So now it has officially begun, again. Hillary Rodham Clinton is running for President. Let the questions begin. But the questions I'm interested in are not the stupid ones (Was she behind a nazi commie plot to blow up Benghazi?) or the horse racey ones (Will Hillary become inauthentic in a more authentic way?) Clinton, for a variety of reasons, receives a lot of stupid animosity for a lot of stupid reasons, and there are chapters of her career that could stand to see a little sunlight. I am not interested in any of that.
My question is, will she be good for public education?
I think we can all agree at this point that it's no longer possible to assume that anybody running under the Democrat standard is a supporter of public schools. Andrew Cuomo and the Obama administration have painfully proven that sad current reality. So it would be useful to know what kind of Democrat Clinton II proposes to be.
There's not much of a record to search through. Clinton's track record hasn't brought her into education issues very often. But there is one huge honking squealing flashing siren wrapped in a fluorescent red flag atop a high-powered blinking crimson light.
It's the Center for American Progress.
CAP bills itself as a progressive thinky tank, but it could also be called a holding tank for Clintonian administration members-in-waiting. Among the folks already attached to the HRC are John Podesta, who rose through a career of political aiding to become Chief of Staff for the second Clinton term. After that he formed CAP and has run it since. Podesta protege Jennifer Palmieri has also bounced between government jobs and CAP. They are both major players in the HRC campaign.
CAP has hosted many folks related to the campaign, including Clinton herself. In fact, if you start looking through Clinton's various appearances intended to help stave off controversy, they often turn out to be at CAP. When close Clinton advisor Huma Abedin came under fire, CAP CEO Neera Tanden was one of her staunch defenders.
CAP does an excellent job of hoovering up contributions from wealthy money-wielding folks, and it's a measure of CAP's closeness to Clinton that this money shoveling is seen in some quarters as a means of getting access to what may be the next DC administration.
All in all, it does not seem like a huge leap to think that CAP's positions on education could hew closely to the Clinton II positions. And that takes us back to the sirens and flags and blinkers.
I've looked at some CAP stuff over the past year. Here's some of what we've turned up.
CAP offered a "paper" (because that's what thinky tanks do) providing a roadmap to implementing Common Core. The paper pushes high stakes testing, test-based accountability, computer-based testing, aligned curriculum, VAM, and the fantasy that the new tests will be test-prep free.
When Senator Alexander floated his first ESEA rewrite, CAP was there to call it a failure, primarily because it didn't love high stakes testing enough. Minorities and students with disabilities need the opportunity to take many tests, because that's how they'll achieve more. Also, parents need the feedback in order to know what the kids are doing, and also to make selections from the various school choices available. Any bad idea you've ever hated in the Obama/Duncan administration, CAP has been praising right along.
CAP is not above floating new talking points with a whacky disregard for reality, including a bizarre article that tried to argue that CCSS really helps the female girls, even though the data it cited doesn't support the claims they made. CAP also occasionally turns to TNTP for research back-up, which is like hiring Daffy Duck to work on your dignity and etiquette practice for the Royal Ball.
And CAP was sloppy enough to illustrate an article about how teachers now stick around for more years by slapping up a picture of a TFA teacher who quit after two years to get a corporate job. Fun fact: after being called on it by bloggers near and far, they've left the picture on the article.
In short, there is no reason yet to think that Clinton would change a single, solitary piece of Obama/Duncan education policy. Heck, maybe she could just keep Arne around for another four years. He already knows where the office is, already has furniture he likes.
If Hillary wants my support (and while I may be representative of nobody but myself, maybe there are a few other teachers who are kind of tired of the current administration ed policies-- just two or three of us), then she had better explain exactly what she's going to do differently. I could also say we'd like to know who we're going to get for USED secretary, but hey, we thought we knew last time that we were getting Linda Darling-Hammond and look how that turned out.
But I can tell you this. I have never been a single-issue voter, but my profession has never been so attacked, besieged and crushed under policymakers' boots. So I will not, not under any circumstances, vote for any candidate who gives me the slightest inkling that she (or he) is planning to give me four more years like the last fifteen. I don't care if you're promising me a pony and your opponent is threatening to send locusts to my home town-- if you aren't going to change the destructive, educationally abusive, mandatory malpractice policies of the previous two administrations, I will not vote for you, period, full stop.
That is what I'm ready for.
Sunday, April 12, 2015
NY: How Charters Game the System
Democracy Builders is a New York group whose goal is "to increase quality public school choice by recruiting, engaging and activating authentic parent voices." Their big motto is "Choice + Voice" and they are also the group that confirms several of my expectations about the charter sector.
1) As competition increases in hot charter markets, and charters have to compete with each other and not just the public system, the knives will come out.
2) People who want to run charters the right way for the right reasons will eventually become openly upset with the profiteers who have invaded the charter biz.
Democracy Builders chief Princess Lyles and Dan Clark wrote a piece for the Wall Street Journal back in February calling out the practice of not back-filling seats. Their position is the position that would, to me, make sense if you were a charter operator who really believed that you had something valuable to offer-- "One seat left open is one seat to many" and every "precious seat" that opens up in a charter should be filled immediately.
Refusing to backfill seats works two ways. It can mean leaving a seat open if a student leaves during the year, but it can also mean refusing to fill an empty seat in a cohort-- if you don't get on the charter bus in grade three, then you can never get on it.
Democracy Builders has collected the data and make the charts to show how these practices let charters fake success. (Note: I couldn't get these to display properly on anything except a tablet).
The principle is simple-- as you push more and more students out the door, the number of proficient individuals you need to get your percentage up decreases. So, for instance, KIPP New York tested around 88 third graders, 41 of whom were proficient. By eighth grade, KIPP is testing 61 students, of whom 45 are proficient. That's a growth of 47% up to 74%-- based on only four more students testing well.
Democracy Builders' independent charter category shows schools that are trying to keep seats filled and are paying the price for it in their numbers. Achievement First seems to do a better job of keeping empty seats filled.
But per the data here, the absolute queen of using empty seats to make herself look good is (surprise) Eva Moskowitz. Success Academy posts awesome numbers by percent, growing from 91% proficiency in third grade and growing to whopping 97% in eighth grade. But in raw numbers, that represents an astonishing drop from an average number of students who were actually proficient-- 88 in third grade and 31 in eighth grade. The grades in between show an steady and consistent drop. No other NY charter has enrollment that simply drops off a cliff like SA.
Lyles point is pretty clear. If charters want to call themselves public schools, they can start by following a basic rule of public schools and take in every student who shows up at their doors.
Why don't they? Because they don't want to hurt their numbers, because for charter profiteers students exist only to generate the kinds of numbers that keep the dollars flowing.
The interactive charts are rich and deep and well worth your time and examination. They are also an excellent reminder that public schools are not the only system suffering under the test-and-punish theory of education. The charter system, which really could be a rich and worthwhile addition to the public education scene, is also completely bent out of shape by an accountability system that holds schools accountable for all the wrong things and none of the right things.
Look. Success Academy is a charter system that should be closed down for fraud. It is a system based on doing absolutely everything wrong, from oppressive rules to manic focus on test scores instead of actual education, on top of pushing students out the door if they won't toe the line and help the shcool make the numbers that is uses to keep the money flowing.
But under our completely upside down and inside out accountability system, Success Academies look good. And they don't just suck the money and resources out of the public school system-- they make it that much less likely that a decent and worthwhile charter school could spring up in New York.
Go look at this data-- keeping in mind that it was all put together by charter school advocates, not opponents-- and let it sink in just how screwed up the system has become, to the point that the only path to "success" is to lie, cook books, and abandon the true mission of public education.
