News comes from Indianapolis this week that two of the older charters in town are being shut down. Fall Creek Academy and University Heights Preparatory Academy are going to that Big Chalkboard in the sky.
Fall Creek actually goes back to the days when then-Mayor Bart Peterson could whip up charters at will thanks to a magic mayoral empowerment law that Indiana passed just for his city (Peterson has since moved on to making money more directly in the charter biz). After a strong start, the school fell on less stellar times, and when the city pulled the charter, they turned to Ball State University. It's Ball State that has now shown them the door "due to chronic underperformance"
I don't know much more about these charters; I don't know if they're the victims of gross injustice or incompetents long overdue for being closed down. That's not what I noticed about the story. What I noticed was the headline:
ANGER BUILDS! Over Closing of Fall Creek & University Heights Charters. Why Won’t Ball State Explain; Respond?
The article also contains this sentence:
Parents wanted to know why and were stunned to hear that officials from Ball State weren’t prepared to personally answer their concerns.
I want to feel bad for these parents. I really do. But it's like trying to feel bad for people who smoke cigarettes for the health benefits and then are shocked and upset when they get cancer. It's like people who buy a long-haired dog and are upset that there's fur on the furniture. It's like people who hit themselves in the head with a hammer and complain about the headache.
Here are two things for charter school customers to remember, so they can avoid being shocked, stunned, angry or otherwise surprised in the future.
Charters are not run by elected school boards. They do not have to answer to the voters. They do not have to answer to the customers. They do not have to explain anything, and in some cases have gone to court to fight for their right to be just as non-transparent as they want to be. They are a business, and they don't have to show you their decision making process any more than McDonald's has to show you the recipe for their special sauce.
Charters can close at any time for any reason. People seem to automatically associate the idea of a school with the idea of permanence. That's incorrect. Public schools are permanent. Charter schools are not. Public schools represent a community commitment to provide schooling as long as it's needed. Charter schools represent a business decision to operate as long as it makes sense. Enrolling your child in a charter is making a bet that the school will be in business as long as you want to send your child to it. If you lose the bet, you have to know that losing was always a possibility when you made the bet in the first place.
Considering a charter? Do your homework and understand the risks that come with choosing a charter. Pro tip: "doing your homework" does not mean "listening to charter sales pitch and nothing else." That's like getting info about the car you want to buy only from the salesman trying to sell it to you.
I believe it's possible to find charters that do a pretty okay job out there, but any charter comes with certainly fundamental differences from public school, and some come with differences that can be shocking or stunning if you haven't been paying attention. Bottom line? Charter schools are not created to be just like public schools-- and they aren't. If you're going to understand anything about putting your child in a charter, that's the bare minimum that you need to grasp.
Friday, January 23, 2015
Involuntary Free Market
I've written before about how the free market is a terrible match for public education (here, here and here, for example).
The actual free market (or as we actually experience it in America, the free-ish market) offers plenty of examples of the such a market wouldn't really serve education well at all. There are myriad examples of the triumph of marketing over quality, or market forces discouraging excellence, but for the moment, I'm going to ignore all of that.
Instead, let's consider one way in which the educational "marketplace" differs from every other free market arena-- involuntary customers.
We recently shopped for coffee makers at my house, so let's use them as an example. The coffee gadget market has a wide range of choices, ranging from cheap crap with a limited lifespan up to really expensive machinery that will carry itself to planned obsolescence with style and grace. But they all have one in common-- they are all made to be marketed to people who want to drink coffee.
But what would happen if Congress passed the Personal Use Coffee Maker Act of 2015, requiring every single person in the country to have a working coffee machine?
PUCMA would have little effect on people already owning a perfectly good coffee maker. But now the market would expand to include people who don't actually want to drink coffee, and wise coffee maker makers would find ways to market to that group as well.
Here's a coffee maker that makes verrrrry tiny cups of coffee, so you don't have more than spoonful to drink. Here's a coffee maker whose main feature is that it looks pretty on your counter. Here's a coffee maker that is an absolute piece of useless crap, but it is as cheap as we could make it and still be PUCMA compliant. Here's a coffee maker that actually makes decent hot chocolate. This one is actually a smoothie machine. This one makes a great cheese sandwich.
When a market is expanded to include people who don't actually want your product, market forces not only fail to foster excellence, but they actually foster crappiness.
I believe in the power and importance of a K-12 education; that's why I chose the work that I do. But I recognize that not everybody sees value in pubic education. I have met parents who would like their children to attend a school that never, ever gives any assignment that requires work outside of school. I have met parents who would like their children to attend a school where only sports matter. I have met parents who would like their children to attend a school that only requires the child to show up only a few days out of every week. In a free market education world, could I make money marketing a school for those parents? You bet I could. Just as I could make money marketing a school that will never challenge a child's beliefs with science, or a school devoted to The One True Religion (whichever one will give me the best market share), or a school that lets them sit at home in their PJs and never do school work unless they're in the mood.
In fact, the one free market option that rarely comes up in these discussions of the power of competition in a free market is the option to not be part of the market.
You want to make a true free market for education? Repeal all mandatory school attendance laws.
Of course almost nobody wants to do that because we recognize that it would not only create chaos for the schools and, worse yet, a long-term mess for our whole society because (as I've said many times) parents are NOT the only stakeholders when it comes to education.
We don't repeal mandatory school attendance laws because it would be bad for society as a whole. Why would it be any better to allow a system in which a child could choose Might As Well Not Be Bothering To Attend High School? I'm thinking of the K12 cyber charter ads in PA that made the pitch, "Pick a school that won't get in the way of your kids' sports schedule" or asked "Is your child happy in school." Charter and voucher fans can say, "Oh, but there are no schools out there pretending to offer an education while marketing to students and families who want to look like they're doing the school thing without having to deal with any of the stuff they find annoying," and that's possibly largely true, but of course, given the lack of oversight in most states, we don't really have any way of knowing, do we?
The actual free market (or as we actually experience it in America, the free-ish market) offers plenty of examples of the such a market wouldn't really serve education well at all. There are myriad examples of the triumph of marketing over quality, or market forces discouraging excellence, but for the moment, I'm going to ignore all of that.
Instead, let's consider one way in which the educational "marketplace" differs from every other free market arena-- involuntary customers.
We recently shopped for coffee makers at my house, so let's use them as an example. The coffee gadget market has a wide range of choices, ranging from cheap crap with a limited lifespan up to really expensive machinery that will carry itself to planned obsolescence with style and grace. But they all have one in common-- they are all made to be marketed to people who want to drink coffee.
