Age Before Booty

Wondering if FEE has been up to anything since Jebmaster Bush took off his FEE leader hat so that he could put on his Help Me Further a Presidential Dynasty Hat? Well, today they released the grand-daddy of fake research report position advocacy papers.

If you thought that there were some connections in the pursuit of school choice that were a bridge too far, Dr. Matthew Lardner, Senior Adviser at FEE and Senior Fellow at the Friedman Institute for Educational Choice is here to sing a few choruses of "Ain't No Mountain High Enough."

The new report-like paper product is called "Turn and Face the Strain: Age Demographic Change and the Near Future of American Education" and it is a symphony in baloney, an epic exercise in polishing the living daylights out of a weak argument that could only have been the product of a writers' room meeting that started with, "Who can come up with the most outlandishly ridiculous argument for more school choice?"

It's the little things

Okay, we've got large fish to fry here, but there are so many moments of delicious dopiness.

For firsties, the title is a misquote. The actual line from David Bowie's "Changes" is "Turn and face the strange," but Lardner can be excused because even Bowie's background singers originally messed it up. I just wanted to set the record straight. Also, the real line from the song makes an awesome title for this reporty paper-thing.

Also, there is this cool graphic to go with the report.

My esteemed colleague Edushyster (we while away some twitter time poring over this thing) pointed out that A) the affected parties are all white folks and B) some Amish appear to be involved. I think I'm offended that the artist decided to use baldness as a signifier for aged.

There's also a policy brief (kind of like the book jacket for the report paper thing) which warns that Hurricane Gray is going to make landfall, so I guess we need to board up the windows before we are hit by an onslaught of geeezers. I am wondering what the storm surge is in this metaphor; I'm also wondering if it's a good metaphor for a group headquartered in Florida.

But hey-- here's another metaphor. How many people are going to be in the cart, and how many are going to be pushing it. As someone who is going to be in the cart soon, I have other questions. Will it be a nice cart? Will there be comfortable seats? Will I sit facing forward or backwards, because I might get cartsick? Who gets to steer the cart? So many questions.

Perhaps that's why FEE declares "We need policymakers to be more daring." What does that mean? Does this mean that Senators should be BASE jumping off the top of the Congressional dome? Should they drive around DC without seat belts? Should they spit into the wind and pull the mask off that old Lone Ranger?

Well, as it turns out, they should be daring and support choice, and by that FEE means a woman's choice to control her own reproductive options. Ha! Just kidding. Of course the only choice that matters is school choice, which, as it turns out, is the magic solution to everything.

So how did we get from a geriatric avalanche to school choice? Let's back up a step and look at the full report and see if we can piece this together.

Watch out for old people and babies.

"Boomers retire and send their grandkids to school" reads the headline, and that's pretty much the upshot of Part I of this argument.

Lardner introduces us to something called Age Dependency Ratios. This is the ratio of able-bodied working age folks to the combined number of slacker old people and wussy children who insist on living on some version of the dole. Lots of folks appear to compute this just using the oldsters, although most also seem to base the computation using 64 as retirement age, and I'm pretty sure that the real retirement age for my cohort is more like 82-- more if our pensions and social security are scarfed up before we get our hands on them.

Projects call for that ratio to tilt toward the slackluster old-young group, with fewer people pushing a cart full of more retirees and school children. That will probably be expensive.

Now, the reporty paper thing spends a lot of time (over twenty-five pages) establishing this, and we could spend some time picking at the numbers and how panicky they should make us (I've lost the link, but one on-line source I read showed that the projected sky-is-falling ratio for the US is lower than the ratio in Japan right now today-- update: found it).

But I'm not going to argue the point. I'll stipulate that baby boomers are getting old and retirey and that will make us collectively what I believe the economists call Pretty Damn Expensive.

And this relates to school choice how, exactly...?

The connection seems to rest on a couple of pieces of reformster baloney.

Part I is that the current generation entering their thirties are mostly dopes who did poorly on their standardized reading tests, and if they didn't get good reading test scores, then we know, somehow, that they won't be able to pull their weight in society and make sure that my cart is comfy with maybe bucket seats. At least they don't try to back this "connection" up with the fully-debunked "research" by Chetty et al.

They do note that the Age Dependency Ratio depends on the assumption that work age people are working, but this does not lead them to the question of where the jobs went for those folks to work at. Like all problems, this one has nothing whatsoever to do with a fractured economy and rampant poverty. Nor does it suggest that the 1% might want to get off their mountain of money and th9ink about how to put America back to work. Nope. That has nothing to do with it.

Also, throwing money at education hasn't helped anything. Again, don't ask them for a research back-up to this idea. Everyone, you know, just knows. But education the way we do it costs too much and makes the cart too big and heavy.

Now, they will try to back up this next action plan portion with some research because we get to school choice by referring to a study called "The Productivity of Public Charter Schools" by Albert Chang et al. This study "found" that charter schools are much more productive (assuming, as usual, that the only thing anybody wants a school to do is get students to pass a standardized math and reading test).

