Results
You've already heard the big take-away. Other interesting bits of data include a much higher effect for K-2 students (though, since the VAMsauce depends on data going back four years, I'm wondering how exactly we crunched the little kids' numbers). There is a bunch of statistics-talk here as well, but much of it boils down to fancily-worded "Nothing to see here." There are charts for those who enjoy charts.
Interpretation and pre-emptive kibbitzing
The interpretation is simple. Merit pay will yield better test results if you let teachers hold it in their hands for nine months and threaten to take it back if their students don't do well on the Big Test.
The researchers anticipate three areas that might be used to dispute their results, so they address them ahead of time.
First, attrition. They anticipate the complaint that teachers will find other ways to improve their test scores including getting Little Pat McFailsalot out of their classroom, at least on test day. They tran some numbers and decided this didn't happen to any notable degree.
Second, liquidity restraints. We're talking about teacher money here. Teachers might spend their own money in the classroom to improve their bonus-earning chances, which would be a level playing field if all teachers were wealthy, but in a world where teachers have very little extra money to spend in the classroom (or Wal-mart or anywhere else), an extra $4K in September might tilt the field. In other words, did the group that got a $4K run out and spend it to make sure they kept it? Survey says no. Interesting sidelight-- when asked in March, 69% of the Loss teachers had not cashed their bonus checks yet.
Third, cheating. They decided that wasn't a factor because, reasons. Seriously-- isn't the whole hypothesis here that the bonus will motivate teachers to raise test scores any way they can? I have no reason to believe these teachers were cheating, but if this were my experiment, that would certainly be something I'd look for. What kind of pressure and temptation do you suppose will will be felt by a teacher who has already spent his "bonus" on house payments and groceries?
But it gets better. They argue that the proof that no cheating occurred is that results on the state test-- which had nothing to do with their incentive program-- came out about the same. So, the test results from the incentivized program were pretty much the same as the results that they got with no incentives at all. Maybe that means that test prep for the one test is also good test prep for the state test. Or maybe it means that the incentive program had no effect on anything.
Wrapping it up
I see enough holes in this very specific research to drive a fleet of trucks through. But let's pretend for a moment that they've actually proven something here. What would we do with it?
First, we'd need to convince a school district business office to let teachers hold a big pile of district money for nine months, thereby giving up a bunch of interest income and liquidity. At the same time, we'd have to get the administration and board to budget a merit pay line item for "Somewhere between a small amount and a huge mountain." These are great ideas, because if there's anything business managers love, it's letting someone else hold their money, and they only love that slightly less than starting a year with an unknowable balloon payment of indeterminate size next June.
When school districts talk about merit pay, they talk about a merit lump sum set aside at the beginning of the year so that teachers can fight over a slice of the already-set merit pie. As I've said repeatedly, no school board in this country is ever going to say to the public, "Our teachers did such a great job this year that we need to raise taxes to cover all the well-earned merit pay bonuses we owe them."
Of course, somebody would have to figure out the merit system. How many Harvard grad students work in your district? And how exactly will you figure out the math score bonus for your phys ed teacher?
Districts could manage the financial challenges of this risk aversion model by pre-determining the aggregate merit pay in the district. This, combined with "pay for percentile," would absolutely guarantee open warfare among staff members, who would be earning their merit bonuses by literally ripping them dollars out of colleagues' hands. Boy, I bet teaching in that school would be fun.
The largest thing they haven't thought through
Instituted, this system will not play out like a merit bonus at all. If I start every year with an "extra" $4K (or whatever amount), I've gotten a raise, and every year I don't make my numbers is a year that I get a punitive retroactive pay cut.
In no time at all, this system morphs from a merit pay bonus system of rewards to a bad score DEmerit system of punishments. Rather than a bonus that really lifts up teachers, these folks have come up with a way to make punishment for low results even more painful and effective. A miracle indeed.
Saturday, December 13, 2014
Ohio Schools Must Get Religion
There are some things that Ohio schools can, apparently, do without. The Ohio state school board did vote to scuttle the 5 of 8 rule; this would make schools free to operate without librarians, nurses, and guidance counselors, for starters.
But then-- why would you need a nurse or a guidance counselor when you have religion and business in the house?
