The latest Education Week features a package of essays about the Common Core from the perspective of "five leading educators." The package was paid for by the Gates Foundation, but EdWeek retained "total editorial control" of the package. Before you roll your eyes, I can vouch for at least some of that; I am one of the five contributors and at no point did I feel as if EdWeek or Gates were tying to mess with my part of the package (although EdWeek did call me a "leading educator" which calls their journalistic judgment into question). Clearly EdWeek did get to control who they asked to write in the first place, but I can't help feeling that if they were looking for five CCSS cheerleaders, they should have chosen differently.
In the interests of full disclosure, I will also report that EdWeek paid me more for this piece than anybody has ever paid me for a single piece of writing ever. The only effect this had on me was that I felt obliged to eschew juvenile behavior (like sophomoric "package" jokes). Also, I had an actual editor to notice when I made mistakes. You readers get juvenile behavior and mistakes for free. You're welcome.
These articles also ran in the print version, which means you may have paywall issues accessing them, but you may be able to find a print version. Is it worth your trouble? Let me give you the quick rundown-- what did Gates get for their big State of the Common Core journalism package?
Ariel Sacks contributes "Decoding the Common Core: A Teacher's Perspective."
Sacks is a New York City English teacher who has published a book about teaching whole novels in a student-centered approach. She blogs over at the Center for Teaching Quality Collaboratory and while CTQ can feel a bit reformy at times, I've found lots of smart, interesting teachers over there, Sacks among them.
Her take on the Core is familiar. She sees much that aligns with what she already does, but she also sees some problems that can be traced to Core creation by non-educators, including the backwards scaffolding that produces so many developmentally inappropriate standards in lower grades. She also expresses some issues with the fiction vs. non-fiction issues. Her conclusion:
All in all, I feel that, if the common standards had never been
developed, teachers wouldn't necessarily be worse off, and we might have
been able to put our attention toward something equally or more
beneficial to students. Yet, if the standards were to disappear today, I
would also feel that a valuable conversation had been cut short, an
opportunity to connect and expand students' learning in classrooms
across the country abandoned rather than developed.
I disagree on what would be lost. I haven't encountered that many valuable conversations sparked by the Core, and I don't see any Core connection to expanding and connecting learning. Her other conclusion is that the standards will survive only with teacher input, but that assumes that the standards can be changed or re-interpreted. That is possible on a local level, if local leadership supports it. But that's about it.
John Troutman McCrann contributes "Teaching the Common Core Requires Fine-tuning School Policies."
McCrann is an America Achieves fellow who teaches math at Harvest Collegiate High School in New York City; he's also a local UFT leader. McCrann is, for me, another fine example of a teacher who does whatever he thinks is best in his professional judgment and then just chalks it up to the Common Core. If it were a few decades ago, he'd likely be doing exactly the same thing in his classroom and calling it Outcomes Based Education with some Authentic Assessment Sauce on the side.
In fact, Common Core appears in McCrann's first and last paragraph. In between, he discusses some initiatives and policies that his school implemented. It is perhaps early to announce success; Harvest only opened in fall of 2012 with its first 9th grade class. But these are interesting ideas about how to operate a school and Harvest's website is intriguing. But I'm not convinced that McCrann's article couldn't be entitled "Teaching the Common Core Requires Ignoring It and Using Sound Professional Judgment."
Jeff Riley contributes "Why My School District Is Holding Off on PARCC Tests."
Riley is the receiver/superintendent of the Lawrence public schools in Massachusetts. Lawrence is an interesting study, a district in receivership that has not been turned, a la New Orleans, into a charter playground.
Riley's piece is an interesting inclusion in the package, because he's not all that interested in the Core. "Yeah, yeah, we had standards before. These are new ones. Whatever-- I have a bunch of poverty-soaked children to try to educate." Riley's argument about holding off on PARCC and using the old MA test is that he can use another year of comparable data to see how he's doing. But he is pretty relentless in his piece about poverty as a factor, observing among other things that poor students and rich students who graduate with the same scores do not enjoy the same college success.
All students should be challenged to reach high standards. Whether these
are set locally, at the state level, or nationally, I will leave it to
the politicians to decide. The real question—given that over half our
nation's public school children now live at or near the poverty line—is
whether we can ensure that all children receive a great education and a
chance at the American Dream.
Charlotte Danielson contributes "Helping Educators Overcome 'Initiative Fatigue'"
I'm not going to bother explaining who Danielson is. Her contribution is some research, conducted by interviewing 500 educators in four school districts between March 2013 and June 2014 and she found that lots of teachers think dealing with CCSS-based changes is hard.
There are some other findings as well, but for several reasons, I am not inclined to pay much attention to her findings.
First of all, March of 2013 is a long, long time ago on teachers' reform timeline. In March of 2013, I would have told you that this Common Core stuff looked challenging, but probably no big deal, and I was hopeful it could be used to move us forward. I was looking forward to getting a look at it. The 2013-2104 school year was the year that many teachers finally looked Common Core in its beady eyes and realized they didn't like it a bit. It sucks to be a researcher in such a rapidly-shifting environment, but reporting two-year-old data on educator attitudes about the Core is like reporting my three-year-old dog's weight from two years ago.
The other problem is the focus on just four districts. Again, I know researchers are human beings with limits, but implementation of CCSS is so hugely varied in style, severity, autonomy and programming choices from place to place that a sample of four school districts is pretty much meaningless as a nationwide picture of how the implementation is going.
So move on. Nothing to see here.
Finally, there's my contribution. My point is pretty simple, and it's actually supported by the other pieces of the package:
If the goal of Common Core was to provide a consistent framework within and across state lines, to get all the teachers and schools and students in the country on the same page at the same time, then Common Core is a complete and miserable failure. At this point there are a myriad, a plethora, a giant honking mass of versions of the Core, from the version espoused by each state, to the versions that are being tested, to the versions being pushed in programs and textbooks, to the versions being pushed by teachers and PD vendors. We no longer have the slightest assurance that two different people using the term "Common Core" are even talking about the same thing.
