And that’s one of my chief gripes with the battle cry to banish the Department of Education. It’s policy by sound bite. There’s too much of that already.
That's the closing graf of Frank Bruni's NYT op-ed this morning. It follows a thoughtful discussion of the usefulness of the beleaguered Department of Education-- ha, no. Just kidding. It comes at the end of series of sound bites from the Usual Sources. I am envious of this style of well-connected mad-libs journalism-- you get out your list of reliable contacts and fill in the blanks. "Although many critics of [topic] have said [sound bite from critic], others disagree. [Sound bite from supporter.]"
Bruni's topic is the continued existence of the Department of Education, and his piece offers all the lack of nuance and shallowness of understanding that he's complaining about in the first place. Perhaps he is offering a post-modern deconstructive criticism of criticism. But on the off chance he's not, let's look at his actual argument.
Bruni starts by noting that beating up on the USED has become a GOP primary punching bag once again, coupled with knee-jerk Common Core hatred. He cites the most recent defection of Chris Christie without noting that Christie's stated faithfulness to the PARCC test means his CCSS rejection is a deeply empty gesture. As is always required in these pieces, Jeb Bush is singled out as Common Core's BFF (Bruni might have noted that, as reported by Buzzfeed of all things, Bush's love is so great that he co-ordinated Core defense with Arne Duncan.)
But, Bruni notes, Democrats are also unfriending the department. Well, actually, one Democrat. Bruni mentions that Murray has teamed up with Lamar Alexander "to sponsor legislation that would leave the department and its secretary with much less influence over states." Why he does not explain that he's talking about the proposed ESEA rewrite that came out of the Senate Education Committe that Murray and Alexander co-chair--- well, that's just a weird detail to skip. Instead he just notes that the bill-- if it passes, which it might, because "bi-partisan support"-- the department would be a shadow of its former self.
So-- to recap-- Bruni has taken the Senate attempt to re-authorize the ESEA, and instead of placing that in the context of a bill that has been awaiting re-authorization by Congress since 2007 and has finally been tackled by the appropriate Senate committee for that tackling, he's creating a new narrative in which, steeped in an anti-department atmosphere, Murray and Alexander just kind of go rogue and float this bill created out of whole cloth just to spank the department.
So what else does Bruni want to point out in this alternate universe?
Well, goodness. Under this proposal, the USED would not have say "over how (or if)" teacher evaluation would occur. And-- Good lord in heaven-- here's a short list of Things Bruni Does Not Know:
1) Even with the USED's watchful eye, states are managing to gut the teaching profession. Current leader in assaulting the profession would be the Wisconsin, where they're thinking that maybe anybody-- even a high school dropout-- can be a teacher.
2) USED's ideas about how to evaluate teacher are stupid. Their major contribution has been to demand that teachers be evaluated by using student test scores, an approach supported by no actual research or science or even common sense, and repudiated by pretty much everybody who doesn't have financial or political benefits tied to the approach.
3) "Or if"? Come on. Name one state, one school, one corner of the country where politicians and leaders are saying, "Let's never evaluate teachers at all." Well, except for charter schools. But the USED supports charters and the charter right to make up any rules they like, so again-- if this is a problem, the USED is definitely not on the case.
4) The best teacher evaluation systems are coming from local school districts, not the feds. Time magazine is profiling a system created by UCLA schools in Koreatown (in LA-- my son's neighborhood!) that Audrey Amrein-Beardsley calls "legitimately new and improved."
But now, having laid out the basic question, Bruni is ready to deploy his parade of sound bites for the USED opponents.
Lamar Alexander (former department head, but again-- not acknowledged by Bruni as the head of Senate Ed Comittee): All we need is a leader to man the bully pulpit about education and a treasury department to cut checks.
Mitch Daniels (former governor and Bush administration person): It's not "ludicrous" to get rid of the department. We did fine without them before 1979. Also, they haven't improved anything.
No, says Bruni, they haven't.
But there’s much more at work than the failings of the education department, which contributes only about 10 percent of funding nationally for K-through-12 schooling and has only so much impact on what happens in classrooms.
You'd think that sentence would open up a considerably larger discussion, but now-- Bruni leaves the mystery of A) if it's true that US education hasn't gotten better since 1979 and B) if not, why not for some other day. He really only wants to use that to the defense of the department and the sound bites for that side of things.
Kati Haycock (head of Education Trust, a advocacy group-- Bruni doesn't mention that they are charter school advocates): When states are left alone, they don't do right by poor students.
Joel Klein (former chancellor of NYC schools, corporate shill for hire, and creator of many reformster monsters): When states are left alone, they don't generate enough failing grades for students.
"Many advocates": Bruni seems to slip into the middle of his own piece to say that we have to compete globally and so students must be educated not just for their state, but for the whole world. Because everybody remembers America's big bunch of young people who never leave their home state because they are only educated in a state-specific way??
Mike Petrilli (Fordham boss and professional pusher of Common Core, testing, charters and other great education money-making schemes): We need to right-size the feds.
Bruni also muses about the money. If there were no department, who would make sure that the taxpayers are getting their money's worth. Which speaks to Bruni's view of the department, which seems to be as the national education police. There's a whole list of things that the states can't be trusted to do correctly, and a department is needed to Make Them Behave.
Recent history is more complicated. Haycock's argument that states don't do right by their poor educationally is valid; the problem is that the USED hasn't changed that a bit. Haycock, Klein, and Petrilli are fine examples of all the folks who have used the Problems of Educating the Poor as ways to Make Lots of Money. Under modern ed reformsterism, we locate educational problem areas and mark them for strip-mining, while simultaneously depriving the folks who live in those communities of voice or vote. Reformsters did not descend upon post-Katrina New Orleans out of a deep, driving concern that the poor children of the city were being deprived of an education-- they packed up their bags and headed south because it was an opportunity, a chance to create a system that gave a whole spectrum of profiteers and investors the opportunity to get their hands on public education tax dollars.