I have not had a chance to read this study, but Gene V. Glass of Arizona State University did take the time to review the report. We don't have to get into the fine points-- I think a couple of sentences from Glass's review will give you the drift of his gist:

Not reported is the fact that the demographic differences between the two sectors are highly correlated with the estimates of different effects; the sector with the higher percentage of poor pupils scores lower on the NAEP test. This failure alone renders the report and its recommendations indefensible.

So, it's bunk.

But it's part of the foundation of FEE's argument. Education is costly, so we should use more efficient providers aka charters. Or we could have schools powered by cold fusion generators carried on the backs of hippogryphs.

Digital learning. Outcome-based funding (aka merit pay on teacher and district scale). Charter schools. Education savings accounts (aka vouchers 2.0).

Test question. The above four are:

A) programs advocated by FEE
B) approaches that have been repeatedly tried without any hint of success
C) good ways to turn public tax dollars into booty for private interests
D) all of the above

Did you pick D? Congrats-- you are proficient! And since you have been scored proficient, we can confidently say that one less old person will die in poverty.

And just for kicks

The report also throws in a quote from Friedman right next to a photo of him looking all thoughty and heroic, like he is considering the best way to go kung fu on some accountant's ass. Are you convinced yet?

Bottom Line

I have seen choice fans stretch to make their case, but this is going to Siberia to get a bagel. On the back of a unicorn. Edushyster challenged me to sum up the whole program in one tweet, and this was the best I could do:

@EduShyster Going 2be many poor, lazy geezers and infants; only solution is more school choice. Also, a bicycle, becuz a vest has no sleeves
— Peter Greene (@palan57) February 4, 2015

This is a monument of incoherence, the grand-mac-daddy of non-sequitorial arguments. We will have more old people, therefor we need more school choice. Because reasons.

So, twenty-some pages establishing a problem before setting up a bogus and unsubstantiated connection to their proposed solution. It's slick and pretty and well produced and one more graphic artist staved off starvation for another day, but in the end, this is 100% grade-A nonsense. Good to know FEE is able to carry on without Candidate Bush.

Maine's SBA Loaded With Glitches

Lewsiton Middle School teacher Brian Banton took training, complete with practice for the Maine assessments that will be take on iPads. According to the Lewiston-Auburn Sun Journal, his report on that experience was direct and to the point.

"I was shocked to discover it doesn't work," Banton said. “As our training went on this morning, teachers in the room looked at each other and said, 'We can't do this.'”

He offered specific examples. When a point is entered on the iPad, it can't be removed. So no correcting mistakes. Multiplication symbols do not appear as multiplication symbols. The test should allow students to see both a graph and questions about it at the same time-- but they can't.

Maine schools do have the option of offering the paper version of the test, but for those just discovering that the computer version is a mess, it's too late-- the final date for choosing the paper version was February 4.

Parents (including some who are teachers) are making noise about opting out, and the school committee chair is right with them:

"The state can say 'it's all fixed,' but show me it is fixed,” Handy said. Or, “we opt out altogether.”

Handy said he can be “a stick in the mud and say, 'We're not going to administer it because you have given us a faulty product.' When an entire school district does that, it puts the state on notice. I have no problem doing that.”

However the school superintendent cautioned that the state has made it clear that giving any aid and comfort to the opt out movement would be "playing with fire."

The school district is pursuing options with the state, but it appears to be one more example of Not Ready for Prime Time testing.

Answering Petrilli's Questions: What Does CCSS Opposition Mean?

Mike Petrilli at the Fordham Foundation offered a set of nine questions to ask political candidates who trumpet their Common Core opposition. As one might expect, they are not so much a plan for inquiry as a series of moves in a game of Gotcha.

This is one of the things I find vaguely charming about Petrilli-- he seems like that overeager kid on the debate team who enjoys making a verbal jousting match over anything from the death penalty to the correct side on which the loose end of the toilet paper should hang. Political advocacy/thinky tankery seems like his dream job.

Petrilli has occasionally asked for a more civil and better-toned discussion about the Core. I'd offer him this set of questions as an example of why we don't more easily get that-- these are not questions designed for dialogue, but are instead designed to try to force the Core-attacking politician into a corner. They assume that the pol is engaging in dishonest discourse and therefore can be poked at with similar dishonest tools.

But as someone who is, in fact, opposed to Common Core, I wondered if I could come up with answers to these questions. I don't know that any of these will be useful for the politicians in question, but it's a nice thought exercise, at least. Here we go.

1) Do you mean that you oppose the Common Core standards themselves? All of them? Even the ones related to addition and subtraction? Phonics? Studying the nation’s founding documents? Or just some of them? Which ones, in particular, do you oppose? Have you actually read the standards?

Yeah, when Petrilli says nine questions, he's being liberal with his use of the traditional counting methods.