And there isn't even a controlling body or authority in place which could settle the argument; those guys are all busy making money on various other companies' versions of Common Core.
There are some interesting pieces here, a conversation-worthy idea or two, but if The Gates was hoping for a Common Core pep rally, they did not get the package they were hoping for.
Sunday, March 29, 2015
Razing Arizona
The Arizona Capitol Times last week ran an op-ed from a concerned citizen who wants to stick up for the beleaguered common core standards. Rebecca Hipps bills herself as a descendant of some of Arizona's founding families, and as such, she doesn't want the pioneer spirit to be damaged by the ejection of CCSS.
Hipps is not actually in Arizona. According to her LinkedIn profile, she spent her first three post-college years in three different teaching jobs before heading to DC, where she has worked for the DC Common Core Collaborative, a charter school, Teach Plus, and O'Dell Education, an outfit that appears to specialize in the manufacture and sales of Core-related programs and PD. They were founded by Judson O'Dell, who was Dean of Students at a university in Argentina before coming to work at the College Board and Educational Testing Service. That's Hipps' current employer, so her love for the Core is not exactly a surprise.
When she discusses her fears about the core ditchery that Arizona is contemplating, she says this:
My greatest fear in Arizona repealing the CCSS is that poorly developed standards with a hidden agenda will take its place.
Yes, yes, I can see how one would worry that schools would be commandeered by a set of standards developed by educational amateurs and pushed forward with an agenda of opening up public schools to private corporations or cracking open and unifying markets for publishing companies. Seriously-- "poorly developed standards with a hidden agenda" is as good a description of the common core standards as anyone has ever written. It's as if for a split second Hipps forgot which side she's paid to be on.
Her list of reasons that Arizona students need the Core is the usual boilerplate. Critical thinking, writing, reading, mathematical reasoning-- because apparently Arizona teachers are currently unaware of these things. Hipps is afraid that without the Core, Arizona teachers will slide back to some lesser land of educational inadequacy.
Given Hipps' concern for Arizona education, it's curious that she doesn't mention one of Arizona's other outstanding educational features-- leadership in frequent and brutal cuts to education budgets in the entire country. Arizona has cut public ed spending steadily since the late oughts, and they rank 50th in college per-student spending. It's a wonder that Hipps did not bring this up, as it would seem that Arizona is a poster child for spending bottom dollar on education and getting bottom dollar results.
At least Hipps is able to speak out at all. Arizona's teachers, superintendents, principals and school board members have spoken up about the slash and burn methods of their state leaders, and the state leader response has been to float a law that will require them to shut up.
Arizona lawmakers have attached an amendment to Senate Bill 1172. It prohibits "an employee of a school district or charter school, acting on the district's or charter school's behalf, from distributing electronic materials to influence the outcome of an election or to advocate support for or opposition to pending or proposed legislation."
On the one hand, it's a good idea that Mrs. O'Teacher not give her class an hour of self-directed worksheets while she stuffs envelopes for the new ballot initiative. On the other hand, there's that whole First Amendment thing. And the law is so broadly worded that I imagine a citizen asking a school district employee, "I'm really worried about the new proposed law cutting all money to public schools. Will that hurt our programs here," and said school employee must reply, by law, "I cannot share any information about that with you." Other critics of the bill fear that it would even prohibit any discussion of educational programs that directly affect children with those children's parents.
And while I'm not concerned, exactly, I am curious-- would this law also prohibit charter schools from advertising?
The law is clearly one more attempt to push educators out of the political world. No more informational letters to parents and voters. No more taking a public stand against assaults on school funding by the governor and legislators. Presumably no teacher or administrator in Arizona could write a response to Hipps' op-ed-- at least not with any indication that they were writing their response from the perspective of a public educator.
In other words, Arizona educators can use their professional judgement and expertise-- they just can't let anybody know that they have any, or share what it leads them to conclude. Note that the law doesn't make any distinction between advocacy based on facts and that based on political preferences.
In New Jersey, charter operators have been trying to shut down Rutgers researcher Julia Sass Rubin, whose research has been embarrassing charter operators and the government buddies with the use of actual facts and fully-supported data. Their argument in NJ has been that Rubin shouldn't be allowed to mention her credentials-- in other words, she can share her data without explaining why it should be given credence.
But that's reformsterism, and as Hipps' plaintive cry for the Core and the amendment's inclusion of charters might indicate, Arizona's leadership is not so much pro-reform as it is just plain anti-public education. Hell, even DFER is on their case (turns out that Arizona has little money for schools, but lots for prisons). New governor Doug Ducey (previous job-- CEO of Cold Stone Creamery) has shown no interest in continuing the reformy policies of his predecessor Jan Brewer.
Governor Ducey (whose children attend Catholic school) was plain as day at his inauguration that tax hikes are verbotten and that all of Arizona's financial problems come from spending money poorly, not spending too little. He likes school choice, but has not explained how that will work, particularly if all the choices are brutally underfunded. But then, he seems to admire the model of such no-government paradises as Somalia; it would seem that school choice is not so important as making sure that all schools are underfunded and unregulated. This is all more than a little ironic-- have you ever been in a Cold Stone Creamery? Workers there are regulated down to how they must talk and behave for the customers, and franchise owners must spend enough money to do things properly.
Why, out of this whole constellation of issues, Hipps would find the possible ejection of Common Core to be most alarming and troubling is, given her employment history, not exactly a puzzle. But even from way over here in Pennsylvania, I can see that dumping a bad set of amateur-created standards is the least of Arizona's worries. Let's just hope that the people who can identify those problems are still allowed to talk about them.
Hipps is not actually in Arizona. According to her LinkedIn profile, she spent her first three post-college years in three different teaching jobs before heading to DC, where she has worked for the DC Common Core Collaborative, a charter school, Teach Plus, and O'Dell Education, an outfit that appears to specialize in the manufacture and sales of Core-related programs and PD. They were founded by Judson O'Dell, who was Dean of Students at a university in Argentina before coming to work at the College Board and Educational Testing Service. That's Hipps' current employer, so her love for the Core is not exactly a surprise.
