If you are going to view or pass along just one hour's worth of viewing to explain why the reformster testing mania is unsupportable, the panic over failing schools is manufactured, and the entire justification for stripping schools (particularly those with poor, non-white students) is bogus, this is the video for you.
We all have some Kardasshian. Out-of-basement readiness. Why Zhao didn't buy shampoo. Why America is still here. Rudolph the Rednosed Reindeer. And why we need to stop trying to imitate China.
I especially recommend this to show your friends who are not fully immersed in the ongoing debate about US public schools. Highly accessible, very funny, clear and still full of facts-- this is well worth the 55 minutes you will need to watch it.
Yong Zhao (final) from Schoolhouse Live on Vimeo.
(Note: Updated to include the final cut of the speech, complete with slides)
Thursday, April 30, 2015
New Teacher Attrition Report: Better Than You Thought
The USED National Center for Education Statistics today released a "first look" at a new report looking at public school teacher attrition and mobility (entitled, with typical bureaucratic poetry, "Public School Teacher Attrition and Mobility in the First Five Year")
Our data set is centered on around 155,000 teachers who began teaching in 2007-2008, looking at them through 2011-2012, so this is a data slice that shows us what has happened to the profession most recently, but not, it should be noted, since the CCSS test bomb dropped on classrooms all over the country.
The "first look" is brief and loaded with charts, so you should really go take a look at it yourself, but here are some highlights to whet your appetite.
The basic raw attrition rate is far better than the conventional wisdom about half of new teachers leaving within the first five years. NCES figures say that by year five, 17.3% of the Class of 07-08 has left the classroom.
When you break that attrition down by categories, you find
* men left in a higher percentage than women
* non-white teachers left in higher percentages than white
* teachers with a base pay of over $40K left at a vastly lesser rate than everyone else
A third of teachers with less than a bachelor degree left within the first year, but almost half of the teachers with "higher than a master's degree" left immediately.
Teachers who were not assigned mentors left at roughly twice the rate of teachers with mentors.
So if you're hiring teachers, a black man with a PhD who's going to be paid less than $40K is your worst bet for classroom longevity.
I'm not surprised to see that teachers with alternative certificates or no certificates at all were more likely to have left. Elementary teachers stuck around in greater percentages than secondary teachers (proving either high school jobs are harder or elementary teachers are tougher; as a high school teacher married to an elementary teacher, I am prepared to offer no theory on this matter).
But I was surprised to see that the attrition rate for city/suburban vs. town/rural was almost exactly the same. Town/rural starts out losing faster, but by year five had evened out.
Less surprising-- finding that schools with over 50% free and reduced lunch rates had higher attrition rates. But the difference was not as huge as you might have predicted (18.6% vs 15.7%)
Folks will poke through this data for a variety of purposes. For instance, this may be the place to ask if young teachers are fleeing or being pushed out. For this groups movers (changing to a new job), 2 in 5 were involuntary after five years. For leavers, it's more complicated. Involuntary departures varied from year to year, with a peak of 35.5% after the second year and a low of 19.9% after the fourth. I'd be curious to see if that means that pre-tenure departures through counseling or firing are actually happening out there, but it appears there's more number crunching and data diddling to do.
There's plenty of appendage regarding methodology and technical explanations that yield paragraphs like this one:
For the BTLS first wave, weights are obtained directly from the 2007–08 SASS, since all interviewed beginning teachers in SASS were eligible for BTLS. On the BTLS data file, the final weight for the first wave is called W1TFNLWGT, which is called TFNLWGT on the SASS data file.
So I'll leave it to wiser data crunchers to pry this apart a bit more. This is data that appears to be worth a careful, considered look.
Did the rate get better after the former 50% rate was bandied about, or was that rate (which was always an estimate) just not right? Have the forces of reform changed the ebb and flow of the profession? And have attrition rates been changed by the past three years of test-and-punish? Does this mean that the fear of displaced young teachers is misplaced, or are we over-worried about chasing people away? And exactly how does this new data really supports or attacks any of the old arguments? I don't think we know any of these things yet, but now that we have actual hard data, we can start to figure them out and move past our "best guesses" of the past.
In the meantime, I would be pleased to find that my beloved profession is not hemorrhaging as badly as has been presumed. There are too few male and/or minority teachers-- that doesn't seem to have "changed." But I don't really care if this data make it easier or harder for reformsters or the rest of us to make our cases-- I want to see teaching be a stable, satisfying profession, and I want to deal with the issues that we actually have, and not the ones we imagine. Losing 1 in 5 teachers is nothing to brag about. So let the dissecting of this report begin.
Our data set is centered on around 155,000 teachers who began teaching in 2007-2008, looking at them through 2011-2012, so this is a data slice that shows us what has happened to the profession most recently, but not, it should be noted, since the CCSS test bomb dropped on classrooms all over the country.
The "first look" is brief and loaded with charts, so you should really go take a look at it yourself, but here are some highlights to whet your appetite.
The basic raw attrition rate is far better than the conventional wisdom about half of new teachers leaving within the first five years. NCES figures say that by year five, 17.3% of the Class of 07-08 has left the classroom.
When you break that attrition down by categories, you find
* men left in a higher percentage than women
* non-white teachers left in higher percentages than white
* teachers with a base pay of over $40K left at a vastly lesser rate than everyone else
A third of teachers with less than a bachelor degree left within the first year, but almost half of the teachers with "higher than a master's degree" left immediately.
Teachers who were not assigned mentors left at roughly twice the rate of teachers with mentors.
So if you're hiring teachers, a black man with a PhD who's going to be paid less than $40K is your worst bet for classroom longevity.
I'm not surprised to see that teachers with alternative certificates or no certificates at all were more likely to have left. Elementary teachers stuck around in greater percentages than secondary teachers (proving either high school jobs are harder or elementary teachers are tougher; as a high school teacher married to an elementary teacher, I am prepared to offer no theory on this matter).
But I was surprised to see that the attrition rate for city/suburban vs. town/rural was almost exactly the same. Town/rural starts out losing faster, but by year five had evened out.