I have, of course, read the standards, and the correct question is not to ask exactly which ones I object to. I would ask, instead, why I am supposed to search through all the standards looking for the unobjectionable ones, like hunting a piece of uncooked spaghetti in a stack of needles. I would not hand a teacher a textbook and say, "Some of the pages of this book are good and usable, so keep the whole thing." I would not serve someone a meal that is part nutritious food, part plastic, and part arsenic. The fact that some standards are unobjectionable does not mean the whole thing shouldn't be thrown out.

2) Or do you mean that you oppose the role that the federal government played in coercing states to adopt the Common Core? 

Well, yes. That and the role it continues to play. Petrilli suggests that doesn't make a GOP candidate special among other GOP candidates. So be it. It's better to be right than to be special.

3) Do you mean that you think states should drop out of the Common Core? States like Iowa? Isn’t that a bit presumptive, considering that you’re not from Iowa and the state’s Republican governor wants Common Core to stay? 

This is not so much a question as a dare. Go ahead, it says. Go ahead and declare yourself in favor of setting aside the will of the state. The correct answer is, of course, that Iowa has the right to be a damn fool if it wants to, but that doesn't make it any less foolish, and any sensible person would offer the opinion that Iowa ought to stop being foolish.

4) If you do think that states should reject the Common Core, which standards should replace them? Do they need to be entirely different, or just a little bit different?  And could you cite a specific example of a standard that needs to be “different?”

Let's back up the assumption truck, and let me hear your support for the idea that national-ish standards are necessary or in any way useful. Which highly successful nations on the globe are successful because of national standards? Which studies show the value of national standards? Because I think the states should get rid of the standards, period. But if the state thinks they need standards, they can best design them from the ground floor up. The Common Core does not need to be (nor should it be) a rough draft, and there is no need to compare future hypothetical standards to it. If your brother gets divorced, and then remarried, you do not go to Thanksgiving dinner and ask for an accounting of how different his new wife is from his previous one.

5) Or do you mean that you oppose the way Common Core has been implemented? If so, everywhere, or just in some states? Or just in some schools? You are running for president; do you think the president of the United States has a role in fixing Common Core implementation?

Can you catch in features such as the repeated "or" how Petrilli wants you not to just ask these questions, but pepper the candidate with them? But the President does have a role in fixing it, because the President had a role in making implementation both A) necessary and B) too fast in the first place. The President's role is simple-- step back and say, "As far as I'm concerned, everybody can adopt whatever standards they want, or not, whenever they want, or not." And then sit down and shut up.

6) Do you mean you oppose any standards in education that cross state lines? Several years ago, the governors came to an agreement about a common way to measure high school graduation rates. Do you oppose that, too?

If states want to imitate each other or get into cooperative agreements, that's their business, not DC's. Do I oppose measuring graduation rates? These are starting to smell of flop sweat and desperation, not political gamesmanship. Who the heck is going to oppose graduation rate measurement? Out loud?

7) Or do you mean that you oppose any standards, even those set at the state level? Since states have the constitutional responsibility to provide a sound education, don’t you think they should be clear about what they expect students to know and be able to do in the basic subjects?

I'm a pretty anti-standardization guy, but this is about as close as this list gets to a legitimate question. My answer is that they should be clear, but not very. The clearer standards are, the more prescriptive and restrictive they are, and the more it become impossible to impose and oversee them without becoming punitive. Plus, the more specifically educational goals are developed through a political process, the crappier they will be. Any system that doesn't trust teachers is doomed to failure (and, ironically, if teachers really were untrustworthy, strict standards would not help, anyway).

8) Or do you mean that you oppose standards that aim to get young people ready for college or a good-paying career? Do you think that’s too high a standard? What standard would you prefer?

Can you tell me, right now, exactly what a five year old needs to learn over the next thirteen years in order to be ready for a career? If you say anything but "no," you're either delusional or a liar. The future is wide open, mysterious, murky, and ever-changing. Government is fundamentally unable to create any set of standards that are nimble and robust enough to meet this requirement.

There are so many problems with career and college readiness as the definition of an educated person (does this mean future stay-at-home parents can drop out now? what is the government doing to make sure there will be enough good-paying careers available?) but the biggest is that defining a human life in terms of a job is a small, meager, cramped, sad measure of human worth. Let's educate students to be happy, fulfilled, contributing members of society, good citizens and great people. And most of all, let's give them a system that lets them define success for themselves, instead of beating them into whatever version of success that the government has defined for them.

9) Tell us again: Why do you oppose the Common Core?

Well, because it sucks. Hey. Ask a short, snarky question, get a short snarky answer.

That's it. Other than some serious and fundamental policy disagreements with the GOP, I think I'm totally ready to run for the nomination.

USED Continues To Support Predatory Colleges

The Department of Education is pleased to announce that their program to preserve the school-to-debt pipeline is proceeding apace.

You may recall that the USED once declared they would crack down on predatory for-profit flim-flam artists masquerading as colleges. You may also recall that, when presented with an exceptional example of a chain of egregious sharks, the USED finally stepped in to preserve the interests of everyone except the students involved in the massive scame.