When she discusses her fears about the core ditchery that Arizona is contemplating, she says this:
My greatest fear in Arizona repealing the CCSS is that poorly developed standards with a hidden agenda will take its place.
Yes, yes, I can see how one would worry that schools would be commandeered by a set of standards developed by educational amateurs and pushed forward with an agenda of opening up public schools to private corporations or cracking open and unifying markets for publishing companies. Seriously-- "poorly developed standards with a hidden agenda" is as good a description of the common core standards as anyone has ever written. It's as if for a split second Hipps forgot which side she's paid to be on.
Her list of reasons that Arizona students need the Core is the usual boilerplate. Critical thinking, writing, reading, mathematical reasoning-- because apparently Arizona teachers are currently unaware of these things. Hipps is afraid that without the Core, Arizona teachers will slide back to some lesser land of educational inadequacy.
Given Hipps' concern for Arizona education, it's curious that she doesn't mention one of Arizona's other outstanding educational features-- leadership in frequent and brutal cuts to education budgets in the entire country. Arizona has cut public ed spending steadily since the late oughts, and they rank 50th in college per-student spending. It's a wonder that Hipps did not bring this up, as it would seem that Arizona is a poster child for spending bottom dollar on education and getting bottom dollar results.
At least Hipps is able to speak out at all. Arizona's teachers, superintendents, principals and school board members have spoken up about the slash and burn methods of their state leaders, and the state leader response has been to float a law that will require them to shut up.
Arizona lawmakers have attached an amendment to Senate Bill 1172. It prohibits "an employee of a school district or charter school, acting on the district's or charter school's behalf, from distributing electronic materials to influence the outcome of an election or to advocate support for or opposition to pending or proposed legislation."
On the one hand, it's a good idea that Mrs. O'Teacher not give her class an hour of self-directed worksheets while she stuffs envelopes for the new ballot initiative. On the other hand, there's that whole First Amendment thing. And the law is so broadly worded that I imagine a citizen asking a school district employee, "I'm really worried about the new proposed law cutting all money to public schools. Will that hurt our programs here," and said school employee must reply, by law, "I cannot share any information about that with you." Other critics of the bill fear that it would even prohibit any discussion of educational programs that directly affect children with those children's parents.
And while I'm not concerned, exactly, I am curious-- would this law also prohibit charter schools from advertising?
The law is clearly one more attempt to push educators out of the political world. No more informational letters to parents and voters. No more taking a public stand against assaults on school funding by the governor and legislators. Presumably no teacher or administrator in Arizona could write a response to Hipps' op-ed-- at least not with any indication that they were writing their response from the perspective of a public educator.
In other words, Arizona educators can use their professional judgement and expertise-- they just can't let anybody know that they have any, or share what it leads them to conclude. Note that the law doesn't make any distinction between advocacy based on facts and that based on political preferences.
In New Jersey, charter operators have been trying to shut down Rutgers researcher Julia Sass Rubin, whose research has been embarrassing charter operators and the government buddies with the use of actual facts and fully-supported data. Their argument in NJ has been that Rubin shouldn't be allowed to mention her credentials-- in other words, she can share her data without explaining why it should be given credence.
But that's reformsterism, and as Hipps' plaintive cry for the Core and the amendment's inclusion of charters might indicate, Arizona's leadership is not so much pro-reform as it is just plain anti-public education. Hell, even DFER is on their case (turns out that Arizona has little money for schools, but lots for prisons). New governor Doug Ducey (previous job-- CEO of Cold Stone Creamery) has shown no interest in continuing the reformy policies of his predecessor Jan Brewer.
Governor Ducey (whose children attend Catholic school) was plain as day at his inauguration that tax hikes are verbotten and that all of Arizona's financial problems come from spending money poorly, not spending too little. He likes school choice, but has not explained how that will work, particularly if all the choices are brutally underfunded. But then, he seems to admire the model of such no-government paradises as Somalia; it would seem that school choice is not so important as making sure that all schools are underfunded and unregulated. This is all more than a little ironic-- have you ever been in a Cold Stone Creamery? Workers there are regulated down to how they must talk and behave for the customers, and franchise owners must spend enough money to do things properly.
Why, out of this whole constellation of issues, Hipps would find the possible ejection of Common Core to be most alarming and troubling is, given her employment history, not exactly a puzzle. But even from way over here in Pennsylvania, I can see that dumping a bad set of amateur-created standards is the least of Arizona's worries. Let's just hope that the people who can identify those problems are still allowed to talk about them.
Saturday, March 28, 2015
Vouchers and Tax Credit Scholarships in the U.S.
I don't have anything to add to this. But it's worth watching and it's a great video to share with folks who may not yet fully grasp what's going on nationally.
Who Put the D in DFER?
DFER stands for Democrats for Education Reform, a group that has the distinction of possessing a name in which none of the words are accurate.
The Democrat part is a fun piece of trivia. One of the key founders of DFER is Whitney Tilson, a big time hedge fund manager (you can read more about him here). Leonie Haimson has a great quote from the film version of Tilson's magnum opus about ed reform, "A Right Denied," and it's a dream of mine that every time somebody searches for DFER on line, this quote comes up.
“The real problem, politically, was not the Republican party, it was the Democratic party. So it dawned on us, over the course of six months or a year, that it had to be an inside job. The main obstacle to education reform was moving the Democratic party, and it had to be Democrats who did it, it had to be an inside job. So that was the thesis behind the organization. And the name – and the name was critical – we get a lot of flack for the name. You know, “Why are you Democrats for education reform? That’s very exclusionary. I mean, certainly there are Republicans in favor of education reform.” And we said, “We agree.” In fact, our natural allies, in many cases, are Republicans on this crusade, but the problem is not Republicans. We don’t need to convert the Republican party to our point of view…”
It's kind of genius. Like if I wanted to keep Wal-Mart out of town, just declaring myself a Wal-Mart executive and announcing repeatedly that Wal-Mart doesn't want to build in my town and convincing a bunch of actual Wal-Mart executives to join my organization and to start promoting my anti-building-in-my-town agenda.