But what would happen if Congress passed the Personal Use Coffee Maker Act of 2015, requiring every single person in the country to have a working coffee machine?
PUCMA would have little effect on people already owning a perfectly good coffee maker. But now the market would expand to include people who don't actually want to drink coffee, and wise coffee maker makers would find ways to market to that group as well.
Here's a coffee maker that makes verrrrry tiny cups of coffee, so you don't have more than spoonful to drink. Here's a coffee maker whose main feature is that it looks pretty on your counter. Here's a coffee maker that is an absolute piece of useless crap, but it is as cheap as we could make it and still be PUCMA compliant. Here's a coffee maker that actually makes decent hot chocolate. This one is actually a smoothie machine. This one makes a great cheese sandwich.
When a market is expanded to include people who don't actually want your product, market forces not only fail to foster excellence, but they actually foster crappiness.
I believe in the power and importance of a K-12 education; that's why I chose the work that I do. But I recognize that not everybody sees value in pubic education. I have met parents who would like their children to attend a school that never, ever gives any assignment that requires work outside of school. I have met parents who would like their children to attend a school where only sports matter. I have met parents who would like their children to attend a school that only requires the child to show up only a few days out of every week. In a free market education world, could I make money marketing a school for those parents? You bet I could. Just as I could make money marketing a school that will never challenge a child's beliefs with science, or a school devoted to The One True Religion (whichever one will give me the best market share), or a school that lets them sit at home in their PJs and never do school work unless they're in the mood.
In fact, the one free market option that rarely comes up in these discussions of the power of competition in a free market is the option to not be part of the market.
You want to make a true free market for education? Repeal all mandatory school attendance laws.
Of course almost nobody wants to do that because we recognize that it would not only create chaos for the schools and, worse yet, a long-term mess for our whole society because (as I've said many times) parents are NOT the only stakeholders when it comes to education.
We don't repeal mandatory school attendance laws because it would be bad for society as a whole. Why would it be any better to allow a system in which a child could choose Might As Well Not Be Bothering To Attend High School? I'm thinking of the K12 cyber charter ads in PA that made the pitch, "Pick a school that won't get in the way of your kids' sports schedule" or asked "Is your child happy in school." Charter and voucher fans can say, "Oh, but there are no schools out there pretending to offer an education while marketing to students and families who want to look like they're doing the school thing without having to deal with any of the stuff they find annoying," and that's possibly largely true, but of course, given the lack of oversight in most states, we don't really have any way of knowing, do we?
Thursday, January 22, 2015
Conservative Brake Shoes
Andy Smarick just rolled out Part VII in his series of thoughtful considerations of the role of conservatism in education reform. It has been a carefully crafted series as Smarick strikes a careful balance as Smarick surveys many sides of the public education debates then turns to the folks on his own side of the rhetorical ravine and says, gently and carefully, "Some of you guys really aren't any better than some of the yahoos over there."
In this installment, Smarick considers how conservatives (meaning, as he hinted in earlier installments, real conservatives) can be a benefit in revolution by serving as a set of brakes. Some conservatives in those times may seem like wet blankets, but when a fire is threatening to burn our of control, a wet blanket can be just the thing.
But when a group is of one opinion and convinced of the righteousness of its cause, virtues can distort into vices. Unified becomes monolithic; principled becomes doctrinaire; daring becomes rash; confident becomes unrepentant; progressive becomes unrestrained.
Accordingly, opponents can actually aid reformers. They can serve as a ballast helping to ground the reformer, serving as a moderating influence on his proclivity for excess. A reasonable opponent helps reveal the location of the middle and the fringe; her centripetal force pulls the reformer back from the latter.
It's an interesting extension of the idea-- opposition actually serves the cause of conservatism simply by slowing down the race to, well, anything.
Smarick spins this from the book The Founding Conservatives (which I have not read myself) that apparently argues that some of the quiet conservative figures of our own revolution were the necessary wet blankets that kept our revolution from descending into the crazy-pants bloodthirsty excess of the French revolution. He underlines the all-too-often ignored point that the Founding Fathers disagreed tremendously on a great many things. I wish more people remembered this piece of history-- anyone who talks about "what the framers intended" is historically illiterate. The only thing the framers absolutely agreed on was that certain other framers ought to smacked upside the head.
As usual in these pieces, Smarick makes sure his readers know he hasn't defected by being sure to indict the opponents of reformsterism for their own excesses. Those examples show how thinly drawn is the line he's trying to define.
For instance, he offers "You want to destroy public education" as one overstatement, and that is in my estimation just a hair over the line-- some reformsters may not want to destroy public education, or may use words like "transform" or "disrupt," but the end effect of the policies they pursue would, in fact, destroy public education. When one considers the attempt to hand the entire York, PA public school system over to a private for-profit charter operator, it's hard to see that as anything other than the destruction of a public school system.
But he moves on to mark the excesses of reformsters as well (it's probable that Condoleezza Rice is over the line when she claims that charter opponents are the true racists).
Ultimately, he argues that it's the conservatives who keep movements from spinning out of control by offering internal brakes.
Education reform is fantastic at articulating eternal principles, acting with urgency, and speaking in lofty rhetoric. But—as we consider huge federal programs, value-added algorithms, national standards and tests, and other “game changers”—it is worth considering whether we prize prudence, respect experience, or preserve time-tested institutions.
Smarick doesn't offer any names of people who exert such a conservative restraining effect upon the reformster movement. I can think of some reasons they may be hard to find on both sides.
Ben Franklin was one such example. Franklin did not become a radical overnight. He was for years a strong voice for unity with Britain and for retaining the traditional bonds that held the colonies tightly to the empire. Franklin, by many accounts, bowed under his final straw when on a diplomatic mission to Parliament, where he came to understand that there would be no compromise, no recognition of colonial rights.
Franklin could have been a voice for moderation and peace. He could have been an ally of the British. Instead, they made him into a radical enemy.
Likewise, I didn't start out as a hammerfingered blogger. Even a few years ago, I would not have envisioned myself routinely calling out the United States Secretary of Education. Now, I'm more radical than I ever was before. By some standards, I'm not particularly radical at all, and some days I'm actually pretty reasonable. But I didn't get here because of any new impulse within myself. I got here because the more I saw and read and listened to, the more I realized that there are people in this country using their power and money to remake public education, to use the force of law to require me to commit educational malpractice, to trample on the professional expertise and personal commitment of me and my fellow teachers, to put profits and power above the best interests of my students. Some are thoughtlessly destructive, some are maliciously destructive, and some sincerely believe that they are wielding a sledgehammer in a good cause. But the end result is much the same.
