Mike McShane is guest-blogging at Rick Hess's EdWeek spot, and today he calls for a truce between sides in the education wars, except that he doesn't really, which is okay because what he's saying is worth paying attention to.
McShane starts with the story of the 1914 Christmas truce on the western front of the Great European War. It's an even more apt opening than it first appears, but let me get back to that shortly. McShane is calling for a similar truce between the warring sides of the battle for US public education, and he makes his pitch by suggesting that there are some important things that unite us. McShane says that people are getting stuck with "caricatured views of their ideological opponents," which is fair, although as with any highly divisive issue, there are plenty of people who insist on behaving like caricatures. But if we look past the caricatures, we can find things that unite us. Well, two things, anyway. He lists them as mistakes he thinks folks are making.
Letting Means Obscure Ends
McShane says that in interviewing people from across the spectrum, he found that both sides see themselves as opposing a goal of monolithic, unresponsive school systems. Conservatives want to avoid a giant governmental bureaucratic monolith, while liberals want to avoid a giant corporate monolith. At the same time, neither actually has a desire to create a large, unresponsive, monolithic system.
The difference, McShane suggests, is what the two sides see as an antidote to the monolith-- liberals like democracy, and conservatives like the free market. But both want to break up the monolith and create a system more responsive to the needs of students and the values of a community.
McShane's not wrong, but he's not entirely correct either. The free market and democracy are distorted reflections of each other. The free market is a form of democracy in which a dollar is a vote-- and therefore some people get to have more votes than others. In a democracy, Bill Gates has as many votes as I do. In the free market, Bill Gates has a gazillion more votes than I do. And because people tend to believe strongly in and value their preferred system, we all tend to launch with, "First, we have to get the system working the way it's supposed to so that we can get started on schools." But not everybody is in a position to make that happen. Folks who won at the Free Market Game are uniquely equipped to advocate that same game be played by everyone.
But there is a commonality that both sides can share, and it's the meat of McShane's argument. It's also why his call for a truce isn't really a call for a truce at all.
Not Recognizing a Common Enemy
What McShane really does in his piece is argue for a redrawing of battle lines. It's not so much that we could have a cease-fire-- it's that we need to start fighting the right people.
When Secretary Duncan says that education can be bipartisan, he means that centrist Republicans can coalesce around an essentially center-left technocratic vision of how to operate schools. They want centralized standards, test-based school and teacher accountability, and limited "quality" choices for students.
The real fight, McShane suggests, is not liberals versus conservatives, or democracy versus the free market-- it's collectivism versus individuals. And on this point, I do not disagree with him. The last fifty years or so of American government has been about the development of a new hybrid form of centralism, in which DC collects a bunch of power and then hands it over to corporate interests.
Politicians like centralized power because that gives them more control, more ability to realize their personal visions of a better place. Corporate interests have always been pro-centralization; from Rockefeller through Gates, business leaders have loved an open market until they are winning, at which point they do their best to shut down all diversity and competition. And everybody has at least moments in which they dream of a system that is more efficient, less wasteful, less cantankerous, a nation of happy people united boldly behind one clear, singularly correct vision-- which is the governmental equivalent of a squad of unicorns dancing on silver clouds with hippogryphs. It can't possibly happen, but it's so pretty to imagine.
So instead of lining up the Left against the Right, McShane would like to line up the Forces of Freedom against the Courts of Centralized Collectivism. This is not so much a truce as a redirection of attack.
This Is Not Easy
Parsing the battle along those lines makes lots of sense, but there are problems.
For one, there are sympathizers on both sides. There are pro-public ed folks who don't like Common Core in particular, but who think centralized national standards in general would be just fine. And there are plenty of privatizers whose believe in the free market only to the extent that it lets them take control and get rich.
There are people who reject ed reform but accept many of its premises; for instance, those who say the current high-stakes testing must go, but of course there must be some mechanism by which a central government can monitor school progress. Some folks reject standardization, but agree that education must progress pretty much the same from state to state; you don't get that without some centralized control. And there are people who just sincerely hate the inefficiency and mess that come with democracy and pluralism.
Nor is history on McShane's side. The ed wars didn't erupt through some form of spontaneous combustion. Reformsters came out swinging, hard, by demonizing public school teachers and creating a system designed to create failure rather than help schools succeed. At the same time, people who actually rather hate public education have come out hard against ed reform policies. Democrats have shat upon their traditional allies in public education, but Republicans have not leapt into the breach to make new friends. It has become quite a challenge for teachers to tell friend and foe apart. McShane's desire to redraw the lines involves a field that is already marked by lines drawn with a feather in fields of wet mud.
My Proposal for Lines Drawing
So we can redraw lines many ways. Centralists versus individualists. Corporate versus public. Urban versus rural. Efficiency versus robust flexibility. But I think there's another place to draw a line-- between the people who have money and power, and the people who don't.
The people with power and money have the means to impose their singular vision for education on everyone else. A classroom teacher or a thinky tank thoughtmeister are just two more people with opinions until they can get someone with power and money to listen to them. David Coleman was just a shmoe with a dream until he successfully bent Bill Gates' ear. Arne Duncan was just one more educational amateur who was sure he knew the Secret of Fixing Schools until he acquired the power to make everyone agree with him.
In other words, the world is filled with people who say, "Boy, if I ruled the world, this is what I'd make everybody do." Only the people who also have money and power are a problem. They will mostly want to have a centralized vision, and they place they envision as the center is the place where they're standing. Arne Duncan without a cushy government gig and Bill Gates without a personal fortune would just be two more guys on twitter scrambling for retweets and followers with the rest of us.
Where you find the threat of a centralized vision, you'll find somebody with money and/or power selling it, pushing it, enforcing it. And one technique of those with money and power for keeping the little people from storming the castle is to get the little people busy fighting each other.
The Great European War
Back in the day, I did plenty of reading and studying of what we now call WWI. One of the striking universal features of the war is that soldiers felt a stronger kinship with other soldiers than they did with the generals and politicians in cushy offices far from the front. Regardless of their nationality, these soldiers often expressed the idea that their biggest enemies were not the other soldiers in the other trenches, but the politicians, generals, and wealthy industrialists who had sent all the soldiers there to fight and die.
The rare truces that broke out at the front can be seen as moments in which the soldiers recognized their kinship, and also recognized that the real enemy was far away, comfortably ignorant of what was really going on at the front. The powerful were far away, making the decisions that would govern the war.
But of course all they did, for that day, was sing some carols and play some soccer. And by 1917, reports of such random truces were rare. They knew that while their real enemies were far away, they were also powerful and untouchable.
I look forward to the next installment of McShane's guest turn. I'm not sure what can be accomplished by a truce-- I think some truly unbridgeable differences in fundamental values stand in the way of significant alliances across these many lines that separate us. But I do believe that we can all benefit from the exercise of figuring out with whom we really agree and disagree, which in turn helps us clarify what we really want, all of which is infinitely preferable to knee-jerk reactions to the people we think we're supposed to align with (or not). And we can always listen. Don't stop paying attention to other things going on, but listen. It never hurts to listen.
Monday, December 22, 2014
Sunday, December 21, 2014
Talking Distraction
Dad Gone Wild has been on a streak of extra-sharp postings lately (though it belongs on your blogroll all the time), but I wanted to highlight a particular insight hiding in the midst of his recent post about the new education tsar in Tennessee.