Less surprising-- finding that schools with over 50% free and reduced lunch rates had higher attrition rates. But the difference was not as huge as you might have predicted (18.6% vs 15.7%)
Folks will poke through this data for a variety of purposes. For instance, this may be the place to ask if young teachers are fleeing or being pushed out. For this groups movers (changing to a new job), 2 in 5 were involuntary after five years. For leavers, it's more complicated. Involuntary departures varied from year to year, with a peak of 35.5% after the second year and a low of 19.9% after the fourth. I'd be curious to see if that means that pre-tenure departures through counseling or firing are actually happening out there, but it appears there's more number crunching and data diddling to do.
There's plenty of appendage regarding methodology and technical explanations that yield paragraphs like this one:
For the BTLS first wave, weights are obtained directly from the 2007–08 SASS, since all interviewed beginning teachers in SASS were eligible for BTLS. On the BTLS data file, the final weight for the first wave is called W1TFNLWGT, which is called TFNLWGT on the SASS data file.
So I'll leave it to wiser data crunchers to pry this apart a bit more. This is data that appears to be worth a careful, considered look.
Did the rate get better after the former 50% rate was bandied about, or was that rate (which was always an estimate) just not right? Have the forces of reform changed the ebb and flow of the profession? And have attrition rates been changed by the past three years of test-and-punish? Does this mean that the fear of displaced young teachers is misplaced, or are we over-worried about chasing people away? And exactly how does this new data really supports or attacks any of the old arguments? I don't think we know any of these things yet, but now that we have actual hard data, we can start to figure them out and move past our "best guesses" of the past.
In the meantime, I would be pleased to find that my beloved profession is not hemorrhaging as badly as has been presumed. There are too few male and/or minority teachers-- that doesn't seem to have "changed." But I don't really care if this data make it easier or harder for reformsters or the rest of us to make our cases-- I want to see teaching be a stable, satisfying profession, and I want to deal with the issues that we actually have, and not the ones we imagine. Losing 1 in 5 teachers is nothing to brag about. So let the dissecting of this report begin.
Wednesday, April 29, 2015
Merryl Tisch Shows How Test Supporters Get It Wrong
New York Chancellor of the Board of Regents Meryl Tisch stopped by All In with Chris Hayes to avoid answering some pointed questions about high stakes testing and the opt out movement in New York. She had the additional disadvantage of sitting beside Diane Ravitch, who did answer questions and made Tisch look even slipperier by comparison, but I think Tisch's appearance is a quick, capsuled look at what promoters of high stakes testing get wrong.
After opening with some background (Atlanta convictions, rising parent opposition, left-and-right wing hatred for Big Standardized Tests), Hayes notes that New York's opt out numbers are huger than ever and turns to Tisch.
Hayes: When you see the reports of opting out, including the high strong numbers from some areas, do you think "People are crazy" or "We are doing something wrong"?
Tisch does not think people are crazy (phew!) and believes that people "should act in what they perceive to be the best interests of their children." That's an important construction because like many BS Test fans, Tisch is also a charter school fan, which puts her in the awkward position of believing that parents should opt out of public school, but not public school testing. Choice is only okay sometimes.
So why the push back? "Perhaps we have not been clear enough in describing the intent of the test." So, opt out is a PR problem, because if people disagree with us, it could only be because they don't understand how right we are. So what is the intent of the test?
"The intent of the test is to give a snapshot of performance and allow parents to know where their children are at any given point in their educational career as compared to their peers."
And there's your first problem, because that doesn't even make sense. "Snapshot" and "at any given point in time" do not go together. I can't see how my child is doing at any point in time because I only have a snapshot from one particular point in time.
Tisch moves on immediately to asserting that income inequality is directly tied to the achievement gap (which is actually the BS Test score gap) for our poor students, and she starts waving the Wait Let Me Speak hand at Hayes because he is completely ready to call her on that piece of baloney, so she squeezes in that poor students can't make more money unless they have access to high quality education. Hayes calls her on her correlation-causation fallacy, but I'd like to call her on her fallacious equating of high quality education and high stakes snapshot testing. What does taking the BS Test have to do with access to high quality education?
The reformster answer (which Tisch doesn't get to) is that BS Test results allow us to target the students who are struggling. The problem here is that 1) we already know where they are and 2) after years of targeting them with BS Testing, we have yet to actually get them additional resources to help them do better.
Ravitch gets her turn and uses it to point out that tests are not vaccinations and these tests are not useful because the results provide no useful information. "There is no diagnostic value to the test," somehow prompts Tisch to smirk, like she has caught the help trying to act like they know how caviar really tastes. Hayes notes that Tisch clearly has something she wants to share with the rest of the class, and she unveils Test Purpose #2.
The tests are a diagnostic tool for curriculum and instruction development on the state level, and a way of making sure the taxpayers get their money's worth.
In other words, a completely different purpose for the tests than the one she offered about two minutes earlier. It's now a snapshot of how our children, schools, and systems are doing-- for the taxpayers. So that business about info for the parents was, what-- just spitballing? Because if this is the actual purpose of the test then 1) what's wrong with the NAEP and 2) why is it necessary to test every child every year?
Hayes points out that Tisch gave a non-response to the observation that the tests are not diagnostically useful for students, parents or children, and she insists that she be allowed to insert a non-response to that point. When parents opt out it messes things up. Also, she was in a doctor's office where a parent wanted to compare their child to a growth chart. Like the vaccination analogy, this is bogus for many reasons. I'll just pick one: When I weigh my child, I get a full picture of how much my child weighs, but when my child takes a BS Test and I get just the score, I get only the tiniest sliver of a slice of how well my student is doing in school.
As for the diagnostic value of the tests, Tisch asserts (with her asserty hand waving before her) that school districts report "all the time" that they make decisions about curriculum around the test results. Which certainly proves that schools will teach to the test as best they can, particularly when threatened with punitive responses to the results. This does not prove that either test results or the following curriculum adjustments serve the educational interests of the students. She also says words about how the ability to glean specific info from these tests is really important, which is not remotely the same as proving that it can actually be done.
Hayes asks Ravitch if there's a right way to do test-driven accountability or if it's just the wrong tree at which to be woofing. "Wrong tree," says Ravitch. You can't do the wrong thing the right way. The model is wrong. We are the most overtested nation in the world.
What would Tisch like to say to parents?
Tisch would like parents to understand that this is all the union's fault, and that if teacher evals hadn't been linked to the tests, they would all be testing away happily. Children have just been trapped in a labor dispute between the governor and teacher.
In about six minutes, Tisch manages to showcase a full range of pro-test arguments, all specious.