Ohio governor John Kasich has a great program in place to improve school-community connections and to bring mentors into the school to help.
Community Connectors provides $10 million in 3-to-1 matching grants that will help give more Ohio students access to role models who can help motivate and inspire them, as well as help them develop skills that lead to success in school and the workplace.
Kasich even has a few words to add himself:
The power of mentorship holds great promise to help us better connect our communities with our schools, and lift up our educators and our kids. We can show them why learning matters, we can teach them about workplace culture and professional etiquette. We can help them appreciate how important good character is to success in life as well as values like hard work, discipline and personal responsibility—all of which can help motivate and inspire them to find their purpose and to reach for the stars." — Gov. John R. Kasich
There may be some cranky teachers who want to say, "And what did you think we're teaching them, anyway?" But I'd welcome the backup. I can tell my students that things like showing up every day, on time, are important in the workplace, but hearing it from an actual employer definitely gives the message more weight (I am, after all, "just a teacher" and of doubtful authority).
So, great idea, right? Except it comes with a string or two. Although reportedly not spelled out in the legislation, the grants come with a requirement that schools must partner with a business and with a faith-based group. Nobody is really asking questions about the business requirement for the partnership application, but the faith-based requirement needs some 'splainin'" The Cleveland Plain Dealer went in search of that explanation.
Buddy Harris, senior policy analyst at the Ohio Department of Education, is quoted in the Cleveland Plain Dealer saying that faith-based groups are "clearly at the heart of the vision of the governor." He goes on to allay any concerns about that pesky state-church wall being breached.
"We do not forsee any proseletyzing happening between mentors and students," Harris said. "That's not really what we're seeking."
But Kasich's welcome video for applicants to the program is a little more direct:
"The Good Lord has a purpose for each and every one of them (students) and you're helping them to find it," Kasich said on the video.
So, proseletyzing.
In the interests of transparency, I'll just note that my own relationship with organized religion is long and complicated, and I have some clear feelings about the separation of church and state, not the least of which is that the separation protects the church from the state, not just vice versa.
There are plenty of faith-based groups that do good community work without trying to sell their brand. Their are plenty of groups that use the illusion of faith-basedness as a dodge for fundraising. And there are plenty of faith-based groups who do Good Works only because it gives them an opportunity to spread their particular Word. Not all of these groups are going to provide useful mentoring to young people. We could just take all comers, but that's not going to hold up long (I look forward to the first time the Ohio Alliance of Satan Worshippers tries to get in on the mentoring action. Heck, even an Islamic group is liable to create a stink in the Buckeye State). And as soon as we try to have the conversation about which are which, we will find ourselves discussing how a government agency can evaluate the worthiness of a faith-based group (which must also include an evaluation of the faith on which it's based). Plus the coordination needed if we are going to make sure that we don't have an evangelical Christian mentoring a Jewish student, or a Islamic mentor working with a born-again Christian student. So, also a government agency to record and sort and match the religious faiths of students and mentors? This whole mess is not good for anybody.
Kasich had to know this was an issue-- most of his previous discussions of the program skipped any mention of the faith-based requirement. Ten million dollars is a small stack of money, but it's more than enough to buy a small bureaucratic train wreck.
But then-- why would you need a nurse or a guidance counselor when you have religion and business in the house?
Ohio governor John Kasich has a great program in place to improve school-community connections and to bring mentors into the school to help.
Community Connectors provides $10 million in 3-to-1 matching grants that will help give more Ohio students access to role models who can help motivate and inspire them, as well as help them develop skills that lead to success in school and the workplace.
Kasich even has a few words to add himself:
The power of mentorship holds great promise to help us better connect our communities with our schools, and lift up our educators and our kids. We can show them why learning matters, we can teach them about workplace culture and professional etiquette. We can help them appreciate how important good character is to success in life as well as values like hard work, discipline and personal responsibility—all of which can help motivate and inspire them to find their purpose and to reach for the stars." — Gov. John R. Kasich
There may be some cranky teachers who want to say, "And what did you think we're teaching them, anyway?" But I'd welcome the backup. I can tell my students that things like showing up every day, on time, are important in the workplace, but hearing it from an actual employer definitely gives the message more weight (I am, after all, "just a teacher" and of doubtful authority).
