To help kick off School Choice PR Week, Forbes ran a puff piece about choice entitled "Kicking Off School Choice Week With 9 Things You Need To Know". The piece comes from contributor Maureen Sullivan who in 2009 was elected to the the Hoboken school board arguing "for lower taxes and higher standards" during her "nearly" four year term (Sullivan was elected as a member of the Kids First team, then defected because she found them insufficiently reformy, leading to a great deal of fiscal grandstanding and wrangling in Hoboken)
Her 9 things make a nice compendium of what choice advocates offer as arguments these days. Let's consider them in the order she presents them.
1) Sullivan cites the American Federation for Children poll as proof that Americans want school choice for realsies. As Diane Ravitch pointed out to me when I wrote about that poll, it's interesting that in all the times choice has been on a ballot in the states, it has never won once (update: my mistake-- with huge backing, a charter bill did finally just pass in Washington) . At any rate, looking to AFC for information about school choice is like looking to R. J. Reynolds for information about the effects of smoking.
2) More than 100K students use vouchers to attend private school (according to Center for Education Reform, another school choice booster group). There are a little under 50 million K-12 students in the US, making voucher students about 0.2% of the student population. It's a good number to remember the next time anybody offers students in a voucher program as proof of anything.
3) There are 6,500 charter schools open now. Well, probably, more or less. Hard to say exactly how many have opened or closed this week. According to the National Alliance for Public School Charters, 2.5 million students are enrolled. Sullivan did include one actually interesting factoid here-- half of all charters are in four states (California, Texas, Florida and Arizona).
4) The Center for Education Reform offers grades each state on its charter school swellness. It's a fifty-five-point scale, and twenty-five of those points are based on independent authorizers and number of schools allowed. Fifteen more points for a combination of state and district autonomy, along with "teacher freedom," whatever that is supposed to be. Final fifteen are for funding. The A states are DC, Minnesota, Indiana, Michigan and Arizona.
5) Eight states don't allow charters (North Dakota, South Dakota, Montana, Nebraska, Vermont, West Virginia, Alabama and Kentucky, though Nebraska is likely to change under a new pro-charter governor). It's an interesting list. Do you suppose the lack of any juicy urban profit centers is a factor for these states?
6) Charter schools go out of business. Sigh. I wish this weren't news to people, but as we repeatedly see, it is. The NAPSC reported that 200 2012-13 charters didn't open again the following year. The Center for Ed Reform says that of 6,700 that ever were, 1,036 have closed since 1992. I do not know how to make those figures fit with the figures in item 3.
7) Charter schools are getting better results. This is based on the wishful thinking and fluffy unicorns study released bu CATO studying Texas charters. In fact, there are no conclusive studies showing that charters do it better, and where marginally better results occur (and also when they don't, which is sad for the charter) those results are readily explained by how the charter manages its student body with selective intake and pushing out low performers. There are virtually no examples of charters attempting to educate an entire student population in the same way that a public school system must. So far we've had one all-charter district, and it failed to have any positive effect whatsoever.
8) The US Senate passed a resolution recognizing National School Choice Week, sponsored by Tim Scott (Rep-SC) with ten co-sponsors including Ted Cruz , Rand Paul, and Dianne Feinstein.
9) The two biggest teachers' unions got their asses handed to them by pro-school-choice candidates, achieving victory only over Pennsylvania's Tom Corbett, who arguably could have been beaten by my dog. There's a whole host of explanations for those electoral victories, and they do underline how disconnected AFT and NEA leadership are from absolutely anything at all. I suspect the elections mostly show that political fooferawing only moves the needle so far. Scott Walker wasn't going to lose unless someone caught him on video beating a nun to death with a puppy. Tom Corbett wasn't going to win even if someone had a video of Jesus endorsing him.
Sullivan's article is one more example of the long game that charter and choice advocates are playing. Just keep insisting something is true long enough (public schools are failing, vaccines are dangerous, fluoride makes you communist, The Bachelor is a show about finding true love, charter schools are popular and successful) and eventually it enters Conventional Wisdom as, at a minimum, a "valid alternative view." It's not necessary for the things to be true, or even supported by facts-- just keep repeating them uncritically and without argument, and eventually, they stick.
Tuesday, January 27, 2015
Monday, January 26, 2015
The Biggest Failure: Defining Success
Time magazine ran an interview with Senator Lamar Alexander, discussing the future of testing and the ESEA. It concludes with this quote:
What I know is the biggest failure of No Child Left Behind is the idea that Washington should tell 100,000 public schools and their teachers whether they’re succeeding, whether they’re failing and what the consequences of that should be. That hasn’t worked.
I think that's close, but perhaps not dead-on. Because implied by the idea of DC telling the public schools whether or not their succeeding is the idea of DC telling the schools what success really means.
No Child Left Behind didn't just legislate the idea that the feds would tell schools and teachers how well they were doing. It redefined what "success" means in education.
Defining success has always been one of the great challenges in education. Through the early part of my career (I graduated from college in 1979), there was a steady trend toward authentic assessment, because everything we knew and were learning about education said that an objective test was by far the worst way to decide how well a student was acquiring skills and knowledge.
If you are of a certain age, you recognize and tremble at these initials-- TSWBAT.
For you youngsters, that's "The Student Will Be Able To," and it meant that your lesson plans would focus on what the student could actually do at the end of instruction. So if you were trying to teach a student the knowledge and skills necessary to analyze a full modern novel or write a complete analytical essay or assemble a carburetor or successfully bid out a hand of bridge, you weren't going to give some sort of bubble test. The student was going to demonstrate outcomes by doing the thing. That would be success.
The focus on outcomes was leading us to student portfolios. No longer would a test or two or ten define the student's achievements. Instead, a portfolio would be assembled showing progress, development, achievement, and success in a year's worth of projects, assignments, and accomplishments. That was going to be success.
And just as we were out in the trenches coming to grips with how exciting and terrifying it would be to come up with a portfolio system and they could be electronic portfolios, because with computer tech we could include videos and demonstrations and oh holy smokes on a shingle this would be completely individualized so that each student would graduate with twelve years' worth of broad, varied authentic achievements that would paint a completely personal picture of all the strengths and depths and awesomeness of that individual human being--- just as we were starting to get a grip on that, the feds stepped in, dragged the needle across the vinyl and said, "Nope-- we got your definition of success right here."
Success is a good score on a standardized test. And it looks exactly the same for every student.
And Race to the Top and RttT Lite (less filling, more waivery) doubled down on that by adding one-size-fits-all non-sequitorian justification. Success is a good score on a standardized test because success is a college education and a well-paying job.