If the goal is to give parents information about their student, why does the test return so little data? And what difference does it make if other students opt out?
If the goal is to give teachers and schools actionable data to inform instruction, why return so little data, so late?
If the goal is to give taxpayers and policymakers feedback about how the system is doing, testing every child every year is by far the least cost-effective method.
If the goal is to identify and diagnose troubled schools for intervention, why don't bad scores trigger a release of additional resources for the identified school?
And why do pro-testers never, ever provide solid data about how well the tests actually measure any of the things they supposedly measure?
Tisch can blame the opt out movement on the union and politics all she wants; the reality on the ground is that more and more parents have had enough. The BS Test boosters are going to need better talking points.
Originally posted at View from the Cheap Seats
After opening with some background (Atlanta convictions, rising parent opposition, left-and-right wing hatred for Big Standardized Tests), Hayes notes that New York's opt out numbers are huger than ever and turns to Tisch.
Hayes: When you see the reports of opting out, including the high strong numbers from some areas, do you think "People are crazy" or "We are doing something wrong"?
Tisch does not think people are crazy (phew!) and believes that people "should act in what they perceive to be the best interests of their children." That's an important construction because like many BS Test fans, Tisch is also a charter school fan, which puts her in the awkward position of believing that parents should opt out of public school, but not public school testing. Choice is only okay sometimes.
So why the push back? "Perhaps we have not been clear enough in describing the intent of the test." So, opt out is a PR problem, because if people disagree with us, it could only be because they don't understand how right we are. So what is the intent of the test?
"The intent of the test is to give a snapshot of performance and allow parents to know where their children are at any given point in their educational career as compared to their peers."
And there's your first problem, because that doesn't even make sense. "Snapshot" and "at any given point in time" do not go together. I can't see how my child is doing at any point in time because I only have a snapshot from one particular point in time.
Tisch moves on immediately to asserting that income inequality is directly tied to the achievement gap (which is actually the BS Test score gap) for our poor students, and she starts waving the Wait Let Me Speak hand at Hayes because he is completely ready to call her on that piece of baloney, so she squeezes in that poor students can't make more money unless they have access to high quality education. Hayes calls her on her correlation-causation fallacy, but I'd like to call her on her fallacious equating of high quality education and high stakes snapshot testing. What does taking the BS Test have to do with access to high quality education?
The reformster answer (which Tisch doesn't get to) is that BS Test results allow us to target the students who are struggling. The problem here is that 1) we already know where they are and 2) after years of targeting them with BS Testing, we have yet to actually get them additional resources to help them do better.
Ravitch gets her turn and uses it to point out that tests are not vaccinations and these tests are not useful because the results provide no useful information. "There is no diagnostic value to the test," somehow prompts Tisch to smirk, like she has caught the help trying to act like they know how caviar really tastes. Hayes notes that Tisch clearly has something she wants to share with the rest of the class, and she unveils Test Purpose #2.
The tests are a diagnostic tool for curriculum and instruction development on the state level, and a way of making sure the taxpayers get their money's worth.
In other words, a completely different purpose for the tests than the one she offered about two minutes earlier. It's now a snapshot of how our children, schools, and systems are doing-- for the taxpayers. So that business about info for the parents was, what-- just spitballing? Because if this is the actual purpose of the test then 1) what's wrong with the NAEP and 2) why is it necessary to test every child every year?
Hayes points out that Tisch gave a non-response to the observation that the tests are not diagnostically useful for students, parents or children, and she insists that she be allowed to insert a non-response to that point. When parents opt out it messes things up. Also, she was in a doctor's office where a parent wanted to compare their child to a growth chart. Like the vaccination analogy, this is bogus for many reasons. I'll just pick one: When I weigh my child, I get a full picture of how much my child weighs, but when my child takes a BS Test and I get just the score, I get only the tiniest sliver of a slice of how well my student is doing in school.
As for the diagnostic value of the tests, Tisch asserts (with her asserty hand waving before her) that school districts report "all the time" that they make decisions about curriculum around the test results. Which certainly proves that schools will teach to the test as best they can, particularly when threatened with punitive responses to the results. This does not prove that either test results or the following curriculum adjustments serve the educational interests of the students. She also says words about how the ability to glean specific info from these tests is really important, which is not remotely the same as proving that it can actually be done.
Hayes asks Ravitch if there's a right way to do test-driven accountability or if it's just the wrong tree at which to be woofing. "Wrong tree," says Ravitch. You can't do the wrong thing the right way. The model is wrong. We are the most overtested nation in the world.
What would Tisch like to say to parents?
Tisch would like parents to understand that this is all the union's fault, and that if teacher evals hadn't been linked to the tests, they would all be testing away happily. Children have just been trapped in a labor dispute between the governor and teacher.
In about six minutes, Tisch manages to showcase a full range of pro-test arguments, all specious.
If the goal is to give parents information about their student, why does the test return so little data? And what difference does it make if other students opt out?
If the goal is to give teachers and schools actionable data to inform instruction, why return so little data, so late?
If the goal is to give taxpayers and policymakers feedback about how the system is doing, testing every child every year is by far the least cost-effective method.
If the goal is to identify and diagnose troubled schools for intervention, why don't bad scores trigger a release of additional resources for the identified school?
And why do pro-testers never, ever provide solid data about how well the tests actually measure any of the things they supposedly measure?
Tisch can blame the opt out movement on the union and politics all she wants; the reality on the ground is that more and more parents have had enough. The BS Test boosters are going to need better talking points.
Originally posted at View from the Cheap Seats
Baltimore's Katrina
Well, that didn't take long.
This appeared on twitter
And in my inbox was an email from the folks at The Center for Education Reform, a hard-core charter promoting group.
They shared a story of a mom who was happy to tell how getting her kid into a charter saved his life, and charters had improved her neighborhood. She was talking about DC, but the writer was careful to draw the parallels:
She noted the people in her community haven’t changed since the mid-90s, but school choice has empowered them to make better decisions and aspire for something greater. The nation is watching Baltimore clean up from yesterday’s destruction caused in large part by young schoolchildren that have no choice in a city where violence looks a lot like D.C. did twenty years ago.
Katrina was a golden opportunity for charter promoters to take over a whole city's school system.
Now, the boiling over of Baltimore will apparently be treated as another marketing tool. It's a two-fer; not only are the riots and racial unrest a disaster that trash the city, but they are a disaster created by public schools.