Tennessee is one of many states that has seen the departure of some reformster leadership. Kevin Huffman has moved on, and the governor has named Dr. Candace McQueen to fill the spot. Some observers are happy about that because they see her as more qualified than Huffman, though that is a might low bar to clear since Huffman is a lawyer with a couple of years of Teach for America under his belt-- perfect qualifications for leading a state's education program. So McQueen, who has headed a teacher prep program and supposedly taught in a classroom or two, looks like an improvement. She's being hailed as a choice with appeal to both left and right, and met with calls to be bold and mend fences.
But Dad sees some red flags, particularly in the timing. McQueen will start out just before the legislative session, which promises to feature some bills ranging from reform-unfriendly to reform-rollbacky. Of course, since she's just started at that point, as is supposed to be a Common Core expert, Dad wonders if there won't be a call to just hang on, wait, talk about things, let her work. And he offers what I consider a great insight into one reformster tactic
I’m not trying to come off as a conspiracy nut, but that is standard operating procedure for the reform crowd. They love to play upon your reasonableness and get you talking. See reasonable people believe that while you are talking, both sides are suspending activities. Thats the trap. the reform crowd talks and builds at the same time. You don’t have to look any further then East Nashville to find evidence of that. While neighborhood groups were engaged in dialog about a KIPP take over and what it would look like, KIPP was meeting with the school district, hiring a principal and recruiting in the neighborhood. So guess what, they are now ready to implement their plan despite the fact that the community still hasn’t accepted it and the band plays on.
Good call. One of the features of the political landscape for the past couple of decades is the recognition that you don't really need people to agree with you to get things done. Just keep thm talking and meanwhile, do what you want to do.
It's an insight worth remembering. Not that I think there should never be conversation. I'm a big fan of engaging with anybody who wants to talk about the issues. But listening to what reformsters have to say should never take the place of paying attention to what they are actually doing. It's like those thieves that work in teams-- one at the front door occupying you with a tale of woe while the other slips in the back and steals your stuff. Don't let it turn you into the kind of person who never opens your front door to anybody. But keep your back door locked and stay alert.
Tennessee is one of many states that has seen the departure of some reformster leadership. Kevin Huffman has moved on, and the governor has named Dr. Candace McQueen to fill the spot. Some observers are happy about that because they see her as more qualified than Huffman, though that is a might low bar to clear since Huffman is a lawyer with a couple of years of Teach for America under his belt-- perfect qualifications for leading a state's education program. So McQueen, who has headed a teacher prep program and supposedly taught in a classroom or two, looks like an improvement. She's being hailed as a choice with appeal to both left and right, and met with calls to be bold and mend fences.
But Dad sees some red flags, particularly in the timing. McQueen will start out just before the legislative session, which promises to feature some bills ranging from reform-unfriendly to reform-rollbacky. Of course, since she's just started at that point, as is supposed to be a Common Core expert, Dad wonders if there won't be a call to just hang on, wait, talk about things, let her work. And he offers what I consider a great insight into one reformster tactic
I’m not trying to come off as a conspiracy nut, but that is standard operating procedure for the reform crowd. They love to play upon your reasonableness and get you talking. See reasonable people believe that while you are talking, both sides are suspending activities. Thats the trap. the reform crowd talks and builds at the same time. You don’t have to look any further then East Nashville to find evidence of that. While neighborhood groups were engaged in dialog about a KIPP take over and what it would look like, KIPP was meeting with the school district, hiring a principal and recruiting in the neighborhood. So guess what, they are now ready to implement their plan despite the fact that the community still hasn’t accepted it and the band plays on.
Good call. One of the features of the political landscape for the past couple of decades is the recognition that you don't really need people to agree with you to get things done. Just keep thm talking and meanwhile, do what you want to do.
It's an insight worth remembering. Not that I think there should never be conversation. I'm a big fan of engaging with anybody who wants to talk about the issues. But listening to what reformsters have to say should never take the place of paying attention to what they are actually doing. It's like those thieves that work in teams-- one at the front door occupying you with a tale of woe while the other slips in the back and steals your stuff. Don't let it turn you into the kind of person who never opens your front door to anybody. But keep your back door locked and stay alert.
Education Opportunity Network Newsmaker of the Year
From my library of Posts You Should Really Read (I do actually have such a library, and you can always find it here) come this end of the year post at Education Opportunity Network. I don't have a great deal to add to it, but part of hanging out in the blogosphere is trying to amplify other voices, because some things just ought to be widely read.
The post is a great reminder of some of the folks who came and went in the ed biz this year. Hard to believe that twelve months ago people were still paying attention to She Who Must Not Be Named, or that Campbell Brown turned from journalist to water-girl for corporate interests so very quickly.
But EON has reserved the Newsmaker of the Year award for charters, and they provide a well-collated linkfest-laden narrative that stretches all the way back to the 2013 article in Forbes of all places that laid out how charters were a gravy train running straight to Fat City and includes other great pieces of journalism like the Detroit Free Press series on charters that Rick Hess called "unhelpful" but which I call an awesome piece of actual journalism.
Since then, it has been a constant string of charter misbehavior, theft, scandal, and malfeasance. EON has collected most of the high points, from using charters to funnel money to religious schools to the embezzlement to the regular sudden disappearance of charters to the many techniques used to use non-profit organizations to magically turn public tax dollars into private profits (sometimes for corporations, sometimes for individuals). In Pennsylvania alone:
Startling examples of charter school financial malfeasance revealed by the authors included an administrator who diverted $2.6 million in school funds to a church property he also operated. Another charter school chief was caught spending millions in school funds to bail out other nonprofits associated with the school. A pair of charter school operators stole more than $900,000 from the school by using fraudulent invoices, and a cyber school entrepreneur diverted $8 million of school funds for houses, a Florida condominium, and an airplane.
So if you are looking for one stop shopping for news of charter misbehavior and a recognition of how the charter business has had a great year of twisting and torturing public education, this is your post to bookmark and save.
The post is a great reminder of some of the folks who came and went in the ed biz this year. Hard to believe that twelve months ago people were still paying attention to She Who Must Not Be Named, or that Campbell Brown turned from journalist to water-girl for corporate interests so very quickly.
But EON has reserved the Newsmaker of the Year award for charters, and they provide a well-collated linkfest-laden narrative that stretches all the way back to the 2013 article in Forbes of all places that laid out how charters were a gravy train running straight to Fat City and includes other great pieces of journalism like the Detroit Free Press series on charters that Rick Hess called "unhelpful" but which I call an awesome piece of actual journalism.
Since then, it has been a constant string of charter misbehavior, theft, scandal, and malfeasance. EON has collected most of the high points, from using charters to funnel money to religious schools to the embezzlement to the regular sudden disappearance of charters to the many techniques used to use non-profit organizations to magically turn public tax dollars into private profits (sometimes for corporations, sometimes for individuals). In Pennsylvania alone:
Startling examples of charter school financial malfeasance revealed by the authors included an administrator who diverted $2.6 million in school funds to a church property he also operated. Another charter school chief was caught spending millions in school funds to bail out other nonprofits associated with the school. A pair of charter school operators stole more than $900,000 from the school by using fraudulent invoices, and a cyber school entrepreneur diverted $8 million of school funds for houses, a Florida condominium, and an airplane.
So if you are looking for one stop shopping for news of charter misbehavior and a recognition of how the charter business has had a great year of twisting and torturing public education, this is your post to bookmark and save.
Defending The Test
Feeling feisty after a successful election run, Republicans are reportedly gunning for various limbs of the reformster octopus, and reformsters are circling the wagons for strategic defense of those sucker-covered limbs.