Watch DFER's video or read their statements of belief and vision. Their narrative is clear. Public schools are failing because entrenched bureaucracy and those damn teacher unions have ruined everything. So we need to blow up public schools by using standards to create tests that will provide proof of how much public schools suck; then we can replace them with charters and choice.
DFER may have started as a thinly-disguised attempt to infiltrate the Democratic party, but they have bought their way in quite successfully in some regions. The intro video features a parade of elected Dem officials (though it's not recent-- in the video Cory Booker is still mayor of Newark) who are proud to lay the responsibility for failing public schools on the backs of teachers.
Why tell this story? Again-- most of the names behind DFER are big time hedge fund managers. Ripping open markets is a win-win; you have the satisfaction of helping lesser beings with your superior knowledge, and you can make a buttload of cash. You can see both on display in this insider story of the charterista assault on Bridgeport. You can also make your contributions to politicians running in key education elections (right now DFER would like to help Anthony Williams become mayor of Philly).
DFER is no more Democratic than my dog. There's not enough space between their positions and the positions of the conservative Fordham Institute (though I think, on balance, Fordham is generally more respectful of teachers). But for the privatizers to be effective, they need to work both sides of the aisle. Also, RFER would sound too much like a pot advocacy group.
So they're not really Democrats. And they don't want to reform education-- they just want to privatize it and reduce teachers to easily replaced widgets. And they aren't particularly interested in education other than as a sector of the economy. I suppose I have no beef with their use of the word "for," as long as they put it with the things that they are really for-- privatization and profit. So, Apoliticals Supporting Privatization and Profit. ASPP. Much better.
The Democrat part is a fun piece of trivia. One of the key founders of DFER is Whitney Tilson, a big time hedge fund manager (you can read more about him here). Leonie Haimson has a great quote from the film version of Tilson's magnum opus about ed reform, "A Right Denied," and it's a dream of mine that every time somebody searches for DFER on line, this quote comes up.
“The real problem, politically, was not the Republican party, it was the Democratic party. So it dawned on us, over the course of six months or a year, that it had to be an inside job. The main obstacle to education reform was moving the Democratic party, and it had to be Democrats who did it, it had to be an inside job. So that was the thesis behind the organization. And the name – and the name was critical – we get a lot of flack for the name. You know, “Why are you Democrats for education reform? That’s very exclusionary. I mean, certainly there are Republicans in favor of education reform.” And we said, “We agree.” In fact, our natural allies, in many cases, are Republicans on this crusade, but the problem is not Republicans. We don’t need to convert the Republican party to our point of view…”
It's kind of genius. Like if I wanted to keep Wal-Mart out of town, just declaring myself a Wal-Mart executive and announcing repeatedly that Wal-Mart doesn't want to build in my town and convincing a bunch of actual Wal-Mart executives to join my organization and to start promoting my anti-building-in-my-town agenda.
Watch DFER's video or read their statements of belief and vision. Their narrative is clear. Public schools are failing because entrenched bureaucracy and those damn teacher unions have ruined everything. So we need to blow up public schools by using standards to create tests that will provide proof of how much public schools suck; then we can replace them with charters and choice.
DFER may have started as a thinly-disguised attempt to infiltrate the Democratic party, but they have bought their way in quite successfully in some regions. The intro video features a parade of elected Dem officials (though it's not recent-- in the video Cory Booker is still mayor of Newark) who are proud to lay the responsibility for failing public schools on the backs of teachers.
Why tell this story? Again-- most of the names behind DFER are big time hedge fund managers. Ripping open markets is a win-win; you have the satisfaction of helping lesser beings with your superior knowledge, and you can make a buttload of cash. You can see both on display in this insider story of the charterista assault on Bridgeport. You can also make your contributions to politicians running in key education elections (right now DFER would like to help Anthony Williams become mayor of Philly).
DFER is no more Democratic than my dog. There's not enough space between their positions and the positions of the conservative Fordham Institute (though I think, on balance, Fordham is generally more respectful of teachers). But for the privatizers to be effective, they need to work both sides of the aisle. Also, RFER would sound too much like a pot advocacy group.
So they're not really Democrats. And they don't want to reform education-- they just want to privatize it and reduce teachers to easily replaced widgets. And they aren't particularly interested in education other than as a sector of the economy. I suppose I have no beef with their use of the word "for," as long as they put it with the things that they are really for-- privatization and profit. So, Apoliticals Supporting Privatization and Profit. ASPP. Much better.
Presidential Magical Misery Tour
Man, do I not look forward to the upcoming Presidential race. Or the already-started race. Whatever you want to call it.
On the GOP side, we've already got Ted Cruz deciding to distinguish himself by getting out ahead of the Silly Pack. That's fine. The sooner he burns out, the better for America.
But the Jebster's irony-drenched and self-awareness-parched campaign has been chugging along for a while, including his nifty Super-PAC, the Right to Rise. This PAC is established to "support candidates who want to restore the promise of America with a positive, conservative vision of reform and renewal." Apparently those candidates are all wrapped up in just one guy-- the Jebbinator, Bush III, the Littlest Shrub of All. What do they absolutely and unironically believe?
We believe passionately that the Right to Rise — to move up the income ladder based on merit, hard work and earned success — is the central moral promise of American economic life.
Because if there's anything that the Bush story tells us, it's that anybody born into riches and power can climb the ladder of ivy league connections to a position of even more wealth and power. Jeb's staff the completely independent operators of Right to Rise do acknowledge that the playing field no longer seems to be level and that the recovery did not raise all boats.
We believe the income gap is real, but that only conservative principles can solve it by removing the barriers to upward mobility. We will celebrate success and risk-taking, protect liberty, cherish free enterprise, strengthen our national defense, embrace the energy revolution, fix our broken and obsolete immigration system, and give all children a better future by transforming our education system through choice, high standards and accountability. We will strive to put our fiscal house back in order, re-limit government and ensure that America is a welcoming society.
