In April, the Alliance to Reclaim Our Schools and the Center for Popular Democracy released their looks-like-it's-becoming-annual report on charter school fraud. The Tip of the Iceberg: Charter School Vulnerabilities to Waste, Fraud, and Abuse has several points to make and some numbers to throw around, but the major point is, "Wow! Many charters abuse the system something fierce."
The report sorts the various reports of fraud that they've cataloged into six varieties.
Operators using fraud for personal gain.
This is good, old-fashioned "I'm going to dip into the company cash register fraud. Examples include Masai Skiefs of the Harambee Institute of Science, who helped himself to $88K for, among other things, a house down payment. He was a slacker compared to the Pierces, of Minnesota's Right Step Academy, who paid for a Caribbean vacation, $11,125 worth of Timberwolves season tickets, and almost $18K of credit card debt.
School revenues used to support other operator businesses.
This would include the Philadelphia charter operator who used a half a million in tax dollars for his school to help keep his restaurant and health food store in business. Or the Florida charter director who used $750K from his school to finance his apartment complex.
These are really fine examples of the charter philosophy that says, "That money doesn't belong to the taxpayer-- it belongs to the child. And once the child enrolls in the school, the money belongs to me." This is the bold entrepreneurial spirit run amuck.
Mismanagement that puts children in actual danger.
In all fairness, this is more like "not following state regulations to insure safety of children." Less common, but still concerning. Take the two Ohio charters that were shut down by the state because, among other things, they were not feeding the students. Or the Paterson NJ charter in which 75% of the staff never passed a background check.
Charters requesting public funds for services not provided.
Ah, good old-fashioned fraud. Just charge the government for things you never did. California's Cato School of Reason Charter School managed to soak the state for millions of dollars for students who were actually attending private school elsewhere. In Minnesota, the Community School of Excellence Charter School had its students attest to lunches that they did not eat so that the school could be reimbursed for them. Not providing mandated special ed services is also a popular twist on this trick.
Boosting Enrollment
Sort of a special subcategory of the previous scam, this is billing the government for students you just don't have. Success Academy in Minnesota was found to have overbilled the taxpayers over $600K. The report cites schools in Florida, Pennsylvania, and California that listed enrollment over and above the number of students actually in evidence.
Mismanagement
Keeping books for a school is hard, but many states don't require charter operators even to prove they can balance their own check book (Hey, remember that time New York authorized a twenty-two year old who hadn't even finished college to run a charter school?)
The report has appendices full of more specifics-- and this is just the stuff that made it into official paperwork of charges, convictions, or state direct orders to pay money back.
The grand total of charter waste and fraud is now over $200 million dollars. The more sexy number that made it into the papers is $1.4 billion in the next year, but that's a bit of grandstanding-- the report uses a methodology from the Association of Certified Fraud Examiners, and the methodology is to look at the grand total and assume that 5% of it will end up drained by fraud. So that's not exactly a rock-solid number.
But the $200 million? That's a real number, and simply it only includes what has been proven by or admitted to authorities, I feel comfortable believing that there's a heck of a lot more money than that involved. And that's before we get to all the perfectly legal methods that charters can use to bilk the taxpayer (lease a building to yourself, anyone?).
That is over $200 million dollars drained away from public schools. That is over $200 million that public schools didn't have to buy supplies, hire staff, maintain buildings, and keep from raising taxes. That is $200 million dollars taken from taxpayers.
The longer the modern charter movement continues, the more instances of misbehavior come to light and the more obvious it becomes (even and especially to the non-fraudster charter operators) that the charter sector needs-- at the very least-- to be more tightly regulated and controlled.
The charter industry will push back against that, as they have pushed back against every attempt to inhibit their ability to just roll in piles of money freely, answering to nobody. In fact, word on the street is that a brand-new Education News Service is about to be launched. It will employ actual professional reporters, but they will be employed only after signing a pledge that they will cast a critical eye only on public schools and never on charter schools. So there's that to look forward to.
But in the meantime, check out this report, and read up on the many, many ways that charter scam artists make themselves rich and their industry look bad all at the same time.
Monday, May 11, 2015
Sunday, May 10, 2015
Is the Right Splintering on Testing?
Last week both Rick Hess (American Enterprise Institute) and Robert Pondiscio (Fordham) turned up in the pages of US News, each to post his own response to the opt out movement. Since both of these guys come from the Fordham-AEI-Stanford axis of market-based reformsterism, it's interesting to note that they seem to disagree. Of course, the right is no more monolithic than any other segment of opinion, but it's still interesting to look for points of debate within reformsterdom.
Pondiscio presented Four Lessons To Learn from the Opt Out Debate, which was really a list of four things that opt-outers need to wise up about.
4) Unions are driving discontent. Pondiscio and Mike Petrilli have both tried to sell this idea, but it is a pig that will not fly. Has the union in NY successfully stirred up agitation among parents over everything? That's a clear "no." The union could not roil up opposition to the Big Standardized Test if the parents of New York thought the test was just peachy. One could argue that the teachers simply removed one last obstacle to opting out (fear that opting out would hurt beloved Miss Othmar) and let nature take its course.
Bottom line-- the union could not create discontent out of thin air.
3) Black test scores matter. Here Pondiscio tries to sell the "opt out is a middle class white thing" narrative, which ignores a great number of details (and makes the odd assumption that white = middle class and black = poor which-- really?) It also tries to sell the pretense that non-wealthy non-whites have really been benefiting by having their neighborhood school bulldozed and their democratic voices silenced.
2) Don't follow the money. Pondiscio's argument here is that everything in a school costs money.
"The test prep industry is lucrative," writes anti-testing NPR reporter Anya Kamenetz, who also points to a report that calculated $669 million spent on tests in 45 states, or $27 per student. That's it? The desk on which your kid takes his tests costs four times that amount.