Being an outstanding musician or welder? Not success. Being a middling student but a stand-up person who makes their community a better place? Not a success. Screwing up as a freshman and turning your life around to graduate after five years? Not a success.
Marching to the beat of a different drum? Hey, kid. Who said you could have a drum? Everybody in this band plays clarinet, and to be a success, you must take the standardized bubble test on clarinterry.
The most stunning obtusity, the most spectacular failure of NCLB/RTTT is the manner in which it has turned the goal and purpose of education into something small, cramped, meager and unvaried.
Success is a good score on a standardized test.
What a sad, tiny, uninspired definition of success. But NCLB introduced it and tied us all to it, like eagles chained to a stuffed turtle on the desk of the world's least ambitious accountant. The biggest failure of NCLB was to take the whole vast continent of possibilities, the promise and varied range of humanity that has always characterized this country-- to look at all that and say, "No, we're just going to say that success is a good score on a standardized test that only covers a couple of subjects, badly. And we'll demand that everyone achieve it at the same time in the same way. That's success."
That's the biggest failure of No Child Left Behind. If you see Senator Alexander, you can tell him I said so.
What I know is the biggest failure of No Child Left Behind is the idea that Washington should tell 100,000 public schools and their teachers whether they’re succeeding, whether they’re failing and what the consequences of that should be. That hasn’t worked.
I think that's close, but perhaps not dead-on. Because implied by the idea of DC telling the public schools whether or not their succeeding is the idea of DC telling the schools what success really means.
No Child Left Behind didn't just legislate the idea that the feds would tell schools and teachers how well they were doing. It redefined what "success" means in education.
Defining success has always been one of the great challenges in education. Through the early part of my career (I graduated from college in 1979), there was a steady trend toward authentic assessment, because everything we knew and were learning about education said that an objective test was by far the worst way to decide how well a student was acquiring skills and knowledge.
If you are of a certain age, you recognize and tremble at these initials-- TSWBAT.
For you youngsters, that's "The Student Will Be Able To," and it meant that your lesson plans would focus on what the student could actually do at the end of instruction. So if you were trying to teach a student the knowledge and skills necessary to analyze a full modern novel or write a complete analytical essay or assemble a carburetor or successfully bid out a hand of bridge, you weren't going to give some sort of bubble test. The student was going to demonstrate outcomes by doing the thing. That would be success.
The focus on outcomes was leading us to student portfolios. No longer would a test or two or ten define the student's achievements. Instead, a portfolio would be assembled showing progress, development, achievement, and success in a year's worth of projects, assignments, and accomplishments. That was going to be success.
And just as we were out in the trenches coming to grips with how exciting and terrifying it would be to come up with a portfolio system and they could be electronic portfolios, because with computer tech we could include videos and demonstrations and oh holy smokes on a shingle this would be completely individualized so that each student would graduate with twelve years' worth of broad, varied authentic achievements that would paint a completely personal picture of all the strengths and depths and awesomeness of that individual human being--- just as we were starting to get a grip on that, the feds stepped in, dragged the needle across the vinyl and said, "Nope-- we got your definition of success right here."
Success is a good score on a standardized test. And it looks exactly the same for every student.
And Race to the Top and RttT Lite (less filling, more waivery) doubled down on that by adding one-size-fits-all non-sequitorian justification. Success is a good score on a standardized test because success is a college education and a well-paying job.
Being an outstanding musician or welder? Not success. Being a middling student but a stand-up person who makes their community a better place? Not a success. Screwing up as a freshman and turning your life around to graduate after five years? Not a success.
Marching to the beat of a different drum? Hey, kid. Who said you could have a drum? Everybody in this band plays clarinet, and to be a success, you must take the standardized bubble test on clarinterry.
The most stunning obtusity, the most spectacular failure of NCLB/RTTT is the manner in which it has turned the goal and purpose of education into something small, cramped, meager and unvaried.
Success is a good score on a standardized test.
What a sad, tiny, uninspired definition of success. But NCLB introduced it and tied us all to it, like eagles chained to a stuffed turtle on the desk of the world's least ambitious accountant. The biggest failure of NCLB was to take the whole vast continent of possibilities, the promise and varied range of humanity that has always characterized this country-- to look at all that and say, "No, we're just going to say that success is a good score on a standardized test that only covers a couple of subjects, badly. And we'll demand that everyone achieve it at the same time in the same way. That's success."
That's the biggest failure of No Child Left Behind. If you see Senator Alexander, you can tell him I said so.
Duncan's Legless Duck
I opened my eyes while you were kissing me once more than once
And you looked as sincere as a dog
Just as sincere as a dog does when it’s the food on your lips with which it's in love
--Fiona Apple "Parting Gift"
When you have to bribe or threaten people to be your friend, you can be sure that your friendship will be short-lived.
Over at EdWeek, Alyson Klein is asking one of the big questions of the moment-- how much political juice does the ED department have in NCLB waiver renewals? The related question is how much juice does the department have in the NCLB reauthorization itself?
The possible and imminent rewrite of ESEA/NCLB makes more obvious what some of us have been saying all long-- the tale of "voluntary" adoption of Common Core, high-stakes testing, test-based teacher evaluations, and the rest of the reformster package was a fiction. States complied with the federal mandates because the feds had everyone's violation of the NCLB ridiculously unattainable goals to threaten the states with, and because they could score some cash doing it.
Reauthorizing ESEA has always been the quick way to short-circuit reformster plans. NCLB has been the gun that the feds held to every state's head. Now Congress is threatening to take out the bullets. Without any bullets, and with the big piles of money running out, the administration is finding it's out of friends.
Arne Duncan can make impassioned speeches about the value of testing and then rerun the text in various publications. It doesn't really matter. Arne Duncan has had six years to prove that he has a vision of how to make US public education strong and vital. He has had six years to convince people that he knows what he's doing,that he knows where he wants to go and how to get there. He has failed. His only hope at this stage would have been a cadre of people saying, "Well, I wasn't sure, but I know I've seen the good his policies can do and the way they've really energized the school district, so I back this guy." There are no such people now. He may have some small input with the Senate committee (Sen. Patty Murray seemed to be parroting many of his talking points), but I don't hear anybody saying, "And of course we want to work closely with the Secretary as we consider this important legislation."
Duncan hasn't made friends in Congress. He hasn't made friends among teachers, which is in some ways his biggest failure; if you think back to the beginning of his time in office, you'll recall that he said many things that teachers thought were great, but then he followed those good statements with terrible policies. And he hasn't made friends among the states. He may have thought he was making friends, but all he was gaining was compliance for as long as held the gun in one hand and the purse strings in the other.