People are finally remembering that it's the ESEA, due to be transformed from No Child Left Behind into something new since 2007, which gives current reformster wave of waivers its power. Fix the ESEA properly and you cut the legs out from under the current non-laws governing K-12 education in this country. At Ed Week, Klein and Camera report that some GOP aides are already drafting a version of an ESEA rewrite that removes the federal testing mandate. I'm a fan of the idea; months ago, I picked high stakes testing as the reformy thing I'd most like to see die.
Massive high stakes testing is at the center of the reformster program, but it's also one of the most visible and widely hated features of reformsterism. Duncan and other bureaucrats have been issuing word salads aimed at changing the optics since last summer, but nothing of substance has been done to lessen the impact of high stakes testing. Duncan saying, "Schools shouldn't focus on testing so much" without changing any of the policies related to testing is like a mugger saying, "Don't be so pre-occupied with my gun" while he continues to take your wallet.
Our current system is positively Kafkaesque, or possibly Dilbertesque. Schools have literally stopped doing our jobs full time so that we can devote more time to generating reports on how well we're doing our job. Even if the Big Test were an accurate measure of how well we're doing our job (which they are most certainly not), the current set-up is unequivocally absolutely stupid. It is like having welders spend half as many hours welding so that they can write up reports on output of the welding unit in the factory. It's like having your boyfriend go on half as many dates so that he can stay home and write notes about how much he misses you. It's like feeding your baby half as many meals because you need to keep him on the scale to check if he's gaining enough weight.
Actually-- it's worse than all of those. It is supervisory bureaucrats believing that their part of the process-- checking on how the work is going-- is more important than actually doing the work.
Objections to cutting testing all fall into that category. They are all variations on, "But if testing is cut, how will my office know what is going on in classrooms." Well, dipstick, we are trying to tell you what is going on in classrooms-- teachers regularly stop doing actual teaching so that they can prepare for and take your damn tests.
People propose local tests. Reformsters complain that local people just don't know how to make sexy, rigorous tests as well as corporate sponsors like Pearson. People propose staggering the tests, taking only one a year, or one every couple of years. Reformsters claim that this would make it easier to game the system, as if the testing system is not one giant game right now.
In his defense of testing, Andy Smarick offers this list of benefits of annual testing:
Smarick shares with Andrew Saultz and others the belief that testing is also necessary in order to target failing schools. I call baloney on this. Smarick has been a critic of lousy urban schooling for a while; I don't believe for a second that he needed standardized test scores to conclude that some poor urban schools were doing a lousy job. If my hand is resting on a red-hot electric range, and the flesh is sizzling and smoke is curling up from my hand, I'm not standing there saying, "Hey, could someone bring me a thermometer so I could check this temp? I might have a problem here."
The one argument I can concede is that terrible test scores might allow activists to light a fire under the butts of non-responsive politicians (who would not notice a burning hand unless it was holding a thick stack of $100 bills). But we've had time for that to work, and it isn't happening. Lousy scores in poor urban schools are not being used to funnel resources, make infrastructure improvements or otherwise improve poor urban schools-- results are just being used to turn poor urban schools into investment and money-making opportunities for charter operators and investors, and after a few years those outfits have no successes to point to that aren't the result of creaming or creative number-crunching. So this pro-test argument is also invalid.
Mike Petrilli has also stepped up to defend testing. Responding to the reported rewrite initiatives he asks,
Do Republicans really want to scrap the transparency that comes from measuring student (and school and district) progress from year to year and go back to the Stone Age of judging schools based on a snapshot in time? Or worse, based on inputs, promises, and claims? Are they seriously proposing to eliminate the data that are powering great studies and new findings every day on topics from vouchers to charters to teacher effectiveness and more?
The biggest problem with Petrilli's defense is that the current battery of bad standardized tests are not accomplishing any of those things. They are not providing transparency; they are just providing more frequent bad data than the "stone age" technique. The current Big Tests get their own authority and power from nothing more than "inputs, promises and claims." For-profit corporations are really good at creating that kind of marketing copy, but that doesn't make it so. And if data from the Big Tests are powering great studies and new findings, I'd like to see just one of them, because I read up pretty extensively, and I haven't seen a thing that would match that description.
Petrilli does, however, have one interesting idea-- "kill the federal mandate around teacher evaluation and much of the over-testing will go away."
I've always said that Petrilli is no dummy (I"m sure he feels better knowing I've said it). Tying teacher (and therefore school, and, soon, the college from which the teachers graduated) evaluation to both The Test and to the teachers' career prospects guarantees that schools will be highly motivated to center much of everything around that test. This is an aspect of the testing biz that Arne either doesn't understand or is purposefully ignoring. I tend toward the latter; if we go back to the Race to the Top program, we see that teacher evaluation linked to test results is the top policy goal.
If the test result mandate didn't come from the feds, each state would come up with its own version. It might not be any better than the current situation, but we'd have fifty interesting fights instead of one big smothering federal blanket. And each state would still have to come up with some sort of answer to the question of how to evaluate a fifth grade art teacher with third grade math test results.
Of course, there's a trade-off with reducing pressure to do all testing, all the time. The less pressure associated with The Big Test, the more students will not even pretend to take the tests a little bit seriously, and the less valid the results will be (and as invalid as the results are now, there's plenty of room left for that to go further south).
Tests are going stay under the gun because they are at once both the most visible and most senseless part of reformsterism. They are an even easier target for Republicans that the Common Core itself because unlike CCSS, everybody knows exactly what they are and whether or not they've been rolled back, and their supporters can't point at a single concrete benefit to offset the anxiety, counter-intuitive results, and massive waste of school time. And tests have reached into millions of American homes to personally insult families ("You may think your child is bright and worthy, but I'm an official gummint test here to tell you that your kid is a big loser").
But tests will be vigorously defended because-- Good God!! Look at that mountain of money!! The business plan of Pearson et al is about way more testing, not less. Test data is important to create charter marketing and support voucher programs. And because technocrats need data to drive their vision of reform, so they can never admit that the emperor not only has no clothes, but also is not actually an emperor but rather a large hairless rat that has learned to walk on its hind legs.
In short, The Big Test may turn out to be the front line, the divider between people who are worried about actual live human children and people who are worried about programs and policies and -- Good God!! That mountain of money is sooooo huge!!! You can bet that as we speak, lobbyists and their ilk are being dispatched toot suite to do some 'splaining to those GOP politicians who are after the bread and butter. Keep your eyes peeled as we enter the new year to see how this plays out.
People are finally remembering that it's the ESEA, due to be transformed from No Child Left Behind into something new since 2007, which gives current reformster wave of waivers its power. Fix the ESEA properly and you cut the legs out from under the current non-laws governing K-12 education in this country. At Ed Week, Klein and Camera report that some GOP aides are already drafting a version of an ESEA rewrite that removes the federal testing mandate. I'm a fan of the idea; months ago, I picked high stakes testing as the reformy thing I'd most like to see die.
Massive high stakes testing is at the center of the reformster program, but it's also one of the most visible and widely hated features of reformsterism. Duncan and other bureaucrats have been issuing word salads aimed at changing the optics since last summer, but nothing of substance has been done to lessen the impact of high stakes testing. Duncan saying, "Schools shouldn't focus on testing so much" without changing any of the policies related to testing is like a mugger saying, "Don't be so pre-occupied with my gun" while he continues to take your wallet.