Pondiscio is arguing that "money-making" does not automatically equal "evil and untrustworthy." But the difference between the test and the desk is that the desk has a proven and recognized purpose in the classroom. The test is there because of an artificially created "need," and since the test manufacturers were themselves instrumental in creating that artificial "need," they are suspect.
1) Respect parental choice. I saved this one till last because it is the crux of the issue. The opt-out movement has put many people (at least those who care about some level of intellectual consistency and honesty) in a bind. If you think parents should get to choose their own schools, it seems awfully inconsistent to say they should not get a choice when it comes to testing. (There's also a problem if you're anti-school choice but pro opt-out-- I have an answer for that, but that's for a whole other piece. I just didn't want you to think I'd missed that).
Those of us who value testing need to do a better job of explaining to unhappy parents what's in it for them. But we also must respect parental prerogative, whether we like it or not.
Rick Hess went first, but he still calls Pondiscio on that last point.
Oddly enough, suburban parents seem oddly ungrateful for these efforts to help them see that their children’s schools actually stink. When reformers wonder why these parents don’t get it, the usual culprit is “messaging.” And the usual solution is better PR.
Hess's piece "Opt out parents have a point" is pure Hess. Whatever you think of his goals and track record, Hess is smart, and he doesn't hesitate to call his fellow-reformsters on weak arguments, like a white hat hacker strolling in to say, "You can't argue that. It's weak and stupid and they will punch a hole in you right here--" and then he punches the hole himself to prove the point, even as he subtly plays the angle to strengthen other pieces of the argument. Of all the people I read, few are as good as Hess at playing the chess game of arguments and angles and looking dozens of moves ahead.
So Hess points out that parents are not idiots and the opt-out revolt is not some crazy tin hat fluke, even as he doubles down on the idea that opt out is white suburban thing. In Hess's narrative, "Middle-class parents are right to question whether today's education reforms will help their kids." That line is the sub-heading of his article.
Reformsters, Hess suggests, have gotten tied up in trying to convince middle-class parents that their schools actually suck, and see parents as irrational for resisting such enlightenment (insert Duncan mom quote here).
But there’s another possibility. It’s that these parents are being reasonable when they worry that the reform agenda, whatever its merits when it comes to schools steeped in dysfunction, does more harm than good for their kids. Reformers have tended to dismiss this possibility, while seeking to convince middle-class parents that their schools are much worse than they may realize.
Hess is offering a smoother formulation of Merryl Tisch's clumsy compromise offer that "better schools" could be exempt from test-bombing. This will be a tricky argument to pull off-- how to tell higher-income schools, "No, we won't use the same ugly blunt tools on you that we'll use on the poor schools," when the argument for poor schools has always been, "We'll use the same instruments on you that we use on the rich kids."
Hess offers three concrete proposals. Make testing more transparent, top to bottom. Broaden the "vision of excellence" beyond simple math and English. Drop the redistribution of teachers planning for creating excellence everywhere.
Meh. Transparency is great, but unlikely. Hess does always seem to have disliked the narrowing of curriculum that testing has driven. Nobody anywhere has anything remotely like a real plan for redistributing "good" teachers, so objecting to that is a freebie.
But Hess's real Big Idea here is to bridge the gap between poor and middle class parents so that they are not fighting each other, and to listen to what they want and try to get it to them.
Damn, but I admire Hess's precision of argument and language. Here's what he says:
Maybe the solution is not to berate these parents, but to ask what they want for their children, find ways to help make that happen and seek opportunities to promote reform that benefits a broad coalition of low-income and middle-class families.
This is not the blunt, bald-faced call for school choice (and charters) that Pondiscio made; it's an artful and careful laying of the foundation for the same argument.
That would make sense. The market forces wing of the reformsters is most enamored of choice (and charter) in schools. It has already pretty much abandoned Common Core-- they don't need it and in fact it now becomes an argument in favor of charters ("Get your kids away from that stupid Common Core"). Now, if they're willing, they can ju-jitsu the opt-out momentum straight into an argument for a market-driven choice (and charter) system. I don't think there's any real splintering happening at all.
The market wing will always like some sort of instrument for generating data, because they believe that free-market choices have to be based on some sort of data. But the reformster market wing (schools would be better with free-market profit-judged competition) is not the same as the reformster elite betters wing (the Lessers should shut up and let their Betters tell them what they need) and it's a mistake to confuse the two. The opt out movement will continue to confound and annoy the elites because, to them, it's a bunch of the Lessers acting up and misbehaving. But if the marketeers can set that aside, they can use the opt out movement to their advantage. I'm pretty sure Hess can see that; now he's just got to clue in his allies without tipping off the rest of us.
Pondiscio presented Four Lessons To Learn from the Opt Out Debate, which was really a list of four things that opt-outers need to wise up about.
4) Unions are driving discontent. Pondiscio and Mike Petrilli have both tried to sell this idea, but it is a pig that will not fly. Has the union in NY successfully stirred up agitation among parents over everything? That's a clear "no." The union could not roil up opposition to the Big Standardized Test if the parents of New York thought the test was just peachy. One could argue that the teachers simply removed one last obstacle to opting out (fear that opting out would hurt beloved Miss Othmar) and let nature take its course.
Bottom line-- the union could not create discontent out of thin air.
3) Black test scores matter. Here Pondiscio tries to sell the "opt out is a middle class white thing" narrative, which ignores a great number of details (and makes the odd assumption that white = middle class and black = poor which-- really?) It also tries to sell the pretense that non-wealthy non-whites have really been benefiting by having their neighborhood school bulldozed and their democratic voices silenced.
2) Don't follow the money. Pondiscio's argument here is that everything in a school costs money.
"The test prep industry is lucrative," writes anti-testing NPR reporter Anya Kamenetz, who also points to a report that calculated $669 million spent on tests in 45 states, or $27 per student. That's it? The desk on which your kid takes his tests costs four times that amount.