So, great idea, right? Except it comes with a string or two. Although reportedly not spelled out in the legislation, the grants come with a requirement that schools must partner with a business and with a faith-based group. Nobody is really asking questions about the business requirement for the partnership application, but the faith-based requirement needs some 'splainin'" The Cleveland Plain Dealer went in search of that explanation.
Buddy Harris, senior policy analyst at the Ohio Department of Education, is quoted in the Cleveland Plain Dealer saying that faith-based groups are "clearly at the heart of the vision of the governor." He goes on to allay any concerns about that pesky state-church wall being breached.
"We do not forsee any proseletyzing happening between mentors and students," Harris said. "That's not really what we're seeking."
But Kasich's welcome video for applicants to the program is a little more direct:
"The Good Lord has a purpose for each and every one of them (students) and you're helping them to find it," Kasich said on the video.
So, proseletyzing.
In the interests of transparency, I'll just note that my own relationship with organized religion is long and complicated, and I have some clear feelings about the separation of church and state, not the least of which is that the separation protects the church from the state, not just vice versa.
There are plenty of faith-based groups that do good community work without trying to sell their brand. Their are plenty of groups that use the illusion of faith-basedness as a dodge for fundraising. And there are plenty of faith-based groups who do Good Works only because it gives them an opportunity to spread their particular Word. Not all of these groups are going to provide useful mentoring to young people. We could just take all comers, but that's not going to hold up long (I look forward to the first time the Ohio Alliance of Satan Worshippers tries to get in on the mentoring action. Heck, even an Islamic group is liable to create a stink in the Buckeye State). And as soon as we try to have the conversation about which are which, we will find ourselves discussing how a government agency can evaluate the worthiness of a faith-based group (which must also include an evaluation of the faith on which it's based). Plus the coordination needed if we are going to make sure that we don't have an evangelical Christian mentoring a Jewish student, or a Islamic mentor working with a born-again Christian student. So, also a government agency to record and sort and match the religious faiths of students and mentors? This whole mess is not good for anybody.
Kasich had to know this was an issue-- most of his previous discussions of the program skipped any mention of the faith-based requirement. Ten million dollars is a small stack of money, but it's more than enough to buy a small bureaucratic train wreck.
Chicago Schools Caught Cooking the Charter Books
Back in September, Chicago Principoal Troy A. LaRaviere used the Chicago Public School systems own MAP test numbers to show that public school students were outpacing charter schools in the same neighborhoods.* The findings were published in the Sun Times, complete with linkage to the CPS website where the numbers were all laid out. The Sun Times conducted and published their own analysis, confirming LaRaviere's findings.
Then a funny thing happened. The numbers changed.
The Administrator’s Alliance for Proven Policy and Legislation in Education (AAPPLE) discovered "at some point between the publication of our findings and the release of school ratings, CPS removed the original file containing school growth data and replaced it with a different version." Fortunately, they had saved the original, so they could see the differences that had mysteriously appeared. You can read their report here. But the basic scoop is this;
The main fiddling occurred with pre-test scores, generally lowering them so that school growth would be more awesome. AAPPLE found that this change was made for "nearly every charter school" while fewer than twenty public schools were affected (yes, I hear you out there hollering "but charter schools are public schools" and all I can say is, do shut up). The altered scores gave some charters growth scores increased by as many as fifty points (the biggest change for the public schools was a whopping two points).
Not all charters were winners. CICS chain charters were big winners in up-scoring, while schools like Shabazz Charter took a negative twenty point hit. AAPPLE notes that the charters that were given the fake growth results were largely in gentrifying areas.
AAPPLE did ask for a meeting with the CPS Accountability Office (another exhibit in the How Accountability Makes Education Way More Expensive display) and got one very quickly, in which the office explained that yes, they did change the scores. They offered two justifications.
First, that charters took the 2013 MAP (the "pre-test" or baseline) in the fall of 2013 instead of the spring of 2013. Why this requires a fiddling of scores is unclear, possibly because there is no earthly reason for it.
Second, students took different versions of the same test, so, adjustments are-- really? The AAPPLE report gives the response to these lines of argument, but the bottom lines, as near as I can tell is that only one of two things can be true here. Either 1) the MAP test and growth model system is such a wretchedly invalid system that a stiff wind off the lake is enough to throw its results into question or 2) CPS decided to cheat in order to make some charters look successful. If there's a third possible explanation, I can't see it.
