Tennessee's New CCSS Astroturf

Tennessee has birthed one of the newest astroturf reformster groups in the country, the bright and shiny Tennesseans for Student Success.

Why does need this influx of shiny green? It could be that the state is playing with joining those that have jumped off the Common Core bandwagon. Last week the house subcommittee that watches over academic standards was all set to discuss House Bill 3, a bill that would scrap the Common Core and require the state to start over by developing its own standards in a process that would involve (gasp) teachers.

The bill was proposed by Republic John Forgety, a former teacher and superintendent. Reported Chalkbeat, 

“I’m of the opinion that this body (the legislature) should not be in the business of telling a third-grade teacher how to teach,” said Forgety, a former teacher and school superintendent.

The discussion of the bill has been postponed (according to Chalkbeat, another GOP representative asked for a postponement citing, I kid you not, an epiphany). But Tennesseans for Student Success had shown up in force, ready to stand up for the Core.

TSS has been busy other places, as one would respect from any self-respecting well-bankrolled astro-turf group. They have had a facebook page for a month now, with a bit over 1200 likes as I write this. Tennesseans probably got to know them through their television spots, like this one

You can see that the Core is supported by moms and teachers. Clearly this is the kind of group that, even though it reportedly first formed in October and hired an executive director in January, managed to raise enough money to run the above ad during the Super-Bowl. I am sure they had several really awesome bake sales, and maybe a car wash. It could have happened. Well, no. Reportedly the Tennessee Association of Business Foundation helped fund it; the foundation is an offshoot of the TN Chamber of Commerce, which has received grants from the Gates Foundation to help promote Common Core. But these moms still look very determined and stern, particularly about the prospect of being "dragged" back to the bad old days.

TSS is fond of the point that Tennessee has the fastest-improving test scores in the country, which is better if you think test scores are super important and easier if you start out with test scores deep in the toilet.

The actual website is somewhat sparse, but you can sign up for a newsletter. They do list some of their staff. including executive director Jeremy Harrell (ran campaigns for both Gov Bill Haslam and Lamar Alexander, plus other political credits), Ashley Elizabeth Graham (was deputy communications director for Marsha Blackburn), and Weston Burleson (was account exec with Stoneridge Group). All of the listed personnel have connections to GOP lawmakers and campaign work (they also make sure to include a cheer for Tennessee sports teams). The Tennessean reports that the group also employs four lobbyists.

In short, this looks like a team selected for its political campaigning savvy; there appear to be no educators in sight except as props in tv ads and government hearings.

The whole business plays out like a complicated political circus balancing act. Governor Haslam was a for the common Core before he was against it, sort of. Haslam led the early adoption of the Core, but in the last year, the standards are not feeling loved. Anti-core politicians won big in some counties, and a Vanderbilt poll showed that teachers are not fans. So last September, Haslam decided that maybe Common Core needed to be carefully reviewed by a review board that he would set up and , well, you know those movies where the good guy is undercover and his buddy is about get offed by the bad guy so he steps in and punches his buddy first, just to keep both his buddy and his cover story alive...? This looks kind of like that.

So we've got Haslam's review of the Core and a separate rewrite of the Core proposed by a GOP legislator and backed by teachers. Now we have an astro-turf rather transparently run by a handful of Haslam's political operatives agitating to reject Forgety's review and stick with the Governor's. Some pols are apparently asking if the two reviews of standards can be put together. Want to place your bets?

In the meantime, the main event in Tennessee is not the battle over standards, but the push to scrap public education and replace it with a World O'Charters. So this astro-turf sideshow is not necessarily even getting everyone's full attention.

The Bullying Antidote

I am not a bullying expert, but I have taught teenagers for thirty-five years, so I've had the opportunity to observe it in the field. And much of what we try to do with the goal of stopping it seems counterproductive, even as we engage in behavior that actually re-enforces bullying as an okay Thing.

Bullying is frequently not what it says it's about. Even though we associate bullying with things like "picking on a kid because he has blue hair," I've never seen a "blamed" trait like that present in only bullied kids. Attempting to address bullying by traits rarely works; I'm thinking here of all the schools that post-Columbine watched out for their own school's version of the trenchcoat mafia and tried to deal with the potential bullying problems by making those kids stop acting different.