That magical time has become the reformsters dream, and a dozen techniques for forcing disaster and failure on school districts and using that failure as a means of diverting public tax dollars to private pockets. And the USED has been a champion of the process, putting the interests of investors, hedge fund operators, charter school companies, test manufacturers, and corporate interests ahead of concerns for American students.
From Common Core to Big Standardized High Stakes Testing, the USED has become the champion of one-size-fits-all reform (though, of course, wealthy folks are exempt).
And here's the problem with strong central planning. It requires your central planner to be right every time, and no human can pull that off. But with central control, a single bad idea becomes everybody's bad idea. And when your central planner has mostly only bad ideas, you get widespread disaster.
When your system is infected with money, that only makes things worse, because central planning makes one-stop-shopping for those who want to buy themselves some friendly policy decisions.
There's a lot to discuss, but when Bruni hit his contact list, he missed a particular group of sound bite generators-- he forgot to contact any actual supporters of public education. And so his Festival of Sound Bites is lopsided and nuance-free. Let's hope that next time he collects a better class of sound bites.
Sunday, May 31, 2015
Saturday, May 30, 2015
When Higher Expectations Aren't
I want to go back to this post about testing from Jersey Jazzman because it so clearly hits a fundamental lie in the Common Core Testing scheme.
Go read it again. It might be the most important post of (at least) the month.
The big point-- that a standardized test is engineered to create a bell curve. Should all the students ever do really well on it, reformsters will not say, "Yippee! At last student achievement has risen! Mission accomplished!" No, should the long-awaited day arrive on which all students score well, reformsters will say, "This test is defective. Send it back."
Let's frame this another way. Let's talk about expectations.
As I ranted the other day, reformsters love higher expectations. They never tire of telling us that the magic sauce saturating their super standards is a reduction brew of higher expectations. We have for over a decade heard the mantra that we must all believe that every child can excel. Every child can do awesometastic work-- if we just have high expectations.
It's a lie.
It's a big, fat lie.
Common Core is not about higher expectations for every child at all.
Because the expectation embedded in a standardized test is that 10-20% of students will do lousy, and another large chunk will just be fair-to-middlin'.
The architects of Common Core and the Big Standardized Tests expect a big chunk of students to do poorly, and that low expectation is built into the test.
When they say, "We're going to set the bar high because that will make every student rise to meet it," they are lying. What they really mean is, "We are going to set the bar high because that will guarantee that our expectation of large-scale failure will be met."
It is possible that some reformsters don't even realize they're doing this. Under NCLB I'm pretty sure some advocates really believed that all children could be above average. But that doesn't change what they've done.
They've built the expectation of failure into the system. They have codified a program of low expectations. And their low expectations are so ingrained, that just as with their low expectations of teacher quality, they refuse to believe any results that do not confirm their expectations.
The BS Testing of Common Core is the very definition of low expectations. So the next time some reformster tosses out that baloney about higher expectations, ask them-- if the test results came back tomorrow at 95% proficiency, what would you say? Hooray? Because if you'd say "these results must be wrong," you don't ever get to lecture us about the soft bigotry of low expectations ever again.
Go read it again. It might be the most important post of (at least) the month.
The big point-- that a standardized test is engineered to create a bell curve. Should all the students ever do really well on it, reformsters will not say, "Yippee! At last student achievement has risen! Mission accomplished!" No, should the long-awaited day arrive on which all students score well, reformsters will say, "This test is defective. Send it back."
Let's frame this another way. Let's talk about expectations.
As I ranted the other day, reformsters love higher expectations. They never tire of telling us that the magic sauce saturating their super standards is a reduction brew of higher expectations. We have for over a decade heard the mantra that we must all believe that every child can excel. Every child can do awesometastic work-- if we just have high expectations.
It's a lie.
It's a big, fat lie.
Common Core is not about higher expectations for every child at all.
Because the expectation embedded in a standardized test is that 10-20% of students will do lousy, and another large chunk will just be fair-to-middlin'.
The architects of Common Core and the Big Standardized Tests expect a big chunk of students to do poorly, and that low expectation is built into the test.
When they say, "We're going to set the bar high because that will make every student rise to meet it," they are lying. What they really mean is, "We are going to set the bar high because that will guarantee that our expectation of large-scale failure will be met."
It is possible that some reformsters don't even realize they're doing this. Under NCLB I'm pretty sure some advocates really believed that all children could be above average. But that doesn't change what they've done.
They've built the expectation of failure into the system. They have codified a program of low expectations. And their low expectations are so ingrained, that just as with their low expectations of teacher quality, they refuse to believe any results that do not confirm their expectations.
The BS Testing of Common Core is the very definition of low expectations. So the next time some reformster tosses out that baloney about higher expectations, ask them-- if the test results came back tomorrow at 95% proficiency, what would you say? Hooray? Because if you'd say "these results must be wrong," you don't ever get to lecture us about the soft bigotry of low expectations ever again.
Punching the Eight Year Olds
In some special states, it's not just the end of testing season-- it's also punish third graders by telling them that all their hard work this year was a waste of their time because they have failed a single reading test, and so they have officially flunked third grade.
Mississippi is just open more example of a state that thinks eighth-year-olds need to be pummeled mercilessly so that they will stop holding out, because clearly any third grader who can't pass a Big Standardized Reading Test must not have been threatened enough. Clearly some folks believe that once facing the prospect of failure, a nation of third graders will declare, "Well, then, I'll stop messing around and learn how to read, because previously I had no interest in learning that fundamental skill-- at last not as much as I wanted to get into fourth grade." Yes, surely that's what will happen.