AAPPLE concludes, with what I would call admirable restraint, that lack of transparency is a bit of a problem, and CPS is not using a level playing field. Since I don't have to work in Chicago, I can go ahead and make my own assessment, which is that this is the kind of lying, cheating bullshit that you can only get away with when you work behind closed doors.
* Personally, I am not inclined to evaluate any schools anywhere based on standardized test scores, but that's the game reformsters choose to play, and I do think it's not unfair to judge whether they are winning in the game they chose under the rules they set.
Then a funny thing happened. The numbers changed.
The Administrator’s Alliance for Proven Policy and Legislation in Education (AAPPLE) discovered "at some point between the publication of our findings and the release of school ratings, CPS removed the original file containing school growth data and replaced it with a different version." Fortunately, they had saved the original, so they could see the differences that had mysteriously appeared. You can read their report here. But the basic scoop is this;
The main fiddling occurred with pre-test scores, generally lowering them so that school growth would be more awesome. AAPPLE found that this change was made for "nearly every charter school" while fewer than twenty public schools were affected (yes, I hear you out there hollering "but charter schools are public schools" and all I can say is, do shut up). The altered scores gave some charters growth scores increased by as many as fifty points (the biggest change for the public schools was a whopping two points).
Not all charters were winners. CICS chain charters were big winners in up-scoring, while schools like Shabazz Charter took a negative twenty point hit. AAPPLE notes that the charters that were given the fake growth results were largely in gentrifying areas.
AAPPLE did ask for a meeting with the CPS Accountability Office (another exhibit in the How Accountability Makes Education Way More Expensive display) and got one very quickly, in which the office explained that yes, they did change the scores. They offered two justifications.
First, that charters took the 2013 MAP (the "pre-test" or baseline) in the fall of 2013 instead of the spring of 2013. Why this requires a fiddling of scores is unclear, possibly because there is no earthly reason for it.
Second, students took different versions of the same test, so, adjustments are-- really? The AAPPLE report gives the response to these lines of argument, but the bottom lines, as near as I can tell is that only one of two things can be true here. Either 1) the MAP test and growth model system is such a wretchedly invalid system that a stiff wind off the lake is enough to throw its results into question or 2) CPS decided to cheat in order to make some charters look successful. If there's a third possible explanation, I can't see it.
AAPPLE concludes, with what I would call admirable restraint, that lack of transparency is a bit of a problem, and CPS is not using a level playing field. Since I don't have to work in Chicago, I can go ahead and make my own assessment, which is that this is the kind of lying, cheating bullshit that you can only get away with when you work behind closed doors.
* Personally, I am not inclined to evaluate any schools anywhere based on standardized test scores, but that's the game reformsters choose to play, and I do think it's not unfair to judge whether they are winning in the game they chose under the rules they set.
Friday, December 12, 2014
Whither Disruptive Students?
Now that we've all had our turns spanking Mike Petrilli for his bracingly honest take on charter skimming ("It's not a bug. It's a feature."), it's time to move on to the question that he raised-- what about the students who are a disruption in their schools?
Define the Problem
First, I want to acknowledge the precise shading of the problem, because it does have a major effect on what we propose as a solution.
Most charteristas frame the issue as "allowing students to escape failing schools." As a statement of the problem, this has a major shortcoming for charter promoters. If the problem is that some schools are failing, why oh why would we discuss saving some students and abandoning others instead of discussing how to make the school Not Fail? Reformsters have toyed with the recovery model, where the failing school is taken over by charteristas, but that doesn't seem to be a popular approach. At the very least, it requires reformsters to push straight through local opposition to the takeover of public schools.
If the problem is schools that are failing because they lack resources, support and money, the most obvious solution is to give them resources, support, and money. But there's no growth opportunity for charteristas in that.
Petrilli's framing is more elegantly useful. If the problem is Bad Students, then no amount of money or resources is likely to fix the problem. Instead, we must separate the bad seeds from the good, allow the poor but gifted students to depart for more the company of a better class of peers. This is an excellent growth opportunity for the modern charter entrepreneurs.
