The reports keep rolling in. New York families are opting out of the Big Standardized Test in unprecedented numbers, massive numbers, numbers that will make virtually all of the "data" about school performance "gleaned" from the BS Test suspect.
The state has responded by, well, trying to get the problem to shut up and go away. On Tuesday's All In with Chris Hayes, Chancellor Merryl Tisch tried valiantly to make the problem go away. "We didn't explain the purpose of the test well enough," said Tisch, who proceeded to botch her gazzillionth attempt in at least three years to explain the purpose of the test. Then she shifted over to explaining the opt out movement as a byproduct of a "labor dispute," the result of teachers leading poor parents and children astray.
That would be exactly backwards.
Teachers are, by nature, good little soldiers. We are regular apologists for bad national, state and local policies. We are on the front lines where students and their parents say, "So why do we have to do this? It seems like a stupid waste of time." That's when, time after time, use our reassuring teacher voice and bring our charges to peaceful coexistence with policies and procedures that we might not even love, but they are the rules, and as teachers, we're generally fans of the rules.
So when teacher leaders in NY threw their weight behind opting out, what happened was not a state-wide brainwashing by teachers. I don't believe for a moment that NY teachers started poking holes in the dike that was holding back the opt out floodwaters. The floodwaters were already high, near to bursting at places like tiny Ken-Ton school district where the board wanted to lead a face-on charge against the state and the voters showed up to egg them on. I'll bet you anything that in school after school it was teachers who had been standing there with their fingers in the dike. All Karen McGee had to say was, "We're done. Just step back."
Meanwhile, GOP Senator Jack Martins is trying to put another of Tisch's bright ideas into play. She suggested that top NYC schools could be exempted from teacher evaluation rules; Martins would like to make that law for the whole state. Under his proposal, the schools in the top 20% of test results would be exempt from using the tests to evaluate their teachers. This is only a good idea if
1) You believe that the only purpose of the test is to find and fire "bad" teachers, and all the rest of that baloney about the benefits of the test was actually baloney.
2) You are hoping that this will somehow make the teachers union happy enough to go back to being good little dike-plugging soldiers.
3) You are hoping that this will shut up the parents for those top schools.
I'm willing to bet that the top 20% schools are also the schools which serve the more affluent, better-connected, most knowledgeable-about-how-to-give-the-system-a-headache parents. In other words, the parents that Tisch most wishes would shut up.
It remains to be seen what the fallout of from Optoutmageddon is going to be, but it's a sure bet that continued attempts to dismiss, marginalize, and silence opt-outers will not be enough to make Tisch and Cuomo happy campers again. When people want to say something important, they keep raising their voices until they feel they are heard. Albany had better start listening soon.
Thursday, April 16, 2015
Wednesday, April 15, 2015
Paying Your Bills & The Corinthian 100
The slow-motion train wreck that is the unspooling of the Corinthian for-profit college chain has just dumped one more car off the tracks. Students have announced that they will not repay the debt they incurred attending the nation's top contender for the Predatory College gold medal. While the group launched as a collective fifteen, they have now rounded themselves off at an even 100.
This is not an easy issue to parse. Most of us in the adult world understand a few basic financial principles, including "If you don't want to pay back a huge loan, don't take out the huge loan." But there are other factors at play here.
Corinthian's history is less than exemplary. Founded in 1995, they have since glommed up twenty other post-secondary institutions. They have been called "the nation's worst private college chain" and have been sued many, many, many times; California's attorney general charged them with false and predatory advertising as well as securities fraud. Huffington Post caught them using the practice of hiring their own graduates to help keep their post-grad employment numbers inflated.
One would think that when the USED announced that they were going to shut down predatory colleges that used students as conduit for borrowed money, leaving those students with crushing debt and no marketable job skills-- one would think that just such a pronouncement would leave Corinthian shaking in its boots. That crackdown was announced in March of 2014. By June of 2014, the USED was announcing a plan to keep Corinthian in business. Undersecretary Ted Mitchell (who came to the department carrying strong ties to Pearson, NewSchools Venture Fund, and other investor ties to the private education biz) announced that Corinthian would receive an influx of cash, permission to keep admitting students, and a government overseer to keep an eye on them (powered, I supposed, by the threat of-- I don't know. Stern looks? More cash?). This, apparently, is what Too Big To Fail looks like in the college world.
Next up was selling off parts of the chain-- to Educational Credit Management Corporation, a group specializing in shaking down college students for their loan debts. They have been the subject of more than a few horror stories about overzealous collecting, but they did immediately (as in, December of 2014) set up a new subsidiary named Zenith Education Group to run the schools. Putting a debt collection agency in charge of a college doesn't make a lot of sense, unless you understand that the purpose of the "college" is to recruit "students" to use as carriers for transporting loan dollars from lenders to the "college." The students shoulder all the interest and fees associated with the loans, while everyone else makes the profit. Or as Rep. Steve Cohen (D-Tenn) put it in the Washington Post:
"To prop up a school whose main purpose seems to be to get federal money is a misguided use of federal funds," Cohen said. "When a school like [Corinthian] that has a checkered history is on the mat, throw in the towel. It's over."
Of course, when I say "everyone makes a profit," that's a longer list than you expect. Jump back to November of 2013 with me to read this report about the $41.3 billion dollars in profits on student loans made by the US government. Even if there's a decimal point misplaced, that's an obscene profit to make on the backs of students. If the feds are worried about the cost of college, they need only look in the mirror. Arne Duncan had a sort of non-response response to the report at the time, but the botom line here is that the feds are among the folks with incentive to keep the college debt machine grinding away.