1) As competition increases in hot charter markets, and charters have to compete with each other and not just the public system, the knives will come out.
2) People who want to run charters the right way for the right reasons will eventually become openly upset with the profiteers who have invaded the charter biz.
Democracy Builders chief Princess Lyles and Dan Clark wrote a piece for the Wall Street Journal back in February calling out the practice of not back-filling seats. Their position is the position that would, to me, make sense if you were a charter operator who really believed that you had something valuable to offer-- "One seat left open is one seat to many" and every "precious seat" that opens up in a charter should be filled immediately.
Refusing to backfill seats works two ways. It can mean leaving a seat open if a student leaves during the year, but it can also mean refusing to fill an empty seat in a cohort-- if you don't get on the charter bus in grade three, then you can never get on it.
Democracy Builders has collected the data and make the charts to show how these practices let charters fake success. (Note: I couldn't get these to display properly on anything except a tablet).
The principle is simple-- as you push more and more students out the door, the number of proficient individuals you need to get your percentage up decreases. So, for instance, KIPP New York tested around 88 third graders, 41 of whom were proficient. By eighth grade, KIPP is testing 61 students, of whom 45 are proficient. That's a growth of 47% up to 74%-- based on only four more students testing well.
Democracy Builders' independent charter category shows schools that are trying to keep seats filled and are paying the price for it in their numbers. Achievement First seems to do a better job of keeping empty seats filled.
But per the data here, the absolute queen of using empty seats to make herself look good is (surprise) Eva Moskowitz. Success Academy posts awesome numbers by percent, growing from 91% proficiency in third grade and growing to whopping 97% in eighth grade. But in raw numbers, that represents an astonishing drop from an average number of students who were actually proficient-- 88 in third grade and 31 in eighth grade. The grades in between show an steady and consistent drop. No other NY charter has enrollment that simply drops off a cliff like SA.
Lyles point is pretty clear. If charters want to call themselves public schools, they can start by following a basic rule of public schools and take in every student who shows up at their doors.
Why don't they? Because they don't want to hurt their numbers, because for charter profiteers students exist only to generate the kinds of numbers that keep the dollars flowing.
The interactive charts are rich and deep and well worth your time and examination. They are also an excellent reminder that public schools are not the only system suffering under the test-and-punish theory of education. The charter system, which really could be a rich and worthwhile addition to the public education scene, is also completely bent out of shape by an accountability system that holds schools accountable for all the wrong things and none of the right things.
Look. Success Academy is a charter system that should be closed down for fraud. It is a system based on doing absolutely everything wrong, from oppressive rules to manic focus on test scores instead of actual education, on top of pushing students out the door if they won't toe the line and help the shcool make the numbers that is uses to keep the money flowing.
But under our completely upside down and inside out accountability system, Success Academies look good. And they don't just suck the money and resources out of the public school system-- they make it that much less likely that a decent and worthwhile charter school could spring up in New York.
Go look at this data-- keeping in mind that it was all put together by charter school advocates, not opponents-- and let it sink in just how screwed up the system has become, to the point that the only path to "success" is to lie, cook books, and abandon the true mission of public education.
Saturday, April 11, 2015
Arne's New History of CCSS on MSNBC
Arne Duncan sat down with Chris Hayes on MSNBC to explain why folks are just so all-fired fire-up about Common Core. Let's see what the current story is.
Hayes starts by saying that CCSS has trouble because it has been conflated with high stakes testing which was linked to all sorts of stuff because of NCLB. This skips past the Obama/Duncan administration's role in bolting high stakes testing to everything from school evaluation to teacher evaluation, but okay. We're only seven seconds in.
Hayes leads with a fun question-- what, if anything, has been achieved in the years since NCLB was signed by Bush?
Duncan: Fixing achievement gaps is the big achievement, but NCLB "has been broken for a while" (which raises the question-- was it ever not broken) and Congress also sucks. So the administration "partnered with states" to provide waivers which allowed them to part ways with the most onerous parts of the law. Which begs a huge question-- outside of the absurd 100% above average test scores requirement, was there any part of NCLB that wasn't given a huge shot of steroids under waivers? Sadly, Hayes is not going to ask that question.
Hayes: My reading of the data (and one of the problems is that there's so much data you can read anything) is that the testing gap (and I love him just a little for calling it a testing gap and not an achievement gap) hasn't really narrowed at all, "certainly not the narrowing that we were promised back in 2001."
Duncan: We have a long way to go. (Which is true in the same way that I have a long way to go to get to Chicago because I'm still sitting in my office at home.) Anyway, we've seen gains over the past twenty-thirty years, but it's not fast enough. So this law has to be about equity. So put politics aside (says the guy who's got no political juice left in his thermos). This law also has to be about early childhood education, because that will level the playing field. Also, we have to bring more dollars to disadvantaged communities. The children who need the most get the least, says the man whose administration likes to frame all aid and grant proposals as competitions. But he thinks maybe Congress can fix inequity.
Hayes: I want to talk about Common Core for a second. (And he smiles a little smile, like "let's do this silly thing, I'm going to ask a question, you're going to sling baloney, it'll be fun"). Are you surprised by how controversial Common Core (which he characterizes as "kind of an obscure issue in certain ways") has become?
Duncan: "It's actually very simple. The goal's to have high standards." So, kids, the whole national consistency issue, the whole being able to compare kids in Idaho and Maine, the whole keeping everyone on the same page so mobile students will never get lost-- that's no longer the point.
Duncan goes on to display how much he doesn't understand about how this works. He talks about how, under NCLB, too many states dummied down standards. He says this was "to make politicians look good." I'd be more inclined to say "to avoid punitive consequences for their schools." If Arne had reached my conclusion (and really, given that he was in charge of a large school district at the time, it's kind of amazing that he didn't reach my conclusion) then perhaps he wouldn't have figured that the solution was to make the consequences of high stakes testing even more punitive than before.
Insert story here of how schools lied to students about how ready they were for college. So brave governors decided to stop lying to children. "Let's have true college and career ready standards for every single child." As always I wonder why reaching that conclusion leads to a next step where one says, "Let's hire a couple of guys who have no real education experience, either pedagogical or developmental, and have them whip something up."
Hayes: When you say it like that, it sounds swell. But instead this is very polarizing. Arne looks dumbfounded like "I know, right, dude? What is up with these crazy people?" and Hayes continues to point out that Jeb Bush is going to have to spend a bunch of time in Iowa confronting people (unless his huge ad buy actually helps and....nahh).
Duncan: It's only polarizing to politicians. If you talk to parents, to real parents--
And Hayes cuts him off to say "I disagree. I strongly disagree" which is an appropriate response to Arne's deep-fried fluffernuttery. It's ironic. Duncan is all "let's keep politics out of this" and yet the whole "this is polticians raising a stink and real parents just love it" is, of course, pure political spin.
Duncan soldiers on. If you ask parents if they want their children to really be college and career ready, do you want them to be able to write well, think critically, have a real chance at life, parents think that's just swell.
Hayes: That's right. But if you go in and say Common Core-- and he cuts to specific examples all across the country of kids coming home with dumb crap or taking a terrible test and the source of their kid's anxiety is Common Core. Common Core has become the name for all testing related stress.
And I'm going to interrupt to say, yes, that's right, because at this point "Common Core" is a deeply meaningless term. Duncan's point is also deeply dumb, because it assumes the sale. Sure parents want all those things-- but there is not an iota of evidence that Common Core is linked to any of them.