So now, as waiver renewal comes due, Duncan finds himself in the difficult position of negotiating the price of a condo in a development that may never be built and which he doesn't actually own. Someone else (someone who's not even listening to him) is designing the building, and he has to negotiate a deal with future tenants. The administration perhaps thought they were strengthening their hand by making new waiver deals good through 2018, but it's looking like a mistake-- why lock yourself into a long term deal you may not need to make in the first place.
And you'll notice that none of the states are piping up to say, "We would like you to rewrite ESEA so it looks exactly like the waiver requirements, because we think they are swell." Instead, Klein quotes Kentucky ed commissioner Terry Holiday saying that once waivers are dead and gone, "I think we'd all quickly abandon all the work on tying teacher evaluation to test scores."
The waivers exist to free states from the mandates of ESEA, but nobody knows what those mandates will look like after Congress gets through with them. Duncan's position? Make a deal for a waiver or else something might happen, somehow, maybe?
Klein quotes Anne Hyslop at Bellwether:
"I don't see the department doing much more to really put the hammer down on states to get their evaluation systems in place," she said. "I don't think [renewal] means states are going to change what they're doing or get in trouble if they don't do what the department says. The secretary is saying pretty please do this, and states are saying thanks for your input, but we're going another direction."
Maybe if his programs had possessed some actual merit they would have developed support of their own, but here we are looking at VAMs and test-based accountability and increased charterization and turn-around schools and the feds telling every school in the country what success looks like and none of it-- none of it-- has produced anything resembling successful results. The only real success can be found in the same places as Duncan's remaining friends-- boardrooms and offices of edubiz corporations where the money has been pouring in.
Congress created NCLB in a flurry of bipartisan jolliness, but it was so closely tied to the Bush administration that it is still seen as a Bush law. Whatever comes out of the current move to rewrite, I don't think anyone is going to call it the Obama/Duncan ESEA.
Don't worry about Duncan. His connections have kept him sell-employed for most of his adult life, and I doubt that they'll fail him after he leaves USED. But for the moment he's just a guy trapped on a legless duck without enough food left on his lips to make the dog fake affection.
And you looked as sincere as a dog
Just as sincere as a dog does when it’s the food on your lips with which it's in love
--Fiona Apple "Parting Gift"
When you have to bribe or threaten people to be your friend, you can be sure that your friendship will be short-lived.
Over at EdWeek, Alyson Klein is asking one of the big questions of the moment-- how much political juice does the ED department have in NCLB waiver renewals? The related question is how much juice does the department have in the NCLB reauthorization itself?
The possible and imminent rewrite of ESEA/NCLB makes more obvious what some of us have been saying all long-- the tale of "voluntary" adoption of Common Core, high-stakes testing, test-based teacher evaluations, and the rest of the reformster package was a fiction. States complied with the federal mandates because the feds had everyone's violation of the NCLB ridiculously unattainable goals to threaten the states with, and because they could score some cash doing it.
Reauthorizing ESEA has always been the quick way to short-circuit reformster plans. NCLB has been the gun that the feds held to every state's head. Now Congress is threatening to take out the bullets. Without any bullets, and with the big piles of money running out, the administration is finding it's out of friends.
Arne Duncan can make impassioned speeches about the value of testing and then rerun the text in various publications. It doesn't really matter. Arne Duncan has had six years to prove that he has a vision of how to make US public education strong and vital. He has had six years to convince people that he knows what he's doing,that he knows where he wants to go and how to get there. He has failed. His only hope at this stage would have been a cadre of people saying, "Well, I wasn't sure, but I know I've seen the good his policies can do and the way they've really energized the school district, so I back this guy." There are no such people now. He may have some small input with the Senate committee (Sen. Patty Murray seemed to be parroting many of his talking points), but I don't hear anybody saying, "And of course we want to work closely with the Secretary as we consider this important legislation."
Duncan hasn't made friends in Congress. He hasn't made friends among teachers, which is in some ways his biggest failure; if you think back to the beginning of his time in office, you'll recall that he said many things that teachers thought were great, but then he followed those good statements with terrible policies. And he hasn't made friends among the states. He may have thought he was making friends, but all he was gaining was compliance for as long as held the gun in one hand and the purse strings in the other.
So now, as waiver renewal comes due, Duncan finds himself in the difficult position of negotiating the price of a condo in a development that may never be built and which he doesn't actually own. Someone else (someone who's not even listening to him) is designing the building, and he has to negotiate a deal with future tenants. The administration perhaps thought they were strengthening their hand by making new waiver deals good through 2018, but it's looking like a mistake-- why lock yourself into a long term deal you may not need to make in the first place.
And you'll notice that none of the states are piping up to say, "We would like you to rewrite ESEA so it looks exactly like the waiver requirements, because we think they are swell." Instead, Klein quotes Kentucky ed commissioner Terry Holiday saying that once waivers are dead and gone, "I think we'd all quickly abandon all the work on tying teacher evaluation to test scores."
The waivers exist to free states from the mandates of ESEA, but nobody knows what those mandates will look like after Congress gets through with them. Duncan's position? Make a deal for a waiver or else something might happen, somehow, maybe?
Klein quotes Anne Hyslop at Bellwether:
"I don't see the department doing much more to really put the hammer down on states to get their evaluation systems in place," she said. "I don't think [renewal] means states are going to change what they're doing or get in trouble if they don't do what the department says. The secretary is saying pretty please do this, and states are saying thanks for your input, but we're going another direction."
Maybe if his programs had possessed some actual merit they would have developed support of their own, but here we are looking at VAMs and test-based accountability and increased charterization and turn-around schools and the feds telling every school in the country what success looks like and none of it-- none of it-- has produced anything resembling successful results. The only real success can be found in the same places as Duncan's remaining friends-- boardrooms and offices of edubiz corporations where the money has been pouring in.
Congress created NCLB in a flurry of bipartisan jolliness, but it was so closely tied to the Bush administration that it is still seen as a Bush law. Whatever comes out of the current move to rewrite, I don't think anyone is going to call it the Obama/Duncan ESEA.
Don't worry about Duncan. His connections have kept him sell-employed for most of his adult life, and I doubt that they'll fail him after he leaves USED. But for the moment he's just a guy trapped on a legless duck without enough food left on his lips to make the dog fake affection.
Sunday, January 25, 2015
What Is Public Education, Really?