Which brings us back to the issue of the Corinthian 100 and their resolution not to pay back the debt (some of which hits the six-figure range).
On the one hand, I fully sympathize with folks who say, "When you borrow money, you pay it back. Doesn't get any simpler than that. If you borrow more money than you can pay back, that's just dumb. If you don't pay back your debts, somebody else pays the price. Other people should not pay for your dumb."
On the other hand, it's easy to make dumb choices people are lying to you.
Folks who find themselves in debt for Corinthian educations, but without any marketable skills that would allow them to make money-- those folks got in this mess by driving past a dozen corners where there should have been big bright neon red flags. But there were no flags there, because the gatekeepers had taken the flags down and stuffed them in their back pockets.
Corinthian has a repeatedly gotten in trouble for lying, false advertising, misrepresenting itself, and promising what it could not deliver. But the feds did not shut them down, did not demand they put a warning label on their applications, did not publicly chastise them in a manner that might have given applicants pause. And when Corinthian actually started to suffer the free-market consequences of bad behavior, the feds stepped in to protect not the students, but the investors and operators. They actually crafted a plan to allow Corinthian to draw in more students!
And the loans? If I go to buy a house, and I visit the bank for a mortgage loan, generally speaking the bank (excepting the years between, say, 2002-2008) will make sure that they don't lend me more than I can pay, and they will also demand an assessment of the house so that they know I'm getting their money's worth in my purchase. Who was exercising such oversight of these college loans? Apparently, nobody.
Corinthian students have racked up over a half billion dollars in federal loans. The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau has already asked the courts to grant relief, and the Department of Justice has reportedly said that the Department of Education has "complete discretion" to make the loans evaporate. Back in February, a $480 million relief package was announced which would help (about 40%) with the private loans that students took out, but those are separate from the half billion in federal loans. Yesterday the USED released a "heightened cash alert" list of institutions that are under extra scrutiny, but given the department's history, it's not clear what the "extra scrutiny" could lead to, since the scrutinizing that has gone on so far has been pretty unimpressive.
Since I originally posted this piece, Corinthian has been slapped with a $30 million fine by the USED, for the same old shenanigans including lying about job placement (counting in some cases two day jobs at the school itself). Corinthian remains unbowed and claims this is just unfair and unfounded. If I were a cynical man, I might read into the article that the feds finally got fed up with fakery on the principle that it's okay to lie to students, but not to us. Or maybe the relentless coverage finally got to them. At any rate, Corinthian did finally get spanked a bit.
I suppose we could argue that young adults should know better than to trust colleges, loan companies and the federal government, and that grown-ups in the US should know not to trust anybody at all ever. But it's hard for me to look at this mess and not conclude we could do better. Certainly we can do better than to get to the point where 100 young Americans decide that only by publicly trashing their own credit ratings can they hope to get somebody's attention.
Originally posted at View from the Cheap Seats
This is not an easy issue to parse. Most of us in the adult world understand a few basic financial principles, including "If you don't want to pay back a huge loan, don't take out the huge loan." But there are other factors at play here.
Corinthian's history is less than exemplary. Founded in 1995, they have since glommed up twenty other post-secondary institutions. They have been called "the nation's worst private college chain" and have been sued many, many, many times; California's attorney general charged them with false and predatory advertising as well as securities fraud. Huffington Post caught them using the practice of hiring their own graduates to help keep their post-grad employment numbers inflated.
One would think that when the USED announced that they were going to shut down predatory colleges that used students as conduit for borrowed money, leaving those students with crushing debt and no marketable job skills-- one would think that just such a pronouncement would leave Corinthian shaking in its boots. That crackdown was announced in March of 2014. By June of 2014, the USED was announcing a plan to keep Corinthian in business. Undersecretary Ted Mitchell (who came to the department carrying strong ties to Pearson, NewSchools Venture Fund, and other investor ties to the private education biz) announced that Corinthian would receive an influx of cash, permission to keep admitting students, and a government overseer to keep an eye on them (powered, I supposed, by the threat of-- I don't know. Stern looks? More cash?). This, apparently, is what Too Big To Fail looks like in the college world.
Next up was selling off parts of the chain-- to Educational Credit Management Corporation, a group specializing in shaking down college students for their loan debts. They have been the subject of more than a few horror stories about overzealous collecting, but they did immediately (as in, December of 2014) set up a new subsidiary named Zenith Education Group to run the schools. Putting a debt collection agency in charge of a college doesn't make a lot of sense, unless you understand that the purpose of the "college" is to recruit "students" to use as carriers for transporting loan dollars from lenders to the "college." The students shoulder all the interest and fees associated with the loans, while everyone else makes the profit. Or as Rep. Steve Cohen (D-Tenn) put it in the Washington Post:
"To prop up a school whose main purpose seems to be to get federal money is a misguided use of federal funds," Cohen said. "When a school like [Corinthian] that has a checkered history is on the mat, throw in the towel. It's over."
Of course, when I say "everyone makes a profit," that's a longer list than you expect. Jump back to November of 2013 with me to read this report about the $41.3 billion dollars in profits on student loans made by the US government. Even if there's a decimal point misplaced, that's an obscene profit to make on the backs of students. If the feds are worried about the cost of college, they need only look in the mirror. Arne Duncan had a sort of non-response response to the report at the time, but the botom line here is that the feds are among the folks with incentive to keep the college debt machine grinding away.
Which brings us back to the issue of the Corinthian 100 and their resolution not to pay back the debt (some of which hits the six-figure range).
On the one hand, I fully sympathize with folks who say, "When you borrow money, you pay it back. Doesn't get any simpler than that. If you borrow more money than you can pay back, that's just dumb. If you don't pay back your debts, somebody else pays the price. Other people should not pay for your dumb."