What seems more common, at least in my part of the universe, is a person is targeted, and then some feature of the individual is used as a hook to hang the bullying on. In other words, first comes "we'll bully that guy" and second comes "we'll pick on him about his hair color."

This is a tricky dynamic because weirdness or oddness can signal weakness or a lack of confidence, and those traits do make a student a potential bullying target. (This is particularly true if the blue hair  etc is an affectation, and of course how many teens adopt one affectation or another in their search for their own special voice.)

The critical question for me is this: what makes bullying okay to the bully? I believe most people work things out in their heads so that they feel they are doing the right thing. So what does a bully tell him- or her-self that makes bullying okay.

The answer, I believe, is "He deserves it."

A bully never says he's bullying somebody. He's straightening him out. He's teaching him a lesson. He needs to be taken down a peg. The target deserves it. Bad things should happen to that person; I am just being an instrument of divine and universal judgment.

The reason the target supposedly deserves to be straightened out is also a pointless distraction. Getting in a big argument about whether Chris or Pat deserves to be pushed, punched, humiliated, or frozen out-- this is a huge side discussion that actually makes things worse. Because when we get in an argument whether or not Pat and Chris deserve to be abused, we are accepting the premise that some people do. Any time you tell students, "Chris does not deserve to be bullied," you are also sending the message "But some people DO deserve to be bullied."

And as long as you accept that in this world there are people who deserve to be treated as less-than-human, as others, as whipping posts, then there will always be bullying. You cannot stamp out bullying by trying to make the argument that bullying is only bad when you bully the wrong people.

If you want to stamp out bullying in your classroom, the policy is simple. It is not okay to treat people poorly, to treat them as less-than-human, to try to hurt them in any way on purpose, ever. Ever.

This doesn't mean everyone must hold hands and hug. There are lots of contexts in which people can disagree with each other, dislike each other, and recognize that they have no desire to spend a second more around each other than is absolutely necessary. But all of that can be done in a context that recognizes that everyone in the game is a real, live human being, and it is not okay to treat them like anything less.

It's not always an easy rule to live with; heaven knows I find it a challenge at times. But it is absolutely the best bullying antidote I know. Or as Kurt Vonnegut put it,

Hello babies. Welcome to Earth. It's hot in the summer and cold in the winter. It's round and wet and crowded. On the outside, babies, you've got a hundred years here. There's only one rule that I know of, babies-God damn it, you've got to be kind.

Working within the College Marketplace

Looking at a Pearson employment-ish opportunity took me down a whole new rabbit hole. If you think of college campuses as a sort of oasis in our otherwise sales-obsessed culture, I have bad news for you.

The actual name of the job is Pearson Campus Ambassador. You can find the whole pitch here, but let me walk you through the highlights.

The job description is a bit fuzzy. Right up front the pitch is

We're hiring students to work part-time with Pearson on campus and help students do well in their courses. You get work experience, and we help more students succeed. It's a win-win! 

But among the touted benefits are "building valuable business and career skills like problem-solving, public speaking and communication." Ambassadors can also look forward to "working side by side with faculty, Pearson staff, and others."

Under a "Responsibilities" tab, a clearer picture begins to emerge. Here's what the job involves:


Lead Pearson technology demonstrations and/or presentations for students and faculty.
Create events, activities, and opportunities that help students best use Pearson technologies.
Collect campus feedback through focus groups, surveys, and individual interviews.
Work with professionals at Pearson to promote current products and shape future ones.
Participate in conference calls, team trainings, and regularly scheduled team meetings.

And from elsewhere in the website, another description of what the job looks like:

Pearson Campus Ambassadors are instrumental in leading classroom presentations on Pearson technologies, hosting tables at book fairs, and capturing video testimonials. They also facilitate focus groups, conduct student surveys, and create projects and events specific to the student experiences on their campuses.


So, basically, the job is be a Mary Kay lady who throws Tupperware parties for Pearson on your college campus.

Pearson's been doing this for a while. Actually, everybody's been doing this for a while. Some of the obvious players like Google and Microsoft hire student "ambassadors," but I found information about ambassadors for Barnes & Noble and General Mills (trying to get your college buddies to eat breakfast strikes me as an impressive challenge).