Pondiscio is arguing that "money-making" does not automatically equal "evil and untrustworthy." But the difference between the test and the desk is that the desk has a proven and recognized purpose in the classroom. The test is there because of an artificially created "need," and since the test manufacturers were themselves instrumental in creating that artificial "need," they are suspect.
1) Respect parental choice. I saved this one till last because it is the crux of the issue. The opt-out movement has put many people (at least those who care about some level of intellectual consistency and honesty) in a bind. If you think parents should get to choose their own schools, it seems awfully inconsistent to say they should not get a choice when it comes to testing. (There's also a problem if you're anti-school choice but pro opt-out-- I have an answer for that, but that's for a whole other piece. I just didn't want you to think I'd missed that).
Those of us who value testing need to do a better job of explaining to unhappy parents what's in it for them. But we also must respect parental prerogative, whether we like it or not.
Rick Hess went first, but he still calls Pondiscio on that last point.
Oddly enough, suburban parents seem oddly ungrateful for these efforts to help them see that their children’s schools actually stink. When reformers wonder why these parents don’t get it, the usual culprit is “messaging.” And the usual solution is better PR.
Hess's piece "Opt out parents have a point" is pure Hess. Whatever you think of his goals and track record, Hess is smart, and he doesn't hesitate to call his fellow-reformsters on weak arguments, like a white hat hacker strolling in to say, "You can't argue that. It's weak and stupid and they will punch a hole in you right here--" and then he punches the hole himself to prove the point, even as he subtly plays the angle to strengthen other pieces of the argument. Of all the people I read, few are as good as Hess at playing the chess game of arguments and angles and looking dozens of moves ahead.
So Hess points out that parents are not idiots and the opt-out revolt is not some crazy tin hat fluke, even as he doubles down on the idea that opt out is white suburban thing. In Hess's narrative, "Middle-class parents are right to question whether today's education reforms will help their kids." That line is the sub-heading of his article.
Reformsters, Hess suggests, have gotten tied up in trying to convince middle-class parents that their schools actually suck, and see parents as irrational for resisting such enlightenment (insert Duncan mom quote here).
But there’s another possibility. It’s that these parents are being reasonable when they worry that the reform agenda, whatever its merits when it comes to schools steeped in dysfunction, does more harm than good for their kids. Reformers have tended to dismiss this possibility, while seeking to convince middle-class parents that their schools are much worse than they may realize.
Hess is offering a smoother formulation of Merryl Tisch's clumsy compromise offer that "better schools" could be exempt from test-bombing. This will be a tricky argument to pull off-- how to tell higher-income schools, "No, we won't use the same ugly blunt tools on you that we'll use on the poor schools," when the argument for poor schools has always been, "We'll use the same instruments on you that we use on the rich kids."
Hess offers three concrete proposals. Make testing more transparent, top to bottom. Broaden the "vision of excellence" beyond simple math and English. Drop the redistribution of teachers planning for creating excellence everywhere.
Meh. Transparency is great, but unlikely. Hess does always seem to have disliked the narrowing of curriculum that testing has driven. Nobody anywhere has anything remotely like a real plan for redistributing "good" teachers, so objecting to that is a freebie.
But Hess's real Big Idea here is to bridge the gap between poor and middle class parents so that they are not fighting each other, and to listen to what they want and try to get it to them.
Damn, but I admire Hess's precision of argument and language. Here's what he says:
Maybe the solution is not to berate these parents, but to ask what they want for their children, find ways to help make that happen and seek opportunities to promote reform that benefits a broad coalition of low-income and middle-class families.
This is not the blunt, bald-faced call for school choice (and charters) that Pondiscio made; it's an artful and careful laying of the foundation for the same argument.
That would make sense. The market forces wing of the reformsters is most enamored of choice (and charter) in schools. It has already pretty much abandoned Common Core-- they don't need it and in fact it now becomes an argument in favor of charters ("Get your kids away from that stupid Common Core"). Now, if they're willing, they can ju-jitsu the opt-out momentum straight into an argument for a market-driven choice (and charter) system. I don't think there's any real splintering happening at all.
The market wing will always like some sort of instrument for generating data, because they believe that free-market choices have to be based on some sort of data. But the reformster market wing (schools would be better with free-market profit-judged competition) is not the same as the reformster elite betters wing (the Lessers should shut up and let their Betters tell them what they need) and it's a mistake to confuse the two. The opt out movement will continue to confound and annoy the elites because, to them, it's a bunch of the Lessers acting up and misbehaving. But if the marketeers can set that aside, they can use the opt out movement to their advantage. I'm pretty sure Hess can see that; now he's just got to clue in his allies without tipping off the rest of us.
The Two Critical Testing Questions
The full range of debate about the Big Standardized Tests really comes down to answering two critical questions about the testing.
1. Does the test collect good data?
The whole justification for the BS Tests is that they will collect all sorts of rich and useful data about students, schools, and educational programs.
I have been amazed at the widespread, childlike, bland faith that many people have in anything called a "standardized test." If it's a "standardized test," then surely it must measure real stuff with accuracy, reliability and validity. Sure, the reasoning goes, they wouldn't be putting the test out there if it weren't really measuring stuff.
But to date, no evidence has appeared that the BS Tests are reliable, valid, or actually measuring anything that they claim to measure. The test contents are locked under a Giant Cone of Secrecy, as if the test is some sort of educational vampire that will evaporate if sunlight hits it. Nor have the data collected by the BS Test been clearly linked to anything useful. "Well, since she got a great score on the PARCC, we can be assured that she will be a happy, productive, and rich member of society," said nobody, ever.
Nor is the data rich with any level of data at all. Instead, we get reports that are the equivalent of saying the student was either "Pathetic," "Sad," "Okee dokee-ish," and "Mighty Swell."