One of the repeated tricks and techniques of reformsterism is to propose policies or procedures as beneficial for public education when in fact, intentionally or not, they are far more likely to damage public education. This argument usually takes the form of trying to redefine public education itself-- kind of like handing someone a screwdriver and saying, "This will be a great hammer; just hold it like this." Much of what is presented as an attempt to reform the public schools are actually attempts to turn them into Not Public Schools.
So let me see if I can lay out what features the real US education system actually has, the better to understand when we've moved outside that boundary. I'll stipulate right up front that our current public education system does not always nail each of these perfectly, but these traits still define what our public education system is (and is not).
The public education system takes all students.
We've divided up territory geographically so that we can be sure not to miss a single child. If a child lives within the boundaries of that school system, that school system must take that child. There are some limits in the public education system (for instance, a child who presents a clear and present danger to other students), but beyond those limits no child can be rejected, pushed out, or required to seek education elsewhere. And certainly the public education system does not require you to apply to be in the system, or go find a school to take you when your original school no longer will.
The public education system is publicly funded.
All taxpayers contribute. It may be necessary for state or federal government to shuffle some of that money around to even things out; after all, we do not provide roads decent roads only in rich neighborhoods. If there's a requirement that parents must contribute money, time, or both in order for their child to be allowed to attend, that is not a public school.
Conversely, any attempt to cut funding or failure to properly provide for a school is nothing less than an attempt to turn it into Not A Public School. While student "outcomes" are certainly a consideration for a public school, it is does not establish equity to simply demand that all schools produce the same outcomes regardless of what resources and facilities they have.
The public education system is run by local taxpayers.
A public school system is one of the last bastions of participatory democracy. The school is run by a group of taxpayers who are elected by other taxpayers. The school board must (in fact, can only) have public meetings at which members of the public can have their say about the decisions of the school board. Taxpayers get to have their final say about school board decisions by voting.
If a school is run by people who don't have to meet in front of the taxpayers and do not have to listen to the taxpayers, it is not a public school. If the people who run the school cannot be removed from office by the people who live in that local school district, it is not a public school. If school policy is set by a people who do not have to answer to local taxpayers, that is not a public school.
The public school system is run transparently.
The complete financial records of a public school are always available, in full, to any taxpayer and/or voter in the local school district. Any school that says, "We don't have to show our financial records to you," is not a public school.
The public school system is not run for profit.
The public school system is a public service. If you like, you can think of it as a managed public good, like a park or the municipal water supply. As such, it never produces a profit for anybody. This includes directly (as in an explicitly for-profit charter) or indirectly (as in a not-for-profit charter that pays profit-creating fees to a building owner or school management company).
The public school is stably staffed with the best professionals the available money can buy.
A public school hires certified professionals, and it pays with a competitive salary and it structures its system to encourage the staff members to stay in the school for the length of their career. Teachers are evaluated with a system that considers the full range of skills and qualities that the school district values, and those who do poorly receive support or, eventually, fired if they cannot get their act together. A public school tries to be a source of stability in its community.
Schools that use any of the pay systems that are designed to cut total operating cost by paying the total teaching staff bottom dollar are not public schools. Using an evaluation system that does not really evaluate the full range of teacher qualities, or which injects an invalid random element, is an attempt to turn the school into Not a Public School. None of these "merit" systems, VAMvaluations, "career ladders," or short-term hiring practices designed to run a school on the cheap contribute to the quality or stability of the school.
The public school is a long term commitment.
Public schools represent a promise by the community made to every child, present and future, that they will be given the best education we can get them, no matter what, as long as there are children who need it. Public schools do not close for business reasons.
You can break these rules.
There are plenty of perfectly good schools that don't meet these standards, and their existence is not a pimple on the face of the universe. But they aren't public schools.
Another way of understanding the reformster position is that they have tried to convince us that entities that are not public schools actually are. If they want to have a conversation about how to change our traditional public education system into something else, that's a perfectly legitimate conversation to have.
But to have that conversation, we need honesty. Reformsters need to just say, "We want to replace the traditional American public education system with a different kind of system," and then we can have that conversation. But insisting that we are trying to bolster or improve public education by stripping its defining qualities is both destructive and dishonest.
So let me see if I can lay out what features the real US education system actually has, the better to understand when we've moved outside that boundary. I'll stipulate right up front that our current public education system does not always nail each of these perfectly, but these traits still define what our public education system is (and is not).
The public education system takes all students.
We've divided up territory geographically so that we can be sure not to miss a single child. If a child lives within the boundaries of that school system, that school system must take that child. There are some limits in the public education system (for instance, a child who presents a clear and present danger to other students), but beyond those limits no child can be rejected, pushed out, or required to seek education elsewhere. And certainly the public education system does not require you to apply to be in the system, or go find a school to take you when your original school no longer will.
The public education system is publicly funded.
All taxpayers contribute. It may be necessary for state or federal government to shuffle some of that money around to even things out; after all, we do not provide roads decent roads only in rich neighborhoods. If there's a requirement that parents must contribute money, time, or both in order for their child to be allowed to attend, that is not a public school.
Conversely, any attempt to cut funding or failure to properly provide for a school is nothing less than an attempt to turn it into Not A Public School. While student "outcomes" are certainly a consideration for a public school, it is does not establish equity to simply demand that all schools produce the same outcomes regardless of what resources and facilities they have.
The public education system is run by local taxpayers.
A public school system is one of the last bastions of participatory democracy. The school is run by a group of taxpayers who are elected by other taxpayers. The school board must (in fact, can only) have public meetings at which members of the public can have their say about the decisions of the school board. Taxpayers get to have their final say about school board decisions by voting.
If a school is run by people who don't have to meet in front of the taxpayers and do not have to listen to the taxpayers, it is not a public school. If the people who run the school cannot be removed from office by the people who live in that local school district, it is not a public school. If school policy is set by a people who do not have to answer to local taxpayers, that is not a public school.
The public school system is run transparently.
The complete financial records of a public school are always available, in full, to any taxpayer and/or voter in the local school district. Any school that says, "We don't have to show our financial records to you," is not a public school.
The public school system is not run for profit.
The public school system is a public service. If you like, you can think of it as a managed public good, like a park or the municipal water supply. As such, it never produces a profit for anybody. This includes directly (as in an explicitly for-profit charter) or indirectly (as in a not-for-profit charter that pays profit-creating fees to a building owner or school management company).
The public school is stably staffed with the best professionals the available money can buy.
A public school hires certified professionals, and it pays with a competitive salary and it structures its system to encourage the staff members to stay in the school for the length of their career. Teachers are evaluated with a system that considers the full range of skills and qualities that the school district values, and those who do poorly receive support or, eventually, fired if they cannot get their act together. A public school tries to be a source of stability in its community.