Here's Isa Adney back in 2012 talking about her experience as a Pearson ambassador back in 2012:

I actually consult with a wonderful student ambassador program with Pearson (the leading education services company), where students are paid to be on campus to help teach students how to get the most out of their new learning materials such as Pearson's MyMathLab) through class presentations and tutoring hours. These student ambassadors get to know more people on campus, earn money to help them in school, build connections and meet mentors within the company, and gain some really great professional experience. This doesn't always happen while working at a fast-food restaurant in college. 

One can see that this works well for the company-- a low-cost low-maintenance high-impact marketing strategy that doubles as a recruitment program, while helping get young people at the very beginning of their adult careers to think of corporations as their good buddies. And you don't have to sell your soul-- just your friends.

Virginia: Let's Kneecap Public Schools

How soon they forget.

It wasn't that long ago that Virginia was taking advantage of North Carolina's terrible education policies by trying to poach NC teachers. Now, some Virginia voices are calling for their own edu-mugging.

Every state has its own set of whacky politicians who open their mouths and let the crazy fly out. Virginia has David Brat, who brings it to the national level.

Brat, you may or may not recall, is the Tea Party candidate who booted Eric Cantor out of Congress. He's an economics professor at Randolph-Macon College, a small liberal arts college in Ashland. The folks who have been poring over his background since he upset Cantor suggest that he's a Randian who attributes 19th century advances in government, economics and science to Calvinism.

He has some thoughts about education as well, and has chimed in on the current budgetary debates in VA, as reported by Will Ragland at Think Progress. If you've come across this story, it was probably under the money quote which was

Socrates trained Plato in on a rock and then Plato trained in Aristotle roughly speaking on a rock. So, huge funding is not necessary to achieve the greatest minds and the greatest intellects in history.

But Brat has ideas far more alarming than simply teaching from atop a hunk of stone.

He began his remarks by saying, “The greatest thinkers in Western civ were not products of education policy,” before mentioning Socrates and Plato. He later went on to say that he thinks the answer to improving education in this country “would be to get private sector folks into every one of our schools, get the CEOs in the schools and move beyond this just narrow policy debate and really have a revolution.”

But Virginia is not content to simply send some educational dismantlery to DC. They've got some ideas of their own.

Senator Mark D. Obenshain has introduced SJ 256, a constitutional amendment dealing with charter schools. What the bill proposes is simple-- let Virginia charter schools be authorized by the Governor-appointed state Board of Education.

I can't imagine a much better way to pit the state government against the state school system. With one constitutional amendment, the Governor becomes the overseer of a system created to put public schools out of business. With creativity, this can provide all sorts of political leverage ("Do it my way, or you'll find a dozen charter schools opening in your district, right across the street from your local public high school.") But ultimately, this is a bill that would give Virginia's governors and his hand-picked education chiefs the power to simply swamp their own public school system. If this passes, local public school teachers could be lucky to find a full-sized rock to stand on to teach.

The current system in Virginia requires local school districts to authorize charters, not unlike volunteering to have a bucket of leeches released in one's own bathwater. Unsurprisingly, charter growth has been slow under this system. Obenshain is concerned that Virginia is falling behind other charter-friendly states and that nationally there are oh-so-many moms and dads waiting in line to get junior into a lovely charter school.

The measure has passed the Virginia Senate and is expected to scoot on through the House. The vote was along party lines, though when you break it down into individuals, we are once again reminded how bizarre ed reform has made the political terrain. Senator Chap Peterson is a lawyer who is representing a charter that is fighting against a local school district that won't give them approval, but he voted against the measure because he feels it takes away the power of the local school board and destroying local control. Peterson is a Democrat, so go figure.

As a constitutional amendment, the measure has a long journey yet to travel. That means folks in Virginia have lots of time to gather rocks, whether they want them to throw, to stand and teach upon, or to check underneath for any politicians that might be hiding under them.

Waiting for Marshmallows

The Marshmallow Experiment was a series of studies performed at Stanford starting the late sixties (and also not a bad band name) that purported to study self-control and the ability to defer gratification. It comes up these days in many contexts, including discussions of grit and prudence and character education.

It also shows the flaws in some models of human behavior.