I've covered the story of the USED and Corinthian Colleges before; the more detailed version is here. Let's look at what today's cheery press release actually says.

Zenith Education Group has announced that they have finished glomming up fifty-some campuses from Corinthian College, in a deal that has been under construction since November.

Zenith is a subsidiary of Educational Credit Management Company. ECMC is a debt collection company, specializing in chasing down student loan repayment. Apparently they have pursued those debts a bit overzealously at times, but here they are, cutting out the middle man. Exactly what expertise the "newly created" Zenith has in operating colleges (other than chasing the debts that students run up paying tuition to them) is not clear. But the removal of the middle man allows Zenith to turn these for profit schools into non-profits. After all, I don't have to make money collecting tuition from you if I can make money from selling you the loan for the tuition money.

When they call Zenith "newly created," they aren't kidding. Bizapedia shows them forming in December of 2014. The company is filed in Florida, but it operates out of Oakdale, Minnesota (the six principals are Gary M. Cook, John F. Depodesta, Daniel S Fisher, David L. Hawn, James V. McKeon, and Gregory A. Van Guilder) at 1 Imation Place in the same building as the other ECMC offices reside, plus Premiere Credit of North America LLC. Cook was or is the director of ECMC Technology Services Corporation. DePodesta is the ECMC chairman of the board.

Zenith's interim president is Troy A. Stovall, who "comes to the position with eight years of leadership experience in nonprofit higher education administration and a distinguished background serving in various management consulting and advisory roles." So he totally knows about education. Most recently he was the Executive Vice President and Chief Operating Officer for Howard University, but he also runs his own consulting firm; his LinkedIn profile includes a plug for Time Driven Activity Based Costing, so apparently he speaks fluent consultantese. He's also a principal at something called Oak Forest Ventures, "a solutions firm dedicated to substantially improving the profitability of its clients."

Are you getting the impression that this is way more about business and money than about education and a future for students?

Zenith has a chirpy new website. It touts the qualities of, but does not list by name, its "employees." So, not a faculty, I guess. And they have a whole tab devoted to their partners:

We intend to graduate high-performing, highly skilled students from our schools, and our new partnership program will identify high-quality employers in industries with clear local workforce needs that are sufficiently equipped to support students as they work to embark upon their new careers.

One can hope that will become a bit more concrete and nailed down, as one of Corinthian's many scam-related issues was its tendency to create fake employment for its students to hide its lousy job placement record. This is not great for schools specifically devoted to preparing students for a place in the workforce.

A look at the "our schools" tab confirms what news reports imply-- Zenith has no schools in its chain other than the ones it just grabbed from Corinthian.

That grabbage depended hugely on the USED's involvement. So when they said that they would drop the hammer on predatory colleges, apparently by "hammer" they meant "big fluffy hammer sculpted out of money." Truthout tells the story and makes the case that the USED is saving a chunk of its own bacon. If Corinthian had simply gone belly up or been shut down by the feds, some students would have had the option of a get-out-of-loans free cards, which could have cost the USED a few hundred million bucks. The USED has reportedly been making big bucks from student loans, so anti-shark measures may not be in their business interests.

As part of the deal, "the parties agreed to pay the Department $12 million in an up-front payment, and up to an additional $17.25 million earn-out over the next seven years that will be used to benefit Corinthian students." The Department is announcing a $480 million loan forgiveness plan for borrowers who paid their way to Corinthian with high-cost private loans. Who this covers is not clear from the USED press release, but in any version, it's not much help. If the $480 mill is split over the 30,000 students who just became assets traded from Corinthian to Zenith, that's about $16K. If we add in current Corinthian students as well, it's closer to $7K. The press release says this money will also help past Corinthian students get a fresh start, so that $480 mill is looking tinier and tinier.

The USED also cheerfully reports that Zenith has agreed to all manner of swell things, like voluntarily hiring an independent monitor, which is right up there with politicians setting up ethics committee to oversee their own behavior, under their own direction. I'm not impressed.

Also, "in the months since the announcement of the sale" (which would be December and January) "Zenith has agreed to implement a series of improvements to improve outcomes, strengthen career training, and ensure accountability and transparency." Yes, boys and girls, in just two months (with, presumably, time off for to celebrate Christmas and the big fat present Santa Duncan was delivering) Zenith managed to retool an entire college system that was previously designed to fraudulently use students as straws through which to suck up delicious loan money. Given an organization run by guys who have no actual college-running experience, that is a managerial feat of amazing skill and bullshittery.

Here's the big finish to the federal PR notice:

Throughout, the Department has sought a wind down of Corinthian Colleges that protects students, protects the investment taxpayers have made in their success, and creates opportunities for students to finish what they started. The Department has also sought a resolution that, where possible, establishes a strong and ongoing platform for high quality career education in the future. Today’s announcement by Zenith and Corinthian is a major and positive step in these directions.