“We have had dozens and dozens of studies on this topic,” said [Linda] Darling-Hammond. “The findings are about as consistent as any findings are in education research: the use of testing is counterproductive, it does not improve achievement over the long run, but it does dramatically increase dropout rates. Almost every place that has put this kind of policy in place since the 1970s has eventually found it counterproductive and has eliminated the policy. Unfortunately policy makers often are not aware of the research and they come along years later and reintroduce the same policies that were done away with previously because of negative consequences and lack of success.”
This whole Failing Third Graders policy argument is what I've learned to recognize as a standard reformster construction. The basic argument structure looks like this:
1) This is a real problem. We will tell you just how real a problem it is.
2) Therefor a bicycle, because a vest has no sleeves.
Step 1 sometimes involves a big slice of deep fried baloney, but sometimes it's an actual issue. Third grade reading is probably an actual issue-- students who can't read well-ish by third grade seem not run into issues down the road (although-- correlation or causation-- those problems might be connected to reading issues, or both the problems and the reading issues could be related to some other factor *cough* poverty *cough*).
The thing is, you could take all the evidence that third grade retention works, roll it up in ball, set it on a pedestal non the head of a pin and still have room left over for several milling angels to have a square dance. Or, to be plain, there is no evidence that retention helps. There is a mountain of evidence that it hurts.
So if we actually wanted to solve the problem of third grade reading proficiency (and not, say, create yet open more crisis with which to force more evidence of public education failure), there are so many things we could do.
We could add additional teachers at the K-3 level so that each student could get more focused personal instruction.'
We could add more intervention programs and personnel so that the moment a student faltered, that child would get all the help she needed.
We could pursue aggressive programs to put books into children's homes. Hell, we could pursue aggressive programs to write and publish materials that wide varieties of children (and their parents)would find appealing and attractive.
We could use methods of assessment that would more reliably tell us about student reading skills, and not more ridiculously inauthentic BS Testing.
We could listen to actual experts. There are plenty talking about this.
“People often present this as if there are only two choices — choice one is hold the kids back and the other is socially promote them without any additional resources or strategies,” Darling-Hammond said. “But the third way, the right response, is one in which you identify the resources they must have and ensure they are getting them immediately. They also should look at whether if you sit them down with a book, can they read? Because a lot of kids perform poorly on multiple-choice standardized tests who actually know the material if you present it in a more authentic way.”
At a minimum, we could shift our thinking-- instead of trying to think of ways to make sure that eight year olds aren't Getting Away With Something by having reading issues, we could adopt an attitude that we will do Whatever It Takes to help those students succeed. Because telling eight year olds that we will punch them in the face if they don't pass that BS Test is not only cruel and stupid-- it also just plain doesn't work.
Mississippi is just open more example of a state that thinks eighth-year-olds need to be pummeled mercilessly so that they will stop holding out, because clearly any third grader who can't pass a Big Standardized Reading Test must not have been threatened enough. Clearly some folks believe that once facing the prospect of failure, a nation of third graders will declare, "Well, then, I'll stop messing around and learn how to read, because previously I had no interest in learning that fundamental skill-- at last not as much as I wanted to get into fourth grade." Yes, surely that's what will happen.
“We have had dozens and dozens of studies on this topic,” said [Linda] Darling-Hammond. “The findings are about as consistent as any findings are in education research: the use of testing is counterproductive, it does not improve achievement over the long run, but it does dramatically increase dropout rates. Almost every place that has put this kind of policy in place since the 1970s has eventually found it counterproductive and has eliminated the policy. Unfortunately policy makers often are not aware of the research and they come along years later and reintroduce the same policies that were done away with previously because of negative consequences and lack of success.”
This whole Failing Third Graders policy argument is what I've learned to recognize as a standard reformster construction. The basic argument structure looks like this:
1) This is a real problem. We will tell you just how real a problem it is.
2) Therefor a bicycle, because a vest has no sleeves.
Step 1 sometimes involves a big slice of deep fried baloney, but sometimes it's an actual issue. Third grade reading is probably an actual issue-- students who can't read well-ish by third grade seem not run into issues down the road (although-- correlation or causation-- those problems might be connected to reading issues, or both the problems and the reading issues could be related to some other factor *cough* poverty *cough*).
The thing is, you could take all the evidence that third grade retention works, roll it up in ball, set it on a pedestal non the head of a pin and still have room left over for several milling angels to have a square dance. Or, to be plain, there is no evidence that retention helps. There is a mountain of evidence that it hurts.
So if we actually wanted to solve the problem of third grade reading proficiency (and not, say, create yet open more crisis with which to force more evidence of public education failure), there are so many things we could do.
We could add additional teachers at the K-3 level so that each student could get more focused personal instruction.'
We could add more intervention programs and personnel so that the moment a student faltered, that child would get all the help she needed.
We could pursue aggressive programs to put books into children's homes. Hell, we could pursue aggressive programs to write and publish materials that wide varieties of children (and their parents)would find appealing and attractive.
We could use methods of assessment that would more reliably tell us about student reading skills, and not more ridiculously inauthentic BS Testing.
We could listen to actual experts. There are plenty talking about this.
“People often present this as if there are only two choices — choice one is hold the kids back and the other is socially promote them without any additional resources or strategies,” Darling-Hammond said. “But the third way, the right response, is one in which you identify the resources they must have and ensure they are getting them immediately. They also should look at whether if you sit them down with a book, can they read? Because a lot of kids perform poorly on multiple-choice standardized tests who actually know the material if you present it in a more authentic way.”
At a minimum, we could shift our thinking-- instead of trying to think of ways to make sure that eight year olds aren't Getting Away With Something by having reading issues, we could adopt an attitude that we will do Whatever It Takes to help those students succeed. Because telling eight year olds that we will punch them in the face if they don't pass that BS Test is not only cruel and stupid-- it also just plain doesn't work.
Wisconsin's Assault on Public Education
Wisconsin's political leaders, including Governor Scott "Hoping To Be Ready For National Prime Time" Walker, are doing their best to really, truly dismantle public education.