In case you slept in that day in Psych 101, here's the basic layout. Put a child and some marshmallows in a room together. Promise the child even more marshmallows if she'll refrain from eating the ones in front of her. Then leave the room. The child's subsequent behavior provides a measure of how much ability the child has to delay gratification.

In 2012, a new variation on the study was conducted at the Rochester Baby Lab, and it revealed a whole aspect of the problem that was not covered in the original experiments.

What if the child's ability isn't the only important variable? What if environment also matters?

The new experiment varied the environment. Some children dealt with a reliable environment, and some dealt with an unreliable one in which the adults they dealt with were not as good as their word.

The format was a one-two punch. The children were given a box of lame crayons and told, "If you can just wait a minute, I'll bring back some better art supplies." Then they were left alone with a sticker and told, "Don't touch this sticker and I'll bring you a bunch of better ones."

In the reliable environment, the adult followed through as promised. In the other environment the adult returned empty-handed with excuses. And then it was time for the marshmallow.

The effect was huge. The mean wait time for children in the unreliable environment was about three minutes. For those in the reliable environment, about twelve. Compared to previous research, that's half as much waiting for unreliables and twice as much waiting for reliables.

In other words, the quality of deferred gratification is not just an innate immutable quality that the child possesses in some sort of vacuum-- it's a rational reasoned response to what one knows about conditions in the environment. Put another way, this quality of "self-control" is really about the relationship between the person and the environment (particularly the parts of that environment shaped by other people).

The broadest conclusion I can draw from this is that what we often ascribe to deficiencies in a person's character are actually behaviors developed in response to that person's environment. We are focusing on the person when we should be focusing on the relationship between that person and the surroundings.

Say your engine is running hot. Should you be looking for a particular engine part that is running with too much friction, or should you check the oil? Say your child has developed hives all around his upper torso and arms where his shirt touches his skin? Should you worry about why his skin has such a hivey quality, or should you be checking to see if he's having an allergic reaction to something in the shirt?

Say your kid won't wait long when you set a marshmallow in front of her. Should you declare the child character-deficient, with  a sad lack of self-control? Or should you look at the environment that child lives in every day and ask how it has taught her that waiting is a fool's game.

Children are learning machines. They are learning all the time, and they are learning lessons like whether or not the world around them can be trusted or counted on. When they arrive at school, they have already earned a PhD in Human Behavior, and they operate with a set of assumptions based on what they've learned.

It is not helpful to say that children who have learned certain lessons from their environment, and who now make choices based on what they've learned-- it is not helpful to label those students as character-deficient because the lessons they've learned are different from the lessons we wish they had learned.

If it helps, think of the conclusions you reach about students as marshmallows. You can reach some conclusions quickly and easily right now. Or you can wait, and you'll get more to work with. Show some self-control.

Standardized Tests: Bitter But Necessary Medicine?

At EdWeek, Cristina Duncan Evans had this to say about standardized testing:

What's worse than annual standardized testing? Not having it at all.

Well, no. I don't think so. Her argument is not an unusual one.


What would happen if we no longer had to take the bitter pill of standardized testing? At the most basic level, it would become much harder to figure out which schools aren't doing an adequate job of reaching students. 

I don't think so. I don't believe that standardized tests are telling us that now, so this is kind of like arguing that closing down the telegraph company would be bad because I would never get any more phone calls from that guy who never calls me on the phone.

There are at least two disconnects. One, the tests aren't telling us about how adequate schools are and two, they never will, because they can't.

Politicians and bureaucrats could game statistics to make achievement gaps disappear in order to appeal to voters who don't know what is going on in their local schools. 

Yes, because the past decade of test-driven accountability has kept politicians so honest.

In fact, we've been treated to a decade of politicians gaming statistics in order to make schools look like failures in order to justify initiatives for charts, vouchers, turnaround scammers and other folks lined up to get their mitts on the goose that lays golden taxpayer-financed eggs. If there's anything standardized tests have NOT been used for, it's to let people know what's going on in their local schools.

And, as always, I have a problem with the idea that local folks have no knowledge of what's going on in schools unless a government bureaucrat with a test results spread sheet tells them.

Without comparisons, failing schools would face little pressure to improve.

Really? Nobody would know they were failing? Not students nor parents nor teachers working there? And the only clue, the only possible hint that they were failing would be standardized test results? A click-and-bubble test that narrowly measures slim aspects of two disciplines is the best measure we can think of for telling whether a school is failing or not?