Abandoning Those People
The problem with this model is that it involves abandoning a whole bunch of live human children, throwing up our hands and warehousing them in what remains of a public system after everything useful and profitable has been stripped from it. I could barely accept this as a "solution" if those charters that did the stripping came with 100-year contracts to stay and do the job no matter how inconvenient or unprofitable it became. Since modern charters commit to stay in business only as long as they're in the mood, the Petrilli solution of Good Student Charter Schools and Those People Public School Warehousing is not an acceptable solution.
On twitter, Petrilli noted that I was "putting a lot on the shoulders of poor gifted kids." When accused of hating "those kids," the disruptive students, he replied, "Alternatively, I LOVE 'those kids'--the low income kids who want to learn." Well, who doesn't.
A colleague once had a student teacher who quit about two weeks in. When told he had to work with all of her classes, he said, "But I only want to teach the smart kids, the kids who really want to be here." Well, sure. But that's not the gig. The gig is to teach everyone. Abandoning the students who are difficult is not the job. It's not the mission. It's not the purpose of public education.
It is absolutely true that in some places, the public schools have failed that mission. It is also true that in some places, that mission is way harder to accomplish than in others. But those are the problems we should be addressing. This proposal is the equivalent of saying that since we have filled up our car's back seat with Burger King wrappers, we need to buy a new car.
Who Deserves Education?
The Petrilli argument seems to be that those students who deserve it should have the choice of a better school. Of course, it's not really their choice, because in this system, it's the school who will decide exactly who deserves the "better" education. Students (or their parents) will have to prove they really want it by displaying the behavior and skills that the charter wants to see-- otherwise, it's back to the public school holding pens with them. I will say one thing for this approach-- it's as complete a repudiation of No Child Left Behind as anybody has ever proposed.
What Petrilli is describing is not choice for students and families-- it is choice for schools, with a big side helping of highly coerced behavior modification.
So What If They Stay?
So if we close the escape hatch, what do we do about the Better Class of Student trapped in a school with Those People?
I have a couple of answers to that.
First, Resources-
Why do we keep looking at schools that are grossly underfunded and completely lacking in basics like building maintenance and books and supplies and acting like this is an unsolvable riddle? It's like looking in your cupboard and pantry and finding no food and saying, "Well, I don't know. I guess we need to move to a new house." Get schools the resources they need. Stop short-changing the schools of the poor and minority families because it's politically expedient to do so. Give them leadership. Give them money. Give them resources. In short, give them all the tools that are used to make the schools of wealthy white kids excellent.
Next, Look at Those People
"Disruptive student" is such a broad category, from the very smart and board to the highly challenged and frustrated. It also includes Students Who Bring Huge Baggage To School With Them. But as Sarah Blaine asks, at exactly what age do you think it's okay to give up on them? When they're old enough to move directly into a jail cell?
Curmudgeonly though I am, I believe some fairly hopeful things about people. One thing I believe is that by and large people do not make a nuisance of themselves for no good reason. A student who disrupts does so for a reason. Find out what it is. Address it. Screaming is a baby's way of saying, "I need something, dammit, but I don't know how to tell you." The improvement over that level of communication is gradual and often takes decades. This process will require somebody to pay attention and it will require flexibility and creativity in the response and if you think I am even trying to imply that I am some sort of miracle worker who can reach troubled youths easily, I have a bridge in Brooklyn to sell you.
But I do know some things that don't work. "You're a worthless failure. Go sit over there with the other worthless failures," does not help anybody. "Do as I say or I will punish you some more," is also rarely helpful. "This is why you don't deserve nice things," is unlikely to be motivational.
Petrilli also asked, via twitter, "Why put the needs of the most disadvantaged few above the needs of the also disadvantaged many?" I'd ask why we have to rank them at all? Particularly if we can't be sure we know which are which.
Find out what the students need. Help them get it.
What About the Gifted?
Petrilli suggested that leaving gifted students trapped with Those People is hard on them. I agree. Of course, I also think that gifted students can very often be Those People, so I'm not sure his plan is going to help. But lets pretend for a moment that we can reliably sort the goats from the sheep. What do we do?
Variable tracking works. I know tracking is considered Very Naughty. If you allow students a say in their tracks, it works. If you have some course that do not track or which track according to different criteria (phys ed, choir, arts), you can still have a mixed population, and still allow the best students space in which to be best.