Do the BS Tests measure anything other than the students' ability to take the BS Tests? Do the test results actually mean anything? If the test fans can't answer those questions, we're wasting everyone's time.
2. What action is taken with the data?
The tests are supposed to provide data on which to act. Does that-- can that-- happen?
On the classroom level, no. Data is too meager, non-transparent, and just plain late to do anybody any good. "Well, last year you score Okee-dokee-ish because you missed some questions that I'm not allowed to see, so I've customized an educational program to address what I imagine your problem areas used to be," is not a useful thing to say to a student.
But what about identifying schools that need help? Is the data used to help those schools? Not unless by "help" you mean "close" or "take over" or "strip of resources so students can go to a charter instead." Our current system does not identify schools for help; it identifies schools for punishment.
Of course, it's hard to come up with a good action plan based on bad data, which is why we need answers to Question #1 before we can do anything with Question #2.
We can't fix what we don't measure.
Well, maybe, but it doesn't matter because right now our process is as follows:
1) Hey, your bicycle looks like it's not working right.
2) I've measured the lead content of the paint on the bicycle by squeezing the bouncy part of the seat. Your bike is definitely defective.
3) I have thrown your bicycle in the dumpster.
We aren't measuring anything, and we aren't fixing anything. Outside of that, test-driven accountability is working out very Okee dokee-ish.
1. Does the test collect good data?
The whole justification for the BS Tests is that they will collect all sorts of rich and useful data about students, schools, and educational programs.
I have been amazed at the widespread, childlike, bland faith that many people have in anything called a "standardized test." If it's a "standardized test," then surely it must measure real stuff with accuracy, reliability and validity. Sure, the reasoning goes, they wouldn't be putting the test out there if it weren't really measuring stuff.
But to date, no evidence has appeared that the BS Tests are reliable, valid, or actually measuring anything that they claim to measure. The test contents are locked under a Giant Cone of Secrecy, as if the test is some sort of educational vampire that will evaporate if sunlight hits it. Nor have the data collected by the BS Test been clearly linked to anything useful. "Well, since she got a great score on the PARCC, we can be assured that she will be a happy, productive, and rich member of society," said nobody, ever.
Nor is the data rich with any level of data at all. Instead, we get reports that are the equivalent of saying the student was either "Pathetic," "Sad," "Okee dokee-ish," and "Mighty Swell."
Do the BS Tests measure anything other than the students' ability to take the BS Tests? Do the test results actually mean anything? If the test fans can't answer those questions, we're wasting everyone's time.
2. What action is taken with the data?
The tests are supposed to provide data on which to act. Does that-- can that-- happen?
On the classroom level, no. Data is too meager, non-transparent, and just plain late to do anybody any good. "Well, last year you score Okee-dokee-ish because you missed some questions that I'm not allowed to see, so I've customized an educational program to address what I imagine your problem areas used to be," is not a useful thing to say to a student.
But what about identifying schools that need help? Is the data used to help those schools? Not unless by "help" you mean "close" or "take over" or "strip of resources so students can go to a charter instead." Our current system does not identify schools for help; it identifies schools for punishment.
Of course, it's hard to come up with a good action plan based on bad data, which is why we need answers to Question #1 before we can do anything with Question #2.
We can't fix what we don't measure.
Well, maybe, but it doesn't matter because right now our process is as follows:
1) Hey, your bicycle looks like it's not working right.
2) I've measured the lead content of the paint on the bicycle by squeezing the bouncy part of the seat. Your bike is definitely defective.
3) I have thrown your bicycle in the dumpster.
We aren't measuring anything, and we aren't fixing anything. Outside of that, test-driven accountability is working out very Okee dokee-ish.
Good News! We Can Cancel The Tests Now!
Christopher Tienken is a name you should know. Tienken is an associate professor of Education Administration at Seton Hall University in the College of Education and Human Services, Department of Education Leadership, Management, & Policy. Tienken started out his career as an elementary school teacher; he now edits American Association of School Administrators Journal of Scholarship and Practice and the Kappa Delta Pi Record.He and his colleagues have done some of the most devastating research out there on the Big Standardized Tests.
Tienken's research hasn't just shown the Big Standardized Tests to be frauds; he's shown that they are unnecessary.
In "Predictable Results," one of his most recent posts, he lays out again what his team has managed to do over the past few years. Using US Census data linked to social capital and demographics, Tienken has been able to predict the percentage of students who will score proficient or better on the tests.
Let me repeat that. Using data that has nothing to do with grades, teaching techniques, pedagogical approaches, teacher training, textbook series, administrative style, curriculum evaluation--- in short, data that has nothing to do with what goes on inside the school building-- Tienken has been able to predict the proficiency rate for a school.
For example, I predicted accurately the percentage of students at the district level who scored proficient or above on the 2011 grade 5 mathematics test in 76% of the 397 school districts and predicted accurately in 80% of the districts for the 2012 language arts tests. The percentage of families in poverty and lone parent households in a community were the two strongest predictors in the six models I created for grade 5 for the years 2010-2012.
Tienken's work is one more powerful indicator that the BS Tests do not measure the educational effectiveness of a school-- not even sort of. That wonderful data that supposedly tells us how students are doing and provides the measurements that give us actionable information-- it's not telling us a damn thing. Or more specifically, it's not telling us a damn thing that we didn't already know (Look! Lower Poorperson High School serves mostly low-income students!!)
In fact, Tienken's work is great news-- states can cut out the middle man and simply give schools scores based on the demographic and social data. We don't need the tests at all.
Of course, that would be bad business for test suppliers, and it would require leaders to focus on what's going on in the world outside the school building, so the folks who don't want to deal with the issues of poverty and race will probably not back the idea. And the test manufacturers would lose a huge revenue steam, so they'd lobby hard against it. But we could still do it-- we could stop testing tomorrow and still generate pretty much the same data. Let's see our government embrace this more efficient approach!!