Franklin became radicalized because he faced men who believed their authority and power meant they did not have to bend, listen or care about what the lesser humans living in the colonies knew or felt or wanted.
There's an oft-overlooked irony at the heart of our country's revolution. The taxes that we so quickly grew to hate were not capricious or pointless-- not at first. The fighting of what we call the French and Indian War had run up a huge bill, and the British felt that since the bill had been run up protecting us, it was not unreasonable to try to collect from us some of the money that they had spent saving our colonial posteriors. You lend your brother-in-law your car for an emergency and he uses all your gas and dents your fender; it doesn't seem like such a stretch to ask him to help chip in.
But it all descended quickly into an assertion of power. The colonies would do as their betters told them to. They would behave. They would fall in line, or else Parliament would punish them harder until they finally broke and knelt before their rightful masters.
We can argue that eventually more conservative voices gathered enough power on both sides to cool things down. But that was not until after a decade in which no voices could provide enough ballast to offset the pressures that gave rise to radical moves all around.
The biggest issue that Smarick doesn't really address is that all sides in some disputes are not created equal. People on a particular side of an issue might not be evil, malicious, purposefully malignant monsters of ill intent-- but that doesn't mean they aren't wrong. The British Parliament may have had their reasons; they may not have intended to start or war or abuse their own brothers and sisters across the sea, and it may have been unfair to ascribe malicious intent to them-- but they were still wrong.
Conservative voices could have tempered their behavior, but would it really have mattered if they had been dead wrong in a more slow, well-considered, thoughtful manner?
Ultimately, I believe that many reformster programs and policies are dead wrong. I believe the current unregulated spread of money-sucking charters does not need to be modulated; it needs to be stopped cold. I believe that Common Core and the testing to which it is stapled are not policies that can be slowed down and carefully managed; they just need to stop. I believe the attempts to convert schools to a business-style model where a CEO can hire and fire and set pay at will are woefully wrong and destructive to education. I could go on; you get the idea.
It's generally a bad idea to slam the gas pedal down and drive hell bent for angry leather into the dark. But if you are headed straight for a cliff that beetles o'er its base into the sea, I'm not sure it makes a whole lot of difference if you drive more slowly.
Oddly enough, Smarick's piece dovetails nicely with Rick Hess's piece this week suggesting that real education debates are going to require much more than a circus-style desire to smack down the opponent.
Second, the measure of one's seriousness ought to be one's willingness to presume the goodwill of those who disagree, forego the insults and boilerplate, and seek principled points of agreement. This means not just citing evidence that one happens to like and dismissing studies that don't help one's cause. It means recognizing that big, complicated policy questions involve winners and losers, values, and unanticipated consequences; they are never simple questions of "what works" and are hardly ever going to be settled by a series of academic studies. It means acknowledging how incredibly complex these issues are, abandoning the search for pat answers, and recognizing that we're inevitably making fraught judgments about what policies are more likely to do more good for more children--and about which of tens of millions of youth deserve priority (and how much more of a priority they should be than their peers) when it comes to a given decision at a given point in time. If we're being the least bit honest with ourselves and each other, we're inevitably going to disagree about a lot of this. And it seems to me that we need to see that as okay--and not as prima facie evidence of someone else's broken moral compass.
As with Smarick's piece, I mostly agree-- but...
In this case, the but is that some participants in the education debates (circus division) have shown other evidence beyond their policy positions that their moral compass is, if not broke, at least tuned to something other than True North. My default position is to assume that other human beings are well-intentioned and can be taken seriously. Some folks wearing the Reformster team uniform have convinced me that they cannot and should not be taken seriously at all, like a uninspired debater who simply beats his shoe on the lectern and tells repeated and baldfaced lies.
No amount of conservative tempering is going to fix that. Nor can tempering and assumption of good will easily bridge the gaps created by completely different values. There are folks, for instance, who believe that orderly standardization of education across all fifty states is a thing that in and of itself has value and virtue. I don't agree. There are people who believe that free market competition makes everything better. I think they operate from a fundamental misunderstanding of How the World Works.
I'm not an ideologue, and if there's anything I've learned in fifty-seven years, it's that I am completely capable of being wrong. But at the same time, I know what I know, and everything I know about the field I've dedicated my professional life to tells me that the reformster agenda is fundamentally destructive to the things I value most. It is as if a physician insisted that she must inject Drano into my daughter's veins; her intentions don't matter all that much, because the Drano injection things is not happening as long as I'm capable of standing up to it, and I'm not sure what reasonable discussion will get us.
I share Hess and Smarick's sense that there is a gulf in the education debates that is keeping us from having discussions that need to be had and which have led people to say a lot of foolish things and often treat other human beings in less-than-exemplary manners. But I see a really huge gulf between the sides, and I don't see it being bridged in any substantial way.
I don't know. Maybe if the conservative brakes get thrown, we can have Hess's honest and difficult conversations. I'm not sure what that will get us.
Years ago, when I was the president of a striking union, while the strike was actually going on, I had regular breakfast meetings with the school board president (in total violation of our respective counsel's advice, so we just didn't tell them). We commiserated, including shaking our heads over the old saying that you can sometimes choose your enemies, but you don't always get to choose your friends, and God save you from some of those friends. We talked only a little about the contractual issues, and we never did a thing that really affected the ultimate shape of the contract. But I think it reminded us regularly that we were both real, live human beings, and probably led us to encourage our own allies to remember the same thing. Even if it didn't actually solve any of the real problems we were facing, it probably kept us all a little more decent and human in a difficult time. Maybe tha5t was enough.
In this installment, Smarick considers how conservatives (meaning, as he hinted in earlier installments, real conservatives) can be a benefit in revolution by serving as a set of brakes. Some conservatives in those times may seem like wet blankets, but when a fire is threatening to burn our of control, a wet blanket can be just the thing.
But when a group is of one opinion and convinced of the righteousness of its cause, virtues can distort into vices. Unified becomes monolithic; principled becomes doctrinaire; daring becomes rash; confident becomes unrepentant; progressive becomes unrestrained.
Accordingly, opponents can actually aid reformers. They can serve as a ballast helping to ground the reformer, serving as a moderating influence on his proclivity for excess. A reasonable opponent helps reveal the location of the middle and the fringe; her centripetal force pulls the reformer back from the latter.
It's an interesting extension of the idea-- opposition actually serves the cause of conservatism simply by slowing down the race to, well, anything.
Smarick spins this from the book The Founding Conservatives (which I have not read myself) that apparently argues that some of the quiet conservative figures of our own revolution were the necessary wet blankets that kept our revolution from descending into the crazy-pants bloodthirsty excess of the French revolution. He underlines the all-too-often ignored point that the Founding Fathers disagreed tremendously on a great many things. I wish more people remembered this piece of history-- anyone who talks about "what the framers intended" is historically illiterate. The only thing the framers absolutely agreed on was that certain other framers ought to smacked upside the head.