So there's Jebby's plan, comfortingly vague except for the doubling down on reformster principles. But Jeb is stuck between two wings of the GOP-- the GOP well-paid-bv-corporate-interests wing and the still-attached-to-conservative-values wing. As a teacher, I'm not excited.
I am no more excited about the Democratic side. We're saying that the nomination is in Hillary Clinton's bag (hmmm... have I heard this before??) and the press is trying hard to shape a narrative in which she represents a struggle between the wings of the Democratic party- the Democratic well-paid-for-by-corporate-interests wing and the still-attached-to-liberal-values wing. You see how this is shaping up. The New York Times portrays her as torn between teachers and Democratic hedge fund guys and Democrats for Education Reform, a group the New York Times describes as "left-leaning" and which I would describe as about as Democratic as the Harvard Boat Club.
Leonie Haimson (of Class Size Matters) pulled up this quote from DFER honcho Whitney Tilson's film manifesto, "A Right Denied," and it should be pulled out every time DFER appears. It explains how DFER decided to be Democrats.
“The real problem, politically, was not the Republican party, it was the Democratic party. So it dawned on us, over the course of six months or a year, that it had to be an inside job. The main obstacle to education reform was moving the Democratic party, and it had to be Democrats who did it, it had to be an inside job. So that was the thesis behind the organization. And the name – and the name was critical – we get a lot of flack for the name. You know, “Why are you Democrats for education reform? That’s very exclusionary. I mean, certainly there are Republicans in favor of education reform.” And we said, “We agree.” In fact, our natural allies, in many cases, are Republicans on this crusade, but the problem is not Republicans. We don’t need to convert the Republican party to our point of view…”
I'm not looking for Hillary to align herself with teachers. Maybe with the national teachers union, but of course we're still trying to get NEA and AFT to align more tightly with teachers, so that's an issue.
It was Hillary Clinton who way back in the day received the infamous Mark Tucker letter outlining how public education could be retooled into a cradle-to-career pipeline, managed by the government and devoted to tracking and training children for their proper place in society. Now, if we held everyone accountable for every letter they ever received, I'd be a sweepstake winner many times over. But that was in 1998, and neither Clinton has exactly stepped up to say, "No, that's just crazy talk and wrong." Clinton's support for traditional US public education has been pretty much invisible.
That may seem like picking at the nits, but here's the thing-- the last guy I voted for said all sorts of wonderful things about public education and about schools and teachers, and that all turned out to be baloney. I vote for Barrack Obama once with enthusiasm and once while holding my nose, and nothing that happened after either vote convinced me that I would have been any worse off somehow putting George Bush II in the White House.
My distrust of Democrats at this point is huge, enormous, massive, a yawning chasm into which we could dump every beanie baby ever manufactured sealed in its own Iowa-sized vacuum container. The Democrat slogan has become, "You probably figure the GOP will be absolutely terrible, so we're banking that you'll vote for us because we're only horrible."
I've never not voted in an election (any election) and I hate the idea of throwing away a symbolic vote, but I have truly had it. I will never again vote for a national candidate who can't convince me that s/he will support public education. And it's already looking as if I'll have to do a lot of searching for 2016.
On the GOP side, we've already got Ted Cruz deciding to distinguish himself by getting out ahead of the Silly Pack. That's fine. The sooner he burns out, the better for America.
But the Jebster's irony-drenched and self-awareness-parched campaign has been chugging along for a while, including his nifty Super-PAC, the Right to Rise. This PAC is established to "support candidates who want to restore the promise of America with a positive, conservative vision of reform and renewal." Apparently those candidates are all wrapped up in just one guy-- the Jebbinator, Bush III, the Littlest Shrub of All. What do they absolutely and unironically believe?
We believe passionately that the Right to Rise — to move up the income ladder based on merit, hard work and earned success — is the central moral promise of American economic life.
Because if there's anything that the Bush story tells us, it's that anybody born into riches and power can climb the ladder of ivy league connections to a position of even more wealth and power.
We believe the income gap is real, but that only conservative principles can solve it by removing the barriers to upward mobility. We will celebrate success and risk-taking, protect liberty, cherish free enterprise, strengthen our national defense, embrace the energy revolution, fix our broken and obsolete immigration system, and give all children a better future by transforming our education system through choice, high standards and accountability. We will strive to put our fiscal house back in order, re-limit government and ensure that America is a welcoming society.
So there's Jebby's plan, comfortingly vague except for the doubling down on reformster principles. But Jeb is stuck between two wings of the GOP-- the GOP well-paid-bv-corporate-interests wing and the still-attached-to-conservative-values wing. As a teacher, I'm not excited.
I am no more excited about the Democratic side. We're saying that the nomination is in Hillary Clinton's bag (hmmm... have I heard this before??) and the press is trying hard to shape a narrative in which she represents a struggle between the wings of the Democratic party- the Democratic well-paid-for-by-corporate-interests wing and the still-attached-to-liberal-values wing. You see how this is shaping up. The New York Times portrays her as torn between teachers and Democratic hedge fund guys and Democrats for Education Reform, a group the New York Times describes as "left-leaning" and which I would describe as about as Democratic as the Harvard Boat Club.
Leonie Haimson (of Class Size Matters) pulled up this quote from DFER honcho Whitney Tilson's film manifesto, "A Right Denied," and it should be pulled out every time DFER appears. It explains how DFER decided to be Democrats.
“The real problem, politically, was not the Republican party, it was the Democratic party. So it dawned on us, over the course of six months or a year, that it had to be an inside job. The main obstacle to education reform was moving the Democratic party, and it had to be Democrats who did it, it had to be an inside job. So that was the thesis behind the organization. And the name – and the name was critical – we get a lot of flack for the name. You know, “Why are you Democrats for education reform? That’s very exclusionary. I mean, certainly there are Republicans in favor of education reform.” And we said, “We agree.” In fact, our natural allies, in many cases, are Republicans on this crusade, but the problem is not Republicans. We don’t need to convert the Republican party to our point of view…”
I'm not looking for Hillary to align herself with teachers. Maybe with the national teachers union, but of course we're still trying to get NEA and AFT to align more tightly with teachers, so that's an issue.