Schools that use any of the pay systems that are designed to cut total operating cost by paying the total teaching staff bottom dollar are not public schools. Using an evaluation system that does not really evaluate the full range of teacher qualities, or which injects an invalid random element, is an attempt to turn the school into Not a Public School. None of these "merit" systems, VAMvaluations, "career ladders," or short-term hiring practices designed to run a school on the cheap contribute to the quality or stability of the school.
The public school is a long term commitment.
Public schools represent a promise by the community made to every child, present and future, that they will be given the best education we can get them, no matter what, as long as there are children who need it. Public schools do not close for business reasons.
You can break these rules.
There are plenty of perfectly good schools that don't meet these standards, and their existence is not a pimple on the face of the universe. But they aren't public schools.
Another way of understanding the reformster position is that they have tried to convince us that entities that are not public schools actually are. If they want to have a conversation about how to change our traditional public education system into something else, that's a perfectly legitimate conversation to have.
But to have that conversation, we need honesty. Reformsters need to just say, "We want to replace the traditional American public education system with a different kind of system," and then we can have that conversation. But insisting that we are trying to bolster or improve public education by stripping its defining qualities is both destructive and dishonest.
Public Education: Political Orphan
Last week's Senate hearing on NCLB underscores what may be old news for some and a growing sick revelation for others-- the Democrats are no longer the party of public education or public school teachers.
Many supporters of the public school system and the teachers who work there have been in denial for a while. They've tried to dismiss nominally Democratic voices touting reformster policy as outlier, or Democrats in Name Only. DFER is so clearly part of a privatizing agenda-- surely that's not what Democrats stand for. And last summer union members agitated for a resolution condemning Arne Duncan and calling for his ouster, as if Duncan were some sort of rogue agent and some day Barack Obama would wake up, read a Department of Education briefing and exclaim, "He's doing what!!?! We'll have to do something about that right away!"
But the names and the stories just keep stacking up and stacking up. After six years, we can no longer pretend that Arne Duncan is doing anything other than what the President, our biggest-name Democrat, wants him to do. A recent New Yorker profile reminds us that among those who have praised Jeb Bush's "work" in education are Barack Obama and Hilary Clinton. Arguably the highest-profile Democratic governor in the country, Andrew Cuomo of New York, has announced in no uncertain terms his intention to break public education and the unions that work there. Randi Weingarten, head of the AFT and so representative of a traditional partnership between organized labor and the Democratic party, has come out in favor of the reformster agenda of testing and VAM-style evaluation.
Well, maybe House and Senate Democrats will ride to the defense of public education? Last Wednesday's hearing reminds us that no, that's not going to happen.
Ranking Democrat Sen. Patty Murray spouted the usual reformster lines. "Assessments help parents and communities hold schools accountable," she said as the hearing opened, repeating the reformster notion that without a big standardized tests, the quality of a school is somehow a mystery. Murray also opened the hearings with the need to get rid of redundant and bad tests, a meaningless assertion that simply serves as a weak manner for insisting that the Big Standardized Tests are necessary and excellent. Murray also threw in a reference to how hard other countries are working to out-compete us in education (because China is a nation whose culture, educational and otherwise, the US should really aspire to.)
What about Elizabeth Warren, who has emerged as a Democrat's Democrat, an alternative to the corporate clubby Hillary Clinton? Nope-- Warren is also of the opinion that when the federal government gives monetary support to local schools, in the name of not having said money wasted, it should get to exercise full oversight in the form of high stakes testing. The subtext of such oversight is, of course, that those of us who work in public education can't be trusted, not to mention a failure to recognize that huge amounts of money are being wasted right now. Senator Al Franken? As Jeff Bryant reported, Franken made
wondered if the whole darn mess could be cleared up by using “computer adaptive assessments.” (Maybe, if you want to spend a whole lot of time and money, a witness replied.)
The lone education friendly set of words came from Rhode Island's junior senator, Sheldon Whitehouse, a career politician and former US Attorney and AG in Rhode Island. I'm going to give you Bryant's version of these comments in their entirety, because they're the only high point of the hearings:
“My experience in the education world is that there are really two worlds in it. One is the world of contract and consultants and academics and experts and plenty of officials at the federal state and local level. And the other is a world of principals and classroom teachers who are actually providing education to students. What I’m hearing from my principals’ and teachers’ world is that the footprint of that first world has become way too big in their lives to the point where it’s inhibiting their ability to do the jobs they’re entrusted to do.”
Indeed, the footprint made by education policy leaders in classrooms has left behind a form of mandated testing that is “designed to test the school and not the student,” Whitehouse stated, and he described a dysfunctional system in which teachers don’t get test results in a timely fashion that makes it possible for them to use the results to change instruction. Instead, educators spend more time preparing for the tests and encouraging students to be motivated to take them, even though the tests have no bearing on the students’ grades, just how the school and the individual teachers themselves are evaluated.
Whitehouse urged his colleagues to consider more closely the purpose of testing – not just how many tests and how often but how assessments are used. He concluded, “We have to be very careful about distinguishing the importance of the purpose of this oversight and not allow the purpose of the oversight to be conducted in such an inefficient, wasteful, clumsy way that the people who we really trust to know to do this education – the people who are in the classroom – are not looking back at us and saying, ‘Stop. Help. I can’t deal with this. You are inhibiting my ability to teach.’”
So, among all the various Democrats in power, we've got one who gets it.
It seems that it's past time to pretend that the Democrats attacking American public education are aberrations or outliers. The reverse is true. The bright lights, the mainstream public faces of the Democratic Party have abandoned public education, combining the kind of pro-corporate privatizing agenda usually associated with the GOP with a cartoon-Democrat affection for government overreach.
Does that mean we should turn to the GOP? Doubtful. Committee Chair Senator Lamar Alexander is an opponent of much of the current administration's education policy, but he also loves him some charter and voucher programs, so he's not exactly a public education BFF either. And while most GOP politicians are now treating the words "Common Core" as if they are highly radioactive, that doesn't mean they are looking to support public education, either.
In terms of policy, the biggest difference between the parties may be that Democrats still occasionally feel the need to hide their druthers behind language designed to keep teachers and other public school advocates from deserting them, whereas Republicans don't try to pretend that teachers, their work, and their union matter factor in GOP political calculations.
Somehow US public education in just one short decade has transformed from the baby that every politician was ready to kiss into the ugly kid that nobody wants to go to Prom with. In this environment, I'm honestly not sure who there is to speak up for public education in the political world, but I hope we can figure it out soon, because the hearings last week were one more reminder that there is no cavalry coming any time soon.