It's a challenging story to write about, because people who aren't following education these days think phrases like "dismantle public education" are hyperbole. They aren't. Wisconsin is on a path to do away with public education as we know it.
Teaching
Wisconsin has been doing its best to break the teaching profession. Walker made himself a national player four years ago by stripping all public sector unions of the power to collectively bargain. That has worked out just about as badly as could have been predicted; people are hired and fired based on, well, anything bosses feel like basing hiring and firing on this week. Wages are less than robust. It has led to teachers saying things like this from Sean Karsten, a thirty-two year old first year reading instructor:
I just look to keep improving my teaching in the best way I can and try to keep my nose out of the other stuff.
Union membership has plummeted-- why spend money on dues for an organization that can't actually do anything when you need that money more for, say, food for your children? But that means there's nobody to effectively stand up to Walker's newest proposal.
It emerged last January as a proposal for alternative certification. "Let's give people with life experience teaching jobs," said Walker. Since then, the legislature has been fleshing out the details, bringing us to the current point-- a proposal people who never graduated from high school could end up teaching high school. (You can see the whole history of the idea in AP releases here.)
Wisconsin would retain some standards-- to teach English, social studies, math or science you would have to have a bachelors degree. In something. Anything. And, weirdly enough, this would only apply grades 6 through 12. In Wisconsin, a first grade teacher would require a real teaching degree, but you could teach twelfth grade chemistry with a bachelors degree in art history.
Walker has been very successful selling the narrative of teachers being overpaid fancy-pants who think they're so special with their uppity college degrees while demanding to soak the taxpayers for upscale benefits far better than anything the cashier at the Pick'n'Save ever gets. This is just more of that-- after all, teaching is a job pretty much anybody would do, anyway. If this all happens, Wisconsin will have the distinction of being the first state in which Teach for American volunteers will be overqualified. In Walker's Wisconsin, anybody will be able to "be a teacher," even without an ivy league degree or five whole weeks of training.
Schools
Just yesterday, the legislature's budget writing committee approved a policy allowing the University of Wisconsin to gut the schools of Madison and Milwaukee.
We've visited Milwaukee before, viewing a legislative idea that turned the war on poverty into a war on the poor. I'm going to be speculative here, and do some between-the-lines reading. But I come from a state with a big rural-urban split, and I seem to see a similar issue in Wisconsin-- a big bunch of rural not-very-wealthy (white) folks who unhappily, even angrily, see themselves as being soaked for too many tax dollars that are going to take care of those lazy urban poor (black) folks. If I'm wrong, I'll count on someone from Wisconsin to correct me.
At any rate, the legislature would like to give UW the power to start up as many independent charters as they like. Well, actually, it commands UW to appoint somebody to the of Grand High Authorizer; local school boards will have no say. Under the Wisconsin method, those newly approved charters can be explicitly for-profit (all modern charters make a profit-- the only variation is in the book-keeping and smoke-mirror combinations to cover the revenue stream). And of course all of the charters will suck their lifeblood directly from the veins of the public system.
Imagine that somebody pulls up to your yard and starts building a house in the middle of your lawn. When you object, they show you a letter from the state capital-- not only can they build there, but you will be responsible for paying all of their bills and making sure they make a handsome income on top of that.
This is not entirely new. Charters have been previously authorizable by Milwaukee City Council, UW-Milwaukee, UW-Parkside and the Milwaukee Area Technical College.
Nor is this a completely out of left field. This proposal comes with the loving support of Sen. Alberta Darling, the same legislator who co-outlined the proposal to drop a house on Milwaukee's poor.
And while the Madison-Milwaukee proposal is the markee move here, don't miss this other tasty detail.
The proposal also allows the Waukesha County Executive to authorize independent charter schools in that county. Sen. Paul Farrow, who headed the Senate’s effort to overhaul accountability for schools, is leaving the Senate in July after recently being elected Waukesha county executive.
Sigh. Some days I think the only way these reformsters could get more lazy and transparent would be to propose legislation requiring the state to deliver bales of money directly to their homes.
Winning Quotes
The Wisconsin State Journal did round up a couple of fine reactions to this latest educational gut shot. From Madison School Board member Ed Hughes:
It looks like the UW President is required to appoint someone who could then authorize as many publicly funded but potentially for-profit charter schools in Madison as that unelected and unaccountable person wanted.
And Madison School Superintendent Jennifer Cheatham was equally blunt:
We are incredibly determined, and we are making progress on behalf of all children. But at every step of the way, the Legislature puts more barriers in our way and makes our jobs more difficult.
Wisconsin's Education Twilight
So the bottom line-- in Scott Walker's Wisconsin, I can set up a charter school at taxpayer expense and staff it with pretty much anybody I like (and who will get whatever pay I feel like giving them--at taxpayer expense). My only out-of-pocket costs might be some up front "processing fees" for the Grand High Authorizer.
The possibilities are endless. Heck, every member of my family could become a member of my charter school faculty. If my family is too small, I could recruit staff from the Pick'n'Save-- if they schedule their cashier shifts in the evening and teach during the day, they can make some nice extra money on the side.
My condolences to the few actual teachers left in Wisconsin. It has to be lonely, and getting progressively lonelier, as Wisconsin works hard to become the Mississippi or the North. The only thing worse than being an actual teacher in Wisconsin will be being a student who hopes to get an actual education.
It's a challenging story to write about, because people who aren't following education these days think phrases like "dismantle public education" are hyperbole. They aren't. Wisconsin is on a path to do away with public education as we know it.
Teaching
Wisconsin has been doing its best to break the teaching profession. Walker made himself a national player four years ago by stripping all public sector unions of the power to collectively bargain. That has worked out just about as badly as could have been predicted; people are hired and fired based on, well, anything bosses feel like basing hiring and firing on this week. Wages are less than robust. It has led to teachers saying things like this from Sean Karsten, a thirty-two year old first year reading instructor:
I just look to keep improving my teaching in the best way I can and try to keep my nose out of the other stuff.