Our current system is positively Kafkaesque, or possibly Dilbertesque. Schools have literally stopped doing our jobs full time so that we can devote more time to generating reports on how well we're doing our job. Even if the Big Test were an accurate measure of how well we're doing our job (which they are most certainly not), the current set-up is unequivocally absolutely stupid. It is like having welders spend half as many hours welding so that they can write up reports on output of the welding unit in the factory. It's like having your boyfriend go on half as many dates so that he can stay home and write notes about how much he misses you. It's like feeding your baby half as many meals because you need to keep him on the scale to check if he's gaining enough weight.
Actually-- it's worse than all of those. It is supervisory bureaucrats believing that their part of the process-- checking on how the work is going-- is more important than actually doing the work.
Objections to cutting testing all fall into that category. They are all variations on, "But if testing is cut, how will my office know what is going on in classrooms." Well, dipstick, we are trying to tell you what is going on in classrooms-- teachers regularly stop doing actual teaching so that they can prepare for and take your damn tests.
People propose local tests. Reformsters complain that local people just don't know how to make sexy, rigorous tests as well as corporate sponsors like Pearson. People propose staggering the tests, taking only one a year, or one every couple of years. Reformsters claim that this would make it easier to game the system, as if the testing system is not one giant game right now.
In his defense of testing, Andy Smarick offers this list of benefits of annual testing:
- It makes clear that every student matters.
- It makes clear that the standards associated with every tested grade and subject matter.
- It forces us to continuously track all students, preventing our claiming surprise when scores are below expectations.
- It gives us the information needed to tailor interventions to the grades, subjects, and students in need.
- It gives families the information needed to make the case for necessary changes.
- It enables us to calculate student achievement growth, so schools and educators get credit for progress.
- It forces us to acknowledge that achievement gaps exist, persist, and grow over time.
- It prevents schools and districts from “hiding” less effective educators and programs in untested grades.
Smarick shares with Andrew Saultz and others the belief that testing is also necessary in order to target failing schools. I call baloney on this. Smarick has been a critic of lousy urban schooling for a while; I don't believe for a second that he needed standardized test scores to conclude that some poor urban schools were doing a lousy job. If my hand is resting on a red-hot electric range, and the flesh is sizzling and smoke is curling up from my hand, I'm not standing there saying, "Hey, could someone bring me a thermometer so I could check this temp? I might have a problem here."
The one argument I can concede is that terrible test scores might allow activists to light a fire under the butts of non-responsive politicians (who would not notice a burning hand unless it was holding a thick stack of $100 bills). But we've had time for that to work, and it isn't happening. Lousy scores in poor urban schools are not being used to funnel resources, make infrastructure improvements or otherwise improve poor urban schools-- results are just being used to turn poor urban schools into investment and money-making opportunities for charter operators and investors, and after a few years those outfits have no successes to point to that aren't the result of creaming or creative number-crunching. So this pro-test argument is also invalid.
Mike Petrilli has also stepped up to defend testing. Responding to the reported rewrite initiatives he asks,
Do Republicans really want to scrap the transparency that comes from measuring student (and school and district) progress from year to year and go back to the Stone Age of judging schools based on a snapshot in time? Or worse, based on inputs, promises, and claims? Are they seriously proposing to eliminate the data that are powering great studies and new findings every day on topics from vouchers to charters to teacher effectiveness and more?
The biggest problem with Petrilli's defense is that the current battery of bad standardized tests are not accomplishing any of those things. They are not providing transparency; they are just providing more frequent bad data than the "stone age" technique. The current Big Tests get their own authority and power from nothing more than "inputs, promises and claims." For-profit corporations are really good at creating that kind of marketing copy, but that doesn't make it so. And if data from the Big Tests are powering great studies and new findings, I'd like to see just one of them, because I read up pretty extensively, and I haven't seen a thing that would match that description.
Petrilli does, however, have one interesting idea-- "kill the federal mandate around teacher evaluation and much of the over-testing will go away."
I've always said that Petrilli is no dummy (I"m sure he feels better knowing I've said it). Tying teacher (and therefore school, and, soon, the college from which the teachers graduated) evaluation to both The Test and to the teachers' career prospects guarantees that schools will be highly motivated to center much of everything around that test. This is an aspect of the testing biz that Arne either doesn't understand or is purposefully ignoring. I tend toward the latter; if we go back to the Race to the Top program, we see that teacher evaluation linked to test results is the top policy goal.
If the test result mandate didn't come from the feds, each state would come up with its own version. It might not be any better than the current situation, but we'd have fifty interesting fights instead of one big smothering federal blanket. And each state would still have to come up with some sort of answer to the question of how to evaluate a fifth grade art teacher with third grade math test results.
Of course, there's a trade-off with reducing pressure to do all testing, all the time. The less pressure associated with The Big Test, the more students will not even pretend to take the tests a little bit seriously, and the less valid the results will be (and as invalid as the results are now, there's plenty of room left for that to go further south).
Tests are going stay under the gun because they are at once both the most visible and most senseless part of reformsterism. They are an even easier target for Republicans that the Common Core itself because unlike CCSS, everybody knows exactly what they are and whether or not they've been rolled back, and their supporters can't point at a single concrete benefit to offset the anxiety, counter-intuitive results, and massive waste of school time. And tests have reached into millions of American homes to personally insult families ("You may think your child is bright and worthy, but I'm an official gummint test here to tell you that your kid is a big loser").
But tests will be vigorously defended because-- Good God!! Look at that mountain of money!! The business plan of Pearson et al is about way more testing, not less. Test data is important to create charter marketing and support voucher programs. And because technocrats need data to drive their vision of reform, so they can never admit that the emperor not only has no clothes, but also is not actually an emperor but rather a large hairless rat that has learned to walk on its hind legs.
In short, The Big Test may turn out to be the front line, the divider between people who are worried about actual live human children and people who are worried about programs and policies and -- Good God!! That mountain of money is sooooo huge!!! You can bet that as we speak, lobbyists and their ilk are being dispatched toot suite to do some 'splaining to those GOP politicians who are after the bread and butter. Keep your eyes peeled as we enter the new year to see how this plays out.
Saturday, December 20, 2014
Cuomo to Teachers: Drop Dead
If you have not yet seen the letter from Cuomo aid Jim Malatras to ed leaders Tisch and King, you can find a copy right here. If you want to see just how direct and ugly an attack by a governor on his own state's public education system can be, you should read it. If you are a teacher in New York, you should read it twice.
I'll hit the highlights, not because the letter's particularly hard to parse, but because some things are just so ugly, they need to be held up to the light as much and as often as possible.
It opens with the observation that New York's low success percentages for proficiency on the Big Test are simply "unacceptable" and therefore Cuomo will make sure that the cut scores are set at more acceptable levels as determined by educators and not politicians. Ha! Just kidding. He's going to pretend that those proficiency numbers represent something other than political gamesmanship by the governor's office.
Speaking of proficiency, the next paragraph opens with this sentence:
Governor Cuomo believes in public education it can open up unlimited opportunity to our students.
I believe Malatras he is not a careful proofreader. I sympathize. I am the king of speedy mistakes, as my readers can attest. But I'm not on the state payroll, writing documents of record.
Malatras goes on to say that "virtually everyone" thinks the system must be reformed and improved, and I wonder if he's counting the people who believe that reformation and improvement start with getting Cuomo's grabby hands off public education's neck. But no-- three guesses where efforts to fix schools must be focused:
Part of the package will be to strengthen one of our most important professions teaching. While some seek to demonize teachers, Governor Cuomo believes the exact opposite wanting to reward excellence in teaching and by recruiting the best and brightest into the profession.
(Yes, the letter is riddled with mistakes. No further comment). Those damn teachers. those stupid incompetent teachers that Cuomo loves so very much.
