After four years of consistently disastrous misleadership, Cami Anderson will be stepping down as head of Newark Schools.
The announcement came today, attached to the name of Commissioner David Hespe. Who finally shoved Anderson out the door? It doesn't really matter. In the manner of other reformsters, I expect that she will fail upwards.
That's the good news. The less good news is that, contrary to Bob Braun's report last week, Anderson will not be replaced by Chris Cerf on a temporary basis; instead, Cerf will reportedly be offered a three year contract. While expectations of an Anderson resignation have been kicking around for at least a year, the emptying of her office gave new life to those expectations. Whoever shoved her gets no credit; Anderson's administration has been so clearly dysfunctional and addicted to failure that it's hard to think of anything that she ever did even sort of right. Leaving her in office this long has been its own sort of spectacular failure, like driving from New York to San Francisco in a car that blew out all four tires somewhere around Philadelphia. You don't get any genius points for finally doing something about the problem that has been killing you for years.
Cerf, of course, comes with a strong reformster pedigree. He worked for Joel Klein from 2006 to 2009, helping make a hash out of New York City schools. He became New Jersey's school chief next, leaving that job in 2014 at about the same time that Bridgegate was taking off. Cerf left directly to work for his old boss Klein at Amplify, the company that Rupert Murdoch hoped would help him cash in in the educational tech biz. No sooner had Cerf exited his New Jersey office then Cami Anderson awarded Amplify over $2 million worth of contracts. It is a cozy club that reformster belong to.
Cerf is one of those guys who has no regrets and never admits a mistake. But Amplify has been a train wreck. They were going to revolutionize education with tablets and on-line content. But, as Bloomberg put it, "that hasn't happened." Amplify couldn't come up with hardware that worked, software that worked, content that impressed anybody, and a workable plan to crack the crowded school market. They couldn't crack the market in assessments, they couldn't get their own internal bureaucracy sorted out, and they couldn't stop hemorrhaging money, making their market as the one division of News Corp that couldn't turn a profit. So when News Corp started waving its ax around, Amplify felt the cutting edge.
Cerf's trajectory is unusual-- he returns to New Jersey in a lower position than he left. But there is no reason to think that his arrival in Newark will be good news for anybody. At the same time, he will be facing some of the strongest, smartest and most experienced student and community activists anywhere in the country. It's true that Anderson set the bar low-- she couldn't even bring herself to speak with anybody in the community. But Cerf is walking into a huge mess with a four-year history of denying Newark citizens any semblance of democracy and any imitation of a working plan for running a public school system.
Cerf starts at the beginning of July. It should be an interesting summer.
Monday, June 22, 2015
Fox Runs PARCC PR
Fox News Sunday took a little under four minutes to provide some uncritical promotional time for PARCC, using their "Power Player of the Week" spot to let Laura Slover, PARCC CEO, push the usual PARCC baloney. It's short-- but I've watched it so that you don't have to.
Chris Wallace kicks things off by saying that Common Core was "started by governors and state education officials as a way to set standards," so we know we're entering the Feel Free To Spin Zone right off the bat, though the second half of that sentence notes that it has become controversial because of concerns over federal interference (it is) and whether or not it's the best way to teach kids (it isn't). So I guess he's acknowledging the controversy, if not teaching it. But let's go visit a group that's testing how well Common Core works.
Roll title card for PPOTW.
Cut to Slover's talking head saying that high standards are vital because high expectations will make students do better.
Explanation that PARCC is one of two state consortia for testing. This is the first of many opportunities Wallace will have to note that PARCC started out with twenty-three members and is now down to twelve, but that little market-based measure of PARCC's failure will not make it into the profile. He'll just mention the twelve state figure in passing and let it go at that.
Slover will now run the talking point about how PARCC is a new kind of test where you don't (always) bubble in the right answer, but now drag and drop the right answer, which is, you know, totally different. She also claims that the tests measure critical thinking, problem solving, and writing, and as we have seen repeatedly, that's mostly a lie. Problem solving, maybe. Writing, not in any meaningful way. Critical thinking, never.