Union membership has plummeted-- why spend money on dues for an organization that can't actually do anything when you need that money more for, say, food for your children? But that means there's nobody to effectively stand up to Walker's newest proposal.
It emerged last January as a proposal for alternative certification. "Let's give people with life experience teaching jobs," said Walker. Since then, the legislature has been fleshing out the details, bringing us to the current point-- a proposal people who never graduated from high school could end up teaching high school. (You can see the whole history of the idea in AP releases here.)
Wisconsin would retain some standards-- to teach English, social studies, math or science you would have to have a bachelors degree. In something. Anything. And, weirdly enough, this would only apply grades 6 through 12. In Wisconsin, a first grade teacher would require a real teaching degree, but you could teach twelfth grade chemistry with a bachelors degree in art history.
Walker has been very successful selling the narrative of teachers being overpaid fancy-pants who think they're so special with their uppity college degrees while demanding to soak the taxpayers for upscale benefits far better than anything the cashier at the Pick'n'Save ever gets. This is just more of that-- after all, teaching is a job pretty much anybody would do, anyway. If this all happens, Wisconsin will have the distinction of being the first state in which Teach for American volunteers will be overqualified. In Walker's Wisconsin, anybody will be able to "be a teacher," even without an ivy league degree or five whole weeks of training.
Schools
Just yesterday, the legislature's budget writing committee approved a policy allowing the University of Wisconsin to gut the schools of Madison and Milwaukee.
We've visited Milwaukee before, viewing a legislative idea that turned the war on poverty into a war on the poor. I'm going to be speculative here, and do some between-the-lines reading. But I come from a state with a big rural-urban split, and I seem to see a similar issue in Wisconsin-- a big bunch of rural not-very-wealthy (white) folks who unhappily, even angrily, see themselves as being soaked for too many tax dollars that are going to take care of those lazy urban poor (black) folks. If I'm wrong, I'll count on someone from Wisconsin to correct me.
At any rate, the legislature would like to give UW the power to start up as many independent charters as they like. Well, actually, it commands UW to appoint somebody to the of Grand High Authorizer; local school boards will have no say. Under the Wisconsin method, those newly approved charters can be explicitly for-profit (all modern charters make a profit-- the only variation is in the book-keeping and smoke-mirror combinations to cover the revenue stream). And of course all of the charters will suck their lifeblood directly from the veins of the public system.
Imagine that somebody pulls up to your yard and starts building a house in the middle of your lawn. When you object, they show you a letter from the state capital-- not only can they build there, but you will be responsible for paying all of their bills and making sure they make a handsome income on top of that.
This is not entirely new. Charters have been previously authorizable by Milwaukee City Council, UW-Milwaukee, UW-Parkside and the Milwaukee Area Technical College.
Nor is this a completely out of left field. This proposal comes with the loving support of Sen. Alberta Darling, the same legislator who co-outlined the proposal to drop a house on Milwaukee's poor.
And while the Madison-Milwaukee proposal is the markee move here, don't miss this other tasty detail.
The proposal also allows the Waukesha County Executive to authorize independent charter schools in that county. Sen. Paul Farrow, who headed the Senate’s effort to overhaul accountability for schools, is leaving the Senate in July after recently being elected Waukesha county executive.
Sigh. Some days I think the only way these reformsters could get more lazy and transparent would be to propose legislation requiring the state to deliver bales of money directly to their homes.
Winning Quotes
The Wisconsin State Journal did round up a couple of fine reactions to this latest educational gut shot. From Madison School Board member Ed Hughes:
It looks like the UW President is required to appoint someone who could then authorize as many publicly funded but potentially for-profit charter schools in Madison as that unelected and unaccountable person wanted.
And Madison School Superintendent Jennifer Cheatham was equally blunt:
We are incredibly determined, and we are making progress on behalf of all children. But at every step of the way, the Legislature puts more barriers in our way and makes our jobs more difficult.
Wisconsin's Education Twilight
So the bottom line-- in Scott Walker's Wisconsin, I can set up a charter school at taxpayer expense and staff it with pretty much anybody I like (and who will get whatever pay I feel like giving them--at taxpayer expense). My only out-of-pocket costs might be some up front "processing fees" for the Grand High Authorizer.
The possibilities are endless. Heck, every member of my family could become a member of my charter school faculty. If my family is too small, I could recruit staff from the Pick'n'Save-- if they schedule their cashier shifts in the evening and teach during the day, they can make some nice extra money on the side.
My condolences to the few actual teachers left in Wisconsin. It has to be lonely, and getting progressively lonelier, as Wisconsin works hard to become the Mississippi or the North. The only thing worse than being an actual teacher in Wisconsin will be being a student who hopes to get an actual education.
Friday, May 29, 2015
PA: Cyber Whine Party
Pennsylvania cyber charters are Very Sad, because the new governor of the state is threatening to end their long-standing party.
Years ago, a local departing superintendent offered a few words of advice. "If you want to get rich," he said, "go start a cyber school." He was not kidding. For the past decade-plus, running a Pennsylvania cyber charter has been as good as printing money. Despite their abysmal record of academic failure, Pennsylvania cybers rake in money hand over fist.
There's no big secret to it-- a cyber is paid the full per-capita home district cost of every student it enrolls. If it costs East Bucksawanna $10,500 per child to provide buildings and maintenance and infrastructure and resources and teachers and books and all the rest, then the Gotrox Cyber Acdemy gets that same $10,500, with which it provides the student with a computer (free!!) and access to a teacher or two (each of whom is carrying several hundreds of students).
It's like running a dealership where every customer will pay the purchase price of their last brand new luxury automobile and in return, all you have to give them is some object with wheels.