While you're waiting for hell to freeze over, take a look at this video featuring Teinken. It's a quick simple look at what we're screwing up with ed reform and assessment (it does spend a lot of time lovingly gazing at Tienkin's face, but it's very accessible for your friends who wonder what the fuss is about-- particularly those who are a little more right-leaning).
Tienken's research hasn't just shown the Big Standardized Tests to be frauds; he's shown that they are unnecessary.
In "Predictable Results," one of his most recent posts, he lays out again what his team has managed to do over the past few years. Using US Census data linked to social capital and demographics, Tienken has been able to predict the percentage of students who will score proficient or better on the tests.
Let me repeat that. Using data that has nothing to do with grades, teaching techniques, pedagogical approaches, teacher training, textbook series, administrative style, curriculum evaluation--- in short, data that has nothing to do with what goes on inside the school building-- Tienken has been able to predict the proficiency rate for a school.
For example, I predicted accurately the percentage of students at the district level who scored proficient or above on the 2011 grade 5 mathematics test in 76% of the 397 school districts and predicted accurately in 80% of the districts for the 2012 language arts tests. The percentage of families in poverty and lone parent households in a community were the two strongest predictors in the six models I created for grade 5 for the years 2010-2012.
Tienken's work is one more powerful indicator that the BS Tests do not measure the educational effectiveness of a school-- not even sort of. That wonderful data that supposedly tells us how students are doing and provides the measurements that give us actionable information-- it's not telling us a damn thing. Or more specifically, it's not telling us a damn thing that we didn't already know (Look! Lower Poorperson High School serves mostly low-income students!!)
In fact, Tienken's work is great news-- states can cut out the middle man and simply give schools scores based on the demographic and social data. We don't need the tests at all.
Of course, that would be bad business for test suppliers, and it would require leaders to focus on what's going on in the world outside the school building, so the folks who don't want to deal with the issues of poverty and race will probably not back the idea. And the test manufacturers would lose a huge revenue steam, so they'd lobby hard against it. But we could still do it-- we could stop testing tomorrow and still generate pretty much the same data. Let's see our government embrace this more efficient approach!!
While you're waiting for hell to freeze over, take a look at this video featuring Teinken. It's a quick simple look at what we're screwing up with ed reform and assessment (it does spend a lot of time lovingly gazing at Tienkin's face, but it's very accessible for your friends who wonder what the fuss is about-- particularly those who are a little more right-leaning).
Saturday, May 9, 2015
CNBC: Gates Needs a Burger
I am writing this with a rag in one hand so I can wipe my apoplectic spit off the computer screen. I am watching a "Squawk Box" clip. That's a show on CNBC, which is, they say "the ultimate 'pre-market' morning news and talk program, where the biggest names in business and politics tell their most important stories."And apparently yesterday's important story included letting Bill Gates, Warren Buffett and Charlie Munger shoot off their amateur hour mouths about public education. If you want a more measured and grown-up take on this, I recommend Valerie Stauss, an actual journalist at the Washington Post.
I don't get it. After years of this, I still don't get it. Was Bill Gates elected to some education-related office? Was he appointed by somebody who was elected? Did he develop a reputation for educational expertise based on his experience, knowledge, research, demonstrated success-- anything? So why the hell are we still listening to him? I mean-- I'll give him this. While other rich guys are busy buying elections, so they can have power over the people who have power, Gates has simply skipped ahead and bought the power.
But after examining the clip, I think it's possible that Buffett and Gates had a bet-- "Let's see who can make the most insupportable statements about education in under eight minutes. Winner gets Rhode Island."
Gah. The clip is over at Strauss's blog, and other places. I'm going to watch it for you. I recommend you not watch it yourself, because it's a beautiful weekend and there's no reason to ruin it.
"One piece of good news is that the charter schools are doing a very good job," says Gates, and I have to take my first swipe at the screen, though that was just a spit take, because it's things like this that make me wonder-- is Gates bullshitting us, or is he so insulated from doing real research himself that he doesn't know he's full of baloney?
But on he goes. The inner cities have high drop-out rates and not many on-to-college students, "but the good charters have overcome that." The secret? Long school day, long school year, different way of working with the teachers (which-- what??) has totally fixed the problem. Gates skips over "managing to only serve the students that make you look successful" as a secret of success, nor does he get into what the growth of money-sucking charters does to the health of the public schools where all the other non-success-making students still attend.
Gates acknowledges that charters only account for a small percent, so we have to spread those best practices to get real change.
Our hostess asks, "How do you do that...um(shrug) in the public school system?" with a tone of voice and expression that would also fit "How do you get that little fat girl to win Miss America when she's also ugly and stupid?" I mean, God, you know, it's the public school system-- how do you get them to do anything well, ever, amiright? (Pause for wiping off screen.)
School boards have power, so they need to be convinced. Teachers unions have a lot of power, so they need to see the models that are working and I'm thinking, "Hey, Bill!! Right there is your problem because to do that you would need a model that works!" and he acknowledges glory hallellujah that teachers want to be part of a model that's working and we need more conversations-- and here he lists the three "entities" that I guess matter which are "government, school boards, unions" so parents and students, too bad for you. It is also not clear if Gates distinguishes between unions and teachers. He has to have noticed by now that his attempt to finance compliance from the national union leadership did not lead to everybody falling in line. He does look a tiny bit sad in this clip; that is probably because he is so depressed that Lily Eskelsen Garcia and Randi Weingarten pledged not to take any more of his money at the NPE convention. He's probably all broken up about that. Then there's just argle bargle wrapup word salad.