Luckily, charter schools save cities.
Not jobs. Not reining in a berserk police department. Not a reinvestment in the public schools that already exist. Not a concerted effort to reverse a cycle of social, political and economic injustice that has chewed neighborhoods to bits. Not sitting down with the people who live in the beleagured sections of the city. Not any ideas that might cost money and not turn a profit.
No, we need charter schools, stat. If black boys spent their youth in charter schools learning to line up, sit still, speak properly, and offer no excuses, the Baltimore riots would never happen.
Disaster capitalists have to be ready to jump on the next disruptive opportunity. Looks like the riots in Baltimore could be just the thing.
This appeared on twitter
They shared a story of a mom who was happy to tell how getting her kid into a charter saved his life, and charters had improved her neighborhood. She was talking about DC, but the writer was careful to draw the parallels:
She noted the people in her community haven’t changed since the mid-90s, but school choice has empowered them to make better decisions and aspire for something greater. The nation is watching Baltimore clean up from yesterday’s destruction caused in large part by young schoolchildren that have no choice in a city where violence looks a lot like D.C. did twenty years ago.
Katrina was a golden opportunity for charter promoters to take over a whole city's school system.
Now, the boiling over of Baltimore will apparently be treated as another marketing tool. It's a two-fer; not only are the riots and racial unrest a disaster that trash the city, but they are a disaster created by public schools.
Luckily, charter schools save cities.
Not jobs. Not reining in a berserk police department. Not a reinvestment in the public schools that already exist. Not a concerted effort to reverse a cycle of social, political and economic injustice that has chewed neighborhoods to bits. Not sitting down with the people who live in the beleagured sections of the city. Not any ideas that might cost money and not turn a profit.
No, we need charter schools, stat. If black boys spent their youth in charter schools learning to line up, sit still, speak properly, and offer no excuses, the Baltimore riots would never happen.
Disaster capitalists have to be ready to jump on the next disruptive opportunity. Looks like the riots in Baltimore could be just the thing.
Testing Minorities: Hard Lessons for Public Ed Supporters
How can they do that? Don't they realize they're just hurting themselves? Don't they realize that their actions will make it harder for them to get what they want?
No, I'm not repeating what some folks say about the riots in Baltimore.
I'm talking about what some public education supporters say about the advocates for civil rights and students with disabilities who support the Big Standardized Tests.
The word keeps coming out of DC-- the BS Tests are unlikely to go away, and one reason is that those advocates absolutely support testing and much that goes with it. And many of us who advocate for public education keep scratching our heads and declaring ourselves confused, mystified, even angry.
And yet, as Baltimore becomes one more place in America to erupt in acts of violence and rioting and fighting and ugly anger (all well covered by the news outlets) as well as equally passionate outpourings of love and support and desire to seek justice without destruction (which make much less compelling television, so you have to scan the internets for those)-- as all that happens, we get it. We express our carefully parsed feelings of condemnation for the destruction, but support and understanding for the frustration born of systemic racist abuse and oppression. So we post the MLK quotes and the Langston Hughes and all the ways we know to say that we get it.
And yet we remain mystified about the support for testing.
I have been as guilty as anyone. But today I heard myself talking about Baltimore with my students, saying something I've said a gazillion times-- people want to be heard, and if they don't think they are being heard they will keep raising their voice until they are, until they can't be ignored, even until they are screaming. If you want it to stop, you have to listen. Really listen, without making excuses or defending yourself, until they're done. And the longer you haven't been listening, the longer you have to listen before the conversation can get back to a place of equilibrium.
Even if you are absolutely certain you are right, you still have to listen.
The supporters of testing have told us, repeatedly, why they want the BS Tests-- because they are afraid of their children becoming invisible, forgotten, warehoused, ignored.
Supporters of public education have often failed to listen. Often. Oh, I've explained all the reasons that BS Tests aren't the answer, the ways in which I think they have been misled. This is not in your best interest. We even accuse leaders of their organizations of having taken enough Gates money to cloud their judgment. None of that shows that I have listened.
You know who's done a good job of listening? Reformsters.
Co-opting the language of civil rights is not just about co-opting a movement. It's about using language that shows that they hear the concerns.
Supporters of public education can't just say, "Trust us," because the history of public ed is not one to inspire trust. We have marginalized people. We have ignored people. Stacey Patton's blistering piece in Dame is a reminder that, to some folks, it certainly looks like many white folks didn't get fully exercised about educational injustice until it came to their schools. For some of us, the experience of reform been, "We were doing perfectly okay on our own, and suddenly these guys swooped down and tried to take everything over." For others it has been, "We were struggling with a failing system, and suddenly these guys swooped down and promised to make things better."
In my desire to protect and preserve the promise of public education, I can forget sometimes just how badly US public education has sometimes served poor and minority students and their communities.
It's not enough to say, "Those guys are not looking out for you." We can't just point out what reformsters do wrong. We have to talk about what we'll do right, what we'll do differently from the past.
I don't want to oversimplify this. Lots of public ed supporters get the social justice piece, too, and lots of social justice fighters know full well who and what the reformsters are. And while it's my style to write in a "we" voice, I don't want to presume to speak for people who are not me. But I am remembering that when people are behaving in a way that seems senseless to me, that's on me-- there's always sense to it, and if something seems senseless, that's because I haven't listened or looked well enough to find the sense.
The reformster use of civil rights language gets traction because there are real concerns and issues that need to be addressed, and many of us are not addressing them. In the last several days I heard many public ed advocates reacting to the news the leaders who support testing by saying that we need to get to them, to find out who they are, to get them to understand. I'm thinking we also need to listen to them, hear them, understand them.Yes, I know there are opportunists all around on all sides. But you can't take advantage unless there's a need to take advantage of, and I, for one, am someone who too easily slips into attacking the problem instead of helping to look for the solution.
Reformsters have made promises. They may have been cynical promises, designed for marketing show, but they've made them. While many of us speaking out for public education may not have the kind of power that the reformsters do, that does not mean we cannot fight for promises of our own. And we can certainly listen.
Nothing I've said is meant to suggest that reformster programs are not piles of baloney. But in the rush to point out how baloney-like they are, it's important not to also suggest that the concerns of the poor, minority, and special needs folks are baloney, too.