This has been a point of contention in PA because every cent that goes into cyber coffers comes straight out of public school tax dollars. Every student that a cyber enrolls is a budget cut for public schools, and the cuts are vicious and deep and resulting in loss of programs, closing of schools, and furloughs of teachers. Taxpayers are complaining to public schools, "What the hell did you do with all that money I gave you," and public schools reply, "That guy right over there [pointing at cyber charter] took it, and that guy right over there [pointing at legislator] says I have to let it happen." People are getting pissed off. The baloney about how the money follows the child isn't convincing, because people are now seeing that the child not only takes his own family's money, but the tax dollars from all the neighbors on his street, too.
Cyber charters in PA have created whole new traditions. For instance, a cyber school may test a student to determine if the student has special needs. Why would they care? Perhaps because they get roughly $10K for regular students and $25K for students with special needs.
There's also the tradition of enrollment day, on which guidance counselors and cyber schoolsters sit at their computers and toss students back and forth like hot potatoes on a reverse e-bay. Why? Well, there are two magic dates on the cyber calendar. After one certain date, the school gets to keep the money even if the kid leaves the cyber. After enrollment day, whoever still has the kid has to count that students test scores as their own.
Anyway. Governor Wolf has raised a fun question-- how much does it actually cost to educate a cyber-student? Because shouldn't it cost, you know, less? And if so, why should taxpayers pay more? No other public school (because, like all charters, cybers insist on calling themselves public schools) sets a budget that includes an extra couple of million just to feather the nest.
Wolf has proposed a flat fee-- $5,950. Cybers currently rake in about $400 million; Wolf's numbers would send about $160 million back to public schools (you know-- the schools that taxpayers thought they were funding in the first place). That sound you hear is the sound of cyber school operators whining, loudly.
"If that budget passes, we're going to have to either cut staff and programming, or we're going to have to increase our enrollment," said Kim McCully, the Interim CEO of 21st Century Cyber Charter, headquartered in Downingtown.
I call bullshit.
21st Century Cyber spends $10,736 per student.
I call bullshit again. Those statements, if true, mean that 21st Century is the most inefficient, poorly-run excuse for a cyber school ever created.
"They've made all these conclusions about our school," said McCully, "but they have never, ever reached out to us and said, can we please come look."
I have no way of knowing if that's true in the case of 21st Century. I know that in some cyber-cases, it took some reaching out by federal grand juries to find out how a charter was spending money. Or by lawsuit. Or by another lawsuit. I also know that right now, the PA School Board Association is demanding to see charter schools financials, and charters have dismissed the whole thing as "frivolous." I think we can safely say that PA charters, both cyber and brick, have not been very interested in talking about fair funding. They've got theirs, Jack.
Or at least, they had theirs. Now they are worried. And whiny.
Cyber schools fill some real needs. There are students who are better served by that model than by the traditional set up. Cyber schools have also become a popular way to augment home schooling. But cybers have also become a good way to get out of having to pay one more truancy fine. And we don't talk very much about cyber assignments which, at the end of the day, just have to be completed on the computer at this end, by somebody.
There's a worthwhile discussion to be had about the value of cyberschools and about the many needs they meet. What we don't really need to discuss is how they meet the needs of some people to accumulate giant piles of money at the expense of public schools and Pennsylvania taxpayers. Wolf's proposal is long overdue; let's ee how it holds up against the impending onslaught of lobbyists for the charter biz. If you're in PA, now would be a good time to write to your legislators.
Years ago, a local departing superintendent offered a few words of advice. "If you want to get rich," he said, "go start a cyber school." He was not kidding. For the past decade-plus, running a Pennsylvania cyber charter has been as good as printing money. Despite their abysmal record of academic failure, Pennsylvania cybers rake in money hand over fist.
There's no big secret to it-- a cyber is paid the full per-capita home district cost of every student it enrolls. If it costs East Bucksawanna $10,500 per child to provide buildings and maintenance and infrastructure and resources and teachers and books and all the rest, then the Gotrox Cyber Acdemy gets that same $10,500, with which it provides the student with a computer (free!!) and access to a teacher or two (each of whom is carrying several hundreds of students).
It's like running a dealership where every customer will pay the purchase price of their last brand new luxury automobile and in return, all you have to give them is some object with wheels.
This has been a point of contention in PA because every cent that goes into cyber coffers comes straight out of public school tax dollars. Every student that a cyber enrolls is a budget cut for public schools, and the cuts are vicious and deep and resulting in loss of programs, closing of schools, and furloughs of teachers. Taxpayers are complaining to public schools, "What the hell did you do with all that money I gave you," and public schools reply, "That guy right over there [pointing at cyber charter] took it, and that guy right over there [pointing at legislator] says I have to let it happen." People are getting pissed off. The baloney about how the money follows the child isn't convincing, because people are now seeing that the child not only takes his own family's money, but the tax dollars from all the neighbors on his street, too.
Cyber charters in PA have created whole new traditions. For instance, a cyber school may test a student to determine if the student has special needs. Why would they care? Perhaps because they get roughly $10K for regular students and $25K for students with special needs.
There's also the tradition of enrollment day, on which guidance counselors and cyber schoolsters sit at their computers and toss students back and forth like hot potatoes on a reverse e-bay. Why? Well, there are two magic dates on the cyber calendar. After one certain date, the school gets to keep the money even if the kid leaves the cyber. After enrollment day, whoever still has the kid has to count that students test scores as their own.
Anyway. Governor Wolf has raised a fun question-- how much does it actually cost to educate a cyber-student? Because shouldn't it cost, you know, less? And if so, why should taxpayers pay more? No other public school (because, like all charters, cybers insist on calling themselves public schools) sets a budget that includes an extra couple of million just to feather the nest.
Wolf has proposed a flat fee-- $5,950. Cybers currently rake in about $400 million; Wolf's numbers would send about $160 million back to public schools (you know-- the schools that taxpayers thought they were funding in the first place). That sound you hear is the sound of cyber school operators whining, loudly.