Malatras goes on to note that the governor doesn't have a lot of control over education, and that this represents a wise and rational distribution of power in running a state. Ha! No, kidding again. Cuomo doesn't have that kind of power, so he's going to use the budget process to just take it. He's asking Tisch and King for their input on Cuomo's ideas as matter of policy (leave the politicking to the legislature). Here are Cuomo's Twelve Awesome Thoughts, with a bit of translation. You're welcome.
1) The teacher evaluation system sucks because it's not failing enough teachers. How can we jigger it so that more teachers are failed by it?
2) It's too hard to fire bad teachers. Hard work is hard. How can we make it less hard to get rid of the teachers that we'll be failing more of once we straighten out the evalouation process?
3) How can we make becoming a teacher harder? Because if we make it really hard to become a teacher, then teachers will be better. Can we give them all a competency test? Recruiting best and brightest would be cool.
4) Cuomo would still like to get merit pay up and running, because the fact that it has never worked anywhere doesn't change his love for how it would reduce payroll costs. Because recruiting teachers (point 3) goes better when you tell them they might get well paid if you feel like paying them more.
5) Could we make the pre-tenure period longer, and could we make their certification temporary so that they have to get re-approved every couple of years. We need to make them stop thinking of teaching as a lifetime career, because that's how you recruit the best and the brightest.
6) What can we do about schools that suck? Particularly Buffalo, because we would really like to accelerate the hand-over of Buffalo schools to charter operators, who make much better campaign contributions than low-paid teachers.
7) Charters? Charters charters charters. Can we just increase the cap in NYC? A whole lot?
8) Education special interests have resisted using courses delivered by computer. Could we just go ahead and do that anyway? Because one college instructor with a computer = 143 high school teachers we could fire.
9) What about mayoral control? It looked like a great idea in NYC until they elected some bozo who didn't get the deal with charters until Cuomo had the legislature rough him up a bit. Mayoral control is better than a damn elected board, but mayors are also elected and those damn voters are a pain in my ass.
10) Should we combine some of the 700 school districts in New York? (This might be the only thing on the list that isn't either evil or stupid. I would make fun of 700 different school districts in New York, but I'm in PA and we aren't any better).
11) The damn regents are appointed by the legislature. Do you think we should fix that, because having to work with people not under his direct control is a real problem for the governor.
12) We're about to replace Dr. King. Is there a way to have a transparent process to replace him with someone I pick?
Oddly enough, the Cuomo office has no interest in looking at rampant testing, craptastic canned curriculum, or widely unpopular standards. I would have said that it was hard to blame these not-beloved-by-teachers programs on teachers, but since Rudy Giuliani found a way to blame the death of Eric Garner on teachers, I'm going to accuse Cuomo of slacking on this department.
Several weeks ago Governor Cuomo said that improving education is thwarted by the monopoly of the education bureaucracy. The education bureaucracy's mission is to sustain the bureaucracy and the status quo and therefore it is often the enemy of change. The result is the current system perpetuates the bureaucracy but, fails our students in many ways.Tackling these questions with bold policy and leadership could truly transform public education and finally have it focus on the student as opposed to the bureaucracy.
Because having power centered in places that aren't the governor's office is just, you know, bad.
In a charming coda, Malatras notes that King might now give even better advice now that he is unshackled from the political demands of his office, because you know that John King-- he was always so constrained by his deep concern about public opinion, and his willingness to listen to the public just tied him up. Now as a federal bureaucrat hired outside any sort of approval system, he'll be free to disregard public opinion entirely. Because A) that's a good thing and B) it's not at all how he conducted himself in his New York job.
Man, I just hope all those New York teacher union officials who carried Cuomo's water throughout the primary season are really enjoying this unfettered direct attack against the profession and the public schools. Tisch and King are supposed to get back to Cuomo with their advice on how best to kick New York's teachers in the teeth by December 31, so to all my NY teacher neighbors, Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year. Enjoy the holidays, because 2015 will bring open season on public school teachers in the Empire State.
I'll hit the highlights, not because the letter's particularly hard to parse, but because some things are just so ugly, they need to be held up to the light as much and as often as possible.
It opens with the observation that New York's low success percentages for proficiency on the Big Test are simply "unacceptable" and therefore Cuomo will make sure that the cut scores are set at more acceptable levels as determined by educators and not politicians. Ha! Just kidding. He's going to pretend that those proficiency numbers represent something other than political gamesmanship by the governor's office.
Speaking of proficiency, the next paragraph opens with this sentence:
Governor Cuomo believes in public education it can open up unlimited opportunity to our students.
I believe Malatras he is not a careful proofreader. I sympathize. I am the king of speedy mistakes, as my readers can attest. But I'm not on the state payroll, writing documents of record.
Malatras goes on to say that "virtually everyone" thinks the system must be reformed and improved, and I wonder if he's counting the people who believe that reformation and improvement start with getting Cuomo's grabby hands off public education's neck. But no-- three guesses where efforts to fix schools must be focused:
Part of the package will be to strengthen one of our most important professions teaching. While some seek to demonize teachers, Governor Cuomo believes the exact opposite wanting to reward excellence in teaching and by recruiting the best and brightest into the profession.
(Yes, the letter is riddled with mistakes. No further comment). Those damn teachers. those stupid incompetent teachers that Cuomo loves so very much.
Malatras goes on to note that the governor doesn't have a lot of control over education, and that this represents a wise and rational distribution of power in running a state. Ha! No, kidding again. Cuomo doesn't have that kind of power, so he's going to use the budget process to just take it. He's asking Tisch and King for their input on Cuomo's ideas as matter of policy (leave the politicking to the legislature). Here are Cuomo's Twelve Awesome Thoughts, with a bit of translation. You're welcome.
1) The teacher evaluation system sucks because it's not failing enough teachers. How can we jigger it so that more teachers are failed by it?
2) It's too hard to fire bad teachers. Hard work is hard. How can we make it less hard to get rid of the teachers that we'll be failing more of once we straighten out the evalouation process?
3) How can we make becoming a teacher harder? Because if we make it really hard to become a teacher, then teachers will be better. Can we give them all a competency test? Recruiting best and brightest would be cool.
4) Cuomo would still like to get merit pay up and running, because the fact that it has never worked anywhere doesn't change his love for how it would reduce payroll costs. Because recruiting teachers (point 3) goes better when you tell them they might get well paid if you feel like paying them more.
5) Could we make the pre-tenure period longer, and could we make their certification temporary so that they have to get re-approved every couple of years. We need to make them stop thinking of teaching as a lifetime career, because that's how you recruit the best and the brightest.
6) What can we do about schools that suck? Particularly Buffalo, because we would really like to accelerate the hand-over of Buffalo schools to charter operators, who make much better campaign contributions than low-paid teachers.
7) Charters? Charters charters charters. Can we just increase the cap in NYC? A whole lot?
8) Education special interests have resisted using courses delivered by computer. Could we just go ahead and do that anyway? Because one college instructor with a computer = 143 high school teachers we could fire.
9) What about mayoral control? It looked like a great idea in NYC until they elected some bozo who didn't get the deal with charters until Cuomo had the legislature rough him up a bit. Mayoral control is better than a damn elected board, but mayors are also elected and those damn voters are a pain in my ass.
10) Should we combine some of the 700 school districts in New York? (This might be the only thing on the list that isn't either evil or stupid. I would make fun of 700 different school districts in New York, but I'm in PA and we aren't any better).
11) The damn regents are appointed by the legislature. Do you think we should fix that, because having to work with people not under his direct control is a real problem for the governor.