And here's how I described this story the last time I covered it

Short version: feds threatened to shut down predatory loan-sucking for-profit scam schools, but decided to bail them out instead. Kind of like finding people in a burning building and saying, "You guys just stay there inside. We're going to hire someone to paint the place."


Once again, we see that zealous federal oversight is for public schools. For privately operated school-flavored businesses, the feds are there to make sure that nothing interrupts the sweet. sweet stream of money flowing to private pockets. It is always possible that Zenith will turn out to be awesome stewards of education, I suppose. But for students, it's a caveat emptor world. For businesses, don't worry-- the government will always watch your back. And don't forget-- this deal was only for a portion of the Corinthian chain-- the rest is still out there, still in business, still preying away. Caveat emptor, indeed.

CAP Scolds Lamar Alexander

CAP has rushed to the defense of the reformy status quo and takes a moment to try to school Lamar Alexander with the pearl-clutching headline, "5 Reasons Why Sen. Alexander's Draft Education Bill Fails Parents." Let's take a look at their five compelling slices of baloney.

1) Lowers academic standards.

Today, all states have academic standards that are aligned to career and college readiness.

Man, if you're going to lie, be big and bold. Their is not a shred of evidence anywhere that the Common Core (which oddly enough CAP does not mention by name once in this article-- oh, where has the love gone) or any of the versions of it actually align to college and career readiness. In fact, I'd be delighted for CAP to show us all where any such "college and career readiness" exists to be aligned to.

Nor is there a shred of evidence that Common Core standards are high standards. None.

2) Prevents parents from making informed decisions about where to send their children to school.

Yes, an ESEA rewrite could undercut the marketing programs for privatizers and takeover artists, and will create a major revenue gap for the corporations that are hoovering up billions of tax dollars on the backs of federal testing requirements. Of course, the premise here once again is that parents are dopes, completely unable to judge how well a school is doing without helpful government documents to straighten them out.

Then again, given the number of parents who find themselves being shafted, snowed, and just generally abandoned by various charter operators, perhaps some sort of consumer protection is in order. Given the number of charter schools that can't manage to keep a simple sales promise like "we'll stay open till your child finishes," maybe ESEA does need some beefing up in this department.

But the assertion that parents have no idea how their child is doing without a federally-mandated standardized test-- that's both patronizing and stupid.

3. Allows low-performing schools to languish.

The other recurring theme? States are terrible and stupid and can't be trusted. I've always found this argument in favor of federal centralism odd-- didn't most of the people working in DC get their political starts in states? Were they shiftless, untrustworthy, and dopey when they worked on the state level, but when they breathed in the air of DC they were suddenly imbued with wisdom?

But the argument here is that "states could design and implement almost any system they want with no federal checks or guardrails." And that would be bad because....? Yes, I know that states have not always exercised superior judgment in the past, but neither have the feds, and when the feds screw it up, they screw it up for a whole country-- not just one state. If you are really concerned about this, set a low bar that you won't let a state sink below. If they sink below it, then the feds can step in. Otherwise, the feds can leave them alone.

Here's the thing-- the feds have been taking steps to not allow low-performing schools to languish for over a decade, and how has that worked? Name me ten schools that used to suck and are now doing great because of federal intervention. Name me five. You can name me lots of schools and districts where federal intervention allowed some charter chains and educorporations to make a bundle, but that's it, and it's certainly not enough.

4. Eliminates federal funding for before- and after-school programs.

Well, it eliminates one funding stream for them. This is small potatoes, easily fixed by legislators if it's an actual issue across the nation.

5. Fails to provide parents with protection from substantial school budget cuts.

The concern here is about a stream of Title I funding, which is an intriguing concern coming from reformsters who have happily held Title I funds hostage in order to arm-twist states into accepting federal control of state-level education.

Without this provision, states would have free rein to cut their education budgets. As a result, children would face larger class sizes and under-resourced schools.

Because states don't have the ability to cut education budgets now? Because I'm in Pennsylvania and over the past few years we sliced off a few billion budget bucks without any trouble at all. I'm not seeing how this provision mysteriously ties state budgetary hands.

But if such cuts become a problem, you know what might help balance it out? Not having to spend billions of dollars on federally mandated tests or billions of dollars on federally mandated new curricular materials or billions of dollars on computers and infrastructure just to take federally mandated tests. If you are really deeply concerned about states having enough money, there are all sort of revenue-leeching bloodsuckers attached to the public education teats-- lend a hand and scrape them off.

Bottom line?

CAP's tale is a story of nefarious states and hapless parents, tragic situation that can only be fixed by federal mandates and bureaucrats (and their dear, close friends at Pearson et al who make a convenient bundle from the one-stop-shopping opportunity that is federally-controlled public education).

Lamar Alexander may well manage to fail parents before he's over, but it sure won't be because he failed to listen to the compassionate humanitarians at CAP. Of all the criticisms of the new draft version of ESEA out there, these are five of the lamest and least valid.