"If that budget passes, we're going to have to either cut staff and programming, or we're going to have to increase our enrollment," said Kim McCully, the Interim CEO of 21st Century Cyber Charter, headquartered in Downingtown.
I call bullshit.
21st Century Cyber spends $10,736 per student.
I call bullshit again. Those statements, if true, mean that 21st Century is the most inefficient, poorly-run excuse for a cyber school ever created.
"They've made all these conclusions about our school," said McCully, "but they have never, ever reached out to us and said, can we please come look."
I have no way of knowing if that's true in the case of 21st Century. I know that in some cyber-cases, it took some reaching out by federal grand juries to find out how a charter was spending money. Or by lawsuit. Or by another lawsuit. I also know that right now, the PA School Board Association is demanding to see charter schools financials, and charters have dismissed the whole thing as "frivolous." I think we can safely say that PA charters, both cyber and brick, have not been very interested in talking about fair funding. They've got theirs, Jack.
Or at least, they had theirs. Now they are worried. And whiny.
Cyber schools fill some real needs. There are students who are better served by that model than by the traditional set up. Cyber schools have also become a popular way to augment home schooling. But cybers have also become a good way to get out of having to pay one more truancy fine. And we don't talk very much about cyber assignments which, at the end of the day, just have to be completed on the computer at this end, by somebody.
There's a worthwhile discussion to be had about the value of cyberschools and about the many needs they meet. What we don't really need to discuss is how they meet the needs of some people to accumulate giant piles of money at the expense of public schools and Pennsylvania taxpayers. Wolf's proposal is long overdue; let's ee how it holds up against the impending onslaught of lobbyists for the charter biz. If you're in PA, now would be a good time to write to your legislators.
The High Expectations Fallacy
High expectations. Boy, do we love that phrase these days.
It's hard-wired into the Common Core. CCSS will use higher expectations to bring about great student achievement. I could link to hundreds of articles using some version of that phrase. The Core will save us all through the power of higher expectations.
As a flip side of this, every instance of a student coming up short is blamed on low expectations. The oft-repeated mantra that we have lied to students, telling them they're on track for college when they aren't. The claim that students with special needs only come up short on school achievement because their teachers have not expected enough of them. Here's the thought as clearly expressed by Washington State:
The evidence is clear that disabilities do not cause disparate outcomes, but that the system itself perpetuates limitations in expectations and false belief systems about who children with disabilities can be and how much they can achieve in their lifetime.
So, high expectations are the key to success and greater achievement. Higher expectations are the key to every thing!
Well, not everything.
For instance, we often offer proof that students aren't ready for college because so many of them take remedial courses. But why? Haven't colleges heard of the magical power of expectations?
I mean, why have the student take a remedial course when you could just have all professors raise their expectations? Come on, Professor McWeisenheimer! Just expect those freshmen to do better! Raise your expectations and surely, face with higher expectations, those college freshmen will be awesome!
And what about employers. We've heard that Common Core is needed to get students ready for careers, but couldn't employers do that just by raising expectations? If new employees are doing poorly, that disparate outcome must be the result of a corporate system that perpetuates limitations in expectations. If we could just train employers to have higher expectations, then all new employees would rise to those expectations! Paradise! Unicorn farms!
Look, I have great respect for the power of high expectations, and I think my students would back me up on this. But if reformsters are going to insist that high expectations are the secret to fixing everything about schools, they need to explain why the power of high expectations ONLY applies to K-12 education and not to either college or the workplace. Until then, the phrase is just an empty soundbite, and really, I expect much better of them.
It's hard-wired into the Common Core. CCSS will use higher expectations to bring about great student achievement. I could link to hundreds of articles using some version of that phrase. The Core will save us all through the power of higher expectations.
As a flip side of this, every instance of a student coming up short is blamed on low expectations. The oft-repeated mantra that we have lied to students, telling them they're on track for college when they aren't. The claim that students with special needs only come up short on school achievement because their teachers have not expected enough of them. Here's the thought as clearly expressed by Washington State:
The evidence is clear that disabilities do not cause disparate outcomes, but that the system itself perpetuates limitations in expectations and false belief systems about who children with disabilities can be and how much they can achieve in their lifetime.
So, high expectations are the key to success and greater achievement. Higher expectations are the key to every thing!
Well, not everything.
For instance, we often offer proof that students aren't ready for college because so many of them take remedial courses. But why? Haven't colleges heard of the magical power of expectations?
I mean, why have the student take a remedial course when you could just have all professors raise their expectations? Come on, Professor McWeisenheimer! Just expect those freshmen to do better! Raise your expectations and surely, face with higher expectations, those college freshmen will be awesome!
And what about employers. We've heard that Common Core is needed to get students ready for careers, but couldn't employers do that just by raising expectations? If new employees are doing poorly, that disparate outcome must be the result of a corporate system that perpetuates limitations in expectations. If we could just train employers to have higher expectations, then all new employees would rise to those expectations! Paradise! Unicorn farms!
Look, I have great respect for the power of high expectations, and I think my students would back me up on this. But if reformsters are going to insist that high expectations are the secret to fixing everything about schools, they need to explain why the power of high expectations ONLY applies to K-12 education and not to either college or the workplace. Until then, the phrase is just an empty soundbite, and really, I expect much better of them.
CAP Chicken Littles New Jersey
This is why I don't take CAP seriously.
There has been a predictable outcry over Chris Christie's announced abandonment of the Common Core. Christie's gesture is hollow and pointless, and some of the Core-loving criticism has been correct to call it cynical, as well as ultimately pointless, since Christie has also recommitted to PARCC and since the CCSS replacement will likely not be a whole new animal, but the same old pig with fresh make-up.
But CAP can be counted on to cobble together a bit of whineage constructed entirely from old reformster PR. They unvieled this slab of baloney in NJ.com under the by-line of Daniell Gibbs Leger, senior vice-president for communications and strategy at the Center for American Progress Action Fund. In other words, her job is to go put stuff on line to try to promote the reformster program. Let's check to see if all the usual talking points are in place.