Many supporters of the public school system and the teachers who work there have been in denial for a while. They've tried to dismiss nominally Democratic voices touting reformster policy as outlier, or Democrats in Name Only. DFER is so clearly part of a privatizing agenda-- surely that's not what Democrats stand for. And last summer union members agitated for a resolution condemning Arne Duncan and calling for his ouster, as if Duncan were some sort of rogue agent and some day Barack Obama would wake up, read a Department of Education briefing and exclaim, "He's doing what!!?! We'll have to do something about that right away!"
But the names and the stories just keep stacking up and stacking up. After six years, we can no longer pretend that Arne Duncan is doing anything other than what the President, our biggest-name Democrat, wants him to do. A recent New Yorker profile reminds us that among those who have praised Jeb Bush's "work" in education are Barack Obama and Hilary Clinton. Arguably the highest-profile Democratic governor in the country, Andrew Cuomo of New York, has announced in no uncertain terms his intention to break public education and the unions that work there. Randi Weingarten, head of the AFT and so representative of a traditional partnership between organized labor and the Democratic party, has come out in favor of the reformster agenda of testing and VAM-style evaluation.
Well, maybe House and Senate Democrats will ride to the defense of public education? Last Wednesday's hearing reminds us that no, that's not going to happen.
Ranking Democrat Sen. Patty Murray spouted the usual reformster lines. "Assessments help parents and communities hold schools accountable," she said as the hearing opened, repeating the reformster notion that without a big standardized tests, the quality of a school is somehow a mystery. Murray also opened the hearings with the need to get rid of redundant and bad tests, a meaningless assertion that simply serves as a weak manner for insisting that the Big Standardized Tests are necessary and excellent. Murray also threw in a reference to how hard other countries are working to out-compete us in education (because China is a nation whose culture, educational and otherwise, the US should really aspire to.)
What about Elizabeth Warren, who has emerged as a Democrat's Democrat, an alternative to the corporate clubby Hillary Clinton? Nope-- Warren is also of the opinion that when the federal government gives monetary support to local schools, in the name of not having said money wasted, it should get to exercise full oversight in the form of high stakes testing. The subtext of such oversight is, of course, that those of us who work in public education can't be trusted, not to mention a failure to recognize that huge amounts of money are being wasted right now. Senator Al Franken? As Jeff Bryant reported, Franken made
wondered if the whole darn mess could be cleared up by using “computer adaptive assessments.” (Maybe, if you want to spend a whole lot of time and money, a witness replied.)
The lone education friendly set of words came from Rhode Island's junior senator, Sheldon Whitehouse, a career politician and former US Attorney and AG in Rhode Island. I'm going to give you Bryant's version of these comments in their entirety, because they're the only high point of the hearings:
“My experience in the education world is that there are really two worlds in it. One is the world of contract and consultants and academics and experts and plenty of officials at the federal state and local level. And the other is a world of principals and classroom teachers who are actually providing education to students. What I’m hearing from my principals’ and teachers’ world is that the footprint of that first world has become way too big in their lives to the point where it’s inhibiting their ability to do the jobs they’re entrusted to do.”
Indeed, the footprint made by education policy leaders in classrooms has left behind a form of mandated testing that is “designed to test the school and not the student,” Whitehouse stated, and he described a dysfunctional system in which teachers don’t get test results in a timely fashion that makes it possible for them to use the results to change instruction. Instead, educators spend more time preparing for the tests and encouraging students to be motivated to take them, even though the tests have no bearing on the students’ grades, just how the school and the individual teachers themselves are evaluated.
Whitehouse urged his colleagues to consider more closely the purpose of testing – not just how many tests and how often but how assessments are used. He concluded, “We have to be very careful about distinguishing the importance of the purpose of this oversight and not allow the purpose of the oversight to be conducted in such an inefficient, wasteful, clumsy way that the people who we really trust to know to do this education – the people who are in the classroom – are not looking back at us and saying, ‘Stop. Help. I can’t deal with this. You are inhibiting my ability to teach.’”
So, among all the various Democrats in power, we've got one who gets it.
It seems that it's past time to pretend that the Democrats attacking American public education are aberrations or outliers. The reverse is true. The bright lights, the mainstream public faces of the Democratic Party have abandoned public education, combining the kind of pro-corporate privatizing agenda usually associated with the GOP with a cartoon-Democrat affection for government overreach.
Does that mean we should turn to the GOP? Doubtful. Committee Chair Senator Lamar Alexander is an opponent of much of the current administration's education policy, but he also loves him some charter and voucher programs, so he's not exactly a public education BFF either. And while most GOP politicians are now treating the words "Common Core" as if they are highly radioactive, that doesn't mean they are looking to support public education, either.
In terms of policy, the biggest difference between the parties may be that Democrats still occasionally feel the need to hide their druthers behind language designed to keep teachers and other public school advocates from deserting them, whereas Republicans don't try to pretend that teachers, their work, and their union matter factor in GOP political calculations.
Somehow US public education in just one short decade has transformed from the baby that every politician was ready to kiss into the ugly kid that nobody wants to go to Prom with. In this environment, I'm honestly not sure who there is to speak up for public education in the political world, but I hope we can figure it out soon, because the hearings last week were one more reminder that there is no cavalry coming any time soon.
Saturday, January 24, 2015
K Reading Instruction: Ignoring the Experts
Defending the Early Years and the Alliance for Childhood have released a report about the use of Kindergarten reading instruction. Authored by Nancy Carlsson-Paige, Geralyn Bywater McLaughlin, and Joan Wolfsheimer Almon, the report gives up its conclusion in its title: "Reading Instruction in Kindergarten: Little To Gain, and Much To Lose."
If you prefer your information in video form, here's a handy short clip they've created to tout the report's conclusions:
Both the video and the report are fully accessible to people who have not been soaking in education policy debates for the past several years, so they are perfect educational tools to share with your civilian friends.
The report is not a long or arduous read, but it's still a full twelve pages, so I'm going to give you the bullet points version.
* Many children are not developmentally ready to read in kindergarten, but the Common Core Standards require schools to do exactly that. Researchers have demonstrated that the developmental milestones of early childhood have not moved significantly since at least the 1920's. Researchers also offer a wide range of time frames for those milestones to be hit, an observation confirmed by anybody who ever spent time around more than one tiny human. Citing superhuman education research machine Mercedes Schneider, the authors note that the Common Core's creation involved not one single grown human with professional expertise, training or experience working with the tiny humans that they were setting standards for.