As usual in these pieces, Smarick makes sure his readers know he hasn't defected by being sure to indict the opponents of reformsterism for their own excesses. Those examples show how thinly drawn is the line he's trying to define.
For instance, he offers "You want to destroy public education" as one overstatement, and that is in my estimation just a hair over the line-- some reformsters may not want to destroy public education, or may use words like "transform" or "disrupt," but the end effect of the policies they pursue would, in fact, destroy public education. When one considers the attempt to hand the entire York, PA public school system over to a private for-profit charter operator, it's hard to see that as anything other than the destruction of a public school system.
But he moves on to mark the excesses of reformsters as well (it's probable that Condoleezza Rice is over the line when she claims that charter opponents are the true racists).
Ultimately, he argues that it's the conservatives who keep movements from spinning out of control by offering internal brakes.
Education reform is fantastic at articulating eternal principles, acting with urgency, and speaking in lofty rhetoric. But—as we consider huge federal programs, value-added algorithms, national standards and tests, and other “game changers”—it is worth considering whether we prize prudence, respect experience, or preserve time-tested institutions.
Smarick doesn't offer any names of people who exert such a conservative restraining effect upon the reformster movement. I can think of some reasons they may be hard to find on both sides.
Ben Franklin was one such example. Franklin did not become a radical overnight. He was for years a strong voice for unity with Britain and for retaining the traditional bonds that held the colonies tightly to the empire. Franklin, by many accounts, bowed under his final straw when on a diplomatic mission to Parliament, where he came to understand that there would be no compromise, no recognition of colonial rights.
Franklin could have been a voice for moderation and peace. He could have been an ally of the British. Instead, they made him into a radical enemy.
Likewise, I didn't start out as a hammerfingered blogger. Even a few years ago, I would not have envisioned myself routinely calling out the United States Secretary of Education. Now, I'm more radical than I ever was before. By some standards, I'm not particularly radical at all, and some days I'm actually pretty reasonable. But I didn't get here because of any new impulse within myself. I got here because the more I saw and read and listened to, the more I realized that there are people in this country using their power and money to remake public education, to use the force of law to require me to commit educational malpractice, to trample on the professional expertise and personal commitment of me and my fellow teachers, to put profits and power above the best interests of my students. Some are thoughtlessly destructive, some are maliciously destructive, and some sincerely believe that they are wielding a sledgehammer in a good cause. But the end result is much the same.
Franklin became radicalized because he faced men who believed their authority and power meant they did not have to bend, listen or care about what the lesser humans living in the colonies knew or felt or wanted.
There's an oft-overlooked irony at the heart of our country's revolution. The taxes that we so quickly grew to hate were not capricious or pointless-- not at first. The fighting of what we call the French and Indian War had run up a huge bill, and the British felt that since the bill had been run up protecting us, it was not unreasonable to try to collect from us some of the money that they had spent saving our colonial posteriors. You lend your brother-in-law your car for an emergency and he uses all your gas and dents your fender; it doesn't seem like such a stretch to ask him to help chip in.
But it all descended quickly into an assertion of power. The colonies would do as their betters told them to. They would behave. They would fall in line, or else Parliament would punish them harder until they finally broke and knelt before their rightful masters.
We can argue that eventually more conservative voices gathered enough power on both sides to cool things down. But that was not until after a decade in which no voices could provide enough ballast to offset the pressures that gave rise to radical moves all around.
The biggest issue that Smarick doesn't really address is that all sides in some disputes are not created equal. People on a particular side of an issue might not be evil, malicious, purposefully malignant monsters of ill intent-- but that doesn't mean they aren't wrong. The British Parliament may have had their reasons; they may not have intended to start or war or abuse their own brothers and sisters across the sea, and it may have been unfair to ascribe malicious intent to them-- but they were still wrong.
Conservative voices could have tempered their behavior, but would it really have mattered if they had been dead wrong in a more slow, well-considered, thoughtful manner?
Ultimately, I believe that many reformster programs and policies are dead wrong. I believe the current unregulated spread of money-sucking charters does not need to be modulated; it needs to be stopped cold. I believe that Common Core and the testing to which it is stapled are not policies that can be slowed down and carefully managed; they just need to stop. I believe the attempts to convert schools to a business-style model where a CEO can hire and fire and set pay at will are woefully wrong and destructive to education. I could go on; you get the idea.
It's generally a bad idea to slam the gas pedal down and drive hell bent for angry leather into the dark. But if you are headed straight for a cliff that beetles o'er its base into the sea, I'm not sure it makes a whole lot of difference if you drive more slowly.
Oddly enough, Smarick's piece dovetails nicely with Rick Hess's piece this week suggesting that real education debates are going to require much more than a circus-style desire to smack down the opponent.
Second, the measure of one's seriousness ought to be one's willingness to presume the goodwill of those who disagree, forego the insults and boilerplate, and seek principled points of agreement. This means not just citing evidence that one happens to like and dismissing studies that don't help one's cause. It means recognizing that big, complicated policy questions involve winners and losers, values, and unanticipated consequences; they are never simple questions of "what works" and are hardly ever going to be settled by a series of academic studies. It means acknowledging how incredibly complex these issues are, abandoning the search for pat answers, and recognizing that we're inevitably making fraught judgments about what policies are more likely to do more good for more children--and about which of tens of millions of youth deserve priority (and how much more of a priority they should be than their peers) when it comes to a given decision at a given point in time. If we're being the least bit honest with ourselves and each other, we're inevitably going to disagree about a lot of this. And it seems to me that we need to see that as okay--and not as prima facie evidence of someone else's broken moral compass.
As with Smarick's piece, I mostly agree-- but...
In this case, the but is that some participants in the education debates (circus division) have shown other evidence beyond their policy positions that their moral compass is, if not broke, at least tuned to something other than True North. My default position is to assume that other human beings are well-intentioned and can be taken seriously. Some folks wearing the Reformster team uniform have convinced me that they cannot and should not be taken seriously at all, like a uninspired debater who simply beats his shoe on the lectern and tells repeated and baldfaced lies.
No amount of conservative tempering is going to fix that. Nor can tempering and assumption of good will easily bridge the gaps created by completely different values. There are folks, for instance, who believe that orderly standardization of education across all fifty states is a thing that in and of itself has value and virtue. I don't agree. There are people who believe that free market competition makes everything better. I think they operate from a fundamental misunderstanding of How the World Works.