No, I'm not repeating what some folks say about the riots in Baltimore.
I'm talking about what some public education supporters say about the advocates for civil rights and students with disabilities who support the Big Standardized Tests.
The word keeps coming out of DC-- the BS Tests are unlikely to go away, and one reason is that those advocates absolutely support testing and much that goes with it. And many of us who advocate for public education keep scratching our heads and declaring ourselves confused, mystified, even angry.
And yet, as Baltimore becomes one more place in America to erupt in acts of violence and rioting and fighting and ugly anger (all well covered by the news outlets) as well as equally passionate outpourings of love and support and desire to seek justice without destruction (which make much less compelling television, so you have to scan the internets for those)-- as all that happens, we get it. We express our carefully parsed feelings of condemnation for the destruction, but support and understanding for the frustration born of systemic racist abuse and oppression. So we post the MLK quotes and the Langston Hughes and all the ways we know to say that we get it.
And yet we remain mystified about the support for testing.
I have been as guilty as anyone. But today I heard myself talking about Baltimore with my students, saying something I've said a gazillion times-- people want to be heard, and if they don't think they are being heard they will keep raising their voice until they are, until they can't be ignored, even until they are screaming. If you want it to stop, you have to listen. Really listen, without making excuses or defending yourself, until they're done. And the longer you haven't been listening, the longer you have to listen before the conversation can get back to a place of equilibrium.
Even if you are absolutely certain you are right, you still have to listen.
The supporters of testing have told us, repeatedly, why they want the BS Tests-- because they are afraid of their children becoming invisible, forgotten, warehoused, ignored.
Supporters of public education have often failed to listen. Often. Oh, I've explained all the reasons that BS Tests aren't the answer, the ways in which I think they have been misled. This is not in your best interest. We even accuse leaders of their organizations of having taken enough Gates money to cloud their judgment. None of that shows that I have listened.
You know who's done a good job of listening? Reformsters.
Co-opting the language of civil rights is not just about co-opting a movement. It's about using language that shows that they hear the concerns.
Supporters of public education can't just say, "Trust us," because the history of public ed is not one to inspire trust. We have marginalized people. We have ignored people. Stacey Patton's blistering piece in Dame is a reminder that, to some folks, it certainly looks like many white folks didn't get fully exercised about educational injustice until it came to their schools. For some of us, the experience of reform been, "We were doing perfectly okay on our own, and suddenly these guys swooped down and tried to take everything over." For others it has been, "We were struggling with a failing system, and suddenly these guys swooped down and promised to make things better."
In my desire to protect and preserve the promise of public education, I can forget sometimes just how badly US public education has sometimes served poor and minority students and their communities.
It's not enough to say, "Those guys are not looking out for you." We can't just point out what reformsters do wrong. We have to talk about what we'll do right, what we'll do differently from the past.
I don't want to oversimplify this. Lots of public ed supporters get the social justice piece, too, and lots of social justice fighters know full well who and what the reformsters are. And while it's my style to write in a "we" voice, I don't want to presume to speak for people who are not me. But I am remembering that when people are behaving in a way that seems senseless to me, that's on me-- there's always sense to it, and if something seems senseless, that's because I haven't listened or looked well enough to find the sense.
The reformster use of civil rights language gets traction because there are real concerns and issues that need to be addressed, and many of us are not addressing them. In the last several days I heard many public ed advocates reacting to the news the leaders who support testing by saying that we need to get to them, to find out who they are, to get them to understand. I'm thinking we also need to listen to them, hear them, understand them.Yes, I know there are opportunists all around on all sides. But you can't take advantage unless there's a need to take advantage of, and I, for one, am someone who too easily slips into attacking the problem instead of helping to look for the solution.
Reformsters have made promises. They may have been cynical promises, designed for marketing show, but they've made them. While many of us speaking out for public education may not have the kind of power that the reformsters do, that does not mean we cannot fight for promises of our own. And we can certainly listen.
Nothing I've said is meant to suggest that reformster programs are not piles of baloney. But in the rush to point out how baloney-like they are, it's important not to also suggest that the concerns of the poor, minority, and special needs folks are baloney, too.
Tuesday, April 28, 2015
WSJ: Fordham's Four Kinds of Wrong
Mike Petrilli and Aaron Churchill took to the Wall Street Journal Monday to present four kinds of wrong while promoting a new Fordham report to be released today.
Before we even get into what they said or why it's baloney, let's open with the caveat that they themselves left out of the article. The study looks at the benefits of closing schools and was done in Ohio, where the Fordham operates charters that directly benefit from the closing schools. So this is, once again, a study touting the benefits of cigarette smoking brought to you by your friends at the Tobacco Institute.
Fordham's claim is simple-- when schools are closed and the students are moved to a new school, those students gain forty-nine extra days of learning. Closing the school and moving the students raises the student achievement.
That's the claim. How is it baloney? Let me count the ways.
1) "Days of learning" is not a thing.
While this concept is frequently used, I've never encountered its use by anyone except reformsters trying to make a case for Reform d'jour. I have never seen it used by a serious researcher. While that may just mean I'm not well-read enough (you can edify me in the comments), I'm still unconvinced by it as a measure.
First, it assumes that learning is a simple linear progression, like I-79 from Pittsburgh to Erie. That strikes me as a view of education so simplistic as to be useless. What is a Day of Learning, exactly, and do we distinguish between a Monday of Learning or a Friday of Learning. How about the First Day of School, which is pretty slow on the learning, even compared to a Last Day Before Vacation Day of Learning.
Second, like VAM, it assumes the power to correctly predict exactly how much learning a hypothetical student in an alternate universe would have achieved. In other words, I can't say that Chris achieved three "extra" days of learning unless I know how many days of learning Chris would have achieved in that alternate universe.
2) We're talking about test scores. That's it.
The scores on Big Standardized Tests that cover just two subject areas are not a valid proxy for student achievement or learning in general. Reformsters like to talk about "student achievement" because that sounds like a broad, beautiful, whole-child measure. Who doesn't want to see students achieve?
But we're not talking about the whole child or real, robust measures of the complex web of skills and knowledge possessed by complicated individual human beings. We're talking about scores from a single test on two subjects. Even if it's a great test (and there really is no reason to think it is, but let's play the if game), that's not a measure of student achievement.