12) We're about to replace Dr. King. Is there a way to have a transparent process to replace him with someone I pick?
Oddly enough, the Cuomo office has no interest in looking at rampant testing, craptastic canned curriculum, or widely unpopular standards. I would have said that it was hard to blame these not-beloved-by-teachers programs on teachers, but since Rudy Giuliani found a way to blame the death of Eric Garner on teachers, I'm going to accuse Cuomo of slacking on this department.
Several weeks ago Governor Cuomo said that improving education is thwarted by the monopoly of the education bureaucracy. The education bureaucracy's mission is to sustain the bureaucracy and the status quo and therefore it is often the enemy of change. The result is the current system perpetuates the bureaucracy but, fails our students in many ways.Tackling these questions with bold policy and leadership could truly transform public education and finally have it focus on the student as opposed to the bureaucracy.
Because having power centered in places that aren't the governor's office is just, you know, bad.
In a charming coda, Malatras notes that King might now give even better advice now that he is unshackled from the political demands of his office, because you know that John King-- he was always so constrained by his deep concern about public opinion, and his willingness to listen to the public just tied him up. Now as a federal bureaucrat hired outside any sort of approval system, he'll be free to disregard public opinion entirely. Because A) that's a good thing and B) it's not at all how he conducted himself in his New York job.
Man, I just hope all those New York teacher union officials who carried Cuomo's water throughout the primary season are really enjoying this unfettered direct attack against the profession and the public schools. Tisch and King are supposed to get back to Cuomo with their advice on how best to kick New York's teachers in the teeth by December 31, so to all my NY teacher neighbors, Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year. Enjoy the holidays, because 2015 will bring open season on public school teachers in the Empire State.
What Has Arne Learned?
Over at the official blog of the Department of Education, Secretary Arne Duncan shares "What I've Learned in Fifty States." Spoiler alert: nothing.
Arne can be excused. Many people are unclear about the meaning of "learn." Learning implies a change of state, a movement from not-knowing to knowing, from not-understanding to understanding. The world has a large supply of people who are not interested in a change of state, and so their interactions with the world around them are not about understanding or grasping or discovering, but about confirmation. They are not looking for a change of state, but of a more solid, comfortable settling into their status quo.
Politics are not conducive to learning. You don't get many political points for saying, "Hey, I've look at some facts, talked to some people, examined the issue, and I've come to a different understanding." In life, we aspire to be, find, foster life-long learners. In politics, learning just gets you a "flip-flopper" label.
So it's not particularly surprising that in traveling through fifty states, Arne "learned" that he's always been right about everything. Not once in fifty states did he encounter something that made him say, "Damn. I need to rethink this."
Can Arne learn? It's a tough call to make from out here in the cheap seats. NEA president Lily Eskelsen-Garcia once declared that he was well-intentioned and sincere, but just wrong. Many folks suggest that he's corrupt and in the pocket of business interests, but I think that's facile. That kind of corruption comes in various shades, few of them simple quid pro quo pay-to-play. I think it's more common that you spend time with rich, important people and they are charismatic and they seem to make a of sense and so, hey, you adopt their view because it just seems so right. I look at things like the last Pearson essay about testing and, man, it looks and sounds like the work of really important people who really know what they're doing, and if I weren't inclined to be a skeptical asshole, I might find it pretty convincing. Maybe Arne's just in way over his head and he's naturally attracted to the cutest lifeguard that fishes him out of the water. Maybe he just doesn't know any better. This is a mystery I still to solve with the clues that make it out to the cheap seats because as it turns out, Arne and I just haven't had a face-to-face conversation yet.
Arne wants us to believe that he's really been listening, but poking through his map of visits reveals very few actual encounters with actual teachers in actual public school settings.
During the past five years, whether my visit was to a conference, a community center, a business, an early childhood center, a university, or one of the more than 340 schools I’ve stopped by, I’ve come away with new insight and knowledge into the challenges local communities face, and the creative ways people are addressing them. I know that in order to do this job well, it’s vital to never stop listening, especially to those in the classroom each day.
Except that most of those 340 schools were backdrops for political business, settings for conferences or announcements that allowed for good eyewash for department business as usual. And when Arne tells me that he's come away with new insights and knowledge, I challenge him to cite a specific example. I'm not going to hold my breath waiting; can anybody remember a single moment in his career that Arne has said, "Hey, from seeing how this looks on the ground, I've learned this thing that I didn't previously understand/know/believe"?
Duncan goes on to cite some specific visits in which he was excited to discover that he has been right all along and that his policies are awesome. This is not learning. By the end of this piece of puffery, it's clear that Arne has learned nothing in five years, but he has collected confirmations of his pre-existing beliefs.
He's had the chance. Say what you want about the people in the Resistance opposing the reformster policies and programs-- we aren't very hard to find. Find just one of our blogs, and the links will open up a whole world of differing opinions and spirited discourse. LEG reported a fairly direct conversation with him. And to his credit, he once actually sat in a room with some BATs. At this point Arne really has no excuse for not being at least familiar with the real arguments against his policies. He could learn about the data that shows how VAM is a failed useless tool, or that his testing program is disastrous, or that modern charters are an unregulated theft-fest. And yet somehow, even a simple "We don't all agree on how best to serve students in America's public schools" doesn't make his list.
I go back to the department blog because it is a striking example of writing at its absolute worst. It fails first in voice. There really isn't anything here to indicate that the post was written by a real person; it could as easily have been written by an intern with Arne's itinerary and a list of department talking points open in front of him. It's seemingly meant to be a personal reflection, and yet there is nothing personal about it, no trace of personality in it. This adds to the cumulative impression I've formed of Arne; he seems to bring nothing personal to his job, but seems to view it as the business of implementing ideas, policies and talking points that he has no personal investment in. When you can take it, try looking for a clip of Arne talking about basketball, and compare it to one of his official secretarial duties. Only one of those activities seems to awaken any personal passion in him (spoiler alert: it's not the one that involves your tax dollars at work).
But this is also the sort of writing that makes me scratch my head and look around for an audience. It's like a man on a soapbox delivering a desultory sermon to nobody. Who did he imagine reading this? Are his critics supposed to be reading it and thinking, "Damn, I've had this guy all wrong. I am now convinced of his rightitude!" Are his supporters (I imagine there must be a few) suppose to take heart from a rousing pep speech, because I don't think this is that. Is it supposed to give journalists something to cover? Because there's nothing either new or strikingly quotable here. I will bet you dollars to donuts that I am at this moment writing the longest response to the piece that is ever going to be written.
The basic point of writing is that you have something you want to say and somebody you want to say it to. Arne's essay appears to fail on both points.
I take it as the intersection of Arne in particular and politics in general-- a pointless, empty exercise in talking to the air to signify, at a minimum, that you are still doing something, and that nothing has changed (just in case anybody was wondering). Devoid of personality, purpose or passion, it hints at a bureaucrat who has simply lost his moorings and any particular contact with actual human beings and the world they live in, but who may not realize that he's even adrift.
Arne opens with the observation that the best ideas come from outside Washington, DC, which is of course the kind of thing said only by people soaked in DC culture (or its outposts in places like, say, Chicago). Just add that to list of things that Arne hasn't learned. As a summative self-assessment, this is not top notch work. Perhaps, rather than trying to advance on merit, Arne is counting on one more social promotion.
Arne can be excused. Many people are unclear about the meaning of "learn." Learning implies a change of state, a movement from not-knowing to knowing, from not-understanding to understanding. The world has a large supply of people who are not interested in a change of state, and so their interactions with the world around them are not about understanding or grasping or discovering, but about confirmation. They are not looking for a change of state, but of a more solid, comfortable settling into their status quo.