On the other hand, it's easy to make dumb choices people are lying to you.
Folks who find themselves in debt for Corinthian educations, but without any marketable skills that would allow them to make money-- those folks got in this mess by driving past a dozen corners where there should have been big bright neon red flags. But there were no flags there, because the gatekeepers had taken the flags down and stuffed them in their back pockets.
Corinthian has a repeatedly gotten in trouble for lying, false advertising, misrepresenting itself, and promising what it could not deliver. But the feds did not shut them down, did not demand they put a warning label on their applications, did not publicly chastise them in a manner that might have given applicants pause. And when Corinthian actually started to suffer the free-market consequences of bad behavior, the feds stepped in to protect not the students, but the investors and operators. They actually crafted a plan to allow Corinthian to draw in more students!
And the loans? If I go to buy a house, and I visit the bank for a mortgage loan, generally speaking the bank (excepting the years between, say, 2002-2008) will make sure that they don't lend me more than I can pay, and they will also demand an assessment of the house so that they know I'm getting their money's worth in my purchase. Who was exercising such oversight of these college loans? Apparently, nobody.
Corinthian students have racked up over a half billion dollars in federal loans. The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau has already asked the courts to grant relief, and the Department of Justice has reportedly said that the Department of Education has "complete discretion" to make the loans evaporate. Back in February, a $480 million relief package was announced which would help (about 40%) with the private loans that students took out, but those are separate from the half billion in federal loans. Yesterday the USED released a "heightened cash alert" list of institutions that are under extra scrutiny, but given the department's history, it's not clear what the "extra scrutiny" could lead to, since the scrutinizing that has gone on so far has been pretty unimpressive.
Since I originally posted this piece, Corinthian has been slapped with a $30 million fine by the USED, for the same old shenanigans including lying about job placement (counting in some cases two day jobs at the school itself). Corinthian remains unbowed and claims this is just unfair and unfounded. If I were a cynical man, I might read into the article that the feds finally got fed up with fakery on the principle that it's okay to lie to students, but not to us. Or maybe the relentless coverage finally got to them. At any rate, Corinthian did finally get spanked a bit.
I suppose we could argue that young adults should know better than to trust colleges, loan companies and the federal government, and that grown-ups in the US should know not to trust anybody at all ever. But it's hard for me to look at this mess and not conclude we could do better. Certainly we can do better than to get to the point where 100 young Americans decide that only by publicly trashing their own credit ratings can they hope to get somebody's attention.
Originally posted at View from the Cheap Seats
This Is How Congress Annoys the Rest of Us
.@SenAlexander: This is a tough subject to deal with. If it were easy, it woulda been done years ago. Thanks committee for improving bill
— Politics K-12 (@PoliticsK12) April 15, 2015
That tweet came over at 4:30, after a long day of Congressional wrangling over the new ESEA. It's a perfectly harmless sort of thing to say after a bunch of work, and it's a perfect example of how government types see things differently than those of us who work for a living.
Let's look at that for a second, and then think about other peoples' work.
I mean, teaching is pretty tough, and the work that goes with it is a challenge to deal with. But I don't remember any of my colleagues ever looking at a new batch of students and saying, "Damn, this looks like a tough bunch to deal with. Let's put it off for seven or eight years."
In fact, you know what has made my job extra tough? All the fallout from a law that set unattainable standards that not a single human being thought could actually be met but, because Congress couldn't do its job, stayed in place and created leverage for even more terrible education pseudo-law.
And it's not just teachers.
Surgeons don't walk into an operating room, look at an injury or illness and say, "Damn, this is going to be hard to deal with. Let's just set it aside for seven or eight years."
Pastors don't look at parishioners who are dealing with extremely tough issues and say, "Wow, this will be hard to deal with. I'll just put it off for seven or eight years."
In fact, pretty much nobody gets up in the morning and says, "My job is going to be really hard to do today. I think I'll just put it off for seven or eight years."
No, for most folks, the rule is , when you have a job to do, you do it, and you do it when it needs to be done. People do hard things every day in this country. Every. Day. Do not give yourselves a ribbon for this.
Look, Congressing is hard. Senatoring is extremely difficult. I couldn't do it (regular readers can confirm that my diplomatic skills are lacking). But you folks signed up for it. You paid good money to be elected. Senators Alexander and Murray should be proud that their committee came closer to accomplishing something that eight years worth of previous Congressy folks.
And I do appreciate-- hugely appreciate-- the attempt to turn ESEA into something less trainwrecky and destructive than NCLB. It's important work, valuable work, work that I'm glad the Senate is doing (even if I disagree with plenty of the substance, I believe they're by and large trying to help).
But the correct thing to say at 4:30 today was, "Thank you for doing the job that we've been failing to do for seven years. On behalf of the several Congresses, we'd like to apologize for failing so long to do this necessary work. We are pleased that we are moving forward, but we are also ashamed that it took us so long to get the job done, while the old bad law continued to wreak havoc on the entire American education system. We are pleased to announce progress, and ashamed that we failed for so long to do so while teachers and students showed up every day to make the best of a bad law that we failed to address. You have done your jobs; now we are going to finally try to do ours."
He might even have added, "Boy, we can be so oblivious to what goes on out in the rest of the country, sometimes!"
That's what Senator Alexander should have had to say at 4:30 today.
KY: Opt Out Not an Option
While some states have a complex process for opting out of the test or require very precise language, the state of Kentucky has made its position pretty clear. The AP earlier this month quoted the Kentucky Education Commissioner, Terry Holliday:
No student may opt out of the standardized assessments conducted under this system.