I'm not an ideologue, and if there's anything I've learned in fifty-seven years, it's that I am completely capable of being wrong. But at the same time, I know what I know, and everything I know about the field I've dedicated my professional life to tells me that the reformster agenda is fundamentally destructive to the things I value most. It is as if a physician insisted that she must inject Drano into my daughter's veins; her intentions don't matter all that much, because the Drano injection things is not happening as long as I'm capable of standing up to it, and I'm not sure what reasonable discussion will get us.
I share Hess and Smarick's sense that there is a gulf in the education debates that is keeping us from having discussions that need to be had and which have led people to say a lot of foolish things and often treat other human beings in less-than-exemplary manners. But I see a really huge gulf between the sides, and I don't see it being bridged in any substantial way.
I don't know. Maybe if the conservative brakes get thrown, we can have Hess's honest and difficult conversations. I'm not sure what that will get us.
Years ago, when I was the president of a striking union, while the strike was actually going on, I had regular breakfast meetings with the school board president (in total violation of our respective counsel's advice, so we just didn't tell them). We commiserated, including shaking our heads over the old saying that you can sometimes choose your enemies, but you don't always get to choose your friends, and God save you from some of those friends. We talked only a little about the contractual issues, and we never did a thing that really affected the ultimate shape of the contract. But I think it reminded us regularly that we were both real, live human beings, and probably led us to encourage our own allies to remember the same thing. Even if it didn't actually solve any of the real problems we were facing, it probably kept us all a little more decent and human in a difficult time. Maybe tha5t was enough.
Choice Advocates Conduct Poll; Unsurprising Results Ensue
The American Federation for Children is not so much about children as they are "the nation's voice for education choice." So when they called a press conference to announce the results from their recent poll, it is perhaps unsurprising that their pollster found a deep and wide support for school choice far beyond anything I've ever seen in any polls before.
Purpose
The purpose of the poll was telegraphed right up front in the subject line for their email announcing the press event announcing the poll-- "Is school choice a 2016 sleeper issue ?"
Kevin Chavous, executive counsel for the AFC, underlined that point in his opening comments. His reading of the 2014 mid-term elections is that pro-choice candidates (that would be, of course, supporters of school choice, not reproductive choice) swept the election, sent a message to the two largest teacher unions, and put Presidential candidates on notice of which way the wind is blowing. Yes, the AFC would like Presidential hopefuls to set sail for Choiceland, and they are here to try to fill those sails with a little more hot wind.
Chavous introduced the pollster, Debbie Beck of Beck Research, a public opinion research firm. He assures us that she's seasoned with fifteen years of experience and has "represented" major corporations, which strikes me as an extraordinarily odd word to use for a pollster, unless of course you think the business of pollsters is to create "research" to help push particular opinions, and not to be unbiased collectors of facts. But then, she's been a consultant on several political campaigns and has worked for folks like Mayor Michale Bloomberg and StudentsFirst, and introduced herself as a Democratic pollster. Who knew that there was such a thing as a pollster who was partisan on purpose?
So Beck stepped up and announced that their study found that modern charters are not widely supported and lead to segregation and the bleeding off of resources from public schools, so the American Federation for Children would withdraw their support from school choice and instead work to make sure that each child in America gets an iPad and a pony. Ha! Of course not. The report that these choice advocates bought and paid for turns out to prove that they've been right all along!! And People Who Want To Be President should damn well listen to this organization and make school choice part of their platform.
Methodology
I did not study pollology in college, so I have no professional standing to critique some of their methodology. But I can say that I found some parts interesting.
They used a sample of 1800 likely voters. 800 of those were a full-on national sample. 1000 were an over sample from ten states (100 per state). The ten states were Arkansas, Florida, Illinois, Louisiana, Mississippi, New Mexico, Nevada, North Carolina, Tennessee, and Wisconsin. That does not look like an education reform cross-section of America to me, not even if I squint. But this oversample was "case-weighted" into the national samples "so that the number of voters in each state is proportional." "Weighting" in polls is basically about using math to correct bad numbers in your random sample-- say your male/female ration of responders is 70/30 instead of 50/50, so you use math to make the samples "weigh" equally. I'm not sure what that has to do with this study, but I am sure that somehow we've got 1000 respondents from educationally regressive states in the mix somehow. If someone wants to edify me in the comments, I welcome the education.
The breakdown of respondents has some interesting data points. The liberal/moderate/conservative breakdown is tilted away from liberals (22/32/39). Education is pretty evenly distributed, as is gender. Age is distributed pretty evenly by decade until we get to "65 and over," which gives us 29% of the respondents.
Some of the questions on the survey are... well.. not exactly what we'd expect in an unbiased search for The Truth. One portion of the survey tests out both pro- and anti- choice talking points (just in case, you know, anybody who happened to be running for a certain higher office might want to know how to spin). One anti-choice point was "Vouchers allow students to attend private schools that teach creationism, focus on religious studies and oppose homosexuality." Yes, I'm sure the school choice issue is best decided based on how one feels about The Gays.
Perhaps the most egregious fishing expedition in the form of a question was a choose-one-or-the-other question that asked respondents to say whether "we need to make major changes to the ways that public schools are run" or "we only need to make minor changes to the way that public schools are run." I didn't go to pollology school, but I have a degree in Word Stuff, and I respect the artful use of the word "only" to subtly tilt that question. Not surprisingly, 48% went with the major changes. Beck called this result "a big wake-up call."
Also, a ranking question asked "Regardless of your position on vouchers or charter schools, what do you think is the BEST reason to increase school choice in America." This allowed the report to claim that "quality of education" is the top reason to "embrace school choice," even if it represents people whose response was, "I hate school choice, but if I had to ever pick a reason to support it, it would be quality of education, a thing I don't believe choice actually fosters." Some folks did buck the system and say that we shouldn't have school choice, but that number was low (but only 2 points lower that the people who believed that competition creates excellence).
The Results
You can read the full report here. I'll touch on its "major findings."
Two-thirds of respondents support the concept of school choice, with an even bigger jump for special needs scholarships. Public charter schools are popular. At least, they're popular when your poll describes them as "independently managed public schools that receive taxpayer dollars and are open to all students." I'm not sure how the response would have run if they'd described public charters as schools that keep only the students they want and which never allow any auditing or transparency about how they spend the tax dollars they receive. I feel like that description might have changed the numbers a bit.
The top three talking points for school choice are:
1) rescues students in failing schools who need help right now
2) the zip code line, as in poor students shouldn't be stuck in schools because zip code
3) vouchers give poor students in crappy schools an escape to a better education. This talking point also throws in the not-exactly-truthful lines about students in "these programs" having higher achievement and higher graduation rate.