And when we're talking about tests scores, it's always important to remember one thing-- nobody has ever displayed a convincing causal link between test scores and anything. Nobody has ever filled in the blanks in "When a student gets higher test scores, that will lead later in life to ________" with anything other than unsupported baloney.
3) We're talking about very modest and mysterious gains.
We're talking about a move from the 20th to the 22nd or 23rd percentile. This is not a dramatic increase. This is a blip.
Put another way-- if the school that we decided to close had posted this kind of gain in the last year before closure, would the Fordham been out in front, standing in front of the bulldozers hollering "Stop! No!! You can't close this school because they are showing dramatic improvement!!" Would they declare that this climb in percentile ranking was enough to declare the turnaround of a failing school successful?
Now, the report must feature some complicated math, because the Coming Attractions trailer also claims 49 extra days of learning over three years, which would be a over a quarter of a year-- how does a blip translate to that much learning.
And if the students displayed a two or three percentile grade, does that not mean that other students were pushed down in percentile rankings? Did transferring students from the closed school make students in the receiving school worse?
4) We're ignoring some fairly significant factors.
Even some reform boosters recognize the value of social capital, and there is research to back it up. Ties to community provide a strong and valuable influence over the trajectory of a child's life, and nothing gives a student strong community ties like a neighborhood school.
So ripping a child away from a neighborhood school is not simply, as Petrilli and Churchill put it, "politically dangerous"-- it's a policy that comes with tremendous cost to the community and the students. It's politically dangerous because people understand that it comes at a huge educational and social cost. It cuts the child loose from a community support system while hollowing out the heart of that community. It tells us something about the expectations of American public schooling that we never used to say "community schools" for the same reason we don't order "wet water" in a restaurant. A community base is the foundation of US public education.
In plain English
Fordham is proposing, with plenty of bells and whistles and pretty filigree, that we close community schools, and uproot and disperse the students of those communities, so that they will score a few points better on math and reading tests.
How can this possibly be more cost-effective than investing resources and support in making the community school better? Why not spend every dollar and cent that you were going to spend reconfiguring administration and distribution of students, transportation costs, materials cost and the human cost to the social capital of the community-- why not invest all that in the school you've already got? What are you doing at this magical new school that you could not do at the school that already exists-- without gutting a community, uprooting children, and blasting away whatever social capital you may have?
Closing schools and dispersing the students weakens the community, weakens the forces that are needed to help students rise and advance. It is exactly the wrong thing to do, and therefor, proposing to do so ought to come with a pretty convincing list of large and transformative benefits. Fordham is not making that case, not even remotely.
Before we even get into what they said or why it's baloney, let's open with the caveat that they themselves left out of the article. The study looks at the benefits of closing schools and was done in Ohio, where the Fordham operates charters that directly benefit from the closing schools. So this is, once again, a study touting the benefits of cigarette smoking brought to you by your friends at the Tobacco Institute.
Fordham's claim is simple-- when schools are closed and the students are moved to a new school, those students gain forty-nine extra days of learning. Closing the school and moving the students raises the student achievement.
That's the claim. How is it baloney? Let me count the ways.
1) "Days of learning" is not a thing.
While this concept is frequently used, I've never encountered its use by anyone except reformsters trying to make a case for Reform d'jour. I have never seen it used by a serious researcher. While that may just mean I'm not well-read enough (you can edify me in the comments), I'm still unconvinced by it as a measure.
First, it assumes that learning is a simple linear progression, like I-79 from Pittsburgh to Erie. That strikes me as a view of education so simplistic as to be useless. What is a Day of Learning, exactly, and do we distinguish between a Monday of Learning or a Friday of Learning. How about the First Day of School, which is pretty slow on the learning, even compared to a Last Day Before Vacation Day of Learning.
Second, like VAM, it assumes the power to correctly predict exactly how much learning a hypothetical student in an alternate universe would have achieved. In other words, I can't say that Chris achieved three "extra" days of learning unless I know how many days of learning Chris would have achieved in that alternate universe.
2) We're talking about test scores. That's it.
The scores on Big Standardized Tests that cover just two subject areas are not a valid proxy for student achievement or learning in general. Reformsters like to talk about "student achievement" because that sounds like a broad, beautiful, whole-child measure. Who doesn't want to see students achieve?
But we're not talking about the whole child or real, robust measures of the complex web of skills and knowledge possessed by complicated individual human beings. We're talking about scores from a single test on two subjects. Even if it's a great test (and there really is no reason to think it is, but let's play the if game), that's not a measure of student achievement.
And when we're talking about tests scores, it's always important to remember one thing-- nobody has ever displayed a convincing causal link between test scores and anything. Nobody has ever filled in the blanks in "When a student gets higher test scores, that will lead later in life to ________" with anything other than unsupported baloney.
3) We're talking about very modest and mysterious gains.
We're talking about a move from the 20th to the 22nd or 23rd percentile. This is not a dramatic increase. This is a blip.
Put another way-- if the school that we decided to close had posted this kind of gain in the last year before closure, would the Fordham been out in front, standing in front of the bulldozers hollering "Stop! No!! You can't close this school because they are showing dramatic improvement!!" Would they declare that this climb in percentile ranking was enough to declare the turnaround of a failing school successful?
Now, the report must feature some complicated math, because the Coming Attractions trailer also claims 49 extra days of learning over three years, which would be a over a quarter of a year-- how does a blip translate to that much learning.
And if the students displayed a two or three percentile grade, does that not mean that other students were pushed down in percentile rankings? Did transferring students from the closed school make students in the receiving school worse?
4) We're ignoring some fairly significant factors.
Even some reform boosters recognize the value of social capital, and there is research to back it up. Ties to community provide a strong and valuable influence over the trajectory of a child's life, and nothing gives a student strong community ties like a neighborhood school.
So ripping a child away from a neighborhood school is not simply, as Petrilli and Churchill put it, "politically dangerous"-- it's a policy that comes with tremendous cost to the community and the students. It's politically dangerous because people understand that it comes at a huge educational and social cost. It cuts the child loose from a community support system while hollowing out the heart of that community. It tells us something about the expectations of American public schooling that we never used to say "community schools" for the same reason we don't order "wet water" in a restaurant. A community base is the foundation of US public education.
In plain English
Fordham is proposing, with plenty of bells and whistles and pretty filigree, that we close community schools, and uproot and disperse the students of those communities, so that they will score a few points better on math and reading tests.