A report in the Lexington Herald-Leader makes the Kentucky position even clearer. Laura Arrasmith has been trying to round up some opt-out action in Kentucky-- she doesn't think her kids should have to take the states Big Standardized Test-- but the state has been pretty clear on its position. She had won some accommodations from her local administrators-- but then Holliday issued some pointed communications about testing to all superintendents.
Holliday has told superintendents that students who don't take the test will be counted and they will be given a score of 0. It gets even worse:
Todd Allen, an assistant general counsel for the state education department, said in a statement that "the student also may be subject to discipline under school or district policies including the code of conduct or behavior."
Arrasmith has started a Facebook page for the movement, which sadly has under 300 likes as I'm typing this.
The United Opt Out page for Kentucky is likewise rather bleak. The state allows for a handful of exceptions due to extraordinary circumstances that would allow a child to skip the test. And when I say extraordinary, I mean that the circumstances include if the child has been placed in protective custody and the FBI won't reveal his location, if the child is the only caregiver for a terminally ill parent, or if the child dies during the testing window.
Allen did elaborate that Kentucky parents can opt out-- opt all the way out of public education. But if your child is enrolled in Kentucky public education, the state expects to do everything the state tells him to. It would be interesting to see how this plays out the next time a Kentuckian demands that his child be excused from hearing about evolution in school. In the meantime, Kentucky parents and teachers can definitely use some support from the rest of the country.
No student may opt out of the standardized assessments conducted under this system.
A report in the Lexington Herald-Leader makes the Kentucky position even clearer. Laura Arrasmith has been trying to round up some opt-out action in Kentucky-- she doesn't think her kids should have to take the states Big Standardized Test-- but the state has been pretty clear on its position. She had won some accommodations from her local administrators-- but then Holliday issued some pointed communications about testing to all superintendents.
Holliday has told superintendents that students who don't take the test will be counted and they will be given a score of 0. It gets even worse:
Todd Allen, an assistant general counsel for the state education department, said in a statement that "the student also may be subject to discipline under school or district policies including the code of conduct or behavior."
Arrasmith has started a Facebook page for the movement, which sadly has under 300 likes as I'm typing this.
The United Opt Out page for Kentucky is likewise rather bleak. The state allows for a handful of exceptions due to extraordinary circumstances that would allow a child to skip the test. And when I say extraordinary, I mean that the circumstances include if the child has been placed in protective custody and the FBI won't reveal his location, if the child is the only caregiver for a terminally ill parent, or if the child dies during the testing window.
Allen did elaborate that Kentucky parents can opt out-- opt all the way out of public education. But if your child is enrolled in Kentucky public education, the state expects to do everything the state tells him to. It would be interesting to see how this plays out the next time a Kentuckian demands that his child be excused from hearing about evolution in school. In the meantime, Kentucky parents and teachers can definitely use some support from the rest of the country.
Tuesday, April 14, 2015
Maryland Disappoints Charters
Maryland's Governor Larry Hogan had a dream, a dream of a state where charters could bloom more easily, more plentifully, and more profitably.
And so he was pushing a bill, a bill that would allow Maryland to catch up to other states in the chartery race for riches. The bill would let charters hire and fire staff at will (Maryland's charter teachers are actually employed by the local district). Teachers wouldn't have to be certified. Charters would have more ability to pick and choose students. Charters would get more money per student and also get a shot at construction funding. Perhaps most importantly, charters would finally have a recourse if mean old local school boards turned them down; they would be able to appeal to the State Board of Education to override the decision of local elected officials. So, democracy.
The Democrats are in control of the Maryland legislature, and they correctly identified the bill as union busting and bad for students. Compromise was sought.
The Senate committee later passed along a version of the bill that was either "watered down" or "improved" depending on your point of view.
That was late March. This week the legislature passed the bill. Sort of. Says the AP
Hogan initially tried to get more input for the state board of education
on charter school operations. His expansion plan also waived certain teacher certifications and opened the possibility for new collective bargaining agreements.
But Senate and House committees made roughly a dozen amendments that largely reversed those proposals in Hogan’s measure.
You can tell the charteristas are Not Pleased, as witnessed by a statement released by Kara Kerwin, president of the Center for Education Reform, a group that is deeply committed to profitable entrepreneurship via the charter biz.
“Late last night, The Maryland General Assembly took a step backwards in passing a dramatically revised charter school bill, making it less likely that parents and educators will be able to create and advance innovative public school opportunities for children.
Yes, because only charters can innovate. This would be the perfect moment to list off some of the innovations that have come out of charter schools. Kara? Kara???
In case you missed it, she's appalled. Appalled!! Democracy and rules are stupid, and only stupid public schools should have to follow them. Charters in other states can do whatever they want to in order to generate profit-- why is Maryland being such a stick in the mud? Charter operators have a God-given right to make their own rules so that they can suck up some tax dollars.
Congratulations Maryland. Congrats on having a not-entirely-craven legislature, and for standing up for public in simple ways that apparently escape some of your neighbor states.
The biggest irony here is that many aspects of the Maryland law are actually contrary to what the US Senate is currently considering in the ESEA rewrite. We can only hope that they, and maybe some neighboring states, get a little inspiration from this small victory for public education.
And so he was pushing a bill, a bill that would allow Maryland to catch up to other states in the chartery race for riches. The bill would let charters hire and fire staff at will (Maryland's charter teachers are actually employed by the local district). Teachers wouldn't have to be certified. Charters would have more ability to pick and choose students. Charters would get more money per student and also get a shot at construction funding. Perhaps most importantly, charters would finally have a recourse if mean old local school boards turned them down; they would be able to appeal to the State Board of Education to override the decision of local elected officials. So, democracy.