Voucher supporters mostly support them for everyone, not just poor kids. And AFC sees broad support among voters for the idea that competition improves education.
Fun side note. The poll results show Romney leading Bush in the GOP primary race.
Conclusions
This poll does not pass the smell test.
It was produced by someone whose business is producing results for political purposes, not attempting to ferret out actual truth. It uses a sample that is oddly collected and "weighted." It was produced under the auspices of an organization that even pretended to say, "Well, you know, we just wanted to check and see if we were right in our thinking."
In fact, we know what the purpose of the poll is. Closing out the press conference Chavous said that "all the candidates [for President] need to take heed." Beck (who by the end of the press conference seemed like an actual member of AFC and not any sort of independent pollster) agreed and said she is waiting to hear more from the candidates.
You might say, "What difference do any of their biases make if their findings are True." I might reply, "If a woman goes to the alter and marries me, what difference does it make whether she wants to live a life or mutually supportive joy and union or she is just waiting to slice me open and steal my vital organs?"
This is not an attempt to further an honest and open discussion about the course of US public education-- it's just an attempt to leverage some political clout. And maybe grab some of public education's vital organs.
Purpose
The purpose of the poll was telegraphed right up front in the subject line for their email announcing the press event announcing the poll-- "Is school choice a 2016 sleeper issue ?"
Kevin Chavous, executive counsel for the AFC, underlined that point in his opening comments. His reading of the 2014 mid-term elections is that pro-choice candidates (that would be, of course, supporters of school choice, not reproductive choice) swept the election, sent a message to the two largest teacher unions, and put Presidential candidates on notice of which way the wind is blowing. Yes, the AFC would like Presidential hopefuls to set sail for Choiceland, and they are here to try to fill those sails with a little more hot wind.
Chavous introduced the pollster, Debbie Beck of Beck Research, a public opinion research firm. He assures us that she's seasoned with fifteen years of experience and has "represented" major corporations, which strikes me as an extraordinarily odd word to use for a pollster, unless of course you think the business of pollsters is to create "research" to help push particular opinions, and not to be unbiased collectors of facts. But then, she's been a consultant on several political campaigns and has worked for folks like Mayor Michale Bloomberg and StudentsFirst, and introduced herself as a Democratic pollster. Who knew that there was such a thing as a pollster who was partisan on purpose?
So Beck stepped up and announced that their study found that modern charters are not widely supported and lead to segregation and the bleeding off of resources from public schools, so the American Federation for Children would withdraw their support from school choice and instead work to make sure that each child in America gets an iPad and a pony. Ha! Of course not. The report that these choice advocates bought and paid for turns out to prove that they've been right all along!! And People Who Want To Be President should damn well listen to this organization and make school choice part of their platform.
Methodology
I did not study pollology in college, so I have no professional standing to critique some of their methodology. But I can say that I found some parts interesting.
They used a sample of 1800 likely voters. 800 of those were a full-on national sample. 1000 were an over sample from ten states (100 per state). The ten states were Arkansas, Florida, Illinois, Louisiana, Mississippi, New Mexico, Nevada, North Carolina, Tennessee, and Wisconsin. That does not look like an education reform cross-section of America to me, not even if I squint. But this oversample was "case-weighted" into the national samples "so that the number of voters in each state is proportional." "Weighting" in polls is basically about using math to correct bad numbers in your random sample-- say your male/female ration of responders is 70/30 instead of 50/50, so you use math to make the samples "weigh" equally. I'm not sure what that has to do with this study, but I am sure that somehow we've got 1000 respondents from educationally regressive states in the mix somehow. If someone wants to edify me in the comments, I welcome the education.
The breakdown of respondents has some interesting data points. The liberal/moderate/conservative breakdown is tilted away from liberals (22/32/39). Education is pretty evenly distributed, as is gender. Age is distributed pretty evenly by decade until we get to "65 and over," which gives us 29% of the respondents.
Some of the questions on the survey are... well.. not exactly what we'd expect in an unbiased search for The Truth. One portion of the survey tests out both pro- and anti- choice talking points (just in case, you know, anybody who happened to be running for a certain higher office might want to know how to spin). One anti-choice point was "Vouchers allow students to attend private schools that teach creationism, focus on religious studies and oppose homosexuality." Yes, I'm sure the school choice issue is best decided based on how one feels about The Gays.
Perhaps the most egregious fishing expedition in the form of a question was a choose-one-or-the-other question that asked respondents to say whether "we need to make major changes to the ways that public schools are run" or "we only need to make minor changes to the way that public schools are run." I didn't go to pollology school, but I have a degree in Word Stuff, and I respect the artful use of the word "only" to subtly tilt that question. Not surprisingly, 48% went with the major changes. Beck called this result "a big wake-up call."
Also, a ranking question asked "Regardless of your position on vouchers or charter schools, what do you think is the BEST reason to increase school choice in America." This allowed the report to claim that "quality of education" is the top reason to "embrace school choice," even if it represents people whose response was, "I hate school choice, but if I had to ever pick a reason to support it, it would be quality of education, a thing I don't believe choice actually fosters." Some folks did buck the system and say that we shouldn't have school choice, but that number was low (but only 2 points lower that the people who believed that competition creates excellence).
The Results
You can read the full report here. I'll touch on its "major findings."
Two-thirds of respondents support the concept of school choice, with an even bigger jump for special needs scholarships. Public charter schools are popular. At least, they're popular when your poll describes them as "independently managed public schools that receive taxpayer dollars and are open to all students." I'm not sure how the response would have run if they'd described public charters as schools that keep only the students they want and which never allow any auditing or transparency about how they spend the tax dollars they receive. I feel like that description might have changed the numbers a bit.
The top three talking points for school choice are:
1) rescues students in failing schools who need help right now
2) the zip code line, as in poor students shouldn't be stuck in schools because zip code
3) vouchers give poor students in crappy schools an escape to a better education. This talking point also throws in the not-exactly-truthful lines about students in "these programs" having higher achievement and higher graduation rate.
Voucher supporters mostly support them for everyone, not just poor kids. And AFC sees broad support among voters for the idea that competition improves education.
Fun side note. The poll results show Romney leading Bush in the GOP primary race.
Conclusions
This poll does not pass the smell test.
It was produced by someone whose business is producing results for political purposes, not attempting to ferret out actual truth. It uses a sample that is oddly collected and "weighted." It was produced under the auspices of an organization that even pretended to say, "Well, you know, we just wanted to check and see if we were right in our thinking."