Munger (they guy you probably haven't heard of) then gets to expound on his Theory of McEducation:
It’s fun by the elite academic types in America to say McDonald’s is the wrong kind of food and its the wrong kind of this, and the jobs don’t pay very much and so forth. I have quite a very different view. I think McDonald’s is one of the most successful educational institutions in the United States. They take people and give them a first job which enables them to get a second job. They do a very, very good job of educating troubled young people to be good citizens. And they are probably more successful than charter schools. (This elicits a hearty chuckle from everyone)
My emphasis. So there you have it. Close all the inner-city schools and just open more McDonald's. Because if you are a troubled poor kid, everything you'll ever need to know in life you can learn at Micky D's. Why, I'll bet the minute this segment was over, Gates called his wife and said, "Pull the kids out of school--we're just going to send them to work at McDonald's. And grab an Arby's application, too, so that we can have a safety school."
(Wipe screen repeatedly). Seriously-- would any wealthy parent in this country tell his kid to go work at McDonald's because that's the best education he could hope for?? No, what Munger is saying is that, for the lower classes, the lessers, the not-so-white and not-so-well-off students, McDonald's is plenty. It's the best that Those People could aspire to.
Buffett chimes in with tales of a McDonald's where he apparently starts his day so often that they know him by name. "Those people are learning very good habits" like showing up on time and, as God is my witness, he includes "they have to learn how to count money" and "they have to learn how to smile at people" and now Gates is giggling a little bit, thinking perhaps, "I took the time to put on a sweater instead of a tie and we still look like rich, patrician asshats up here. Isn't life funny. If it mattered in the slightest what people thought of me, this would be a trainwreck. Thank God this is just CNBC and nobody who isn't One Of Us is actually watching."
Buffett now gets his turn to be pretend education czar (that's really the question). He allows as "we're spending the money" so the resources are clearly there, and I just drape the rag over the screen while I ask if it's his experience in say manufacturing or other businesses, is it his experience that cost is determined by what people want to pay. When he stops at his favorite McDonalds, does he say, "Look, seventy-three cents ought to be enough for my sausage McMuffin. I'm certainly spending the money, so give me my food." Does he shop for cars by saying, "I think ten grand should be enough for that Benz, so hand it over." In what world do you get to say, "I haven't researched this, but I only feel like paying so much, so give me the product for that price." Nor--NOR-- does the fact that we've spent a whole pile of money nationally mean that the pile of money is being properly distributed among the umpty-thousand individual schools. (Take off rag, wring out, continue.)
Now he says something that is actually interesting:
If the only choice we had was public schools, we'd have better public schools.
His point is that the wealthy have opted out, and so the very people who would have the power and juice to demand system improvements no longer have any skin in the game. We end up with two systems. The rich get the education they want for their kids, and some help out, out of conscience, but they don't make sure that public schools provide the education they'd demand if their kids were there.
It's an interesting point, but our hostess redirects back to the We Haz Moneys point, saying, "But it's not an issue of money," so what is public ed losing from defecting rich folks and Buffett is on the question of how much money and now we'll all agree that it's a buttload of money per child, almost as much money as Buffett made while he was speaking that sentence. And then he's back on point-- when rich folks don't have kids in public school, they don't engage with intensity.
The ball is tossed back to Gates, who fumbles for a bit and then lands on "You want in every community the top people to really be aware of what is the dropout rate--" So wherever you are, look up your Bureau of Top People, because if there's any continuing theme about the reformster approach to education it is that the world is made up of Betters and Lessers and the world would be a better place if the Betters had the power to Run Things Properly and shower noblesse oblige on the Lessers. And, oh wait, here's the rest of the sentence "-- and why these inner city schools do such a poor job." Because the drop out rate in inner city neighborhoods can be traced entirely and completely to the schools and nowhere else. And there's some noise about "this" being an important issue (dropout rate, maybe) and then "We're not making as much progress as I'd like." Because the ultimate metric of success here will be whether or not Bill Gates is satisfied.
This has been the toughest area of everything the foundation has worked in. Hostess asks, "Why do you think that is" and I just hold the cloth in front of my face because I can feel the apoplexy rising.
Gates figures it's entrenched interests, a very big system, over $600 billion a year being spent (what?), and it's very resistant to change and I'm thinking, well, yes. It's crazy how some systems like, say, my local hospital won't just let me walk in off the street and tell them how the whole system should be rearranged and how the money should be spent and how the doctors should operate. They are so entrenched and resistant to listening to me just because of some foolishness about how I have no experience, training, expertise or knowledge of how their system works.
Remember that stuff about convincing school boards and showing teachers? Gates says the best results are where the mayor has just taken over and cut everyone out of the decision-making process, because democracy is such a huge pain in the ass. Gates thinks it's best with just "one executive" in charge, but I am still stuck on that "best results" part because I can't think of any city where that's true, but he ticks off New York, Chicago, and as it turns out, those are the only cities he meant and so I'm wishing the interviewer would ask, "So what in God's name do you mean by 'best results,' because there's no reformy success stories to point to in either city" but I'm betting that's not happening.
Munger gets a non-question-- "What do you think about higher education at this point?" He says our system is "the best in the world," though he does not clarify whether he's think of Harvard or Hamburger U. That is why he works with higher education, because he doesn't do well with constant failure ("I tire easily" he says and we all have a good chuckle about that, and I will just shove the rag in my mouth for now). Therefor he doesn't try to fix the public schools in our worst neighborhoods. "You have to be a saint or a Gates to do that," and my apoplectic spit rag bounces off the screen as I yell, "Or one of the millions of public school teachers who have devoted their entire adult lives to working there, you unctuous twit!" And that gets a huge laugh from our hostess and the others because, yeah, how hilarious is it that anybody would try to help poor public schools because that's just not something that ordinary mortals can do EXCEPT FOR THE MILLIONS OF TEACHERS WHO KEEP TRYING TO DO IT WHILE BEING INCREASINGLY HAMPERED BY MEDDLING AMATEURS LIKE YOU RICH SELF-IMPORTANT ASSHATS!! And now we will have a great laugh about how he said saint OR Gates, because it's hilarious to suggest that Bill Gates is not a saint.