She opens by calling Christie out and quoting his former "courageous" support of the Core (because in 2010 it took real courage to accept all that money from various CCSS supporters). And she notes that turning on the Core is a popular parlor game among GOP Presidential aspirants.
But in his attempt to appease his base by opposing the Common Core, Gov. Christie has turned his back on the students of New Jersey, particularly students of color and those from low-income backgrounds.
Yes, we need the Core For The Children.
Also, Achievement Gap. There's a bad one, and it's all because of people with Low Expectations. The Common Core Standards would Level the Playing Field. Because the playing field is totally cockeyed because of educational standards for math and reading, and not at all because of systemic poverty and economic policies that favor the rich.
But see-- in the old days we were always Lying To Students about their college readiness, as proven by the number who have to Take Remedial Course. Also, students with College Degrees Make More Money. This is totally not because both college attendance and later-in-life earnings are directly tied to your socio-economic background.
Let's throw in some Stretchers as Evidence. " Kentucky, who was the first state to adopt the Common Core, saw college and career readiness rates increase from 34 percent to 62 percent in just four years." That would be more impressive if the college and career readiness rate was not simply another name for test results. All this says that after years of practicing taking tests, Kentucky students are better at taking tests.
And let's drive it home in a Big Thesis Without Any Actual Support. "By providing more rigorous standards and holding all students to higher expectations, students are better prepared to exit high school with the skills they need to succeed in college and careers." It sounds lovely, but it depends on the higher expectations magical thinking and references the skills needed to succeed in college and career which would be great except that no such list exists.
Let's throw in some True Statements Unconnected To The Point. "Our students—no matter the color of their skin or their socio-economic status—deserve the highest quality education." That is absolutely true-- but how is it that such a statement does not lead us to a discussion of equitable funding or teacher support or providing resources for poor schools? What exactly does Common Core have to do with providing the highest quality education? Is it used in all the top private schools? (Spoiler alert: not even when hell freezes over).
Doubling Down on Unsupportable Promise, and False Promise of Equity. Christie should support the "high standards that guarantee and equitable education for all students, no matter what their ZIP code may be." (Oh, yeah-- Tyranny of the Zip Code) Because using charters to eliminate geographical boundaries is working super-duper in Newark.
And finally, Alluding to Non-existent Success. Christie should not do this because it will be A Step Backwards "and our students will suffer the consequences." Because New Jersey has had huge educational success because of the Common Core.
I think cigarette companies do a better job of making a case for their project. CAP is reduced, again, to running in circles and hollering that the sky is falling and only the magical power of Common Core can save it.
There has been a predictable outcry over Chris Christie's announced abandonment of the Common Core. Christie's gesture is hollow and pointless, and some of the Core-loving criticism has been correct to call it cynical, as well as ultimately pointless, since Christie has also recommitted to PARCC and since the CCSS replacement will likely not be a whole new animal, but the same old pig with fresh make-up.
But CAP can be counted on to cobble together a bit of whineage constructed entirely from old reformster PR. They unvieled this slab of baloney in NJ.com under the by-line of Daniell Gibbs Leger, senior vice-president for communications and strategy at the Center for American Progress Action Fund. In other words, her job is to go put stuff on line to try to promote the reformster program. Let's check to see if all the usual talking points are in place.
She opens by calling Christie out and quoting his former "courageous" support of the Core (because in 2010 it took real courage to accept all that money from various CCSS supporters). And she notes that turning on the Core is a popular parlor game among GOP Presidential aspirants.
But in his attempt to appease his base by opposing the Common Core, Gov. Christie has turned his back on the students of New Jersey, particularly students of color and those from low-income backgrounds.
Yes, we need the Core For The Children.
Also, Achievement Gap. There's a bad one, and it's all because of people with Low Expectations. The Common Core Standards would Level the Playing Field. Because the playing field is totally cockeyed because of educational standards for math and reading, and not at all because of systemic poverty and economic policies that favor the rich.
But see-- in the old days we were always Lying To Students about their college readiness, as proven by the number who have to Take Remedial Course. Also, students with College Degrees Make More Money. This is totally not because both college attendance and later-in-life earnings are directly tied to your socio-economic background.
Let's throw in some Stretchers as Evidence. " Kentucky, who was the first state to adopt the Common Core, saw college and career readiness rates increase from 34 percent to 62 percent in just four years." That would be more impressive if the college and career readiness rate was not simply another name for test results. All this says that after years of practicing taking tests, Kentucky students are better at taking tests.
And let's drive it home in a Big Thesis Without Any Actual Support. "By providing more rigorous standards and holding all students to higher expectations, students are better prepared to exit high school with the skills they need to succeed in college and careers." It sounds lovely, but it depends on the higher expectations magical thinking and references the skills needed to succeed in college and career which would be great except that no such list exists.
Let's throw in some True Statements Unconnected To The Point. "Our students—no matter the color of their skin or their socio-economic status—deserve the highest quality education." That is absolutely true-- but how is it that such a statement does not lead us to a discussion of equitable funding or teacher support or providing resources for poor schools? What exactly does Common Core have to do with providing the highest quality education? Is it used in all the top private schools? (Spoiler alert: not even when hell freezes over).
Doubling Down on Unsupportable Promise, and False Promise of Equity. Christie should support the "high standards that guarantee and equitable education for all students, no matter what their ZIP code may be." (Oh, yeah-- Tyranny of the Zip Code) Because using charters to eliminate geographical boundaries is working super-duper in Newark.
And finally, Alluding to Non-existent Success. Christie should not do this because it will be A Step Backwards "and our students will suffer the consequences." Because New Jersey has had huge educational success because of the Common Core.
I think cigarette companies do a better job of making a case for their project. CAP is reduced, again, to running in circles and hollering that the sky is falling and only the magical power of Common Core can save it.
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