No Grad Exams for PA?

Pennsylvania, where I live and teach, has been steadily moving toward a full array of graduation exams.

Currently we have what we call the Keystone exams for math and reading. We are one of the last states to do our examing on paper; this may be related to an attempt a few years back to do our 4Sights (test prep tests for the old exam, known as the PSSA's, which we still give to elementary students because--) well , anyway, we tried to do the testing online and it was a massive clusterfinagle that wasted a week of school and resulted in zero actual scoreable tests. When it comes to online testing, we haven't been all the way around the block because we got in a ten-car pileup on the way.

The math and reading Keystones are exams that you would recognize even if you were from out of state. I attended a state-mounted training last year and the presenter used all PARCC materials, and the message was that it was perfectly comparable to the Keystones.

Our Class of 2017 has to pass math algebra, reading literature, and biology Keystones in order to graduate. Depending on who's talking, there are as many as seven more subject-specific tests coming, just as soon as Harrisburg can scrape together the money to get them made.

Students are already taking the Keystones every year, partly as a way of meeting federal testing requirements and partly as a way to warm up for 2017 (everyone just tries not to tell the students that the Keystones currently mean nothing at all to them). So our students have been taking the tests, and we can see how they're doing. And as 2017 gets closer and closer, one thing becomes increasingly clear-- many students are about to have huge problems getting out of high school.

Students get two tries, and then they move onto a project-based assessment, known to my students as The Binder (or, out of my earshot, that Bigass Stupid Binder) which is essentially an independent study course in looseleaf form. There are now adapted or modified forms for students with special needs. And things could be worse-- you should have been around for the first concept for the science test which was to test all science disciplines, forcing high schools to implement a bio-chem-physics-physiology sequence for ninth and tenth grade.

But it's going to be ugly, and lawmakers are starting to take note.

State Senator Andrew Dinneman (D-Chester County) has been trying to de-testify us for a while. But most recently a group of Republicans have gotten on the Get Off The Testing Bandwagon bandwagon.

Over at newsworks, Kevin McCorry reports about a new bill proposed by state Rep. Mike Tobash (R- Dauphin County) to flat-out repeal the state graduation test mandate.

"The children of the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, they need to learn, they need to be assessed, but when we've gone so far that we end up handcuffing our educational system with really an overwhelming amount of standardized assessment, we need to stop and put the brakes on here, take a look at it," said Tobash.

Much of the conversation has centered on the tests as unfunded mandates-- schools are required to get the students through them, but have not been given the resources to meet the challenge. And that's not untrue, but it's beside the real problem.

The real problem is that the Keystone exams aren't very good.

As this discussion ramps up, many supporters of the testing are going to make an obvious comment-- if the students aren't doing well on the tests, can't teachers just fix that by doing their jobs better?

McCorry catches Tobash having close to the right thought in response.

Tobash, who testified on the matter at a hearing at Philadelphia City Hall in November, is skeptical that the tests are actually judging students on material that's applicable to modern workforce.

The Keystones are like every other standardized test-- what they measure best is the student's ability to take a standardized test.


So we play the test prep game-- how much can we do in order to get test results without sacrificing the students' actual education? In reading, the Keystones require a particular vocabulary so that we teach the words they want to have covered with the meanings they prefer. This is part of the standard technique of using tests to dictate local curriculum.

More problematic is the whole approach to reading required by the test. Every selection on the test can be read only one way; there's only one acceptable response to the work. The Keystone also has a keen interest in student's psychic powers, regularly asking them to reach conclusions about what the author intended. Some of the interpretive questions, like the author's intent questions, really are topics that are generally considered fair game in an English classroom-- but we have those discussions as open-ended inquiries, where many ideas can be proposed and supported, but no absolute truth can be known. The exam requires the reverse.

And so the exam requires one more reading skill-- the ability to read a standardized test question and figure out what the exam writer wants you to say. This has nothing to do with learning how to be an active, capable reader of literature, and everything to do with being a compliant tool who can take instructions.

So the biggest problem with the Keystones is not that there are too many of them or they take up too much time, though that's a huge problem. The biggest problem is not that they are unfunded mandates, though that's a problem, particularly in a state that as a matter of policy rips the guts out of public school budgets so that charter and cybercharter operators get rich.

No, the biggest problem is that the Keystones twist instruction and education all out of shape, foster educational malpractice, and ultimately don't provide any of the data that their supporters think they're supposed to provide. The Keystones don't tell Harrisburg how well we're doing. They are supposed to provide all sorts of information to teachers to help us address student needs, and that's baloney as well. There's only one thing we find out from test results-- which sorts of questions our students found most tricky. Keystone results are good for refining test prep, and nothing else.The Keystone exams tell one thing and one thing only-- how well students did on the Keystone exams.

McCorry offers this quote from a rep of our new governor:

Gov. Wolf knows we need tools to measure students' progress and ensure they are equipped the skills needed to flourish in the 21st century, but testing should not be the only measurement.