Look. If I say right now that I'm hungry and ready for supper, and you bring me out a plate of steaming hot liver covered in peppermint ice cream and pickles, when I say "Get this out of here," you would be an idiot to be puzzled and ask, "But I thought you wanted supper." Common Core is steaming hot liver covered in peppermint ice cream and pickles, with sauerkraut on the side.
Anyway.
Duncan: People are just confused and misinformed. The higher standards are different degrees of higherness in different places. We need to communicate with parents and students-- which is just a great insight to have five years into this mess. I suppose it's an improvement that he didn't just call white suburban moms big babies. Again.
Now he's going to trot out Tennessee as an example-- he looks really excited, like he just thought of the correct answer for a tough test-- which is brave given the mess that Tennessee has become, including the slinking away of reformster Kevin Huffman last fall. But the state was brave enough to tell their students that they all sucked, and now they are rapidly improving by some measure that we're not going to discuss.
Hayes: Softball round. Here's the Ted Cruz quote about repealing every word of Common Core and get the feds out of curriculum. Ted is of course wrong twice-- Common Core isn't in any federal law and it's already illegal for the feds to mess with curriculum. Let's see if Arne can handle this high lob.
And he gets it. And he looks so happy. Duncan always looks so pleased and surprised when he really nails something.
In the next over-talking portion, Arne says that we never claimed that the standards were universal. Which is...wellllll. It's true the administration has been pretty careful about not saying things that could be construed as, say, illegal federal directing of state education. But if you look at, say, Duncan's 2010 speech about the Big Vision, there's an awful lot of talk about how this will bring the whole nation up to equal excellence and scary stuff like this:
The North Star guiding the alignment of our cradle-to-career education agenda is President Obama’s goal that America will once again have the highest proportion of college graduates in the world.
That goal can only be achieved by creating a strong cradle-to-career continuum that starts with early childhood learning and extends all the way to college and careers.
This would probably be the time to note that the original draft of Race to the Top allegedly mentions CCSS by name. [Can't find a link-- if you've got it, leave it in the comments.]
Duncan plows on. States should do their own thing, but their universities should be saying that freshmen don't need remedial classes, which-- you do remember that CCSS only covers math and language, right, Arne?
Hayes: There is a question of who makes those standards. The fear is "that some nefarious actor somewhere..." and he doesn't really need to finish the sentence because "nefarious actor" sufficiently conveys that some critics be crazy.
Duncan: Nobody nefarious here. This has been led on the local level by governors from both parties (in some cases, "led" so much that they signed up for the standards before they were completed). This has also been led by educators, fantastic teachers-- and I'll give him a pass on what exactly "led" means in this context because I just know he's not silly enough to trot out the old canard about teachers helping to create the Core.
Hayes: Finally, a higher ed question. The for-profit Corinthian chain comes up, and that is not Arne's happy face. Corinthian, disaster, and federal government all make it into the same sentence, but Hayes fumbles this one, saying that the chain was essentially cut off from federal loans, and no, not so much. The feds were remarkably reluctant to kick Corinthian off the federal teat. Either way, there are now students with lots of debt and not so much education. Nine attorney generals are calling for the USED to forgive the loans. Are you going to do that?
Duncan: We're looking at this very closely. Duncan takes credit for the gainful employment measure and Hayes interrupts to call it one of the best things this department has ever done. Anyway, Duncan is watching the hell out of this, and even talked to some of the students.
Hayes: That's a non-answer (I love Hayes a little bit more).
Duncan tries to rally by adding a very (We are looking at this very very closely) and how it's about bad actors (cousins to the nefarious actors) who were allowed to just do whatever, which is swell, but does not address why the USED, which is already making obscene amounts of profit from student loans, can't just tear these loans up. But, boy, he's not going to tolerate any more of this bad acting, even though the department has been tolerating the heck out of it for over a year. There's no excuse at all for this weaselly response unless he's just afraid to say out loud that the department is deeply committed to looking out for the interests of the investors in Corinthian, which might be reflected by the association of Undersecretary of Education Ted Mitchell, whose qualifications for his job were his long history in the for-profit school industry. Duncan finishes with some noise about how he's not afraid of political pushback on the thing that he might do some day after he's done looking very very closely at the situation.
And we're done.
Kudos to Chris Hayes for pressing Duncan a tad harder than anybody else at MSNBC is ever inclined to, thereby adding to our gallery of ever-changing Common Core narratives. But this was still largely a baloney-delivering conduit for Arne, who should be limited to only so many stretchers per tv appearance, and he was once again over his limit.
Hayes starts by saying that CCSS has trouble because it has been conflated with high stakes testing which was linked to all sorts of stuff because of NCLB. This skips past the Obama/Duncan administration's role in bolting high stakes testing to everything from school evaluation to teacher evaluation, but okay. We're only seven seconds in.
Hayes leads with a fun question-- what, if anything, has been achieved in the years since NCLB was signed by Bush?
Duncan: Fixing achievement gaps is the big achievement, but NCLB "has been broken for a while" (which raises the question-- was it ever not broken) and Congress also sucks. So the administration "partnered with states" to provide waivers which allowed them to part ways with the most onerous parts of the law. Which begs a huge question-- outside of the absurd 100% above average test scores requirement, was there any part of NCLB that wasn't given a huge shot of steroids under waivers? Sadly, Hayes is not going to ask that question.
Hayes: My reading of the data (and one of the problems is that there's so much data you can read anything) is that the testing gap (and I love him just a little for calling it a testing gap and not an achievement gap) hasn't really narrowed at all, "certainly not the narrowing that we were promised back in 2001."
Duncan: We have a long way to go. (Which is true in the same way that I have a long way to go to get to Chicago because I'm still sitting in my office at home.) Anyway, we've seen gains over the past twenty-thirty years, but it's not fast enough. So this law has to be about equity. So put politics aside (says the guy who's got no political juice left in his thermos). This law also has to be about early childhood education, because that will level the playing field. Also, we have to bring more dollars to disadvantaged communities. The children who need the most get the least, says the man whose administration likes to frame all aid and grant proposals as competitions. But he thinks maybe Congress can fix inequity.
Hayes: I want to talk about Common Core for a second. (And he smiles a little smile, like "let's do this silly thing, I'm going to ask a question, you're going to sling baloney, it'll be fun"). Are you surprised by how controversial Common Core (which he characterizes as "kind of an obscure issue in certain ways") has become?
Duncan: "It's actually very simple. The goal's to have high standards." So, kids, the whole national consistency issue, the whole being able to compare kids in Idaho and Maine, the whole keeping everyone on the same page so mobile students will never get lost-- that's no longer the point.
Duncan goes on to display how much he doesn't understand about how this works. He talks about how, under NCLB, too many states dummied down standards. He says this was "to make politicians look good." I'd be more inclined to say "to avoid punitive consequences for their schools." If Arne had reached my conclusion (and really, given that he was in charge of a large school district at the time, it's kind of amazing that he didn't reach my conclusion) then perhaps he wouldn't have figured that the solution was to make the consequences of high stakes testing even more punitive than before.
Insert story here of how schools lied to students about how ready they were for college. So brave governors decided to stop lying to children. "Let's have true college and career ready standards for every single child." As always I wonder why reaching that conclusion leads to a next step where one says, "Let's hire a couple of guys who have no real education experience, either pedagogical or developmental, and have them whip something up."