Munger circles around to clarify that he works with universities because "I really like-- I'm better at making the top better than at fixing insoluble problems" and our context clues would suggest that poor inner city schools are an insoluble problem. Dude, do you even hear yourself??
It appears we're just trying to run out the clock now. Buffett takes another shot at his point, observing that he and Charlie went to public schools because there were no private alternatives, and Buffett's dad cared so much about the schools that he ran for school board (and, you know, you don't even get paid for that), and that intensity of interest makes a difference. But in too many cities, the rich have opted out of the public school system (once again, it's not clear if Gates has a reaction to that). I know he said that already, but as I sit here feeling a little dehydrated, that strikes me as the one useful observation here, particularly as the reformster movement can be seen as a way not to improve public school, but to make it easier for the Betters to opt out of going to school with the Lessers.
It's an exhausting 7:35 minute clip, highlighting to what an astonishing degree that Gates in particular is just living on some other planet. I hope they have a Hamburger U branch campus there.
Leave Those Kids Alone
While we're busy talking about how to implement Pre-K next fall, let's remember one important thing:
Early "academic" instruction is bad for children.
If you like, you can turn to the anecdotal evidence. This does not require deep research. Talk to any first grade teacher, kindergarten teacher, or parents of small children. You hear the same story over and over and over and over again-- today, one of the biggest challenges of the early years is to keep the child from hating school, from fearing school, from associating school with misery. Plenty of teachers do it, but it is a measure of our times that doing so these days requires deliberate strategies, often including small and large acts of rebellion. It is hard to over-state how tragic this is. The one thing teachers of small children never had to do was whip up interest in school. You could ask a group of six year olds, "Who wants to jump off the building into a pile of smelly bananas for me?" and they would be lined up before the first peel turned brown. Small children are natural free-range learning machines. Trying to force them into regimented academic instruction is like beating a chocolate lab because he won't fetch with more care and dignity.
But never mind the anecdotal evidence. Instead, let's use data and science and all those things that our reformy overlords claim to love.
Even the mainstream is getting this. Psychology Today has a piece by Peter Gray, a research professor at Boston College who has written, among other things, a psychology textbook.
Gray cites several research studies, some not exactly obscure.
For instance, in the 1970's the German government did a study of play-based kindergarten vs. direct instruction kindergarten. "Despite the initial academic gains of direct instruction, by grade four the children from the direct-instruction kindergartens performed significantly worse than those from the play-based kindergartens on every measure that was used." That's every measure-- they did more poorly academically and they were less socially and emotionally capable.
A large scale US study of poor African-American children found the same thing. The direct-instruction kindergartners had an initial leap ahead, but by fourth grade were behind their play-based peers academically.
Gray also recommends the paper by the paper published by the Alliance for Childhood and Defending the Early Years. "Reading Instruction in Kindergarten: Little To Gain and Much To Lose" also surveys many studies in the field, and the results are consistent--
Early direct instructions is not helpful. It is not even a neutral ineffective waste of time.
Early academic direct instruction is harmful to the future development of children.
Of course, there are many drawbacks to play based instruction. Wait, did I say "many"? I actually meant "one." And the one drawback to play-based instruction is that there's no good revenue-generating data-collecting standardized test for measuring it.
That's the front on which this battle will be fault. "Oh, sure. Play-based instruction is swell," reformsters will say. "But we still have to have data about how they're doing, so in April we're going to sit these children to give them a standardized test. Because data. And did you see this nice pen-and-pencil set the guy from Pearson gave me?"
And so we'll continue to pollute the early years with test prep. And test prep for small children is the worst, because we have to teach them what a test is and what is going on in this bizarre, artificial activity, not to mention why they should even care. While we're at it, let's just teach them that Santa is dead, too.
Early "academic" instruction is bad for children.
If you like, you can turn to the anecdotal evidence. This does not require deep research. Talk to any first grade teacher, kindergarten teacher, or parents of small children. You hear the same story over and over and over and over again-- today, one of the biggest challenges of the early years is to keep the child from hating school, from fearing school, from associating school with misery. Plenty of teachers do it, but it is a measure of our times that doing so these days requires deliberate strategies, often including small and large acts of rebellion. It is hard to over-state how tragic this is. The one thing teachers of small children never had to do was whip up interest in school. You could ask a group of six year olds, "Who wants to jump off the building into a pile of smelly bananas for me?" and they would be lined up before the first peel turned brown. Small children are natural free-range learning machines. Trying to force them into regimented academic instruction is like beating a chocolate lab because he won't fetch with more care and dignity.
But never mind the anecdotal evidence. Instead, let's use data and science and all those things that our reformy overlords claim to love.
Even the mainstream is getting this. Psychology Today has a piece by Peter Gray, a research professor at Boston College who has written, among other things, a psychology textbook.
Gray cites several research studies, some not exactly obscure.
For instance, in the 1970's the German government did a study of play-based kindergarten vs. direct instruction kindergarten. "Despite the initial academic gains of direct instruction, by grade four the children from the direct-instruction kindergartens performed significantly worse than those from the play-based kindergartens on every measure that was used." That's every measure-- they did more poorly academically and they were less socially and emotionally capable.
A large scale US study of poor African-American children found the same thing. The direct-instruction kindergartners had an initial leap ahead, but by fourth grade were behind their play-based peers academically.
Gray also recommends the paper by the paper published by the Alliance for Childhood and Defending the Early Years. "Reading Instruction in Kindergarten: Little To Gain and Much To Lose" also surveys many studies in the field, and the results are consistent--
Early direct instructions is not helpful. It is not even a neutral ineffective waste of time.
Early academic direct instruction is harmful to the future development of children.
Of course, there are many drawbacks to play based instruction. Wait, did I say "many"? I actually meant "one." And the one drawback to play-based instruction is that there's no good revenue-generating data-collecting standardized test for measuring it.