It was Hillary Clinton who way back in the day received the infamous Mark Tucker letter outlining how public education could be retooled into a cradle-to-career pipeline, managed by the government and devoted to tracking and training children for their proper place in society. Now, if we held everyone accountable for every letter they ever received, I'd be a sweepstake winner many times over. But that was in 1998, and neither Clinton has exactly stepped up to say, "No, that's just crazy talk and wrong." Clinton's support for traditional US public education has been pretty much invisible.
That may seem like picking at the nits, but here's the thing-- the last guy I voted for said all sorts of wonderful things about public education and about schools and teachers, and that all turned out to be baloney. I vote for Barrack Obama once with enthusiasm and once while holding my nose, and nothing that happened after either vote convinced me that I would have been any worse off somehow putting George Bush II in the White House.
My distrust of Democrats at this point is huge, enormous, massive, a yawning chasm into which we could dump every beanie baby ever manufactured sealed in its own Iowa-sized vacuum container. The Democrat slogan has become, "You probably figure the GOP will be absolutely terrible, so we're banking that you'll vote for us because we're only horrible."
I've never not voted in an election (any election) and I hate the idea of throwing away a symbolic vote, but I have truly had it. I will never again vote for a national candidate who can't convince me that s/he will support public education. And it's already looking as if I'll have to do a lot of searching for 2016.
Help for the Failing Schools
This is newest reformster talking point-- the Big Standardized Test is a big boon to poor and minority students, and to ask them to opt out is to ask them is to ask them to become invisible. Robert Pondiscio was pushing it again at the Fordham's blog this week. It's a nice rhetorical move, but it's limited by the degree to which it doesn't actually reflect reality.
Pondiscio makes a few side points before he gets to the main event, suggesting that the New Jersey numbers on how many actual opt-outs are perhaps somewhere between fuzzy and wrong. But then he breaks down the numbers and the opt-out sales pitch to make another point-- as a battleground, Opt Out is shaping up as rich white suburbanites vs. poor brown and black urban dwellers.
I'm going to leave that point alone. Sarah Blaine turned over her blog space to Belinda Edmondson, a mom in Montclair, NJ, who is surprised to discover that she's white and pleased to inform her family that they're wealthy. Edmondson deals with that part of Pondiscio's point pretty well.
Instead, let's move on to Pondiscio's larger point, which is that BS Tests have been a force for positive change in "non-affluent non-white" communities.
Blacks, Latinos, and low-income kids have generally benefitted from test-driven accountability, particularly in the increased number of charters and school choice options...
Okay, if you think charters have actually benefited those students over and above any benefits they would have experienced from public school, I can see believing this point is valid. But first, the case that charters have benefits greater than public schools is a case that has not been effectively made. What we do know is that charters accept only a portion of the students in a community, stripping resources from the schools where all of the rest of the students remain. Are the gains (ranging from arguable to non-existent) for the few charter-accepted students worth the costs to all the other students?
Nor is it clear that BS Tests really had anything to do with these "benefits." Are there really pockets of bad, run-down, under-resourced schools out there that existed in some sort of unseen, unheard reverse Shangri-La and not a soul knew about them until test results came out? Because I haven't heard a convincing story of that yet.
“Kids who are not tested end up not counting,” observed Kati Haycock, president of the Education Trust
This is one of those lines that sounds good, but what are we really saying here. Specifically, those untested kids end up not counting to whom? Surely not their parents. To their schools? To their state and federal representatives? If that's the case, are we really saying that in the face of poverty and want and crumbling buildings and lack of resources and students crying out for dignity, support and education that it's a score on a standardized test that's our best idea of how to move the needle?
"It could be a race problem but it's definitely a respect problem,” says Derrell Bradford, the African American executive director of NYCAN. “There is a pretty strong undertow beneath the opt-out wave. And the force of it is one where some people don't think testing, or Common Core, is the right fit for their child, so they don't think it's the right fit for anyone's child.”
Fair point. Of course, the door swings both ways. If the testing is the right fit for your child, should all children take it? But I think Bradford is missing the point-- we get closer to it with this quote from Pondiscio:
But I’m equally sympathetic to the low-income parents who think that testing reveals how badly they have been failed.
There's room to disagree about part of this sentences. Regular readers know what I think standardized testing reveals (hint: nothing useful at all), but even if we accept that the test reveal "how badly they have been failed," the sentence ends too soon.
Failed by whom?
We could look at test results and declare, "These students have been failed by their state and federal government, left to deal with the kind of poverty that we know leads directly to these sorts of low test results. We must marshall the resources of our society and country to bring and end to this poverty."
We could look at the tests and say, "The education establishment has failed these students by sending such tiny, narrow measures of achievement that have no proven connection to future success and which ignore the full breadth of human achievement that students in more affluent environments take for granted."
We could even say, "Somebody has failed these children, and we will not rest until we have performed the studies and research and in-the-earth examinations that tell us how these children have been failed. It's not an easy question, and we don't know the exact answer, but we will find it."
Instead, we've settled quickly and easily on, "Oh, they were failed by their teacher" and let it go at that.
You tell me that testing has pinpointed communities that need assistance and intervention, and I ask you-- show me school districts where the reaction to low test scores has been to send more resources. Show me five. Show me one!
Even when test scores are used to send in the charters, there's no increase in resources, no attempt to get these students all the help they need. Because we open second and third school systems without increasing resources, we're just shuffling resources around to less and less affect. We're like a painter trying to paint an entire house with one gallon of paint who, instead of buying more paint, just tries using more brushes to push the same amount of paint around.
What is undeniable is that those most likely to be negatively effected by the opt-out impulse are low-income children of color, for whom testing has been a catalyst for attention and mostly positive change.