And the Special?
Petrilli took some flak for talking about Alternative Schools, but done right, they also work. And designing them is a useful challenge, because it forces educators to ask a really important question that we don't ask often enough-- what needs to happen in order for these children to get an education, and what are we demanding really just to serve the ease of the institution?
Some students bring so much baggage that addressing it is a full time job. Can we educate them anyway? Probably. Do we have to send them to a gulag to do it? No. Do they benefit from having contact with their peers? Yes.
Democracy
Public schools are one of the few places left where citizens (albeit young ones) must still interact with people who are not just like them. Outside schools, we are becoming an increasingly walled-off society, and there are absolutely no signs that this is good for us. We have a huge prison population because our solution for dealing with difficult and different people is to send them away (or, unfortunately, increasingly, shoot them).
It is not so easy to sort the deserving from the undeserving; it is not even so easy to sort those that care from those that don't. But in a varied and mixed community, all can learn from all.
We can do better. We can do better in schools, where we have the chance to impart a basic life lesson-- there are people in the world who are not just like you. I don't subscribe to the Duncan theory that expectations and tests dissolve all functional differences between all students. But I do believe that being around other people, including other people who don't approach the world the same way you do, is humanizing and beneficial. However we are reaching the point where as a culture we are increasingly bad at it.
It may well be that we'll keep going this way, increasingly bellicose in our insistence that we will take care of our own and everybody else can go to hell. The problem is that history suggests that when a large sector of a nation's people are sent to hell, they tend to take large chunks of the whole country with them.
Define the Problem
First, I want to acknowledge the precise shading of the problem, because it does have a major effect on what we propose as a solution.
Most charteristas frame the issue as "allowing students to escape failing schools." As a statement of the problem, this has a major shortcoming for charter promoters. If the problem is that some schools are failing, why oh why would we discuss saving some students and abandoning others instead of discussing how to make the school Not Fail? Reformsters have toyed with the recovery model, where the failing school is taken over by charteristas, but that doesn't seem to be a popular approach. At the very least, it requires reformsters to push straight through local opposition to the takeover of public schools.
If the problem is schools that are failing because they lack resources, support and money, the most obvious solution is to give them resources, support, and money. But there's no growth opportunity for charteristas in that.
Petrilli's framing is more elegantly useful. If the problem is Bad Students, then no amount of money or resources is likely to fix the problem. Instead, we must separate the bad seeds from the good, allow the poor but gifted students to depart for more the company of a better class of peers. This is an excellent growth opportunity for the modern charter entrepreneurs.
Abandoning Those People
The problem with this model is that it involves abandoning a whole bunch of live human children, throwing up our hands and warehousing them in what remains of a public system after everything useful and profitable has been stripped from it. I could barely accept this as a "solution" if those charters that did the stripping came with 100-year contracts to stay and do the job no matter how inconvenient or unprofitable it became. Since modern charters commit to stay in business only as long as they're in the mood, the Petrilli solution of Good Student Charter Schools and Those People Public School Warehousing is not an acceptable solution.
On twitter, Petrilli noted that I was "putting a lot on the shoulders of poor gifted kids." When accused of hating "those kids," the disruptive students, he replied, "Alternatively, I LOVE 'those kids'--the low income kids who want to learn." Well, who doesn't.
A colleague once had a student teacher who quit about two weeks in. When told he had to work with all of her classes, he said, "But I only want to teach the smart kids, the kids who really want to be here." Well, sure. But that's not the gig. The gig is to teach everyone. Abandoning the students who are difficult is not the job. It's not the mission. It's not the purpose of public education.
It is absolutely true that in some places, the public schools have failed that mission. It is also true that in some places, that mission is way harder to accomplish than in others. But those are the problems we should be addressing. This proposal is the equivalent of saying that since we have filled up our car's back seat with Burger King wrappers, we need to buy a new car.
Who Deserves Education?
The Petrilli argument seems to be that those students who deserve it should have the choice of a better school. Of course, it's not really their choice, because in this system, it's the school who will decide exactly who deserves the "better" education. Students (or their parents) will have to prove they really want it by displaying the behavior and skills that the charter wants to see-- otherwise, it's back to the public school holding pens with them. I will say one thing for this approach-- it's as complete a repudiation of No Child Left Behind as anybody has ever proposed.