Wallace takes a third grade test and mentions that it was "a little challenging." We see a shot of him being amazed? incredulous? that an answer is dragged and dropped instead of being clicked on (because this is how we test eight year olds' advanced mouse operating skills-- that's in the Core, right?) but no real discussoin of what the questions entailed. Nor do we ever address where the questions come from or why anyone should believe they are a good measure of anything in particular.
Next, several GOP Presidential hopefuls say mean things about Common Core, including Bobby Jindal and Ted Cruz, both of whom get sound bites about how the feds are intruding. Wallace tells Slover, "The main complaint is that this is all part of a federal takeover of local schools." And I suppose that might be the main complaint among Fox News viewers, but c'mon-- even over there word has to have come by now that a whole host of working teachers and education experts have a list of concerns about the actual quality of the standards.
Slover counters that this is a state-driven program and states make all the decisions. But Wallace says it's more complicated than that (though not to Slover, who clearly did not need to wear her big girl pants to this interview). Wallace notes that Race to the Top effectively pushed the Core on states, but he skips over the whole business of waivers; that omission seems odd, given that the Obama administration end run around the law would be just the sort of shenanigans that Fox viewers would love to get outraged about.
We'll now give a few seconds to the opt out movement. Actually, we don't acknowledge there's a movement--we just indicate that some parents choose to pull their children from the test. But not Slover-- she wants to have her young daughter take the test because "I want to be sure she's learning." Because this highly educated CEO of a testing corporation won't know whether or not her child can read or do math unless she has test results to look at. There are so many things Wallace could have done at this juncture, but even in non-confrontation mode, he could have shown us the report that PARCC provides, which basically gives a simple verbal version of a letter grade.
But we're sticking to the usual narrative, which means that besides the usual anti-fed opposition to the Core, the other group we'll mention is-- you guessed it-- the teachers unions. As we watch picketing clips, we're reminded that the union doesn't like testing because they "worry" that their members will be judged on test results. Wallace has nothing to say about that concern (not even a simple observation that the Value-Added method for doing test-based judgment has been rejected by every authority on the subject).
Instead we go back to Slover to ask her how she feels about being slammed by both the right and the left. She takes the softball and says, "We must be doing something right," with a hearty smile.
Wallace begins the wrapup by observing that PARCC is fine-tuning by doing things like making the test 90 minutes shorter next year. But, he says, Slover says the basic principle is sound. Was there a basic principle we talked about anywhere in this piece? No matter- Slover is going to now opine on the testing talking point that we haven't yet squeezed into this piece of PR fluffery yet:
For too long in this country, success has been really a function of what income level parents have and where kids grow up. We think it's critical that kids all have opportunities, whether they live in Mississippi or Massachusetts or Colorado or Ohio, they should all have access to an excellent education, and this is a step in the right direction.
I'll note one more instance of the "access" construction favored by reformsters (would you rather have access to food, or food?). But mostly I'm impressed that Slover is able to deliver all of that speech with a straight face, given that we know that the PARCC and tests like it correlate most directly to socio-economic class. It would have been nice if Wallace had asked something like, "So how, exactly, does taking a standardized test give kids access to an excellent education?" But he just pops up to note that whether or not this is a step in the right direction is debatable, which, yes, yes, it is, and as a debatable issue, it deserves some actual fact-based reporting about the sides of that debate, but Wallace just finishes the sentence by promising us that it will be a big issue for GOP candidates.
I know that the "Power Player of the Week" segments are not meant to be hard news, but this is just a three-minute advertisement for PARCC masquerading as news. A long time ago, television personalities used to pitch products in advertisements during their own programs, but they stopped doing it because it was undignified and hurt credibility. Would that modern news channels (not just Fox) would have another such epiphany.