I'm pretty sure that's deniable. In fact, I'm pretty sure it's completely unproven and without any basis. Testing has not been a catalyst for attention; it has been a catalyst for opening up markets to charter operators, a source of billion dollar paydays for test manufacturers, and an excuse not to invest any more resources or money in the students who need them the most.
This is one of those times when I really wish I were wrong. I wish I already knew stories from places like Philly and Chicago and Detroit and New Orleans where state governments said, "These tests make it clear-- we can no longer give our poorest students inadequate levels of support. We must find the will and the money to build these districts up, to create buildings so beautiful filed with resources so top-of-the-line that suburban parents will fight to send their children into the city to go to school."
But of course, that hasn't happened anywhere. Instead, we get scenes like New York State where a court order to fund poor schools equitably is gathering dust as the Governor says, "You can;t make me" and blames every low test score on teachers. We get New Jersey, where the state first starves then dismantles the school systems that serve brown and black children.
Reformsters make all this big talk about how the tests will be like a signal. "Take this flare gun," they tell our poorest students as they're left out in the desert. "If you feel like you're about to starve, just fire it off and we'll send someone to help." Then the reformsters drive away in cars spacious enough to carry many children, and they wait. And when they see the flare, instead of sending help, they send vultures.
I can imagine an assessment system that would help target schools in trouble (it would involve, among other things, listening to parents no matter how rich they weren't) and get them the sort of financial and resource help they needed. I would support a system like that. We keep talking about the BS Tests as if they were part of a system like that. But they aren't.
Pondiscio makes a few side points before he gets to the main event, suggesting that the New Jersey numbers on how many actual opt-outs are perhaps somewhere between fuzzy and wrong. But then he breaks down the numbers and the opt-out sales pitch to make another point-- as a battleground, Opt Out is shaping up as rich white suburbanites vs. poor brown and black urban dwellers.
I'm going to leave that point alone. Sarah Blaine turned over her blog space to Belinda Edmondson, a mom in Montclair, NJ, who is surprised to discover that she's white and pleased to inform her family that they're wealthy. Edmondson deals with that part of Pondiscio's point pretty well.
Instead, let's move on to Pondiscio's larger point, which is that BS Tests have been a force for positive change in "non-affluent non-white" communities.
Blacks, Latinos, and low-income kids have generally benefitted from test-driven accountability, particularly in the increased number of charters and school choice options...
Okay, if you think charters have actually benefited those students over and above any benefits they would have experienced from public school, I can see believing this point is valid. But first, the case that charters have benefits greater than public schools is a case that has not been effectively made. What we do know is that charters accept only a portion of the students in a community, stripping resources from the schools where all of the rest of the students remain. Are the gains (ranging from arguable to non-existent) for the few charter-accepted students worth the costs to all the other students?
Nor is it clear that BS Tests really had anything to do with these "benefits." Are there really pockets of bad, run-down, under-resourced schools out there that existed in some sort of unseen, unheard reverse Shangri-La and not a soul knew about them until test results came out? Because I haven't heard a convincing story of that yet.
“Kids who are not tested end up not counting,” observed Kati Haycock, president of the Education Trust
This is one of those lines that sounds good, but what are we really saying here. Specifically, those untested kids end up not counting to whom? Surely not their parents. To their schools? To their state and federal representatives? If that's the case, are we really saying that in the face of poverty and want and crumbling buildings and lack of resources and students crying out for dignity, support and education that it's a score on a standardized test that's our best idea of how to move the needle?
"It could be a race problem but it's definitely a respect problem,” says Derrell Bradford, the African American executive director of NYCAN. “There is a pretty strong undertow beneath the opt-out wave. And the force of it is one where some people don't think testing, or Common Core, is the right fit for their child, so they don't think it's the right fit for anyone's child.”
Fair point. Of course, the door swings both ways. If the testing is the right fit for your child, should all children take it? But I think Bradford is missing the point-- we get closer to it with this quote from Pondiscio:
But I’m equally sympathetic to the low-income parents who think that testing reveals how badly they have been failed.
There's room to disagree about part of this sentences. Regular readers know what I think standardized testing reveals (hint: nothing useful at all), but even if we accept that the test reveal "how badly they have been failed," the sentence ends too soon.
Failed by whom?
We could look at test results and declare, "These students have been failed by their state and federal government, left to deal with the kind of poverty that we know leads directly to these sorts of low test results. We must marshall the resources of our society and country to bring and end to this poverty."
We could look at the tests and say, "The education establishment has failed these students by sending such tiny, narrow measures of achievement that have no proven connection to future success and which ignore the full breadth of human achievement that students in more affluent environments take for granted."
We could even say, "Somebody has failed these children, and we will not rest until we have performed the studies and research and in-the-earth examinations that tell us how these children have been failed. It's not an easy question, and we don't know the exact answer, but we will find it."
Instead, we've settled quickly and easily on, "Oh, they were failed by their teacher" and let it go at that.
You tell me that testing has pinpointed communities that need assistance and intervention, and I ask you-- show me school districts where the reaction to low test scores has been to send more resources. Show me five. Show me one!
Even when test scores are used to send in the charters, there's no increase in resources, no attempt to get these students all the help they need. Because we open second and third school systems without increasing resources, we're just shuffling resources around to less and less affect. We're like a painter trying to paint an entire house with one gallon of paint who, instead of buying more paint, just tries using more brushes to push the same amount of paint around.
What is undeniable is that those most likely to be negatively effected by the opt-out impulse are low-income children of color, for whom testing has been a catalyst for attention and mostly positive change.
I'm pretty sure that's deniable. In fact, I'm pretty sure it's completely unproven and without any basis. Testing has not been a catalyst for attention; it has been a catalyst for opening up markets to charter operators, a source of billion dollar paydays for test manufacturers, and an excuse not to invest any more resources or money in the students who need them the most.
This is one of those times when I really wish I were wrong. I wish I already knew stories from places like Philly and Chicago and Detroit and New Orleans where state governments said, "These tests make it clear-- we can no longer give our poorest students inadequate levels of support. We must find the will and the money to build these districts up, to create buildings so beautiful filed with resources so top-of-the-line that suburban parents will fight to send their children into the city to go to school."