The needs of historically underserved populations would go unnoticed beyond their classrooms.   

I just addressed this, so I'll be brief. This is a legitimate concern, but after a decade-plus of NCLB, there is no evidence that standardized tests help with the issue in the slightest, and plenty of evidence that they hurt.

Without standardized testing, successful schools with a strong sense of mission would continue to thrive, but would their lessons be adopted for all students?

Because other teachers aren't interested in hearing about what works, or because they have no means of contacting fellow professionals? And why does success need to be scaleable? Can it be scaleable? What makes you think that something that works at my school with my students when implemented by me will work at your school in your classroom with your students? I think I'm a pretty good husband to my wife. Does it follow that my statement is only true if I would be a great husband to every straight woman and gay man in America?

In the comments, Evans goes on to underline that she believes we need to be able to compare schools so that we know if students are getting a good education. This makes no sense. Do I need to compare my performance as a husband to that of other husbands to know whether I have a good marriage or not, or can my wife and I depend on our own judgment of our own circumstances. Every student should get a good education, and that means something different in every situation. Comparison has nothing to do with it.

Then in the comments Evans adds this:

That's why I favor fewer, better tests that are well designed and that align with not just standards, but our values. If we value critical thinking, creativity, and depth of knowledge, then we need to design assessments that measure those things. Would that be expensive? Certainly. Would such assessments be computer graded? Almost certainly not.

Sigh. I favor magical unicorns flying in on rainbow wings to lick my head and make my hair magically grow back. But it's not going to happen. I agree that the tests she describes would be useful, but we don't have those tests, and we are never, ever, ever, EVER going to have those tests. Instead we have tests that devalue and disincetivize the qualities she lists. She really lost me here-- it's like saying we'd like a really great house paint for our home, but until we can have that, we'll just have to bathe the walls in flames instead.

Finally, this:


I don't trust schools and states to equitable teach ALL of their students without some oversight, because historically, that just doesn't tend to happen in this country.

In this, we agree. But I don't think standardized tests help with this problem in the slightest. In fact, they make things worse by creating the illusion that the issue is being addressed and take resources away from initiatives that actually would help. Standardized tests are not the solution, not in the slightest.
 



 

What's The Matter With Indiana

In the modern era of education reform, each state has tried to create its own special brand of educational dysfunction. If the point of Common Core related reforms was to bring standardization to the country's many and varied state systems, it has failed miserably by failing in fifty different ways.

What Indiana provides is an example of what happens when the political process completely overwhelms educational concerns. If there is anyone in the Indiana state capitol more worried about education students than in political maneuvering and political posturing, it's not immediately evident who that person might be.

The current marquee conflagration of the moment is the announcement of a new Big Standardized Test that will take twelve hours to complete. This announcement has triggered a veritable stampede from responsibility, as every elected official in Indianapolis tries to put some air space between themselves and this testing disaster. And it brings up some of the underlying issues of the moment in Indiana.

Currently, all roads lead to Glenda Ritz.

Back before the fall of 2012, Indiana had become a reformster playground. They'd made early strides solving the puzzle of how to turn an entire urban school district over to privatizers, and they loved them some Common Core, too. Tony Bennett, buddy of Jeb Bush and big-time Chief for Change, was running the state's education department just the way reformsters thought it should be done. And then came the 2012 election.

Bennett was the public face of Indiana education reform. He dumped a ton of money into the race. And he lost. Not just lost, but looooooooosssssssssst!!! As is frequently noted, Glenda Ritz was elected Superintendent for Public Instruction with more votes than Governor Mike Pence. I like this account of the fallout by Joy Resmovits mostly because it includes a quote from Mike Petrilli that I think captures well the reaction of reformsters when Bennett lost.

"Shit shit shit shit shit," he said. "You can quote me on that."

After Ritz became a Democrat education in a GOP administration, Republican politicians decided that given her overwhelming electoral victory, they'd better just suck it up and find a way to honor the will of the people by working productively with her  to fashion bi-partisan educational policies that put the needs of Indiana's students ahead of political gamesmanship. Ha! Just kidding. The GOP started using every trick they could think of to strip Ritz of her power.