Hayes: When you say it like that, it sounds swell. But instead this is very polarizing. Arne looks dumbfounded like "I know, right, dude? What is up with these crazy people?" and Hayes continues to point out that Jeb Bush is going to have to spend a bunch of time in Iowa confronting people (unless his huge ad buy actually helps and....nahh).
Duncan: It's only polarizing to politicians. If you talk to parents, to real parents--
And Hayes cuts him off to say "I disagree. I strongly disagree" which is an appropriate response to Arne's deep-fried fluffernuttery. It's ironic. Duncan is all "let's keep politics out of this" and yet the whole "this is polticians raising a stink and real parents just love it" is, of course, pure political spin.
Duncan soldiers on. If you ask parents if they want their children to really be college and career ready, do you want them to be able to write well, think critically, have a real chance at life, parents think that's just swell.
Hayes: That's right. But if you go in and say Common Core-- and he cuts to specific examples all across the country of kids coming home with dumb crap or taking a terrible test and the source of their kid's anxiety is Common Core. Common Core has become the name for all testing related stress.
And I'm going to interrupt to say, yes, that's right, because at this point "Common Core" is a deeply meaningless term. Duncan's point is also deeply dumb, because it assumes the sale. Sure parents want all those things-- but there is not an iota of evidence that Common Core is linked to any of them.
Look. If I say right now that I'm hungry and ready for supper, and you bring me out a plate of steaming hot liver covered in peppermint ice cream and pickles, when I say "Get this out of here," you would be an idiot to be puzzled and ask, "But I thought you wanted supper." Common Core is steaming hot liver covered in peppermint ice cream and pickles, with sauerkraut on the side.
Anyway.
Duncan: People are just confused and misinformed. The higher standards are different degrees of higherness in different places. We need to communicate with parents and students-- which is just a great insight to have five years into this mess. I suppose it's an improvement that he didn't just call white suburban moms big babies. Again.
Now he's going to trot out Tennessee as an example-- he looks really excited, like he just thought of the correct answer for a tough test-- which is brave given the mess that Tennessee has become, including the slinking away of reformster Kevin Huffman last fall. But the state was brave enough to tell their students that they all sucked, and now they are rapidly improving by some measure that we're not going to discuss.
Hayes: Softball round. Here's the Ted Cruz quote about repealing every word of Common Core and get the feds out of curriculum. Ted is of course wrong twice-- Common Core isn't in any federal law and it's already illegal for the feds to mess with curriculum. Let's see if Arne can handle this high lob.
And he gets it. And he looks so happy. Duncan always looks so pleased and surprised when he really nails something.
In the next over-talking portion, Arne says that we never claimed that the standards were universal. Which is...wellllll. It's true the administration has been pretty careful about not saying things that could be construed as, say, illegal federal directing of state education. But if you look at, say, Duncan's 2010 speech about the Big Vision, there's an awful lot of talk about how this will bring the whole nation up to equal excellence and scary stuff like this:
The North Star guiding the alignment of our cradle-to-career education agenda is President Obama’s goal that America will once again have the highest proportion of college graduates in the world.
That goal can only be achieved by creating a strong cradle-to-career continuum that starts with early childhood learning and extends all the way to college and careers.
This would probably be the time to note that the original draft of Race to the Top allegedly mentions CCSS by name. [Can't find a link-- if you've got it, leave it in the comments.]
Duncan plows on. States should do their own thing, but their universities should be saying that freshmen don't need remedial classes, which-- you do remember that CCSS only covers math and language, right, Arne?
Hayes: There is a question of who makes those standards. The fear is "that some nefarious actor somewhere..." and he doesn't really need to finish the sentence because "nefarious actor" sufficiently conveys that some critics be crazy.
Duncan: Nobody nefarious here. This has been led on the local level by governors from both parties (in some cases, "led" so much that they signed up for the standards before they were completed). This has also been led by educators, fantastic teachers-- and I'll give him a pass on what exactly "led" means in this context because I just know he's not silly enough to trot out the old canard about teachers helping to create the Core.
Hayes: Finally, a higher ed question. The for-profit Corinthian chain comes up, and that is not Arne's happy face. Corinthian, disaster, and federal government all make it into the same sentence, but Hayes fumbles this one, saying that the chain was essentially cut off from federal loans, and no, not so much. The feds were remarkably reluctant to kick Corinthian off the federal teat. Either way, there are now students with lots of debt and not so much education. Nine attorney generals are calling for the USED to forgive the loans. Are you going to do that?
Duncan: We're looking at this very closely. Duncan takes credit for the gainful employment measure and Hayes interrupts to call it one of the best things this department has ever done. Anyway, Duncan is watching the hell out of this, and even talked to some of the students.
Hayes: That's a non-answer (I love Hayes a little bit more).
Duncan tries to rally by adding a very (We are looking at this very very closely) and how it's about bad actors (cousins to the nefarious actors) who were allowed to just do whatever, which is swell, but does not address why the USED, which is already making obscene amounts of profit from student loans, can't just tear these loans up. But, boy, he's not going to tolerate any more of this bad acting, even though the department has been tolerating the heck out of it for over a year. There's no excuse at all for this weaselly response unless he's just afraid to say out loud that the department is deeply committed to looking out for the interests of the investors in Corinthian, which might be reflected by the association of Undersecretary of Education Ted Mitchell, whose qualifications for his job were his long history in the for-profit school industry. Duncan finishes with some noise about how he's not afraid of political pushback on the thing that he might do some day after he's done looking very very closely at the situation.
And we're done.
Kudos to Chris Hayes for pressing Duncan a tad harder than anybody else at MSNBC is ever inclined to, thereby adding to our gallery of ever-changing Common Core narratives. But this was still largely a baloney-delivering conduit for Arne, who should be limited to only so many stretchers per tv appearance, and he was once again over his limit.
Poor People Don't Have Money
Poor people don't have money, and that's a problem for the free market. That's a problem, because, well-- don't think of money as a way to buy stuff. Think of money as a way to attract people's attention so they will come give you things or do things for you.
For people with money, the dance is a simple pas de deux between the person with the money and the person with the goods or service. "I see you have money. Let me convince you to give it to me," says the person with the goods. "Make it worth my while to give you my money," says the person with the money.
It can be a complicated dance at times, but it's relatively straightforward. But the four-cornered dance of the poor is different.
"Make it worth my while to provide this for you," says the person with the goods.
"I can't," says the poor person.
At this point the dance could be over, but in some cases, the government steps in. "To have a smoothly functioning country," says government, "we need to make sure everyone has access to this service." Like food, healthcare, clean water, mail delivery, roads, a standing army.
Sometimes government and corporations do a dance of their own. "I'm going to take the people over here, the ones with money, the ones who can make this worth my while," says the corporation. "You can keep those people over there. The poor ones. The ones we can't make money from." Our mail delivery right now is very much this model. UPS and FedEx and the rest only sort of compete with the United States Postal Service. In fact, when you hire one of the non-USPS companies to deliver a package to East Bumswoggle, Nowherevania, a place so far out that nobody wants to drive on over in search of tiny money, you know who actually delivers it? The USPS, working as a subcontractor for the private corporation. (Fun fact: the USPS has financial problems largely from a Congressional requirement that they pre-fund the retirement of people who don't even work there yet.)
Imagine that a free maket economy consists of taxis, passengers and a government. Passengers attract taxis by standing curbside, waving piles of money. But poor people don't have anything to wave. So the government, either out of altruistic reasons or because they want to get all those poor people off the curb, gets their own batch of taxis to carry the poor home.
Eventually, corporations notice that the government taxis are carrying around big piles of money of their own. And TaxiCorp HQ, somebody says, "That big pile of money has attracted my attention. I wonder how we can get them to give it to us."