That's the front on which this battle will be fault. "Oh, sure. Play-based instruction is swell," reformsters will say. "But we still have to have data about how they're doing, so in April we're going to sit these children to give them a standardized test. Because data. And did you see this nice pen-and-pencil set the guy from Pearson gave me?"
And so we'll continue to pollute the early years with test prep. And test prep for small children is the worst, because we have to teach them what a test is and what is going on in this bizarre, artificial activity, not to mention why they should even care. While we're at it, let's just teach them that Santa is dead, too.
The Narrow Path
Yesterday was grad project day at my school. On this in-service day every year our seniors come in to present for evaluation their senior projects. It is, for many of us on staff, one of the best days of the year.
Pennsylvania installed a graduation project requirement years ago, leaving every school free to decide what their local version would be. Some required every student to write a paper (and the English department to grade all of them-- thanks a lot), some required a service project, and some incorporated the project into classwork students were already taking.
We took a different approach, allowing students to select from five different types of projects-- everything from a career research project to service project to building a cabinet to performing an original work. The project is student chosen, and as you might imagine, some students choose more wisely than others. But as I tell them at their project kick-off meeting, if the project is a waste of their time, they have nobody to blame but themselves. This is one time that a major element of their school career is based on what they value, not on what the school values. If you want to see all the nuts and bolts, follow the link at the bottom of this page (please excuse the comic sans).
Do some students half-ass it, or create some desultory bland project? Sure. But we also see so many awesome things on this day. Numerous beautiful pieces of cabinetry. An album of photographs. the models our students with hair and make-up by the photographer. A home-built log-splitter. A delicious meal. A refurbished game room for children staying at a battered women's shelter. A student weeping as she tells the story of going to Puerto Rico to meet her extended family. A student explaining the training he goes through to be a volunteer fireman, and what he thinks about going into a burning building to rescue a person.
Every grad project day reminds me that our students are so much more than the handful of classes that we teach, and that when they are allowed to display their competencies on their own terms (and those competencies fall outside "sit in desk for forty-five minute increments all day"), the vast majority of them turn out to be pretty great people. They are passionate about stuff-- it's just not all stuff that has a direct and clear connection to classroom and School Stuff.
We complain that the Big Standardized Tests measure just a small sliver of what we do in schools, and we are right to do so. In fact, the meagerness of BS Tests is doubly inadequate, because these students live lives so much bigger than the small sliver of existence that we deal with in school.
We are also right to complain about the narrowing of school under the reformster regime, reducing education to a narrow path for narrow purposes. That has happened, and it's not a good thing-- not for students, schools, or the nation.
But let's be honest. Public education in this country has always flirted with the narrow path, the idea that what we could fit within our school walls was a complete and sufficient view of life and the world and what it means to be fully human in that world. The architects of Common Core and NCLB did not try to take education in a completely new direction; we've been dallying at the trailhead of the narrow path for-- well, forever.
What we see on grad project day is that there are so many and varied versions of success, and that, in many cases, we would never have seen them in our classrooms. Grad project day always prompts me to reflect, to remind myself that part of my obligation as a teacher is to make sure that the path through my classroom is as broad as I can make it, to make sure that I have left as much space as I can for the full range of who my students are and who they aspire to be. There is so much to see and do, and the view from the narrow path is so limited and restrictive.
Pennsylvania installed a graduation project requirement years ago, leaving every school free to decide what their local version would be. Some required every student to write a paper (and the English department to grade all of them-- thanks a lot), some required a service project, and some incorporated the project into classwork students were already taking.
We took a different approach, allowing students to select from five different types of projects-- everything from a career research project to service project to building a cabinet to performing an original work. The project is student chosen, and as you might imagine, some students choose more wisely than others. But as I tell them at their project kick-off meeting, if the project is a waste of their time, they have nobody to blame but themselves. This is one time that a major element of their school career is based on what they value, not on what the school values. If you want to see all the nuts and bolts, follow the link at the bottom of this page (please excuse the comic sans).
Do some students half-ass it, or create some desultory bland project? Sure. But we also see so many awesome things on this day. Numerous beautiful pieces of cabinetry. An album of photographs. the models our students with hair and make-up by the photographer. A home-built log-splitter. A delicious meal. A refurbished game room for children staying at a battered women's shelter. A student weeping as she tells the story of going to Puerto Rico to meet her extended family. A student explaining the training he goes through to be a volunteer fireman, and what he thinks about going into a burning building to rescue a person.
Every grad project day reminds me that our students are so much more than the handful of classes that we teach, and that when they are allowed to display their competencies on their own terms (and those competencies fall outside "sit in desk for forty-five minute increments all day"), the vast majority of them turn out to be pretty great people. They are passionate about stuff-- it's just not all stuff that has a direct and clear connection to classroom and School Stuff.
We complain that the Big Standardized Tests measure just a small sliver of what we do in schools, and we are right to do so. In fact, the meagerness of BS Tests is doubly inadequate, because these students live lives so much bigger than the small sliver of existence that we deal with in school.
We are also right to complain about the narrowing of school under the reformster regime, reducing education to a narrow path for narrow purposes. That has happened, and it's not a good thing-- not for students, schools, or the nation.
But let's be honest. Public education in this country has always flirted with the narrow path, the idea that what we could fit within our school walls was a complete and sufficient view of life and the world and what it means to be fully human in that world. The architects of Common Core and NCLB did not try to take education in a completely new direction; we've been dallying at the trailhead of the narrow path for-- well, forever.
What we see on grad project day is that there are so many and varied versions of success, and that, in many cases, we would never have seen them in our classrooms. Grad project day always prompts me to reflect, to remind myself that part of my obligation as a teacher is to make sure that the path through my classroom is as broad as I can make it, to make sure that I have left as much space as I can for the full range of who my students are and who they aspire to be. There is so much to see and do, and the view from the narrow path is so limited and restrictive.
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