The Democrats are in control of the Maryland legislature, and they correctly identified the bill as union busting and bad for students. Compromise was sought.
The Senate committee later passed along a version of the bill that was either "watered down" or "improved" depending on your point of view.
That was late March. This week the legislature passed the bill. Sort of. Says the AP
Hogan initially tried to get more input for the state board of education
on charter school operations. His expansion plan also waived certain teacher certifications and opened the possibility for new collective bargaining agreements.But Senate and House committees made roughly a dozen amendments that largely reversed those proposals in Hogan’s measure.
You can tell the charteristas are Not Pleased, as witnessed by a statement released by Kara Kerwin, president of the Center for Education Reform, a group that is deeply committed to profitable entrepreneurship via the charter biz.
“Late last night, The Maryland General Assembly took a step backwards in passing a dramatically revised charter school bill, making it less likely that parents and educators will be able to create and advance innovative public school opportunities for children.
Yes, because only charters can innovate. This would be the perfect moment to list off some of the innovations that have come out of charter schools. Kara? Kara???
“The bill removes the State Board’s check and balance authority to review school district actions on charter applications, which by extension removes a Governor’s authority to impact charter school decisions through his or her appointments to the board.
So, the governor won't be able to override the decisions of local elected officials. But if charters are awesometastic, won't local officials line up to have them?
So, the governor won't be able to override the decisions of local elected officials. But if charters are awesometastic, won't local officials line up to have them?
“The bill requires an invasive study by the State Department of Education of all charter school operations, compliance of which will require additional staff and resources. This was clearly an effort by opponents to tie up small, underfunded charter schools with more bureaucracy, not less.
Oh nooosss!!!! Charters will have to be accountable! That is so unfair!! Comply with regulations!! Sooooo unfair!
Oh nooosss!!!! Charters will have to be accountable! That is so unfair!! Comply with regulations!! Sooooo unfair!
“The bill further removes authority for charter schools by making every operational feature subject to agreement with school districts, which more often than not deny basic freedoms to charter operators to hire and train their own personnel. It also furthers funding inequality for public school students attending public charter schools.
"Basic freedoms" to hire and fire whoever, whenever!? They won't be able to unilaterally ignore the wishes of the local taxpayers and their elected officials. Lordy, that's awful!
"Basic freedoms" to hire and fire whoever, whenever!? They won't be able to unilaterally ignore the wishes of the local taxpayers and their elected officials. Lordy, that's awful!
“The bill makes changes in the ability of charter schools to make preferences on who they enroll, which is not a major accomplishment. Nor is the proclaimed victory of advocates over so-called flexibility, which validates authority that already exists for districts and the state to consider requested waivers from various rules and regulations.
>You're not going to let us cherry pick the students? How do you expect us to be awesomely successful?
>You're not going to let us cherry pick the students? How do you expect us to be awesomely successful?
“I’m appalled that this bill is considered progress when by definition it puts school districts and unions more fully in control of charter creation, operations and outcomes. Mr. Governor, I urge you to grab a cup of coffee - or a beer - and sit down to read this bill for yourself, and you too will be appalled at what the General Assembly has done to your well-intentioned proposal.
“While the Governor’s team has embraced this bill, I urge the Governor to veto this bill and start fresh with the next session.”
In case you missed it, she's appalled. Appalled!! Democracy and rules are stupid, and only stupid public schools should have to follow them. Charters in other states can do whatever they want to in order to generate profit-- why is Maryland being such a stick in the mud? Charter operators have a God-given right to make their own rules so that they can suck up some tax dollars.
Congratulations Maryland. Congrats on having a not-entirely-craven legislature, and for standing up for public in simple ways that apparently escape some of your neighbor states.
The biggest irony here is that many aspects of the Maryland law are actually contrary to what the US Senate is currently considering in the ESEA rewrite. We can only hope that they, and maybe some neighboring states, get a little inspiration from this small victory for public education.
Senate ESEA Rewrite: The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly
Today the Alexander-Murray rewrite of ESEA goes out to the full Senate to-- well, God only knows. To be discussed by people who don't know what they're talking about. To have amendments attached about darter snails, e-mails from Benghazi, and naming Pearson Corporation of the Month. Honestly, I'm going to try not to watch too carefully as the sausage is being made.
But before ESEA goes to the sausage factory, let's take a quick look at what there is to love and what there is to not love. And let me recommend heartily the six-post series by Mercedes Schneider who basically underwent many nights of sleep deprivation so that the rest of us wouldn't have to read all 600 pages of this monstrosity. You can find her posts here, here, here, here, here, and here. You can also check out a handy table by Mike Petrilli right here.
So what is there to like about the ESEA rewrite? In a fairly clear and explicit manner, much of the power and control over state education departments out of the federal government's hand. If you think the USED should be abolished, well, here at least it's locked in a tiny little box. It has a whole section (see here) devoted to listing the things the Secretary of Education may not do, and those include very specific restrictions on giving states specific instructions. It bars the feds from tying funding to specific programming (explicitly barring such support for Common Core by name).
This general scaling back is clear from the new statement of purpose for the bill. From the both lofty and painfully specific purposes given a lengthy layout in NCLB, the new bill brings us down to this:
The purpose of this title is to ensure that all children have a fair, equitable, and significant opportunity to receive a high-quality education that prepares them for postsecondary education or the workforce, without the need for postsecondary remediation, and to close educational achievement gaps.
Unfortunately, that's just an amped-up version of "college and career ready," which is its own big fat slice of baloney. So we've gotten rid of federally-coerced Core standards, but we've put into the federal law the short, failed definition of educational success on which the foundation of those standards was built.