As Scott Elliot tells it in this piece at Chalkbeat, things actually started out okay, with Ritz and the Pence administration carving out some useful compromises. Elliot marks the start of open warfare at Bennettgate-- the release of emails showing that Tony Bennett had gamed the less-than-awesome Indiana school grading system to favor certain charter operators.

Certainly Ritz and pence have different ideas about how to operate an education system. Mike Pence particularly loves charters-- so much so that he has taken the unusual move of proposing that charter schools be paid $1,500 more per student than public schools (so forget all about that charters-are-cheaper business).

Indiana has also created a complicated relationship with the Common Core, legislating a withdrawal from the Core, but one that required the state to do it without losing their federal bribes payments. The result was a fat-free Twinkie of education standards-- not enough like the original for some people and too much like it for others.

The Indiana GOP has been trying to separate Ritz from any power. They cite any number of complaints about her work style and competence (the GOP president of the Senate famously commented "In all fairness, Superintendent Ritz was a librarian, okay?") and most of the complaints smell like nothing but political posturing.

It's understandable that the state Board of Education would be a cantankerous group. Consider this op-ed piece from Gordon Hendry, newest member of the board, Democrat, attorney, business exec, and director of economic development under former Indianapolis mayor and current charter profiteer Bart Peterson. Hendry opens with, "To me, education policy is economic policy" (pro tip, Mr. Hendry-- education policy is education policy). After castigating Ritz for not running pleasant, orderly meetings (because her job is, apparently, to make alleged grownups behave like actual grownups), Hendry works up to this:

As a Democrat, I don't know why the superintendent insists on creating conflict where rational debate should instead exist.

That just sets off the bovine fecal detector into loud whoops. First, we've got an accusation buried as an assumption (she's the one creating conflict). Combine that with playing the feigned ignorance card-- I just have no idea why she could be so touchy! Really, dude? I'm all the way over here in Pennsylvania, and I can tell why she might be involved in some crankypants activity. I'm pretty sure winning an election and being forced to work with people who dismiss you and try to cut you out of power-- I'm pretty sure that would put someone in a bad mood. So I can understand finding her ideas obnoxious and disagreeing with how she runs a meeting, but when you claim her point of view is incomprehensible, that tells me way more about you than about her.


Most of the statements I read coming out of Indiana are like that-- they carry a screaming barely-subtext of "I am just stringing words together in a way that I've calculated might bring political advantage, but I am paying no real attention to what they actual mean to real humans."

I have no idea how good at her job Glenda Ritz actually is, but the political statement represented by her landslide election seems clear enough, and it's a little astonishing that Indiana's leaders are so hell bent on thwarting the will of the electorate. But damned if the legislature isn't trying to strip her of chairmanship of the Board of Education.

Meanwhile, the fat-free Twinkie standards have spawned some massive tumor of a test, coming in at an advertised length of twelve hours which breaks down to A) weeks of wasted classroom time and B) at least six hours worth of frustrated and bored students making random marks which of course gets Indiana C) results even more meaningless than the usual standardized test results although D) McGraw-Hill will still make a mountain of money for producing it. Whose fault is that? Tom LoBianco seems close to the answer when he says, basically, everyone. (Although Pence has offered a gubernatorial edict that the test be cut to six hours, so, I don't know- just do every other page, kids? Not sure exactly how one cuts a test in half in about a week, but perhaps Indiana is a land of miracles.*) But it's hard for me not see Ritz and Indiana schools as the victims of a system so clogged and choked with political asshattery that it may well be impossible to get anything done that actually benefits the students of Indiana.

UPDATE: On February 11, the Senate Education Committee gave the okay to a bill that would exempt voucher schools from taking the same assessment as public schools. In fact, the voucher schools can just go ahead and create a test of their own. It is remarkable that the State of Indiana has not just closed all public schools, dumped all the education money in a giant Scrooge McDuck sized vault, and sold tickets to just go in a dive around in it.

There's going to be a rally at the Statehouse on Monday, February 16th. If I were an Indiana taxpayer-- hell if I were a live human who lived considerably closer-- I would be there. This is a state that really hates its public schools.


* Edit-- I somehow lost the sentence about the shortening of the test in posting. I've since put the parenthetical point back.