Money's a funny thing. When you have a bunch of it, people see you. They acknowledge you. They want to make you happy. But remember-- poor people don't have money. The government has the money.
So the people with the goods and services enter the dance-- but they don't come to dance with the poor folks. They come to dance with the government. This dance can take many forms. (We can make it worth your while to let us do that for you. We can do that better than you.) Or they can bring a fourth party into the dance-- the taxpayers whose money the government collects to pay for things. Look at what those guys are spending your money on! It's wasteful! Go give them hell!
Now there's a weird variation of the dance, because the corporations can mostly only sense money, and poor people don't have any. The machinery needs a way to detect this new kind of resource, a resource that has no money, but which attracts the government's money. If only there were something, some instrument that would both detect the "customers" ripe for plucking and which simultaneously helped make the case that the government needs help.
Voila. Big Standardized Tests.
BS Tests fulfill the function of identifying the market opportunity. BS Test scores tell edupreneurs when a school is ripe for takeover, turnaround, or charter replacement. That is why someone like Merryl Tisch can say, "Never mind testing the high score schools." Because those schools are filled with people who have money, and corporations can find them just fine, thank you.
When people claim that BS Tests make the poor visible, that's true. But they're visible like the people who moved were visible to T Rex in the first Jurassic Park. The poor do not have money. They are not the customers. They do not have leverage. And corporations and government are back to the same old dance. "We'll take those customers, the ones over there, the ones we can make a profit with," say the corporations. "You keep the rest."
When you're trying to make sense of some of the privatizing reformy nonsense loose in the world, just remember this-- poor people don't have money. To get rich, nobody needs to make them happy. You need only pay attention to the people who have money, and that's the government, and those guys are already dancing happily with the corporations like a couple that's had a lot to drink and has already rented a room for the night.
There are many, many well-meaning people who have the best interests of poor people at heart, but to the kinds of economic systems and engines that have been set loose, the poor do not matter-- they are at best tools to be used to move money around, but they have no money. A free market system can move around them and over them, but it can't really respond to them unless they find a way to make it worth someone's while. But they have no money, and at the free market ball, that's the only way to pay the dj.
For people with money, the dance is a simple pas de deux between the person with the money and the person with the goods or service. "I see you have money. Let me convince you to give it to me," says the person with the goods. "Make it worth my while to give you my money," says the person with the money.
It can be a complicated dance at times, but it's relatively straightforward. But the four-cornered dance of the poor is different.
"Make it worth my while to provide this for you," says the person with the goods.
"I can't," says the poor person.
At this point the dance could be over, but in some cases, the government steps in. "To have a smoothly functioning country," says government, "we need to make sure everyone has access to this service." Like food, healthcare, clean water, mail delivery, roads, a standing army.
Sometimes government and corporations do a dance of their own. "I'm going to take the people over here, the ones with money, the ones who can make this worth my while," says the corporation. "You can keep those people over there. The poor ones. The ones we can't make money from." Our mail delivery right now is very much this model. UPS and FedEx and the rest only sort of compete with the United States Postal Service. In fact, when you hire one of the non-USPS companies to deliver a package to East Bumswoggle, Nowherevania, a place so far out that nobody wants to drive on over in search of tiny money, you know who actually delivers it? The USPS, working as a subcontractor for the private corporation. (Fun fact: the USPS has financial problems largely from a Congressional requirement that they pre-fund the retirement of people who don't even work there yet.)
Imagine that a free maket economy consists of taxis, passengers and a government. Passengers attract taxis by standing curbside, waving piles of money. But poor people don't have anything to wave. So the government, either out of altruistic reasons or because they want to get all those poor people off the curb, gets their own batch of taxis to carry the poor home.
Eventually, corporations notice that the government taxis are carrying around big piles of money of their own. And TaxiCorp HQ, somebody says, "That big pile of money has attracted my attention. I wonder how we can get them to give it to us."
Money's a funny thing. When you have a bunch of it, people see you. They acknowledge you. They want to make you happy. But remember-- poor people don't have money. The government has the money.
So the people with the goods and services enter the dance-- but they don't come to dance with the poor folks. They come to dance with the government. This dance can take many forms. (We can make it worth your while to let us do that for you. We can do that better than you.) Or they can bring a fourth party into the dance-- the taxpayers whose money the government collects to pay for things. Look at what those guys are spending your money on! It's wasteful! Go give them hell!
Now there's a weird variation of the dance, because the corporations can mostly only sense money, and poor people don't have any. The machinery needs a way to detect this new kind of resource, a resource that has no money, but which attracts the government's money. If only there were something, some instrument that would both detect the "customers" ripe for plucking and which simultaneously helped make the case that the government needs help.
Voila. Big Standardized Tests.
BS Tests fulfill the function of identifying the market opportunity. BS Test scores tell edupreneurs when a school is ripe for takeover, turnaround, or charter replacement. That is why someone like Merryl Tisch can say, "Never mind testing the high score schools." Because those schools are filled with people who have money, and corporations can find them just fine, thank you.
When people claim that BS Tests make the poor visible, that's true. But they're visible like the people who moved were visible to T Rex in the first Jurassic Park. The poor do not have money. They are not the customers. They do not have leverage. And corporations and government are back to the same old dance. "We'll take those customers, the ones over there, the ones we can make a profit with," say the corporations. "You keep the rest."
When you're trying to make sense of some of the privatizing reformy nonsense loose in the world, just remember this-- poor people don't have money. To get rich, nobody needs to make them happy. You need only pay attention to the people who have money, and that's the government, and those guys are already dancing happily with the corporations like a couple that's had a lot to drink and has already rented a room for the night.
There are many, many well-meaning people who have the best interests of poor people at heart, but to the kinds of economic systems and engines that have been set loose, the poor do not matter-- they are at best tools to be used to move money around, but they have no money. A free market system can move around them and over them, but it can't really respond to them unless they find a way to make it worth someone's while. But they have no money, and at the free market ball, that's the only way to pay the dj.
Conservative Core Mythology And Iowa
This week the Common Core Standards entered the GOP primary via the premiere of ad buys in Iowa, marking yet another attempt to beat back conservative opposition to the Core.
The group behind the ads is the Collaborative for Student Success, a group that bills itself as a "grant-making organization" and which lists as its partners and supporters all of the usual suspects from Gates and Broad through Achieve and Stand for Children. As laid out by Mercedes Schneider, this group's efforts to look grass rooty are even lazier than most.
Follow their links and watch some of the videos they're produced, and you find that CFSS is closely linked to Conservatives for Higher Standards. Here's how the CFSS website explains CFHS:
While support for Common Core runs through all political spectrums, the Foundation for Excellence in Education created Conservatives for Higher Standards to lay out the conservative arguments in favor of Common Core, and demonstrate the strong support for the higher standards among Republican leaders, such as Gov. Christie and former Govs. Bush and Huckabee.
Give the Jebster credit-- he knows that his Common Core support is a stumbling block on his path to the White House, but rather than make the politically expedient move of other Core-ophiles like Bobby Jindal and Arne Duncan and simply pretend he no longer likes or knows what Common Core is, Bush is going to just keep throwing money at organizations to spin Core PR.
To pave the GOP primary path, Bush and his various allies have to sell yet another narrative about the Core that will make it palatable to conservative voters. And if we take a look at the CFHS myths vs. facts page, we can get a view of this sad mess of a bedtime story.
MYTH: The standards are federally mandated.