Politics are not conducive to learning. You don't get many political points for saying, "Hey, I've look at some facts, talked to some people, examined the issue, and I've come to a different understanding." In life, we aspire to be, find, foster life-long learners. In politics, learning just gets you a "flip-flopper" label.
So it's not particularly surprising that in traveling through fifty states, Arne "learned" that he's always been right about everything. Not once in fifty states did he encounter something that made him say, "Damn. I need to rethink this."
Can Arne learn? It's a tough call to make from out here in the cheap seats. NEA president Lily Eskelsen-Garcia once declared that he was well-intentioned and sincere, but just wrong. Many folks suggest that he's corrupt and in the pocket of business interests, but I think that's facile. That kind of corruption comes in various shades, few of them simple quid pro quo pay-to-play. I think it's more common that you spend time with rich, important people and they are charismatic and they seem to make a of sense and so, hey, you adopt their view because it just seems so right. I look at things like the last Pearson essay about testing and, man, it looks and sounds like the work of really important people who really know what they're doing, and if I weren't inclined to be a skeptical asshole, I might find it pretty convincing. Maybe Arne's just in way over his head and he's naturally attracted to the cutest lifeguard that fishes him out of the water. Maybe he just doesn't know any better. This is a mystery I still to solve with the clues that make it out to the cheap seats because as it turns out, Arne and I just haven't had a face-to-face conversation yet.
Arne wants us to believe that he's really been listening, but poking through his map of visits reveals very few actual encounters with actual teachers in actual public school settings.
During the past five years, whether my visit was to a conference, a community center, a business, an early childhood center, a university, or one of the more than 340 schools I’ve stopped by, I’ve come away with new insight and knowledge into the challenges local communities face, and the creative ways people are addressing them. I know that in order to do this job well, it’s vital to never stop listening, especially to those in the classroom each day.
Except that most of those 340 schools were backdrops for political business, settings for conferences or announcements that allowed for good eyewash for department business as usual. And when Arne tells me that he's come away with new insights and knowledge, I challenge him to cite a specific example. I'm not going to hold my breath waiting; can anybody remember a single moment in his career that Arne has said, "Hey, from seeing how this looks on the ground, I've learned this thing that I didn't previously understand/know/believe"?
Duncan goes on to cite some specific visits in which he was excited to discover that he has been right all along and that his policies are awesome. This is not learning. By the end of this piece of puffery, it's clear that Arne has learned nothing in five years, but he has collected confirmations of his pre-existing beliefs.
He's had the chance. Say what you want about the people in the Resistance opposing the reformster policies and programs-- we aren't very hard to find. Find just one of our blogs, and the links will open up a whole world of differing opinions and spirited discourse. LEG reported a fairly direct conversation with him. And to his credit, he once actually sat in a room with some BATs. At this point Arne really has no excuse for not being at least familiar with the real arguments against his policies. He could learn about the data that shows how VAM is a failed useless tool, or that his testing program is disastrous, or that modern charters are an unregulated theft-fest. And yet somehow, even a simple "We don't all agree on how best to serve students in America's public schools" doesn't make his list.
I go back to the department blog because it is a striking example of writing at its absolute worst. It fails first in voice. There really isn't anything here to indicate that the post was written by a real person; it could as easily have been written by an intern with Arne's itinerary and a list of department talking points open in front of him. It's seemingly meant to be a personal reflection, and yet there is nothing personal about it, no trace of personality in it. This adds to the cumulative impression I've formed of Arne; he seems to bring nothing personal to his job, but seems to view it as the business of implementing ideas, policies and talking points that he has no personal investment in. When you can take it, try looking for a clip of Arne talking about basketball, and compare it to one of his official secretarial duties. Only one of those activities seems to awaken any personal passion in him (spoiler alert: it's not the one that involves your tax dollars at work).
But this is also the sort of writing that makes me scratch my head and look around for an audience. It's like a man on a soapbox delivering a desultory sermon to nobody. Who did he imagine reading this? Are his critics supposed to be reading it and thinking, "Damn, I've had this guy all wrong. I am now convinced of his rightitude!" Are his supporters (I imagine there must be a few) suppose to take heart from a rousing pep speech, because I don't think this is that. Is it supposed to give journalists something to cover? Because there's nothing either new or strikingly quotable here. I will bet you dollars to donuts that I am at this moment writing the longest response to the piece that is ever going to be written.
The basic point of writing is that you have something you want to say and somebody you want to say it to. Arne's essay appears to fail on both points.
I take it as the intersection of Arne in particular and politics in general-- a pointless, empty exercise in talking to the air to signify, at a minimum, that you are still doing something, and that nothing has changed (just in case anybody was wondering). Devoid of personality, purpose or passion, it hints at a bureaucrat who has simply lost his moorings and any particular contact with actual human beings and the world they live in, but who may not realize that he's even adrift.
Arne opens with the observation that the best ideas come from outside Washington, DC, which is of course the kind of thing said only by people soaked in DC culture (or its outposts in places like, say, Chicago). Just add that to list of things that Arne hasn't learned. As a summative self-assessment, this is not top notch work. Perhaps, rather than trying to advance on merit, Arne is counting on one more social promotion.
Friday, December 19, 2014
College Ratings Framework
Folks who are invested in the education debates can be excused for getting two issues slightly confused in the last month. Arne Duncan's Department of Education has been floating two college related proposals. One is the foolish and unsupportable proposal to rate colleges of education on the test scores of their former students' students. The other is to rate all colleges and universities according to...well, that's what's being discussed.
This factsheet about the college ratings framework will give you a good idea of what's going on. It opens with some stirring words from the Dunc-meister himself.
As a nation, we have to make college more accessible and affordable and ensure that all students graduate with any education of real value. Our students deserve to know, before they enroll, that the schools they’ve chosen will deliver this value. With the guidance of thousands of wise voices, we can develop a useful ratings system that will help more Americans realize the dream of a degree that unleashes their potential and opens doors to a better life.
Every time this administration talks about making college more affordable, I'm forced to remember the reports that the Department of Education is making huge profits from college loans. If the feds could show even half the interest rate love to students that they show to banksters, the "more affordable" part of Dunckie's dream would get somewhat closer. But this is a pretty standard pattern for this business-friendly administration-- we want to get SATs and AP tests and college and health care to every Ameican, as long as we don't have to ask corporations to give up any of their profit margin to do it.
Since the administration's premise is that education is the only thing that will help fix financial and social inequity (again, anything that would bite into corporate profits is off the table), they've got to somehow camouflage the evidence that our current post-secondary system reinforces the Walls Between the Classes rather than breaking them down.
The factsheet lists some of the administration's "achievements," including increasing Pell grants and Opportunity Tax Credits. They're also proud of capping student loan payments at 10% of monthly income, guaranteeing that students will be able to keep paying those loans off until they are eligible for Social Security (whether they'll get any or not is another discussion).
But the administration also wants to put pressure on colleges, because if there's notenough social mobility in America, the only possible explanation is that some colleges suck. So we'd like to rate colleges on many qualities, including but not limited to, enrolling students from many backgrounds, focusing on affordability, and good graduation rate. Here's what the feds think they know so far about rating access, affordability, and outcomes.
Rating categories. Lots of folks have told the Dunc-inator that rankings and false precision would be a bad idea, so the department is leaning toward three ratings: high-performing, low-performing, and those in the middle. This is a bit of a weasel because the choice on what to call those in the middle will be telling. "Adequate," "well-performing," and "meh" would all fit the descriptor, but provide much different impressions to consumers.