And there's our continuing problem. Not only should testing be the single measurement, but it shouldn't be any measurement.

Even if standardized testing didn't heap unnecessary stress on young students, even if it didn't require wasting time on test prep that has no educational value, even if it didn't put unfunded financial demands on already-strapped districts-- even if it didn't do any of those things, the Keystone exam would still be a bad idea because it simply doesn't tell anyone what they want to know. Repealing state requirements for a graduation exam is the right choice. We'll see if Harrisburg actually makes it.

Cuomo to Teachers: Get the Hell Out

I'll give Andrew Cuomo this-- when he makes threats to come after someone, they aren't just empty political promises. He said he would try to break the public schools, and he appears to be determined to make it happen.

Cuomo's assault has started with a lesson in how data can serve as a mirror to reflect the biases of whoever is gazing into it.

Mangling data

Cuomo's talking points and reformy agenda have started with a simple set of data. The proficiency rate for 3rd-8th graders is 35.8% for math and 31.4% for reading. Over 90% of New York teachers received effective ratings. There are three possible explanations for why these numbers don't fit together.

1) The teacher effectiveness ratings are wrong.
2) The student proficiency numbers are wrong.
3) There is no connection between student test results and teacher effectiveness.

#3 is by far the most likely. At the very least, there isn't a shred of documentation, study or much of anything else to support the notion that test results have anything to do with teacher effectiveness. Let's also remember that we're talking about math and reading scores for 3rd through 8th graders-- exactly what should tell us about, say, 11th grade history teachers?

#3 is also affected by #2-- if the student scores don't actually mean anything, they can hardly be connected to teacher scores. And since student cut scores weren't set by any particular supportable academic standard, it's highly unlikely that they are really telling us anything about how many students are "proficient" (a term that doesn't have any actual meaning in this context).

Cuomo has, like a student who fails to check all options on a standardized multiple-choice test, simply stopped at answer #1 because that's the one he likes. He has not even pretended to consider the other two options. It would certainly appear that he is less interested in figuring out what's actually going on and more interested in using test results to draw a target on New York's teachers.

And what a target. 

Cuomo proposes that fifty percent of a teacher's evaluations be based on test scores. (This fun starts on page 229 of his Opportunity Agenda Book.) In the case of non-tested subjects or grades, "a student growth measure that measures one year of academic growth." Whatever that is supposed to mean and wherever those are supposed to come from (since the stated goal here is clear-- "We will eliminate the local measure."

Thirty-five percent of the teacher's evaluation must come from an "independent observer" who can be either 1) a principal from within or without the district, 2) an observer from the state-approved list of "entities" that can do that sort of thing or 3) a faculty member from an education program at a state university of New York (and I am imagining college ed professors across the state slapping their heads and saying, "Why, yes, thanks, that's exactly what I want to spend half my year doing!")

The remaining fifteen percent can come from a local administrator.

And that's it. Screw the whole "multiple measures" idea, and nerts to evaluations by people who know the territory, the teacher, the students, the local lay of the land.

But wait. There's more. Cuomo proposes that all cut-off scores be set at the state level. And if the teacher fails either portion of the evaluation, she fails the whole thing. In other words, if the live human says, "I watched her work and she is a great teacher" and the test scores come in low, the live human observer is over-ruled.

Can we make a teaching career less viable?

Tenure? Screw that, too. It was for 19th century college profs so they could resist political pressure, and of course there are no politics associated with teaching in New York public schools. I wonder how long it took the governor's typist to stop giggling before he could finish this part.

Now tenure requires five straight years of effective ratings. Until you hit those five straight years, you are probationary, and as long as you're probationary, you can be fired at any time for any reason.

Cuomo could not be more clear if he required every college education department to put a giant banner over its doors saying, in huge bold letters, "Get the hell out of New York."

What sane person would try to start a teaching career under these conditions. You must have five straight years of good test scores, which means that taking a job in a high-poverty school would simply be the kiss of death. In fact, if the cut scores are going to be kept the same so that almost seventy percent of New York students are failing The Big Test-- well, that means that most of the classrooms in New York will be the kiss of death to a teaching career. You would be better off betting the state of New York that you can roll snake eyes five times in a row.

Best and brightest

And yet Cuomo's plan blithers on, as if it's not obvious that he's telling future teachers to Get the Hell Out! The teacher beatdown section of the Opportunity Agenda starts with some noise about setting up a doctor-style interning program for training teachers, and I actually support that, having come from a similar residency program myself-- except that, with the stakes of testing so incredibly high, who in their right mind would let a teacher trainee into their school? The residency idea is probably necessary, because under the new, highly punitive evaluation system, what teacher would agree to host a student teacher? The residency idea begs all sorts of questions (how will the state possibly have enough capacity to handle the number of teachers they need to train) but it doesn't really matter, because given the impossible hurdles placed in the path of becoming a tenured teacher with anything remotely resembling job security, who is going to want to invest the time and effort to start on a path that can at any time, through random factors outside of your control, be yanked out from under you?