Nosirree, say CFHS. States entered into the Core voluntarily and can check out any time they like. This story point is a fail-- the Senate committee showed they get it in their rewrite when they used the word "coerce" to describe what the feds will no longer be allowed to do when trying to impose policy. The CFHS story is a hairsplit that nobody believes.
MYTH: CCSS aren't any better than state standards.
CFHS cites that old Fordham study, which is kind of like citing a Tobacco Institute study proving smoking is not so bad. Even then, they have to hem-haw their way around Fordham's finding that CCSS is only better than some state standards.
MYTH: State standards are sufficient for today's students.
An oddly-phrased myth. Do they mean that every state had good-enough standard, or that state-level standards should be sufficient. Either way, their rebuttal is a non-sequitor, citing ACT finding that three-quarters of college freshmen weren't "adequately prepared," which is again, like citing auto industry figures proving that more people need to drive brand new cars. This college ready baloney deserves its own full discussion.
MYTH: State tests aren't broken. Common Core should not try to fix them.
Oh, man. Are you sure you guys are PR professionals? Common Core testing is the most visible, most obviously screwed up and time-wasty part of Common Core and supporters have been trying to separate the idea of the standards from the terrible standardized testing regime for a while now, claiming they're two entirely different things. They're full of it, but I would think you'd want to follow in their footsteps. They throw some baloney about NAEP in here, but it's weak sauce and nobody is listening after the confirmation that those terrible tests are part of Common Core. Fail, boys.
MYTH: Common Core dictates what texts teachers can use.
The Core actually "preserves" freedom of choice for teachers, because it's just a list of what students must know, not how it must be taught. This is disingenuous at best, but the simplest problem with this is that Common Core may not dictate what texts teachers may use, but it sure does dictate what texts are available to buy.
MYTH: Common Core includes scary science stuff.
A win-- sort of. CFHS notes that there is nothing at all in the Core about science, and they are correct. Hold your breath and wait for the follow-up question-- if CCSS is supposed to help us catch up with the rest of the world and help us keep our edge, why does it ignore science entirely, thereby encouraging schools to teach less science so they can spend more time on math and reading test prep?
MYTH: Common Core will also take control of private, charter, religious, Catholic and home schools.
A straight-up noon-answer answer. Because the standards are internationally benchmarked (which I think we could charitably call a baldfaced lie), all of those non-public school types will find Core perfectly swell. Assimilation will be painless. Also, how accountable they'll be will be up to the states. So this answer to this myth is, it's not a myth. Again, good luck trying to find major published teaching material not aligned to CCSS (although much of that alignment is also a lie, so there's that). And while I get it, it also makes me smile a little to see "religious" and "Catholic" listed as separate categories.
MYTH: Common Core will cost more by requiring training, tests, etc
CFHS short answer is, "Yes. Yes, it will." (I'm paraphrasing.) The long answer is that it will make "economic sense." Because better education will get people off welfare and keep them out of prison and the US will be competitive. The Core will save taxpayers money because no more costly remediation at college, and it will lead to competition in the education marketplace, driving down costs. That's a fascinating idea. Maybe these guys now think that charters are part of the Common Core.
MYTH: CCSS is an intrusion into student privacy.
Again, the short answer is, "Yes. Yes, it is." Also, the states are collecting a buttload of data about your child anyway, whether they Core it up or not, but it's totally not broken down by person and you can totally trust them to keep it safe. There's nothing to worry about.At least, not anything that isn't already happening and isn't already beyond your power to do anything about.
MYTH: The feds will take control of the Common Core initiative.
No. The initiative was state led and will remain so. Actually, this is a novel item on the list, because both myths are wrong. Actually, nobody is leading or in charge of the initiative. Anybody anywhere can declare themselves a Common Core spokesperson and there isn't anybody on the planet who can whip up a cease and desist letter. Not only are we building the plane in mid-air, but there is nobody piloting it.
MYTH: The feds threatened to withhold money from anyone who didn't Core it up.
Totally not true. The feds offered to give money to only those states that did adopt the Core. Totally different thing. I didn't say I wouldn't give you your allowance if you didn't do your chores-- I just said you would only get your allowance if you did do your chores.
MYTH: The reading in CCSS is 50% non-fiction, which opens the door to lots of political stuff.
Weird assumption about what is or is not political (Grapes of Wrath, anybody?) But the answer here, like many of the answers, seems to assume that conservative voters are, in fact, morons. To the "myth" that CCSS requires 50% "informational" text, CFHS respondes, "But no-- the CFHS requires 50% of reading be fiction!" Also, informational texts can include America-loving works like de Tocqueville and the Declaration and also politics-free stuff like maps.
The Collaborative for Student Success has some other points they like to make as well, like the idea that the Common Core is really great for helping military families and for making our armed forces stronger, somehow. Gone are some of the old, failed stories (remember when we still had to argue about whether or not teachers helped write the Core?).
But those are the broad outlines of what is supposed to be the conservative-friendly narrative of Common Core. Will we be pushing this in Iowa to try to force the field to support Common Core, or could it be that we are trying to prepare the ground for one particular Core-loving candidate? Next week, when the Collaborative is supposed to be moving beyond radio ads and onto Iowans' tv screens, we may get a hint. But if Jeb is basing his Presidential hopes on these weak arguments, he needs to get himself some new strategists.
The group behind the ads is the Collaborative for Student Success, a group that bills itself as a "grant-making organization" and which lists as its partners and supporters all of the usual suspects from Gates and Broad through Achieve and Stand for Children. As laid out by Mercedes Schneider, this group's efforts to look grass rooty are even lazier than most.
Follow their links and watch some of the videos they're produced, and you find that CFSS is closely linked to Conservatives for Higher Standards. Here's how the CFSS website explains CFHS:
While support for Common Core runs through all political spectrums, the Foundation for Excellence in Education created Conservatives for Higher Standards to lay out the conservative arguments in favor of Common Core, and demonstrate the strong support for the higher standards among Republican leaders, such as Gov. Christie and former Govs. Bush and Huckabee.
Give the Jebster credit-- he knows that his Common Core support is a stumbling block on his path to the White House, but rather than make the politically expedient move of other Core-ophiles like Bobby Jindal and Arne Duncan and simply pretend he no longer likes or knows what Common Core is, Bush is going to just keep throwing money at organizations to spin Core PR.
To pave the GOP primary path, Bush and his various allies have to sell yet another narrative about the Core that will make it palatable to conservative voters. And if we take a look at the CFHS myths vs. facts page, we can get a view of this sad mess of a bedtime story.
MYTH: The standards are federally mandated.
Nosirree, say CFHS. States entered into the Core voluntarily and can check out any time they like. This story point is a fail-- the Senate committee showed they get it in their rewrite when they used the word "coerce" to describe what the feds will no longer be allowed to do when trying to impose policy. The CFHS story is a hairsplit that nobody believes.
MYTH: CCSS aren't any better than state standards.
CFHS cites that old Fordham study, which is kind of like citing a Tobacco Institute study proving smoking is not so bad. Even then, they have to hem-haw their way around Fordham's finding that CCSS is only better than some state standards.
MYTH: State standards are sufficient for today's students.
An oddly-phrased myth. Do they mean that every state had good-enough standard, or that state-level standards should be sufficient. Either way, their rebuttal is a non-sequitor, citing ACT finding that three-quarters of college freshmen weren't "adequately prepared," which is again, like citing auto industry figures proving that more people need to drive brand new cars. This college ready baloney deserves its own full discussion.
MYTH: State tests aren't broken. Common Core should not try to fix them.