But of course, that hasn't happened anywhere. Instead, we get scenes like New York State where a court order to fund poor schools equitably is gathering dust as the Governor says, "You can;t make me" and blames every low test score on teachers. We get New Jersey, where the state first starves then dismantles the school systems that serve brown and black children.
Reformsters make all this big talk about how the tests will be like a signal. "Take this flare gun," they tell our poorest students as they're left out in the desert. "If you feel like you're about to starve, just fire it off and we'll send someone to help." Then the reformsters drive away in cars spacious enough to carry many children, and they wait. And when they see the flare, instead of sending help, they send vultures.
I can imagine an assessment system that would help target schools in trouble (it would involve, among other things, listening to parents no matter how rich they weren't) and get them the sort of financial and resource help they needed. I would support a system like that. We keep talking about the BS Tests as if they were part of a system like that. But they aren't.
Friday, March 27, 2015
Voucher Party
One of the foundational assertions of the charter movement is that public school tax dollars, once collected, should be attached to the child, maybe in a backpack, or perhaps surgically. "This public money... belongs to the student, not the failing school" wrote a commenter on one of my HuffPost pieces today. And I've heard variations on that over and over from charter advocates.
The money belongs to the student.
I've resisted this notion for a long time. The money, I liked to say, belongs to the taxpayers, who have used it to create a school system that serves the entire community by filling that community with well-educated adults who make better employees, customers, voters, neighbors, parents, and citizens. But hey-- maybe I've been wrong. Maybe that money, once collected really does belong to the student. In which case, let's really do this.
Let's let the student spend his voucher money (and let's stop pussyfooting around this-- when we talk about the money following the students, we're talking about vouchers) on the education of his dreams.
Does she want to go to the shiny new charter school? Let her go (as long as they'll take her, of course). But why stop there? Travel has long been considered a broadening experience-- what if she wants to take the voucher and spend it on a world cruise? Why not? It's her money. Perhaps she wants to become a champion basketball player-- would her time not be well spent hiring a coach and shooting hoops all day? Maybe she would like to develop her skills playing PS4 games, pursuant to a career in video-game tournaments. That's educational. In fact, as I recall the misspent youth of many of my cohort, I seem to recall that many found smoking weed and contemplating the universe to be highly educational. I bet a voucher would buy a lot of weed.
What's that, charter advocate? Do I hear you saying that's an unfair comparison, that obviously a high quality charter school is way different from smoking a lot of weed. I agree, but that's beside the point.
The money belongs to the student.
You didn't say that the money was the student's to be used on educational experiences that met with the approval of some overseeing government body. You didn't say that the money was the student's on the condition that the student got somebody's permission to use it first.You didn't say that we'd need to put strings on how the money is spent because students and their parents might not always make responsible choices.
You said the money belongs to the student.
Heck, let's really go all in. Why use the odd fiction of a voucher at all-- let's just collect taxes and cut every single student an annual check for $10,000 (or whatever the going rate is in your neighborhood). Let's just hand them the money that we're asserting belongs to them, and let them spend it as they wish. Maybe they'd like a nice couch, or a new iPad, or a sweet skateboard, or a giant voucher party, or food and clothing for themselves and their family.
Unless of course you'd like to suggest that the taxpayers who handed over that money and the community that collected it have an interest in making sure that it's spent well and responsibly in a way that serves the community's greater good. In which case we can go back to discussing how those needs of the stakeholders--ALL the stakeholders-- are best served by an all-inclusive community-based taxpayer-controlled educational system, and stop saying silly things like, "The money belongs to the student."
The money belongs to the student.
I've resisted this notion for a long time. The money, I liked to say, belongs to the taxpayers, who have used it to create a school system that serves the entire community by filling that community with well-educated adults who make better employees, customers, voters, neighbors, parents, and citizens. But hey-- maybe I've been wrong. Maybe that money, once collected really does belong to the student. In which case, let's really do this.
Let's let the student spend his voucher money (and let's stop pussyfooting around this-- when we talk about the money following the students, we're talking about vouchers) on the education of his dreams.
Does she want to go to the shiny new charter school? Let her go (as long as they'll take her, of course). But why stop there? Travel has long been considered a broadening experience-- what if she wants to take the voucher and spend it on a world cruise? Why not? It's her money. Perhaps she wants to become a champion basketball player-- would her time not be well spent hiring a coach and shooting hoops all day? Maybe she would like to develop her skills playing PS4 games, pursuant to a career in video-game tournaments. That's educational. In fact, as I recall the misspent youth of many of my cohort, I seem to recall that many found smoking weed and contemplating the universe to be highly educational. I bet a voucher would buy a lot of weed.
What's that, charter advocate? Do I hear you saying that's an unfair comparison, that obviously a high quality charter school is way different from smoking a lot of weed. I agree, but that's beside the point.
The money belongs to the student.
You didn't say that the money was the student's to be used on educational experiences that met with the approval of some overseeing government body. You didn't say that the money was the student's on the condition that the student got somebody's permission to use it first.You didn't say that we'd need to put strings on how the money is spent because students and their parents might not always make responsible choices.
You said the money belongs to the student.
Heck, let's really go all in. Why use the odd fiction of a voucher at all-- let's just collect taxes and cut every single student an annual check for $10,000 (or whatever the going rate is in your neighborhood). Let's just hand them the money that we're asserting belongs to them, and let them spend it as they wish. Maybe they'd like a nice couch, or a new iPad, or a sweet skateboard, or a giant voucher party, or food and clothing for themselves and their family.
Unless of course you'd like to suggest that the taxpayers who handed over that money and the community that collected it have an interest in making sure that it's spent well and responsibly in a way that serves the community's greater good. In which case we can go back to discussing how those needs of the stakeholders--ALL the stakeholders-- are best served by an all-inclusive community-based taxpayer-controlled educational system, and stop saying silly things like, "The money belongs to the student."
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