* No research supports the idea that learning to read in Kindergarten results in long-term gains. It's true that no research can hope to show just how much grown human social status and adult self-esteem is derived by parents who can casually observe at cocktail parties that their five-year-old is currently polishing off the complete Harry Potter series, but so far no researcher has been able to show that a kindergarten reading head start leads to early admission to Yale, cuter prom dates, and more frequent raises. Anecdotally, I am sure by the time students have arrived in my classroom to argue about how much they don't enjoy reading Heart of Darkness, any super advantage they may have had from an early reading start has pretty much disappeared. I don't think I'm unusual in this respect, and so far nobody has conducted research that would prove I'm wrong.
* Research does show that play-based programs are far more effective than any sort of Tiny Human Academics. Also, children learn through playful, hands-on experiences with materials, the natural world, and engaging, caring adults.In other words, letting five year olds act like five year olds instead of trying to make them behave like college freshmen is a good choice. It works, and the research shows it.
* Active, play-based experiences in language-rich environments help children develop their ideas about symbols, oral language and the printed word — all vital components of reading. Yes, we know a lot about how to do this stuff effectively.
* We are setting unrealistic reading goals and frequently using inappropriate methods to accomplish them. Which sort of follows. If your goal is to make pigs fly, is there anything you might attempt that wouldn't be inappropriate. This is why it matters that CCSS goals are bad goals set by people who don't know better-- if you start from bad goals, you will use bad methods to pursue them.
* In play-based preschools and kindergartens, teachers intentionally design language and literacy experiences which help prepare children to become fluent readers. In other words, back off. We're professionals and we know what we're doing. What may look like "just messing around" to people who don't know any better is actually laying the groundwork for literacy. And no, you can't get the same effect from a pre-packaged computer program. Tiny humans need to learn from other humans.
* The adoption of the Common Core State Standards falsely implies that having children achieve these standards will overcome the impact of poverty on development and learning, and will create equal educational opportunity for all children. No well-promoted set of government standards will make the effects of poverty disappear. Nor do the standards trump actual developmental stages. You don't get children to grow taller faster simply by insisting that they must, or else.
* Recommendations. The authors wrap up with a list of Things They Want To Have Happen. Erase Kindergarten standards from CCSS. Do some more actual research on what works, particularly with students in poverty. Convene a task force (yeah, I'm not really excited about that idea). No high stakes testing for pre-third grade students. Make teachers better and put experienced ones in high-poverty areas.
Okay, so I don't think all of their recommendations are winners. But they've done a good job of laying out the problems with the kindergarten reading standards (and really, with the standards beyond just those). The standards were set by people who did not know what they were doing, and so the standards don't fit the children. To try to make the children fit the standards requires a sort of educational malpractice.
And yet we already know plenty about what works when teaching children to read. And plenty of teachers were already doing it. Early childhood reading instruction is an area where the amateurs running the Common Core show clearly pushed aside and ignored the experts in the field and demanded that solid techniques and approaches be replaced with unfounded approaches. CCSS demands flying pigs. It's time for the amateurs to just back up and let the people who know how to teach the tiny humans do their job.
If you prefer your information in video form, here's a handy short clip they've created to tout the report's conclusions:
Both the video and the report are fully accessible to people who have not been soaking in education policy debates for the past several years, so they are perfect educational tools to share with your civilian friends.
The report is not a long or arduous read, but it's still a full twelve pages, so I'm going to give you the bullet points version.
* Many children are not developmentally ready to read in kindergarten, but the Common Core Standards require schools to do exactly that. Researchers have demonstrated that the developmental milestones of early childhood have not moved significantly since at least the 1920's. Researchers also offer a wide range of time frames for those milestones to be hit, an observation confirmed by anybody who ever spent time around more than one tiny human. Citing superhuman education research machine Mercedes Schneider, the authors note that the Common Core's creation involved not one single grown human with professional expertise, training or experience working with the tiny humans that they were setting standards for.
* No research supports the idea that learning to read in Kindergarten results in long-term gains. It's true that no research can hope to show just how much grown human social status and adult self-esteem is derived by parents who can casually observe at cocktail parties that their five-year-old is currently polishing off the complete Harry Potter series, but so far no researcher has been able to show that a kindergarten reading head start leads to early admission to Yale, cuter prom dates, and more frequent raises. Anecdotally, I am sure by the time students have arrived in my classroom to argue about how much they don't enjoy reading Heart of Darkness, any super advantage they may have had from an early reading start has pretty much disappeared. I don't think I'm unusual in this respect, and so far nobody has conducted research that would prove I'm wrong.
* Research does show that play-based programs are far more effective than any sort of Tiny Human Academics. Also, children learn through playful, hands-on experiences with materials, the natural world, and engaging, caring adults.In other words, letting five year olds act like five year olds instead of trying to make them behave like college freshmen is a good choice. It works, and the research shows it.
* Active, play-based experiences in language-rich environments help children develop their ideas about symbols, oral language and the printed word — all vital components of reading. Yes, we know a lot about how to do this stuff effectively.
* We are setting unrealistic reading goals and frequently using inappropriate methods to accomplish them. Which sort of follows. If your goal is to make pigs fly, is there anything you might attempt that wouldn't be inappropriate. This is why it matters that CCSS goals are bad goals set by people who don't know better-- if you start from bad goals, you will use bad methods to pursue them.
* In play-based preschools and kindergartens, teachers intentionally design language and literacy experiences which help prepare children to become fluent readers. In other words, back off. We're professionals and we know what we're doing. What may look like "just messing around" to people who don't know any better is actually laying the groundwork for literacy. And no, you can't get the same effect from a pre-packaged computer program. Tiny humans need to learn from other humans.
* The adoption of the Common Core State Standards falsely implies that having children achieve these standards will overcome the impact of poverty on development and learning, and will create equal educational opportunity for all children. No well-promoted set of government standards will make the effects of poverty disappear. Nor do the standards trump actual developmental stages. You don't get children to grow taller faster simply by insisting that they must, or else.
* Recommendations. The authors wrap up with a list of Things They Want To Have Happen. Erase Kindergarten standards from CCSS. Do some more actual research on what works, particularly with students in poverty. Convene a task force (yeah, I'm not really excited about that idea). No high stakes testing for pre-third grade students. Make teachers better and put experienced ones in high-poverty areas.
Okay, so I don't think all of their recommendations are winners. But they've done a good job of laying out the problems with the kindergarten reading standards (and really, with the standards beyond just those). The standards were set by people who did not know what they were doing, and so the standards don't fit the children. To try to make the children fit the standards requires a sort of educational malpractice.