Chris Wallace kicks things off by saying that Common Core was "started by governors and state education officials as a way to set standards," so we know we're entering the Feel Free To Spin Zone right off the bat, though the second half of that sentence notes that it has become controversial because of concerns over federal interference (it is) and whether or not it's the best way to teach kids (it isn't). So I guess he's acknowledging the controversy, if not teaching it. But let's go visit a group that's testing how well Common Core works.
Roll title card for PPOTW.
Cut to Slover's talking head saying that high standards are vital because high expectations will make students do better.
Explanation that PARCC is one of two state consortia for testing. This is the first of many opportunities Wallace will have to note that PARCC started out with twenty-three members and is now down to twelve, but that little market-based measure of PARCC's failure will not make it into the profile. He'll just mention the twelve state figure in passing and let it go at that.
Slover will now run the talking point about how PARCC is a new kind of test where you don't (always) bubble in the right answer, but now drag and drop the right answer, which is, you know, totally different. She also claims that the tests measure critical thinking, problem solving, and writing, and as we have seen repeatedly, that's mostly a lie. Problem solving, maybe. Writing, not in any meaningful way. Critical thinking, never.
Wallace takes a third grade test and mentions that it was "a little challenging." We see a shot of him being amazed? incredulous? that an answer is dragged and dropped instead of being clicked on (because this is how we test eight year olds' advanced mouse operating skills-- that's in the Core, right?) but no real discussoin of what the questions entailed. Nor do we ever address where the questions come from or why anyone should believe they are a good measure of anything in particular.
Next, several GOP Presidential hopefuls say mean things about Common Core, including Bobby Jindal and Ted Cruz, both of whom get sound bites about how the feds are intruding. Wallace tells Slover, "The main complaint is that this is all part of a federal takeover of local schools." And I suppose that might be the main complaint among Fox News viewers, but c'mon-- even over there word has to have come by now that a whole host of working teachers and education experts have a list of concerns about the actual quality of the standards.
Slover counters that this is a state-driven program and states make all the decisions. But Wallace says it's more complicated than that (though not to Slover, who clearly did not need to wear her big girl pants to this interview). Wallace notes that Race to the Top effectively pushed the Core on states, but he skips over the whole business of waivers; that omission seems odd, given that the Obama administration end run around the law would be just the sort of shenanigans that Fox viewers would love to get outraged about.
We'll now give a few seconds to the opt out movement. Actually, we don't acknowledge there's a movement--we just indicate that some parents choose to pull their children from the test. But not Slover-- she wants to have her young daughter take the test because "I want to be sure she's learning." Because this highly educated CEO of a testing corporation won't know whether or not her child can read or do math unless she has test results to look at. There are so many things Wallace could have done at this juncture, but even in non-confrontation mode, he could have shown us the report that PARCC provides, which basically gives a simple verbal version of a letter grade.
But we're sticking to the usual narrative, which means that besides the usual anti-fed opposition to the Core, the other group we'll mention is-- you guessed it-- the teachers unions. As we watch picketing clips, we're reminded that the union doesn't like testing because they "worry" that their members will be judged on test results. Wallace has nothing to say about that concern (not even a simple observation that the Value-Added method for doing test-based judgment has been rejected by every authority on the subject).
Instead we go back to Slover to ask her how she feels about being slammed by both the right and the left. She takes the softball and says, "We must be doing something right," with a hearty smile.
Wallace begins the wrapup by observing that PARCC is fine-tuning by doing things like making the test 90 minutes shorter next year. But, he says, Slover says the basic principle is sound. Was there a basic principle we talked about anywhere in this piece? No matter- Slover is going to now opine on the testing talking point that we haven't yet squeezed into this piece of PR fluffery yet:
For too long in this country, success has been really a function of what income level parents have and where kids grow up. We think it's critical that kids all have opportunities, whether they live in Mississippi or Massachusetts or Colorado or Ohio, they should all have access to an excellent education, and this is a step in the right direction.