In fact, we know what the purpose of the poll is. Closing out the press conference Chavous said that "all the candidates [for President] need to take heed." Beck (who by the end of the press conference seemed like an actual member of AFC and not any sort of independent pollster) agreed and said she is waiting to hear more from the candidates.
You might say, "What difference do any of their biases make if their findings are True." I might reply, "If a woman goes to the alter and marries me, what difference does it make whether she wants to live a life or mutually supportive joy and union or she is just waiting to slice me open and steal my vital organs?"
This is not an attempt to further an honest and open discussion about the course of US public education-- it's just an attempt to leverage some political clout. And maybe grab some of public education's vital organs.
Wednesday, January 21, 2015
Take Me To Your Leader
It is currently popular to rebut teacher evaluations by brandishing student test results. "Only 50% of our students were ranked proficient on the Big Test," some Deeply Concerned Public Official will intone. "So how can only 4% or so of our teachers be rated substandard?"
There are so many things wrong with that construction, not the least of which is the idea that a teacher's single task in life is to get students to pass a Big Standardized Test about reading and math.
But I don't think the folks who are expressing this concern really care about the problem of these phantom bad teachers in school, anyway. And I don't believe they really care, not because of what they are doing, but because of what they aren't.
Let's take New York State. The expectation there is reportedly that 10% of the state's teaching staff will be found wanting. Let's think about what you would do as a state education leader, if you truly believed that 10% of your teaching staff was no good.
Consider first that there are only two possible explanations for that 10%, that tiny mini-mountain of pedagogical incompetence now esconced in classrooms. Either:
1) school leaders hired and awarded tenure to a big bunch of incompetent teachers or
2) school leaders hired 100% competent teachers and somehow broke 10% of them
You see the common thread here. If classrooms are infested with terrible, awful, no good, very bad teachers, then the logical place to look for a solution is to the school leaders who, apparently, keep putting the bad teachers in there.
If we really believed that there were a pipeline spewing toxic teachers into our schools, would we keep endlessly trying to mop up the mess or would we try to find the valve that would simply stop the flow?
We would be developing tools for determining whether a school hired bad teachers or hired good ones and messed them up. We would be retraining principals and superintendents and human resources department so that they were much better at hiring. We would be insisting that school leader training included extensive programs about how to hire good teachers and not ruin them once you have them. We would be looking at which sorts of school environments made teachers better and which sorts made them ineffective. We might even come up with punitive regulations to put pressure on school leaders to be better managers.
Now, I don't for a moment think we have a real crisis in school leadership that is opening this Pipeline of Awful into our classrooms, because I don't believe there's a crisis of awful in our classrooms to begin with. But if someone did sincerely believe that 10% of their state's teachers were no good, wouldn't they be using the approach I've laid out?
I have to conclude that reformsters aren't really concerned about an excess of bad teachers (real or imaginary) in US classrooms, but are instead using the supposed crisis as one more hammer with which to beat away at the teaching profession. If you think I've missed something here, you're welcome to tell me about it in the comments.
Originally published in View from the Cheap Seats
Good vs. Uniform
There's an interesting and fairly well-balanced article in February's Forbes about Pearson, focusing on CEO John Fallon. "Everybody Hates Pearson" is worth a read, but I'm going to pull a pair of quotes from it today.
At one point, writer Jennifer Reingold says this about Fallon:
He emphasizes that the company’s goal is to help students succeed...
That's not entirely true. Part of Pearson's job as the international behemoth of education is to define what "succeed" means. Which is precisely why an international behemoth of education poses a danger to education. Earlier in the article, Reingold offers this quote:
“It doesn’t matter to us whether our customers are hundreds of thousands of individual students and their parents in China, or thousands of school districts in America,” says Fallon. “What we’re trying to do is the same thing—to help improve learning outcomes.”
There's your problem. If you're trying to do "the same thing," for a a student in the US and a student in China, and if "it doesn't matter" to you which is which, then something is wrong.
A Pearson fan is going to protest, "Well, not exactly the same thing. No, obviously not that." And I'm sure that Pearson makes sure to change the language of the test and adjust the price for the local currency. But if your focus is on a fundamental sameness, if you are looking to create a uniform approach to education that can be used all across the globe, then you're doing it wrong.
What we're talking about is uniformity, standardization-- and uniformity is the enemy of excellence.
Jack Teagarden, George Brunis, and J. J. Johnson were great jazz trombone players, and it takes me about two seconds of listening to a recording to know which one I'm hearing play, because they are completely different. All excellent. All different.
Now, I could say that they're all essentially doing the same thing-- playing jazz trombone. But as soon as I try to come up with an "objective" measure of good jazz trombone playing, one that would fit all three of them plus Miff Mole or Urbie Green or some guy in China that I don't even know about, I would choose one of two options.
A) Declare that one behavior is defined as success, in which case I could end up declaring that Teagarden is not a great jazz trombonist because he doesn't use Johnson's be-bop licks. Any system that calls Teagarden a failure as a jazz player is patently absurd.
B) Select a definition of success that includes only traits that all jazz trombonists share. Or to put it another way, come up with a definition of success that deliberately excludes all the traits that make particular jazz trombonists great. This is also deeply backwards.
Uniformity and standardization do not just fail to embrace excellence; they actively reject it. Excellence, difference, variation, individuality-- all must be marked as failure because all violate the standard of uniformity.
When a cook at a McFastfood McRestaurant cooks a stunning chicken cordon bleu, he doesn't get a commndation. He gets fired. When a flight attendant shows up for work in uniform clothing that she has torn up and resewn into a stylish gown, she doesn't get a special prize.
There's only one way to create an educational system that can be marketed all around the globe, only one way to create a system that doesn't care whether you're using it in Nanking or Omaha. The only way to create such a system is to define success as something uniform, bland, and mediocre. The only way to create such a system is to use a definition of success that rejects excellence or any other sort of difference.
You can have an educational system that is good, or one that is uniform. You can't have both.
At one point, writer Jennifer Reingold says this about Fallon:
He emphasizes that the company’s goal is to help students succeed...
That's not entirely true. Part of Pearson's job as the international behemoth of education is to define what "succeed" means. Which is precisely why an international behemoth of education poses a danger to education. Earlier in the article, Reingold offers this quote:
“It doesn’t matter to us whether our customers are hundreds of thousands of individual students and their parents in China, or thousands of school districts in America,” says Fallon. “What we’re trying to do is the same thing—to help improve learning outcomes.”
There's your problem. If you're trying to do "the same thing," for a a student in the US and a student in China, and if "it doesn't matter" to you which is which, then something is wrong.