And yet we already know plenty about what works when teaching children to read. And plenty of teachers were already doing it. Early childhood reading instruction is an area where the amateurs running the Common Core show clearly pushed aside and ignored the experts in the field and demanded that solid techniques and approaches be replaced with unfounded approaches. CCSS demands flying pigs. It's time for the amateurs to just back up and let the people who know how to teach the tiny humans do their job.
Friday, January 23, 2015
CEO Tells Education To Take Low-cost Hike
Stephen Schwarzman, CEO of the Blackstone Group, took to the stage in Davos, Switzerland to speak at the World Economic Form event, "Business Backs Education." His message? Business would prefer not to back education at all.
As reported by David Sirota for International Business Times (and if you're not familiar with Sirota's work, you should be), Schwarzman unloaded the usual baloney about the pressing need to avoid "throwing money at schools."
In the Catholic schools they spend much less money than the public schools, and they get amazing results. Private schools spend much more money than the public schools and they get remarkable results...So as an analyst, this can’t be just about money because you keep having great outcomes regardless of that. And so I would suggest that there are a lot of ways to be successful in education. It's usually good to have more resources of all types, but you can make due [sic] with a lot less and have great outcomes in large scale.
Now that is some top-notch analysis there. I am imagining the meeting at Blackstone where Schwarzman says, "Johnson over there has been doing great work and he gets less pay than most of you, so effective immediately, nobody at this company gets paid more than Johnson."
But Schwarzman, not content to say just one dumb thing, decided to search further up his own alimentary canal for other nuggets of wisdom. For instance, when he says "make do with a lot less," he's not kidding.
“I’ve always wondered, what you do in a society with people who just retire,” he told conference attendees. “If you could get those people, like a board, [to be an] unpaid workforce, pay them next to nothing or nothing, and have them go into the school system to be mentors to kids, and be an example of a certain type of success that you would get dramatically different outcomes. If you can get unemployed people that cost nothing, that can have this dramatic difference, that costs nothing. I love things that cost nothing that have great results. Imagine if you laid on technology and other types of things, you could really set the world on fire with this type of stuff.”
I am sure that Schwarzman's own retirement plan at Blackstone includes a program that involves him coming back as a consultant at the company, for free. Of course, he may be touting the Work For Free After You Retire Plan because a vast chunk of Blackstone's investment pool comes from public employee pension funds.
So maybe Schwarzman knows something the rest of us don't. On the other hand, clearly many other people know something that Schwarzman does not.
The same day Schwarzman was unleashing some Blackstone bloviation overseas, Noah Smith at Bloomberg View was reporting on a recent paper from the National Bureau of Economic Research. Bloomberg's headline? "Throw More Money at Education."
The study found some results that seem clear and unsurprising. Spending more on schools results in benefits for the students who attend there and the communities they head out into.
Smith hits two points regarding the report. The first is a special wrinkle in the findings-- spending more money has the greatest effect when the money is thrown at poor schools.
The second is Smith's own response to the oft-cited complaint that the US already spends a bigger chunk on education than many other countries. Maybe, Smith suggests, that's because we need to, because we have such a massive mess of poverty to overcome.
And remember-- this was being reported in the Bloomberg/BusinessWeek online batch of sites. Schwarzman did not even need to venture into the world of education reportage to find the evidence that he was wrong-- even other people in his own business-oriented universe (you know-- the same universe where it makes sense to offer the investment bankers who tanked the US economy huge bonuses to stay on because you have to pay big money to hold onto valuable expertise) know that he's wrong on this. Though I suppose he could prove his point by taking a pay cut, moving to a smaller, crappier office, and planning to volunteer his time as a school janitor and mentor when he retires.
As reported by David Sirota for International Business Times (and if you're not familiar with Sirota's work, you should be), Schwarzman unloaded the usual baloney about the pressing need to avoid "throwing money at schools."
In the Catholic schools they spend much less money than the public schools, and they get amazing results. Private schools spend much more money than the public schools and they get remarkable results...So as an analyst, this can’t be just about money because you keep having great outcomes regardless of that. And so I would suggest that there are a lot of ways to be successful in education. It's usually good to have more resources of all types, but you can make due [sic] with a lot less and have great outcomes in large scale.
Now that is some top-notch analysis there. I am imagining the meeting at Blackstone where Schwarzman says, "Johnson over there has been doing great work and he gets less pay than most of you, so effective immediately, nobody at this company gets paid more than Johnson."
But Schwarzman, not content to say just one dumb thing, decided to search further up his own alimentary canal for other nuggets of wisdom. For instance, when he says "make do with a lot less," he's not kidding.
“I’ve always wondered, what you do in a society with people who just retire,” he told conference attendees. “If you could get those people, like a board, [to be an] unpaid workforce, pay them next to nothing or nothing, and have them go into the school system to be mentors to kids, and be an example of a certain type of success that you would get dramatically different outcomes. If you can get unemployed people that cost nothing, that can have this dramatic difference, that costs nothing. I love things that cost nothing that have great results. Imagine if you laid on technology and other types of things, you could really set the world on fire with this type of stuff.”
I am sure that Schwarzman's own retirement plan at Blackstone includes a program that involves him coming back as a consultant at the company, for free. Of course, he may be touting the Work For Free After You Retire Plan because a vast chunk of Blackstone's investment pool comes from public employee pension funds.
So maybe Schwarzman knows something the rest of us don't. On the other hand, clearly many other people know something that Schwarzman does not.
The same day Schwarzman was unleashing some Blackstone bloviation overseas, Noah Smith at Bloomberg View was reporting on a recent paper from the National Bureau of Economic Research. Bloomberg's headline? "Throw More Money at Education."
The study found some results that seem clear and unsurprising. Spending more on schools results in benefits for the students who attend there and the communities they head out into.
Smith hits two points regarding the report. The first is a special wrinkle in the findings-- spending more money has the greatest effect when the money is thrown at poor schools.
The second is Smith's own response to the oft-cited complaint that the US already spends a bigger chunk on education than many other countries. Maybe, Smith suggests, that's because we need to, because we have such a massive mess of poverty to overcome.
And remember-- this was being reported in the Bloomberg/BusinessWeek online batch of sites. Schwarzman did not even need to venture into the world of education reportage to find the evidence that he was wrong-- even other people in his own business-oriented universe (you know-- the same universe where it makes sense to offer the investment bankers who tanked the US economy huge bonuses to stay on because you have to pay big money to hold onto valuable expertise) know that he's wrong on this. Though I suppose he could prove his point by taking a pay cut, moving to a smaller, crappier office, and planning to volunteer his time as a school janitor and mentor when he retires.
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