What Petrilli is describing is not choice for students and families-- it is choice for schools, with a big side helping of highly coerced behavior modification.
So What If They Stay?
So if we close the escape hatch, what do we do about the Better Class of Student trapped in a school with Those People?
I have a couple of answers to that.
First, Resources-
Why do we keep looking at schools that are grossly underfunded and completely lacking in basics like building maintenance and books and supplies and acting like this is an unsolvable riddle? It's like looking in your cupboard and pantry and finding no food and saying, "Well, I don't know. I guess we need to move to a new house." Get schools the resources they need. Stop short-changing the schools of the poor and minority families because it's politically expedient to do so. Give them leadership. Give them money. Give them resources. In short, give them all the tools that are used to make the schools of wealthy white kids excellent.
Next, Look at Those People
"Disruptive student" is such a broad category, from the very smart and board to the highly challenged and frustrated. It also includes Students Who Bring Huge Baggage To School With Them. But as Sarah Blaine asks, at exactly what age do you think it's okay to give up on them? When they're old enough to move directly into a jail cell?
Curmudgeonly though I am, I believe some fairly hopeful things about people. One thing I believe is that by and large people do not make a nuisance of themselves for no good reason. A student who disrupts does so for a reason. Find out what it is. Address it. Screaming is a baby's way of saying, "I need something, dammit, but I don't know how to tell you." The improvement over that level of communication is gradual and often takes decades. This process will require somebody to pay attention and it will require flexibility and creativity in the response and if you think I am even trying to imply that I am some sort of miracle worker who can reach troubled youths easily, I have a bridge in Brooklyn to sell you.
But I do know some things that don't work. "You're a worthless failure. Go sit over there with the other worthless failures," does not help anybody. "Do as I say or I will punish you some more," is also rarely helpful. "This is why you don't deserve nice things," is unlikely to be motivational.
Petrilli also asked, via twitter, "Why put the needs of the most disadvantaged few above the needs of the also disadvantaged many?" I'd ask why we have to rank them at all? Particularly if we can't be sure we know which are which.
Find out what the students need. Help them get it.
What About the Gifted?
Petrilli suggested that leaving gifted students trapped with Those People is hard on them. I agree. Of course, I also think that gifted students can very often be Those People, so I'm not sure his plan is going to help. But lets pretend for a moment that we can reliably sort the goats from the sheep. What do we do?
Variable tracking works. I know tracking is considered Very Naughty. If you allow students a say in their tracks, it works. If you have some course that do not track or which track according to different criteria (phys ed, choir, arts), you can still have a mixed population, and still allow the best students space in which to be best.
And the Special?
Petrilli took some flak for talking about Alternative Schools, but done right, they also work. And designing them is a useful challenge, because it forces educators to ask a really important question that we don't ask often enough-- what needs to happen in order for these children to get an education, and what are we demanding really just to serve the ease of the institution?
Some students bring so much baggage that addressing it is a full time job. Can we educate them anyway? Probably. Do we have to send them to a gulag to do it? No. Do they benefit from having contact with their peers? Yes.
Democracy
Public schools are one of the few places left where citizens (albeit young ones) must still interact with people who are not just like them. Outside schools, we are becoming an increasingly walled-off society, and there are absolutely no signs that this is good for us. We have a huge prison population because our solution for dealing with difficult and different people is to send them away (or, unfortunately, increasingly, shoot them).
It is not so easy to sort the deserving from the undeserving; it is not even so easy to sort those that care from those that don't. But in a varied and mixed community, all can learn from all.
We can do better. We can do better in schools, where we have the chance to impart a basic life lesson-- there are people in the world who are not just like you. I don't subscribe to the Duncan theory that expectations and tests dissolve all functional differences between all students. But I do believe that being around other people, including other people who don't approach the world the same way you do, is humanizing and beneficial. However we are reaching the point where as a culture we are increasingly bad at it.
It may well be that we'll keep going this way, increasingly bellicose in our insistence that we will take care of our own and everybody else can go to hell. The problem is that history suggests that when a large sector of a nation's people are sent to hell, they tend to take large chunks of the whole country with them.
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