A Pearson fan is going to protest, "Well, not exactly the same thing. No, obviously not that." And I'm sure that Pearson makes sure to change the language of the test and adjust the price for the local currency. But if your focus is on a fundamental sameness, if you are looking to create a uniform approach to education that can be used all across the globe, then you're doing it wrong.
What we're talking about is uniformity, standardization-- and uniformity is the enemy of excellence.
Jack Teagarden, George Brunis, and J. J. Johnson were great jazz trombone players, and it takes me about two seconds of listening to a recording to know which one I'm hearing play, because they are completely different. All excellent. All different.
Now, I could say that they're all essentially doing the same thing-- playing jazz trombone. But as soon as I try to come up with an "objective" measure of good jazz trombone playing, one that would fit all three of them plus Miff Mole or Urbie Green or some guy in China that I don't even know about, I would choose one of two options.
A) Declare that one behavior is defined as success, in which case I could end up declaring that Teagarden is not a great jazz trombonist because he doesn't use Johnson's be-bop licks. Any system that calls Teagarden a failure as a jazz player is patently absurd.
B) Select a definition of success that includes only traits that all jazz trombonists share. Or to put it another way, come up with a definition of success that deliberately excludes all the traits that make particular jazz trombonists great. This is also deeply backwards.
Uniformity and standardization do not just fail to embrace excellence; they actively reject it. Excellence, difference, variation, individuality-- all must be marked as failure because all violate the standard of uniformity.
When a cook at a McFastfood McRestaurant cooks a stunning chicken cordon bleu, he doesn't get a commndation. He gets fired. When a flight attendant shows up for work in uniform clothing that she has torn up and resewn into a stylish gown, she doesn't get a special prize.
There's only one way to create an educational system that can be marketed all around the globe, only one way to create a system that doesn't care whether you're using it in Nanking or Omaha. The only way to create such a system is to define success as something uniform, bland, and mediocre. The only way to create such a system is to use a definition of success that rejects excellence or any other sort of difference.
You can have an educational system that is good, or one that is uniform. You can't have both.
Tuesday, January 20, 2015
Dear Randi: About That ESEA Petition--
You've been kind enough to drop me an email about your position on testing in the might-be-new ESEA, so I wanted to share my reaction with you.
What the hell are you thinking?
You've enumerated four actions you would like Congress to take with the could-be-revamped ESEA (in partnership with CAP which already blew my mind just a little). While they are clearer than the joint-CAP statement, they don't make me feel any better.
End the use of annual tests for high-stakes consequences. Let’s instead use annual assessments to give parents and teachers the information they need to help students grow.
Oh, hell. While we're at it, let's use annual assessments to make pigs fly out of our butts, because that's just about as likely as the test being a useful source of information that I need to help my students grow. Exactly how would this work. Exactly what would I learn from a standardized test given late in the year, results to be released over the summer, that would help me grow those students?
Use the data we collect to provide the federal government with information to direct resources to the schools and districts that need extra support.
Yes, because that has worked so well so far. The federal government is great about allocating resources on the local level without lots of red tape and strings attached.
You know what would work better? Actual local control. Actual democracy on the local level. Actual empowerment of the people who have the largest stake in the community's schools.
Ensure a robust accountability system that judges schools looking at multiple measures—including allowing real evidence of student learning.
Do you remember when you were on twitter, pushing "VAM is a sham" as a pithy slogan? What the heck happened? How can the head of a national teachers' union take any approach about the widely discredited and debunked test-based evaluation of students other than, "Hell no!"
And finally, the federal government should not be the human resources department for local schools, and should not be in the business of regulating teacher evaluation from Washington D.C. Teacher evaluation is the district’s job.
Oh, come on. In what universe does the federal government give local school districts resources, oversee their accountability system, but still leave them free to do the job. Answer: they don't. This is local control just like adoption of Common Core was freely adopted by states. This is the feds saying, "You can paint your school any color you want, and we'll buy the paint, just as long as you meet the federal standards that say all schools must be black. But otherwise you're totally freely under local control."
Randi, I have been a fan in the past, but I find this policy package an absolute headscratcher, and no matter how I squint, I cannot see the interests of public education (or the teachers who work there) reflected anywhere in the shiny surface of this highly polished turd.
So, no. I'm not going to sign your petition, and I'd encourage others to refrain as well. This is just wrong. Wrong and discouraging and a little anger-inducing, and I'm not going to the dark side with you, not even if they have great cookies.
Sincerely,
Peter Greene
What the hell are you thinking?
You've enumerated four actions you would like Congress to take with the could-be-revamped ESEA (in partnership with CAP which already blew my mind just a little). While they are clearer than the joint-CAP statement, they don't make me feel any better.
End the use of annual tests for high-stakes consequences. Let’s instead use annual assessments to give parents and teachers the information they need to help students grow.
Oh, hell. While we're at it, let's use annual assessments to make pigs fly out of our butts, because that's just about as likely as the test being a useful source of information that I need to help my students grow. Exactly how would this work. Exactly what would I learn from a standardized test given late in the year, results to be released over the summer, that would help me grow those students?
Use the data we collect to provide the federal government with information to direct resources to the schools and districts that need extra support.
Yes, because that has worked so well so far. The federal government is great about allocating resources on the local level without lots of red tape and strings attached.
You know what would work better? Actual local control. Actual democracy on the local level. Actual empowerment of the people who have the largest stake in the community's schools.
Ensure a robust accountability system that judges schools looking at multiple measures—including allowing real evidence of student learning.
Do you remember when you were on twitter, pushing "VAM is a sham" as a pithy slogan? What the heck happened? How can the head of a national teachers' union take any approach about the widely discredited and debunked test-based evaluation of students other than, "Hell no!"
And finally, the federal government should not be the human resources department for local schools, and should not be in the business of regulating teacher evaluation from Washington D.C. Teacher evaluation is the district’s job.
Oh, come on. In what universe does the federal government give local school districts resources, oversee their accountability system, but still leave them free to do the job. Answer: they don't. This is local control just like adoption of Common Core was freely adopted by states. This is the feds saying, "You can paint your school any color you want, and we'll buy the paint, just as long as you meet the federal standards that say all schools must be black. But otherwise you're totally freely under local control."
Randi, I have been a fan in the past, but I find this policy package an absolute headscratcher, and no matter how I squint, I cannot see the interests of public education (or the teachers who work there) reflected anywhere in the shiny surface of this highly polished turd.
So, no. I'm not going to sign your petition, and I'd encourage others to refrain as well. This is just wrong. Wrong and discouraging and a little anger-inducing, and I'm not going to the dark side with you, not even if they have great cookies.
Sincerely,
Peter Greene
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