Oh, man. Are you sure you guys are PR professionals? Common Core testing is the most visible, most obviously screwed up and time-wasty part of Common Core and supporters have been trying to separate the idea of the standards from the terrible standardized testing regime for a while now, claiming they're two entirely different things. They're full of it, but I would think you'd want to follow in their footsteps. They throw some baloney about NAEP in here, but it's weak sauce and nobody is listening after the confirmation that those terrible tests are part of Common Core. Fail, boys.
MYTH: Common Core dictates what texts teachers can use.
The Core actually "preserves" freedom of choice for teachers, because it's just a list of what students must know, not how it must be taught. This is disingenuous at best, but the simplest problem with this is that Common Core may not dictate what texts teachers may use, but it sure does dictate what texts are available to buy.
MYTH: Common Core includes scary science stuff.
A win-- sort of. CFHS notes that there is nothing at all in the Core about science, and they are correct. Hold your breath and wait for the follow-up question-- if CCSS is supposed to help us catch up with the rest of the world and help us keep our edge, why does it ignore science entirely, thereby encouraging schools to teach less science so they can spend more time on math and reading test prep?
MYTH: Common Core will also take control of private, charter, religious, Catholic and home schools.
A straight-up noon-answer answer. Because the standards are internationally benchmarked (which I think we could charitably call a baldfaced lie), all of those non-public school types will find Core perfectly swell. Assimilation will be painless. Also, how accountable they'll be will be up to the states. So this answer to this myth is, it's not a myth. Again, good luck trying to find major published teaching material not aligned to CCSS (although much of that alignment is also a lie, so there's that). And while I get it, it also makes me smile a little to see "religious" and "Catholic" listed as separate categories.
MYTH: Common Core will cost more by requiring training, tests, etc
CFHS short answer is, "Yes. Yes, it will." (I'm paraphrasing.) The long answer is that it will make "economic sense." Because better education will get people off welfare and keep them out of prison and the US will be competitive. The Core will save taxpayers money because no more costly remediation at college, and it will lead to competition in the education marketplace, driving down costs. That's a fascinating idea. Maybe these guys now think that charters are part of the Common Core.
MYTH: CCSS is an intrusion into student privacy.
Again, the short answer is, "Yes. Yes, it is." Also, the states are collecting a buttload of data about your child anyway, whether they Core it up or not, but it's totally not broken down by person and you can totally trust them to keep it safe. There's nothing to worry about.At least, not anything that isn't already happening and isn't already beyond your power to do anything about.
MYTH: The feds will take control of the Common Core initiative.
No. The initiative was state led and will remain so. Actually, this is a novel item on the list, because both myths are wrong. Actually, nobody is leading or in charge of the initiative. Anybody anywhere can declare themselves a Common Core spokesperson and there isn't anybody on the planet who can whip up a cease and desist letter. Not only are we building the plane in mid-air, but there is nobody piloting it.
MYTH: The feds threatened to withhold money from anyone who didn't Core it up.
Totally not true. The feds offered to give money to only those states that did adopt the Core. Totally different thing. I didn't say I wouldn't give you your allowance if you didn't do your chores-- I just said you would only get your allowance if you did do your chores.
MYTH: The reading in CCSS is 50% non-fiction, which opens the door to lots of political stuff.
Weird assumption about what is or is not political (Grapes of Wrath, anybody?) But the answer here, like many of the answers, seems to assume that conservative voters are, in fact, morons. To the "myth" that CCSS requires 50% "informational" text, CFHS respondes, "But no-- the CFHS requires 50% of reading be fiction!" Also, informational texts can include America-loving works like de Tocqueville and the Declaration and also politics-free stuff like maps.
The Collaborative for Student Success has some other points they like to make as well, like the idea that the Common Core is really great for helping military families and for making our armed forces stronger, somehow. Gone are some of the old, failed stories (remember when we still had to argue about whether or not teachers helped write the Core?).
But those are the broad outlines of what is supposed to be the conservative-friendly narrative of Common Core. Will we be pushing this in Iowa to try to force the field to support Common Core, or could it be that we are trying to prepare the ground for one particular Core-loving candidate? Next week, when the Collaborative is supposed to be moving beyond radio ads and onto Iowans' tv screens, we may get a hint. But if Jeb is basing his Presidential hopes on these weak arguments, he needs to get himself some new strategists.
Friday, April 10, 2015
Ken-Ton Schools Yield To State Pressure
The Kennmore-Town of Tonawanda Union Free School District (generally known as the Ken-Ton district) has decided to stand down.
You may recall that about a month ago, the Ken-Ton board president decided to float a resolution to consider opting out of New York state tests as well as the state's teacher evaluation program. After a false start, the board met in front of a highly supportive public crowd, and over the objections of their superintendent, voted to pass the resolution. Push back from the state came almost immediately in the form of threats from Senior Deputy Commissioner Ken Wagner.
This week the standoff came to an end. Tuesday night the board voted to back away from the boycott proposals.
Considering the letter from the state and the gloomy predictions of Superintendent Dawn Mirand, board president Bob Dana was quoted by Joseph Spector at lohud blogs
“With all of that in mind,” School Board President Bob Dana said, “I can’t honestly sit in front of you today and push for a continuation of these proposals.”
Pete Stuhlmiller, the president of Kenmore Teachers Association, had been supportive of the threat to consider the possibility of a test boycott, but he was supportive of the backing down as well. "We realized that our board members faced incredible intimidation from the state Education Department and threats from the governor's office," he said.
There's some question about whether the Ken-Ton board ever really meant to take this fight to the wall. But by being the squeaky wheel for a month, they added to the growing chorus of objections and resistance to the Big Standardized Tests. The board reportedly plans to form a coalition of local schools to fight back, and they have now given themselves a higher profile for feistiness which may aid in those efforts, and they forced the state to show its face, to publicly show itself depending not on reason or right, but on power, intimidation and bullying.
Ken-Ton schools did not win this battle, but as with hundreds of other tiny battles being fought around the country, they made one more little chink in the reformy status quo armor. Hats off to them for that.
You may recall that about a month ago, the Ken-Ton board president decided to float a resolution to consider opting out of New York state tests as well as the state's teacher evaluation program. After a false start, the board met in front of a highly supportive public crowd, and over the objections of their superintendent, voted to pass the resolution. Push back from the state came almost immediately in the form of threats from Senior Deputy Commissioner Ken Wagner.
This week the standoff came to an end. Tuesday night the board voted to back away from the boycott proposals.
Considering the letter from the state and the gloomy predictions of Superintendent Dawn Mirand, board president Bob Dana was quoted by Joseph Spector at lohud blogs
“With all of that in mind,” School Board President Bob Dana said, “I can’t honestly sit in front of you today and push for a continuation of these proposals.”
Pete Stuhlmiller, the president of Kenmore Teachers Association, had been supportive of the threat to consider the possibility of a test boycott, but he was supportive of the backing down as well. "We realized that our board members faced incredible intimidation from the state Education Department and threats from the governor's office," he said.
There's some question about whether the Ken-Ton board ever really meant to take this fight to the wall. But by being the squeaky wheel for a month, they added to the growing chorus of objections and resistance to the Big Standardized Tests. The board reportedly plans to form a coalition of local schools to fight back, and they have now given themselves a higher profile for feistiness which may aid in those efforts, and they forced the state to show its face, to publicly show itself depending not on reason or right, but on power, intimidation and bullying.
Ken-Ton schools did not win this battle, but as with hundreds of other tiny battles being fought around the country, they made one more little chink in the reformy status quo armor. Hats off to them for that.