This is a recurring issue in the bill-- though it clearly wants to sell itself as a purging of Common Core from the national school system, the bill is haunted by the ghosts, both linguistic and programmatic, of NCLB. We get rid of AYP and mandatory sanctions for failing the Big Standardized Test, but we retain our commitment to test-driven accountability and interventions in failing schools. The feds cannot tell states how to manage teacher evaluation systems-- but those systems must be in place.
The new ESEA doesn't dismantle the machine that has been chewing up public ed so much as it forces the USED to hand the keys to the Leveller over to the states.
How much you like the new ESEA (or don't) will have a lot to do with how well you like your state department of education (or whoever bosses them around). Because those are the folks who are going to decide what tests will be given, what will be done with the results, who's failing, and what is going to be done to them.
Other reformster ideas are codified into law here. The new ESEA offers grant incentives for teacher merit pay systems (though the grants will only get things started-- sustaining funds will have to come from elsewhere). There are also competitive grants for teaching "traditional American" history and literacy education (this one is nearly incomprehensible). There are several specific pet projects that can look forward to an infusion of free federal money.
You will also love the new ESEA if you are Teach for America. Kudos to Schneider for spotting this item under Title II and the heading of Things Other Than Actual Teachers That States Can Spend Title II Money For:
(V) recent graduates of institutions of higher education with records of academic distinction who demonstrate the potential to become highly effective teachers, principals, or other school leaders. (pgs. 231-32).
Yes, that's TFA. "Other school leaders" is a particularly slick construction, neatly covering all those TFAers who are there to start their career as edubusinessmen or edubureaucrats.
If you are in the charter biz, you will love the new ESEA so much that you will want to marry it.
Granted, there is a downside for charters-- the law calls for them to serve the same population as public schools (a real cramp in many charters' business plan) and a call for transparency with financial monitoring and evaluation-- though this is only for the "public" charters, which fits nicely with a loophole written into the law which encourages charters to function as public-private hybrids. Since charters already like to argue that they have a private business's right to opacity, I'm betting that they will welcome further arguments to avoid oversight.
So the charter portion of the law balances "a high degree of autonomy" with "monitoring." States can go to the head of the line for Title V funding if
* they let an entity other than a local school district authorize charters
* they give charters equitable financing, compared to public schools (so we're done pretending that charters save taxpayers money)
* they help provide facilities through either funding or co-location
* they let charters handle budget and operations as they wish, including personnel decisions (so, hire, fire and pay at will)
* they use best practices from charters to improve pubic schools (a toughie, since so far this has happened exactly nowhere)
Charters get three years to show the USED what they can do, or, to put it another way, two years to cash checks and waste taxpayer money before anybody seriously checks up on them. Which strikes me as notably different from the mandate to keep testing those 3-8 graders in public school every single year. And the US secretary must use at least 50% of the Title V money to make at least three grants, and those grants can go to states, local outfits, a private non-profit entity, or any combo thereof. So more fake non-profit shell charter companies can set up to suck down those sweet, sweet tax dollars.
There's actually a whole section just about how to get money to charter schools. It's pretty wonky and rather makes one wonder what the Senate could have done if somebody had said, "There's a real problem with public school funding in this country, so let's build a solution for that into the new law." But no.
We'll see as the week unfolds what aspects of the ESEA rewrite attracted Senatorial attention. But if you want to write your Senator and make some suggestions-- well, I'll continue doing so, and I'll continue to say
* it's great to see the USED slapped down, but I watch with trepidation to see what my state government will do (while counting my blessings that I'm not in, say, New York).
* US education is never going to have a chance to thrive and grow and get back on track until we completely and totally drive a stake through the heart of test-driven accountability. That vehicle is a wreck that won't accomplish any of the things you want it to, and it doesn't matter whether it's driven by the feds, the state, or the circus-- it still won't get us where we want to go.
* if government gave half the thoughtful support to building up the public school system that it gives to privatizing education through charter investment opportunities, we'd all be better off.
In the meantime, I'll just keep watching for updates from the sausage factory.
But before ESEA goes to the sausage factory, let's take a quick look at what there is to love and what there is to not love. And let me recommend heartily the six-post series by Mercedes Schneider who basically underwent many nights of sleep deprivation so that the rest of us wouldn't have to read all 600 pages of this monstrosity. You can find her posts here, here, here, here, here, and here. You can also check out a handy table by Mike Petrilli right here.
So what is there to like about the ESEA rewrite? In a fairly clear and explicit manner, much of the power and control over state education departments out of the federal government's hand. If you think the USED should be abolished, well, here at least it's locked in a tiny little box. It has a whole section (see here) devoted to listing the things the Secretary of Education may not do, and those include very specific restrictions on giving states specific instructions. It bars the feds from tying funding to specific programming (explicitly barring such support for Common Core by name).
This general scaling back is clear from the new statement of purpose for the bill. From the both lofty and painfully specific purposes given a lengthy layout in NCLB, the new bill brings us down to this:
The purpose of this title is to ensure that all children have a fair, equitable, and significant opportunity to receive a high-quality education that prepares them for postsecondary education or the workforce, without the need for postsecondary remediation, and to close educational achievement gaps.
Unfortunately, that's just an amped-up version of "college and career ready," which is its own big fat slice of baloney. So we've gotten rid of federally-coerced Core standards, but we've put into the federal law the short, failed definition of educational success on which the foundation of those standards was built.
This is a recurring issue in the bill-- though it clearly wants to sell itself as a purging of Common Core from the national school system, the bill is haunted by the ghosts, both linguistic and programmatic, of NCLB. We get rid of AYP and mandatory sanctions for failing the Big Standardized Test, but we retain our commitment to test-driven accountability and interventions in failing schools. The feds cannot tell states how to manage teacher evaluation systems-- but those systems must be in place.