How can this possibly be more cost-effective than investing resources and support in making the community school better? Why not spend every dollar and cent that you were going to spend reconfiguring administration and distribution of students, transportation costs, materials cost and the human cost to the social capital of the community-- why not invest all that in the school you've already got? What are you doing at this magical new school that you could not do at the school that already exists-- without gutting a community, uprooting children, and blasting away whatever social capital you may have?
Closing schools and dispersing the students weakens the community, weakens the forces that are needed to help students rise and advance. It is exactly the wrong thing to do, and therefor, proposing to do so ought to come with a pretty convincing list of large and transformative benefits. Fordham is not making that case, not even remotely.
Monday, April 27, 2015
Randi, LIly, and Diane at NPE
It was the marquee event of the NPE convention. Lily Eskelsen Garcia and Randi Weingarten sitting down with Diane Ravitch in front of a stuffed-full ballroom. I did not take notes, and the video is not up to rewatch yet, but I want to put my impressions down before they fade too much.
An organizer made one more fruitless attempt to get a room filled with teachers to behave, because when it comes to behaving like good students, teachers are the worst. But as he did so, he informed us that 1,000 people were already online to watch-- so we had to start on time.
Xian Barrett did the introductions, which had to be just a bit nervewracking, but he set a nice tone-- not too formal, but still respecting the weight of the occasion. Nicely done.
My expectations were not high. Both Garcia and Weingarten have carefully staked out and fully fleshed out positions, and while they are the faces of their unions, they are also tied to a big bundle of leadership teams and union bureaucracy. I did not imagine for a minute that either was suddenly going to throw up her hands and say, "Yeah, you know what? I've been wrong about that. I'm going to go ahead and reverse my union's position on the spot."
But it was my first time to see either in person, and I was interested to see how that played out.
Both came in full professional labor leader snappy dress and were whisked to one side moments before the start to don official NPE t-shirts. Garcia by far beats all comes in a hair contest-- it is just a magnificent mane, as iconic as an Elvis DA flip.
The discussion got off to a somewhat plastic start-- Ravitch asked a question and each leader in her turn launched into full-on campaign mode, which led to Ravitch's imposition of a three minute time limit on answers. Ravitch was herself as moderator-- one minute she's a scrappy political veteran and the next she's your grandmother learning how to use a smartphone app.
My not-high expectations were met. Garcia displayed a great grasp of how privatization, crushing unions, dismantling democracy, and test-and-punish all fit together into a larger picture that is bad for teachers, students, and public education. But she either can't or won't see how Common Core is part and parcel of that same drive to break up public education, and her enthusiasm for the Core (there's a great app for the Core! whee!) is both disappointing and intellectually puzzling. Hating testing and loving the Core is like going to the pound and saying, "I want to take home a puppy, but only the end that smiles and licks you on the face. I don't want to take home the end that poops."
Both were support-ish of the opt out movement (Parents should be able to do it; teachers should be able to talk about it). But neither was very strong in denouncing the enshrinement of testing in the ESEA rewrites. You can read a full version of what were essentially Garcia's remarks which boil down to "Less testing, less punishment for test results, and no using tests for purposes for which they weren't created." She is not so much envisioning a world without the Big Standardized Test as a world where the Big Assessment is so swell that everyone welcomes it cheerfully (in part because her imaginary assessment will cover what she considers the good parts of Common Core). She might as well envision a future in which students will ride to school on the backs of brightly colored dinosaurs. The assessment she imagines cannot and will not exist on a national scale.
I did hear Weingarten say one interesting thing (well, two, if you count the part where she said that she had no particular desire to marry her partner). What I believe I heard her say was that testing "has killed" or "has destroyed" the promise of Common Core. I'll be checking the tape-- if I'm correct, then Weingarten just declared Common Core dead, which is not as good as repudiation, but I'll still take it. Her hardest question actually came afterwards, when Mercedes Schneider asked her about that damn robocall to help Cuomo (let's not pretend it wasn't that).
The big moment came with the agreement by both that their unions would no longer take money from Gates. I don't imagine for a moment that they did so on the spot (or that they have the authority, really, to make that decision), but it was still a nice moment.
It was interesting to see their personal styles on display. I have to love Garcia for being quick-witted and snarky; plus, she speaks in a manner that seems completely authentic, like a regular human being. Weingarten is more of an old-school labor leader who suddenly erupts into a hollering bluster that I expect is a measure technique for whipping a crow up into a frenzy, but on Sunday seemed a bit affected and at times over-the-top. But I was born in New England, so maybe that's me.
I know lots of folks who watched from home and in the ballroom were disappointed. I wasn't, but as I said, I wasn't expecting much. Large national unions cannot turn on a dime, and labor leaders live with political realities (we may not like it, but I have heard multiple times from multiple directions that mandatory testing is untouchable in ESEA in part because advocates for civil rights and students with disabilities support testing fervently).
Their support of Common Core is misguided and wrong. Their opposition to test-driven reform-- but not the actual tests-- is befuddling. They have some great things to say about building and defending union power-- but having the power would mean a great deal more if they'd use it for something useful. I haven't liked their position on Common Core and testing
But here's the thing to like about Sunday at NPE.
They were there.
The two leaders of the largest teacher unions in the country agreed to come explain themselves and answer questions in front of a houseful of people who were vocal advocates for public education. Think back less than two years to Dennis Van Roekel dismissing NEA member opposition to Common Core with a flip, "Well, what do you propose to do instead?" That's not where NEA is now.
Even if you're just paying lip service-- you can't do it if you don't know what the answer is supposed to be. Two years ago our union leaders didn't even know that. Before giving her answer about testing, Weingarten acknowledged that some people were going to boo (they didn't, and there wasn't much booing, but there was plenty of hissing at some of the worst)-- she knows that her positions are not popular with advocates for public education.
Two years ago the Network for Public Education barely existed, and the support for public education that it represents was fragmented and invisible to the folks doing political calculus. Not that long ago national union leaders could have easily dismissed NPE and the viewpoint it represents. Today, they cannot.
On so many fronts, the folks who stand up for public education are becoming harder to ignore (looking at you, NY opt outs). Reformsters are spending money to try to rebut and respond to public education advocates. In fact, Peter Cunningham of Education Post, the heavily financed pro-reformster rapid-response PR organization was also at the convention this weekend.