Institutional grouping. A system that allows consumers to compare Harvard Law School and Bob's Truck Driving Academy isn't particularly useful to anybody. The department agrees that taking the goals and type of institutions into account would help ratings make more sense.
Data. They'll start out using data from federal systems, IPEDS and NSLDS. They will keep it just as safe and secure as... well, let's not think about that.
Metrics being considered? What percentage of students are Pelling? Expected family contribution. Family income quintiles. First-generation college students. These would be a measure of how diverse the school population is. Average net price and net price by quintile would look at affordability. Completion rates and transfer rates would speak to successful completion, and labor market success would be another outcome measure. The department is thinking about measuring labor market success not just in job placement, but in income above a certain threshold. Grad school attendance would fit in the outcomes. And for fun, let's throw in how graduates do at repaying their loans.
Yes, let me back up, in case you missed it-- maybe we should evaluate colleges on how much money their graduates make.
It's an interesting assortment, since many of these are beyond the control of the college in question. But some of these would be good things to know, even as many of them will just demonstrate that rich people who go to rich people colleges grow up to be rich people. Boy, that was useful. Unfortunately, the department thinks there is one more step to take here.
Next Steps, College Ratings Website, and Transparency Tools
It's not clear why, having collected this data, we would need a rating system. The government currently requires food companies to list nutritional information on their packaging, but it does not assign a rating based on that data. Nutritional labeling remains one of my all-time favorite examples of government in action-- I get the information I need to make the choices that best suit me. I don't need the feds to label the food "Good" or Healthy" or "Fatty Fat Fat." I can interpret the data in the way that best suits my needs, beliefs, and inclinations.
If the feds want to give students and families more information about colleges, that would be fine. I don't need the feds to interpret the data for me, based on what they think I should want and need. But as Under Secretary Ted Mitchell notes in his closing comments, the feds also like the idea of awarding money (or not) based on their own rating system. So once again we have the administration acting like cartoon versions of what non-liberals hate about liberals-- the idea that people just shouldn't be left to make up their own minds about things because federal bureaucrats can make much wiser choices for them than they can make for themselves.
Add that on top of the bitter irony that this is the federal government that announced its intention to bring the hammer down on predatory for-profit colleges, and yet, when the biggest offender in the pack turned up, these same feds mostly protected the financial interests of the owners. In short, these guys who want to get super-involved in determining the best interests of students already have a lousy record in looking out for the best interests of students. In really short, if you're going to insist on federal overreach, at least show some aptitude for it.
The Department invites comment from the public on the draft framework by Tuesday, Feb.17, 2015. Submissions can be submitted through the online form at http://www.ed.gov/blog/collegeratings or by email to collegefeedback@ed.gov
This factsheet about the college ratings framework will give you a good idea of what's going on. It opens with some stirring words from the Dunc-meister himself.
As a nation, we have to make college more accessible and affordable and ensure that all students graduate with any education of real value. Our students deserve to know, before they enroll, that the schools they’ve chosen will deliver this value. With the guidance of thousands of wise voices, we can develop a useful ratings system that will help more Americans realize the dream of a degree that unleashes their potential and opens doors to a better life.
Every time this administration talks about making college more affordable, I'm forced to remember the reports that the Department of Education is making huge profits from college loans. If the feds could show even half the interest rate love to students that they show to banksters, the "more affordable" part of Dunckie's dream would get somewhat closer. But this is a pretty standard pattern for this business-friendly administration-- we want to get SATs and AP tests and college and health care to every Ameican, as long as we don't have to ask corporations to give up any of their profit margin to do it.
Since the administration's premise is that education is the only thing that will help fix financial and social inequity (again, anything that would bite into corporate profits is off the table), they've got to somehow camouflage the evidence that our current post-secondary system reinforces the Walls Between the Classes rather than breaking them down.
The factsheet lists some of the administration's "achievements," including increasing Pell grants and Opportunity Tax Credits. They're also proud of capping student loan payments at 10% of monthly income, guaranteeing that students will be able to keep paying those loans off until they are eligible for Social Security (whether they'll get any or not is another discussion).
But the administration also wants to put pressure on colleges, because if there's notenough social mobility in America, the only possible explanation is that some colleges suck. So we'd like to rate colleges on many qualities, including but not limited to, enrolling students from many backgrounds, focusing on affordability, and good graduation rate. Here's what the feds think they know so far about rating access, affordability, and outcomes.
Rating categories. Lots of folks have told the Dunc-inator that rankings and false precision would be a bad idea, so the department is leaning toward three ratings: high-performing, low-performing, and those in the middle. This is a bit of a weasel because the choice on what to call those in the middle will be telling. "Adequate," "well-performing," and "meh" would all fit the descriptor, but provide much different impressions to consumers.
Institutional grouping. A system that allows consumers to compare Harvard Law School and Bob's Truck Driving Academy isn't particularly useful to anybody. The department agrees that taking the goals and type of institutions into account would help ratings make more sense.
Data. They'll start out using data from federal systems, IPEDS and NSLDS. They will keep it just as safe and secure as... well, let's not think about that.
Metrics being considered? What percentage of students are Pelling? Expected family contribution. Family income quintiles. First-generation college students. These would be a measure of how diverse the school population is. Average net price and net price by quintile would look at affordability. Completion rates and transfer rates would speak to successful completion, and labor market success would be another outcome measure. The department is thinking about measuring labor market success not just in job placement, but in income above a certain threshold. Grad school attendance would fit in the outcomes. And for fun, let's throw in how graduates do at repaying their loans.
Yes, let me back up, in case you missed it-- maybe we should evaluate colleges on how much money their graduates make.
It's an interesting assortment, since many of these are beyond the control of the college in question. But some of these would be good things to know, even as many of them will just demonstrate that rich people who go to rich people colleges grow up to be rich people. Boy, that was useful. Unfortunately, the department thinks there is one more step to take here.
Next Steps, College Ratings Website, and Transparency Tools
It's not clear why, having collected this data, we would need a rating system. The government currently requires food companies to list nutritional information on their packaging, but it does not assign a rating based on that data. Nutritional labeling remains one of my all-time favorite examples of government in action-- I get the information I need to make the choices that best suit me. I don't need the feds to label the food "Good" or Healthy" or "Fatty Fat Fat." I can interpret the data in the way that best suits my needs, beliefs, and inclinations.
If the feds want to give students and families more information about colleges, that would be fine. I don't need the feds to interpret the data for me, based on what they think I should want and need. But as Under Secretary Ted Mitchell notes in his closing comments, the feds also like the idea of awarding money (or not) based on their own rating system. So once again we have the administration acting like cartoon versions of what non-liberals hate about liberals-- the idea that people just shouldn't be left to make up their own minds about things because federal bureaucrats can make much wiser choices for them than they can make for themselves.
Add that on top of the bitter irony that this is the federal government that announced its intention to bring the hammer down on predatory for-profit colleges, and yet, when the biggest offender in the pack turned up, these same feds mostly protected the financial interests of the owners. In short, these guys who want to get super-involved in determining the best interests of students already have a lousy record in looking out for the best interests of students. In really short, if you're going to insist on federal overreach, at least show some aptitude for it.
The Department invites comment from the public on the draft framework by Tuesday, Feb.17, 2015. Submissions can be submitted through the online form at http://www.ed.gov/blog/collegeratings or by email to collegefeedback@ed.gov
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