The new ESEA doesn't dismantle the machine that has been chewing up public ed so much as it forces the USED to hand the keys to the Leveller over to the states.
How much you like the new ESEA (or don't) will have a lot to do with how well you like your state department of education (or whoever bosses them around). Because those are the folks who are going to decide what tests will be given, what will be done with the results, who's failing, and what is going to be done to them.
Other reformster ideas are codified into law here. The new ESEA offers grant incentives for teacher merit pay systems (though the grants will only get things started-- sustaining funds will have to come from elsewhere). There are also competitive grants for teaching "traditional American" history and literacy education (this one is nearly incomprehensible). There are several specific pet projects that can look forward to an infusion of free federal money.
You will also love the new ESEA if you are Teach for America. Kudos to Schneider for spotting this item under Title II and the heading of Things Other Than Actual Teachers That States Can Spend Title II Money For:
(V) recent graduates of institutions of higher education with records of academic distinction who demonstrate the potential to become highly effective teachers, principals, or other school leaders. (pgs. 231-32).
Yes, that's TFA. "Other school leaders" is a particularly slick construction, neatly covering all those TFAers who are there to start their career as edubusinessmen or edubureaucrats.
If you are in the charter biz, you will love the new ESEA so much that you will want to marry it.
Granted, there is a downside for charters-- the law calls for them to serve the same population as public schools (a real cramp in many charters' business plan) and a call for transparency with financial monitoring and evaluation-- though this is only for the "public" charters, which fits nicely with a loophole written into the law which encourages charters to function as public-private hybrids. Since charters already like to argue that they have a private business's right to opacity, I'm betting that they will welcome further arguments to avoid oversight.
So the charter portion of the law balances "a high degree of autonomy" with "monitoring." States can go to the head of the line for Title V funding if
* they let an entity other than a local school district authorize charters
* they give charters equitable financing, compared to public schools (so we're done pretending that charters save taxpayers money)
* they help provide facilities through either funding or co-location
* they let charters handle budget and operations as they wish, including personnel decisions (so, hire, fire and pay at will)
* they use best practices from charters to improve pubic schools (a toughie, since so far this has happened exactly nowhere)
Charters get three years to show the USED what they can do, or, to put it another way, two years to cash checks and waste taxpayer money before anybody seriously checks up on them. Which strikes me as notably different from the mandate to keep testing those 3-8 graders in public school every single year. And the US secretary must use at least 50% of the Title V money to make at least three grants, and those grants can go to states, local outfits, a private non-profit entity, or any combo thereof. So more fake non-profit shell charter companies can set up to suck down those sweet, sweet tax dollars.
There's actually a whole section just about how to get money to charter schools. It's pretty wonky and rather makes one wonder what the Senate could have done if somebody had said, "There's a real problem with public school funding in this country, so let's build a solution for that into the new law." But no.
We'll see as the week unfolds what aspects of the ESEA rewrite attracted Senatorial attention. But if you want to write your Senator and make some suggestions-- well, I'll continue doing so, and I'll continue to say
* it's great to see the USED slapped down, but I watch with trepidation to see what my state government will do (while counting my blessings that I'm not in, say, New York).
* US education is never going to have a chance to thrive and grow and get back on track until we completely and totally drive a stake through the heart of test-driven accountability. That vehicle is a wreck that won't accomplish any of the things you want it to, and it doesn't matter whether it's driven by the feds, the state, or the circus-- it still won't get us where we want to go.
* if government gave half the thoughtful support to building up the public school system that it gives to privatizing education through charter investment opportunities, we'd all be better off.
In the meantime, I'll just keep watching for updates from the sausage factory.
Monday, April 13, 2015
College Ready, My Butt
There are some parts of the ed reform debates that have repeated so many times, we almost forget that they don't actually make sense.
For instance, the beloved mantra "college and career ready."
What the heck does that even mean?
David Conley, Ph.D, of the Education Policy Improvement Center, has presented on this many times-- he has a set of slides over at the CCSSO website-- and he offers this definition:
The level of preparation a student needs in order to enroll and succeed-- without remediation-- in a credit-bearing course at a postsecondary institution that offers a baccalaureate degree or transfer to a baccalaureate program, or in a high-quality certificate program that enables students to enter a career pathway with potential future advancement.
In case you're wondering, he goes on to define "succeed" as basically "pass the course well enough to continue to the next course or complete the program." So, the Peter Principle is not invoked, I guess.
Note that the "career" portion of readiness doesn't include anything that you can do with a high school diploma. He has also disqualified any job that doesn't allow for future advancement, which is unfortunate since that rules out teaching as an actual career. Go figure.
But even as a measure of college readiness, this is an unhelpful mess. "Enroll and succeed in a credit-bearing course." Any course? As long as I can pass any one entry level course, I'm college ready? If I'm ready to take a music theory course, am I college-ready? And if so, why isn't any instrument in place to mark me college ready? And if not, then why not? Because it would seem that a student is only college ready if she scores well on a math and ELA test, but lots of people go on to college for other things. Is a brilliant young musician or scientist or historian or welder who can't pass a Big Standardized Math test not ready for college, even if they won't take a single math class once they get there?
And really-- which college? Because I'm pretty sure that college ready for the University of Southern North Dakota at Hoople looks a great deal different from college ready for Harvard. For that matter, I'm pretty sure that college ready for Harvard looks a lot different from college ready for the Tulsa Welding School.
The whole complex of questions is further confused by frequent conflation of "college ready," "on grade level," and "scoring proficient." These three ideas are often discussed as if they are interchangeable, but they are not.