But after five sections of flipping the middle finger to every future teacher in New York, the Agenda starts its next section with this sentence:

Once we can attract and recognize the best teachers, we need to keep them in our schools.

First of all, this new system defines "best teacher" as "teacher who has class of good standardized test takers." This idea fails twice-- once by basing teacher evaluations on the results of bad invalid tests and again by removing all other considerations of quality from teaching. Nothing matters in this system but test prep. Nothing.

The Agenda goes on to say that we don't want to lose great teachers to other "more lucrative" professions. It does not say anything about losing future great teachers to other professions where they have greater work to do than spend all their days preparing children to take a pointless standardized tests. Or losing future great teachers to other professions where they are treated like professionals. Or losing future great teachers to other professions where job security is not based on a random roll of the dice.

Sigh. Cuomo proposes to set aside $2 million for incentive payments of up to $20K to encourage great teachers to stay in hard-to-staff schools. Do you know how many payments of $20K you can get out of $2 million? 100. What do you think, Andy? Will 100 teachers take care of all the hard-to-staff schools in New York?

I can answer that. No-- no they will not, because those hard to staff schools will become SUPER hard to staff once you implement a system under which teaching at high-poverty low-achievement schools is an excellent way to never get to start your teaching career.

But just in case, Cuomo also wants to streamline the firing process, and since all non-tenured teachers will be fireable at any time for any reason, I think he's got that covered. Also, no more trying to rehab incompetent teachers, because under this new system, New York will be up to their collective tuchus in eager new educators.

The kisses of death

What's next? Well, back in the first section, Cuomo allowed as how teacher traineess need less theory and more real-world classroom training and experience. However, in this next section, he wants to make sure the new teachers are Good Enough by giving them some standardized tests, which I was going to mock, but you know, since in Cuomo's New York a teacher's job is to prepare students to take a standardized test, it does make sense that taking a standardized test should be the basis of teacher training. So prospective teachers will have to pass some standardized tests, and if too many of them fail, their college program will be shut down. So congratulations, future New York teachers, and welcome to four college years of test prep. Wow. I bet that will attract even more of the best and the brightest to teaching.

I know this is running long, but I want you to get the full grandeur of Cuomo's public school-crushing plans.

We'll make it harder to get into grad school. We'll make your certificate dependent on getting continuing ed hours, but we'll put all of those programs under the direct control of the state education department.

This next one is genius. Cuomo wants to guarantee that not student will have an ineffective teacher two years in a row. Let's think this through. An ineffective teacher is one who is put in a room with the low-scoring students. Whatever teacher we send those students on to will likely also "become" ineffective. Some schools can look forward to small packs of teacher-crushing students, moving like kryptonite through the system. Depending on the VAM sauce that's being brewed, those packs could be composed of low-ability- high-poverty, or even highly gifted students. This schedule shuffling will also guarantee that teachers can't easily develop a specialty, and that administrators can't schedule based on what they know about teacher strengths and weaknesses. And those young teachers trying to get their five straight years of good test scores in? It just became even harder. What, I wonder, does Cuomo propose if a grade level or subject are in a school runs out of teachers who were rated effective this year?

Once again, the message is clear-- whatever you do, don't get a job in a high-poverty low-achievement school.

Finishing touches

Cuomo commits to the Bottom 5% model of school failure, guaranteeing that there are always failing schools. Lucky for them he has decided to scrap time-consuming turnaround plans and just implement receivership, a nifty technique for privatizing a school and handing it over to a specialist for carving up.

Carving up for whom? Well, the very next item is the abolition of caps on charter authorization, so that charters can bloom across the land like a thousand flowers. This comes attached to a meaningless provision that is hilariously called an "anti-creaming provision" because what fun are these long government documents if you can't slip some mildly obscene easter eggs in there? Cuomo also wants to establish educational tax credits, aka vouchers by another name.

Final touches? Let's expand the market for Pre-K providers by pumping more money into that, along with a rating system. The term "high-quality" let's you know that it's nothing but the best, spared no expense. It also lets you know that the state will require assessment so that presumably parents will know how well their four-year-olds are learning to take standardized tests. Oh, wait-- did I say four-year-olds? Let's up the ante and extend this to three-year-olds. Opening up new markets is always good for entrepreneurs, and those three year olds have all been slacking anyway.

So you see? When Andrew Cuomo says he wants to bust up the public ed monopoly, he's not just generating sound bites for the evening news-- he means it. The program is bold and audacious in the same way that pushing a carload of nuns and puppies into the East River is bold and audacious. In particular, it reduces teaching to a job that people would be less likely to want, and then makes it nearly impossible for them to hold onto it anyway. I try to stay away from reaching conclusions about character, but looking at this, I have to figure that Andrew Cuomo is an incredible dolt or a giant prick. I will leave it to my brothers and sister in New York to decide.