Thursday, April 9, 2015
Duncan Strikes Conciliatory Tone
The 50th anniversary of the passing of ESEA was an occasion for Secretary of Education Arne Duncan to speak about the bill. It was also the first big set of wordage that Duncan has issued since the Senate version of the ESEA rewrite was unveiled.
That bill contains a whole lot of "The federal government and the secretary of education shall keep their grubby hands off the operation of education in this country." It repudiated and revoked much of what the Obama/Duncan administration shoehorned into sort-of-law with Race to the Top and the NCLB waiver system.
Folks have been waiting to hear what Duncan might say in response to the bi-partisan Senatorial smackdown. But in this particular speech, he mostly said, "Please, sir, may I have some more."
Duncan opened the speech by co-opting a four-year-old as a live example of Things He Values. He rattled off a list of what he considers the successes so far, denounced NCLB as a "broken" law, and rang his notes about how every child deserves a whole raft of opportunities. Vintage Duncan.
Then he talked about the new bill and what it must have.
No portability. We shouldn't shift resources from poor schools to rich ones (no, he did not explain how he manages the cognitive dissonance involved in believing both this AND that charter schools are great and we need more of them).
Parents etc need the lush verdant jungle of information that springs forth from Big Standardized Tests, because without test scores, parents would be ignorant of their own children's development.
He rhetorically linked education to civil rights. He said that the new ESEA should support pre-K schooling. And we should get more students to graduate (and he illustrated this with a story about a Diplomas Now school, including a student who was also in the house to be a visual aid-- I know this use of humans as props is a pan-party political pastime, but it rubs me the wrong way twelve days to Tuesday).
He called for more education Research and Development (but used Tennessee as an example).
In short, he did not directly address any of the federal involvement that Alexander and Murray's committee explicitly rejected. He did not address the end of federally-mandated test-linked teacher evaluation, and he did not address the rejection of federal involvement in turning around "failing" schools, nor the department's seriously reduced role in approving state plans. He did not even whimper at the powers that the Senate proposes to strip from his department.
He did name check both Senators.
Senator Alexander and Senator Murray share a lifelong commitment to improving education. Senator Murray spent years as a preschool teacher and early learning advocate for the people of her home state of Washington. This work is in her blood, it is why she entered politics. Long before Senator Alexander was Secretary of Education, Governor and a university President—he fought to end a policy of racial discrimination at Vanderbilt when he was the editor of his college newspaper. My father is also from Tennessee and also attended Vanderbilt and he always had tremendous respect for Senator Alexander.
Both senators' commitment to this nation's children is real.
In short, if folks were hoping that Duncan would come out swinging or that we would eventually be treated to a sassy catfight, folks may commence with the disappointment. There is not so much as a veiled oblique criticism of the Senate draft in this speech. The closest to a cautionary word was the sentence "We cannot cut our way to greater opportunities for our children."
And the short summary version of what he wants to see in the bill is now broad and vague:
A new law must build a foundation for 21st century schools by investing in innovation, supporting our fantastic teachers and principals, and encouraging every student's progress so that our nation's greatest asset, our vast academic and social potential, can be fully realized.
There is not even so much as a "college and career" in the whole thing. Duncan here abandons many of the ideas that were previous must-haves. Instead this is a lot of the warm mushy platitudinous word pie that he has served up in the past while dealing lousy policy at the same time. So I'm not sure what there is to learn here, other than there's no storm brewing. At least not yet.
Perhaps Duncan is just lame-ducking it. Perhaps he wanted to stay positive for the big birthday party. Perhaps he's caught a sense that it doesn't matter if he suggests that the new bill should involve ponies and eclairs for all. But whatever his thinking was, there was not the slightest hint of confrontation with the Senate in this bill, and his advice to the House committee was to imitate the Senate's warm atmosphere of bipartisan swellness, advice that I'm sure the House will resolutely ignore. We may have to do without fireworks entirely until the bill takes its bow in front of the full Senate next week.
That bill contains a whole lot of "The federal government and the secretary of education shall keep their grubby hands off the operation of education in this country." It repudiated and revoked much of what the Obama/Duncan administration shoehorned into sort-of-law with Race to the Top and the NCLB waiver system.
Folks have been waiting to hear what Duncan might say in response to the bi-partisan Senatorial smackdown. But in this particular speech, he mostly said, "Please, sir, may I have some more."
Duncan opened the speech by co-opting a four-year-old as a live example of Things He Values. He rattled off a list of what he considers the successes so far, denounced NCLB as a "broken" law, and rang his notes about how every child deserves a whole raft of opportunities. Vintage Duncan.
Then he talked about the new bill and what it must have.
No portability. We shouldn't shift resources from poor schools to rich ones (no, he did not explain how he manages the cognitive dissonance involved in believing both this AND that charter schools are great and we need more of them).
Parents etc need the lush verdant jungle of information that springs forth from Big Standardized Tests, because without test scores, parents would be ignorant of their own children's development.
He rhetorically linked education to civil rights. He said that the new ESEA should support pre-K schooling. And we should get more students to graduate (and he illustrated this with a story about a Diplomas Now school, including a student who was also in the house to be a visual aid-- I know this use of humans as props is a pan-party political pastime, but it rubs me the wrong way twelve days to Tuesday).
He called for more education Research and Development (but used Tennessee as an example).
In short, he did not directly address any of the federal involvement that Alexander and Murray's committee explicitly rejected. He did not address the end of federally-mandated test-linked teacher evaluation, and he did not address the rejection of federal involvement in turning around "failing" schools, nor the department's seriously reduced role in approving state plans. He did not even whimper at the powers that the Senate proposes to strip from his department.
He did name check both Senators.
Senator Alexander and Senator Murray share a lifelong commitment to improving education. Senator Murray spent years as a preschool teacher and early learning advocate for the people of her home state of Washington. This work is in her blood, it is why she entered politics. Long before Senator Alexander was Secretary of Education, Governor and a university President—he fought to end a policy of racial discrimination at Vanderbilt when he was the editor of his college newspaper. My father is also from Tennessee and also attended Vanderbilt and he always had tremendous respect for Senator Alexander.
Both senators' commitment to this nation's children is real.
In short, if folks were hoping that Duncan would come out swinging or that we would eventually be treated to a sassy catfight, folks may commence with the disappointment. There is not so much as a veiled oblique criticism of the Senate draft in this speech. The closest to a cautionary word was the sentence "We cannot cut our way to greater opportunities for our children."
And the short summary version of what he wants to see in the bill is now broad and vague:
A new law must build a foundation for 21st century schools by investing in innovation, supporting our fantastic teachers and principals, and encouraging every student's progress so that our nation's greatest asset, our vast academic and social potential, can be fully realized.
There is not even so much as a "college and career" in the whole thing. Duncan here abandons many of the ideas that were previous must-haves. Instead this is a lot of the warm mushy platitudinous word pie that he has served up in the past while dealing lousy policy at the same time. So I'm not sure what there is to learn here, other than there's no storm brewing. At least not yet.
Perhaps Duncan is just lame-ducking it. Perhaps he wanted to stay positive for the big birthday party. Perhaps he's caught a sense that it doesn't matter if he suggests that the new bill should involve ponies and eclairs for all. But whatever his thinking was, there was not the slightest hint of confrontation with the Senate in this bill, and his advice to the House committee was to imitate the Senate's warm atmosphere of bipartisan swellness, advice that I'm sure the House will resolutely ignore. We may have to do without fireworks entirely until the bill takes its bow in front of the full Senate next week.
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