You know the drill. First they ignore you. But eventually, they can't. The movement to defend and support public education has become strong enough that the union presidents came to us to talk about it. Yes, they brought much of their same old baggage. But they came.
As several speakers noted this weekend, this is a long haul. We are not going to turn any of the large organizations involved quickly or abruptly. But we can help them evolve. And the best place to start is with our natural allies, and THAT can't start until they show up to talk to us. Who knows-- maybe next time they'll come to listen to us, too. Baby steps.
An organizer made one more fruitless attempt to get a room filled with teachers to behave, because when it comes to behaving like good students, teachers are the worst. But as he did so, he informed us that 1,000 people were already online to watch-- so we had to start on time.
Xian Barrett did the introductions, which had to be just a bit nervewracking, but he set a nice tone-- not too formal, but still respecting the weight of the occasion. Nicely done.
My expectations were not high. Both Garcia and Weingarten have carefully staked out and fully fleshed out positions, and while they are the faces of their unions, they are also tied to a big bundle of leadership teams and union bureaucracy. I did not imagine for a minute that either was suddenly going to throw up her hands and say, "Yeah, you know what? I've been wrong about that. I'm going to go ahead and reverse my union's position on the spot."
But it was my first time to see either in person, and I was interested to see how that played out.
Both came in full professional labor leader snappy dress and were whisked to one side moments before the start to don official NPE t-shirts. Garcia by far beats all comes in a hair contest-- it is just a magnificent mane, as iconic as an Elvis DA flip.
The discussion got off to a somewhat plastic start-- Ravitch asked a question and each leader in her turn launched into full-on campaign mode, which led to Ravitch's imposition of a three minute time limit on answers. Ravitch was herself as moderator-- one minute she's a scrappy political veteran and the next she's your grandmother learning how to use a smartphone app.
My not-high expectations were met. Garcia displayed a great grasp of how privatization, crushing unions, dismantling democracy, and test-and-punish all fit together into a larger picture that is bad for teachers, students, and public education. But she either can't or won't see how Common Core is part and parcel of that same drive to break up public education, and her enthusiasm for the Core (there's a great app for the Core! whee!) is both disappointing and intellectually puzzling. Hating testing and loving the Core is like going to the pound and saying, "I want to take home a puppy, but only the end that smiles and licks you on the face. I don't want to take home the end that poops."
Both were support-ish of the opt out movement (Parents should be able to do it; teachers should be able to talk about it). But neither was very strong in denouncing the enshrinement of testing in the ESEA rewrites. You can read a full version of what were essentially Garcia's remarks which boil down to "Less testing, less punishment for test results, and no using tests for purposes for which they weren't created." She is not so much envisioning a world without the Big Standardized Test as a world where the Big Assessment is so swell that everyone welcomes it cheerfully (in part because her imaginary assessment will cover what she considers the good parts of Common Core). She might as well envision a future in which students will ride to school on the backs of brightly colored dinosaurs. The assessment she imagines cannot and will not exist on a national scale.
I did hear Weingarten say one interesting thing (well, two, if you count the part where she said that she had no particular desire to marry her partner). What I believe I heard her say was that testing "has killed" or "has destroyed" the promise of Common Core. I'll be checking the tape-- if I'm correct, then Weingarten just declared Common Core dead, which is not as good as repudiation, but I'll still take it. Her hardest question actually came afterwards, when Mercedes Schneider asked her about that damn robocall to help Cuomo (let's not pretend it wasn't that).
The big moment came with the agreement by both that their unions would no longer take money from Gates. I don't imagine for a moment that they did so on the spot (or that they have the authority, really, to make that decision), but it was still a nice moment.
It was interesting to see their personal styles on display. I have to love Garcia for being quick-witted and snarky; plus, she speaks in a manner that seems completely authentic, like a regular human being. Weingarten is more of an old-school labor leader who suddenly erupts into a hollering bluster that I expect is a measure technique for whipping a crow up into a frenzy, but on Sunday seemed a bit affected and at times over-the-top. But I was born in New England, so maybe that's me.
I know lots of folks who watched from home and in the ballroom were disappointed. I wasn't, but as I said, I wasn't expecting much. Large national unions cannot turn on a dime, and labor leaders live with political realities (we may not like it, but I have heard multiple times from multiple directions that mandatory testing is untouchable in ESEA in part because advocates for civil rights and students with disabilities support testing fervently).
Their support of Common Core is misguided and wrong. Their opposition to test-driven reform-- but not the actual tests-- is befuddling. They have some great things to say about building and defending union power-- but having the power would mean a great deal more if they'd use it for something useful. I haven't liked their position on Common Core and testing
But here's the thing to like about Sunday at NPE.
They were there.
The two leaders of the largest teacher unions in the country agreed to come explain themselves and answer questions in front of a houseful of people who were vocal advocates for public education. Think back less than two years to Dennis Van Roekel dismissing NEA member opposition to Common Core with a flip, "Well, what do you propose to do instead?" That's not where NEA is now.
Even if you're just paying lip service-- you can't do it if you don't know what the answer is supposed to be. Two years ago our union leaders didn't even know that. Before giving her answer about testing, Weingarten acknowledged that some people were going to boo (they didn't, and there wasn't much booing, but there was plenty of hissing at some of the worst)-- she knows that her positions are not popular with advocates for public education.
Two years ago the Network for Public Education barely existed, and the support for public education that it represents was fragmented and invisible to the folks doing political calculus. Not that long ago national union leaders could have easily dismissed NPE and the viewpoint it represents. Today, they cannot.
On so many fronts, the folks who stand up for public education are becoming harder to ignore (looking at you, NY opt outs). Reformsters are spending money to try to rebut and respond to public education advocates. In fact, Peter Cunningham of Education Post, the heavily financed pro-reformster rapid-response PR organization was also at the convention this weekend.
You know the drill. First they ignore you. But eventually, they can't. The movement to defend and support public education has become strong enough that the union presidents came to us to talk about it. Yes, they brought much of their same old baggage. But they came.
As several speakers noted this weekend, this is a long haul. We are not going to turn any of the large organizations involved quickly or abruptly. But we can help them evolve. And the best place to start is with our natural allies, and THAT can't start until they show up to talk to us. Who knows-- maybe next time they'll come to listen to us, too. Baby steps.
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