We're also ignoring all the non-academic issues. Every year, students slink home from college carrying failing grades that are not the result of any academic, intellectual, or skill issues, but instead resulting from a failure to master their own Hey I'm At College independence. There is no standardized test for self-discipline and responsibility.
We especially have no clue what college readiness looks like on the elementary level. You can see where we're headed-- we'll find a correlation between third grade reading scores and college success, but we'll call it causation rather than look for the common cause of both (spoiler alert: it's wealth).
We'll continue to pretend that out of the hundreds of factors that prepare a student for college, the only one that counts is the test score. There are a hundred things to check before you go skydiving, but the reformster way is to say, "Well, you've got a handle thing to pull and shoes on your feet, so everything's great" without ever checking to see if there's even a parachute on your back before they shove you out of the plane.
In fact, we have no clear, complete, scientifically supported picture of what a college ready student looks like, nor any proven way to measure the complex of qualities (that we still can't name and quantify). Standardized test scores are not a proxy, not even a bad one. "Sorry, honey. I couldn't find any ingredients to make you a birthday cake, so I pan fried some pillow stuffing in some engine oil, instead."
Colleges, who have more incentive than anyone to figure out the magic secret of what college ready looks like, still have only moderate success. After all-- all those not-ready students who supposedly need super-remediation?-- the college accepted those students in the first place! Every student who flunks out is a student that the college accepted in the first place! How can that be? Don't we know exactly how to tell that a student is ready for college??
The answer, of course, is no, no, we don't. So instead we demand that teachers coach students to run faster, even though we can't find the track and aren't sure exactly where the finish line is. But run faster anyway. And we'll check how well your shoes are tied regularly, because that's how we'll know whether you're on track to win or not.
Yes, at the root of Common Core and all this other reforminess is a quality we can't identify and don't know how to measure. Is it any wonder that the mansion built on this foundation of dust bunnies and dreams is not safe to live in.
For instance, the beloved mantra "college and career ready."
What the heck does that even mean?
David Conley, Ph.D, of the Education Policy Improvement Center, has presented on this many times-- he has a set of slides over at the CCSSO website-- and he offers this definition:
The level of preparation a student needs in order to enroll and succeed-- without remediation-- in a credit-bearing course at a postsecondary institution that offers a baccalaureate degree or transfer to a baccalaureate program, or in a high-quality certificate program that enables students to enter a career pathway with potential future advancement.
In case you're wondering, he goes on to define "succeed" as basically "pass the course well enough to continue to the next course or complete the program." So, the Peter Principle is not invoked, I guess.
Note that the "career" portion of readiness doesn't include anything that you can do with a high school diploma. He has also disqualified any job that doesn't allow for future advancement, which is unfortunate since that rules out teaching as an actual career. Go figure.
But even as a measure of college readiness, this is an unhelpful mess. "Enroll and succeed in a credit-bearing course." Any course? As long as I can pass any one entry level course, I'm college ready? If I'm ready to take a music theory course, am I college-ready? And if so, why isn't any instrument in place to mark me college ready? And if not, then why not? Because it would seem that a student is only college ready if she scores well on a math and ELA test, but lots of people go on to college for other things. Is a brilliant young musician or scientist or historian or welder who can't pass a Big Standardized Math test not ready for college, even if they won't take a single math class once they get there?
And really-- which college? Because I'm pretty sure that college ready for the University of Southern North Dakota at Hoople looks a great deal different from college ready for Harvard. For that matter, I'm pretty sure that college ready for Harvard looks a lot different from college ready for the Tulsa Welding School.
The whole complex of questions is further confused by frequent conflation of "college ready," "on grade level," and "scoring proficient." These three ideas are often discussed as if they are interchangeable, but they are not.
We're also ignoring all the non-academic issues. Every year, students slink home from college carrying failing grades that are not the result of any academic, intellectual, or skill issues, but instead resulting from a failure to master their own Hey I'm At College independence. There is no standardized test for self-discipline and responsibility.
We especially have no clue what college readiness looks like on the elementary level. You can see where we're headed-- we'll find a correlation between third grade reading scores and college success, but we'll call it causation rather than look for the common cause of both (spoiler alert: it's wealth).
We'll continue to pretend that out of the hundreds of factors that prepare a student for college, the only one that counts is the test score. There are a hundred things to check before you go skydiving, but the reformster way is to say, "Well, you've got a handle thing to pull and shoes on your feet, so everything's great" without ever checking to see if there's even a parachute on your back before they shove you out of the plane.
In fact, we have no clear, complete, scientifically supported picture of what a college ready student looks like, nor any proven way to measure the complex of qualities (that we still can't name and quantify). Standardized test scores are not a proxy, not even a bad one. "Sorry, honey. I couldn't find any ingredients to make you a birthday cake, so I pan fried some pillow stuffing in some engine oil, instead."
Colleges, who have more incentive than anyone to figure out the magic secret of what college ready looks like, still have only moderate success. After all-- all those not-ready students who supposedly need super-remediation?-- the college accepted those students in the first place! Every student who flunks out is a student that the college accepted in the first place! How can that be? Don't we know exactly how to tell that a student is ready for college??
The answer, of course, is no, no, we don't. So instead we demand that teachers coach students to run faster, even though we can't find the track and aren't sure exactly where the finish line is. But run faster anyway. And we'll check how well your shoes are tied regularly, because that's how we'll know whether you're on track to win or not.
Yes, at the root of Common Core and all this other reforminess is a quality we can't identify and don't know how to measure. Is it any wonder that the mansion built on this foundation of dust bunnies and dreams is not safe to live in.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)