I'll note one more instance of the "access" construction favored by reformsters (would you rather have access to food, or food?). But mostly I'm impressed that Slover is able to deliver all of that speech with a straight face, given that we know that the PARCC and tests like it correlate most directly to socio-economic class. It would have been nice if Wallace had asked something like, "So how, exactly, does taking a standardized test give kids access to an excellent education?" But he just pops up to note that whether or not this is a step in the right direction is debatable, which, yes, yes, it is, and as a debatable issue, it deserves some actual fact-based reporting about the sides of that debate, but Wallace just finishes the sentence by promising us that it will be a big issue for GOP candidates.
I know that the "Power Player of the Week" segments are not meant to be hard news, but this is just a three-minute advertisement for PARCC masquerading as news. A long time ago, television personalities used to pitch products in advertisements during their own programs, but they stopped doing it because it was undignified and hurt credibility. Would that modern news channels (not just Fox) would have another such epiphany.
Sunday, June 21, 2015
Einstein on Learning
I'm a fan of the website Brain Pickings, a site where Maria Popova curates a cool collection of cool, smart things. Today for Father's Day she offers an excerpt from the book Posterity, a cool collection of letters from important Americans to their children.
She picked a letter that Albert Einstein wrote to his son when Einstein was 36 and his son Hans Albert was 11. It was 1914 and Einstein had just finished his paper on his general theory of relativity which was about to make him a Very Famous Smart Guy.
In his letter, Einstein included an observation about education. After discussing his son's pursuits, Einstein offered some advice about piano practice-- play the pieces that gave his son joy, whether they were assigned by the teacher or not.
That is the way to learn the most, that when you are doing something with such enjoyment that you don’t notice that the time passes.
Well, isn't that the truth. It is admittedly a difficult state to achieve in a classroom full of teenagers (or six year olds), but it certainly makes a better star to navigate toward than "learn to do something with full awareness that failure will be punished."
She picked a letter that Albert Einstein wrote to his son when Einstein was 36 and his son Hans Albert was 11. It was 1914 and Einstein had just finished his paper on his general theory of relativity which was about to make him a Very Famous Smart Guy.
In his letter, Einstein included an observation about education. After discussing his son's pursuits, Einstein offered some advice about piano practice-- play the pieces that gave his son joy, whether they were assigned by the teacher or not.
That is the way to learn the most, that when you are doing something with such enjoyment that you don’t notice that the time passes.
Well, isn't that the truth. It is admittedly a difficult state to achieve in a classroom full of teenagers (or six year olds), but it certainly makes a better star to navigate toward than "learn to do something with full awareness that failure will be punished."
NYT CCSS ELA PR
Last Friday, Kate Taylor took to the pages of the New York Times to provide a sort of update on what's going on in English classrooms in the "Common Core era." So how are things going? According to Taylor, pretty swell, thanks.
Taylor focuses on the shiny new injection of "informational" reading into the English classroom, leading with the pairing of fiction and non-fiction works, like Catcher in the Rye and articles about bi-polar disorder, the Odyssey and the GI Bill, Tom Sawyer and an op-ed about teenaged unemployment.
The piece is a monument to reportorial Swiss-cheesery, and while I recognize that reporters do not have infinite space available to them, Taylor has skipped over some fairly significant parts of the story.
Here are some things that Taylor does not know.
Taylor does not know that Common Core is in the weeds
She takes a half-sentence to note that schools choose their own readings, so I'm guessing Taylor's heard that not everybody feels the CCSS love. But she fails to teach the controversy here.
She also fails to note that Common Core increasingly means whatever the local authorities want it to mean, or nothing at all. The Common Core of the actual standards is not the same as the Core in the Big Standardized Test, nor is it the same as whatever teaching materials your district has bought-- and all of that is before we get to your local administrator, who may have her own idea of what edited version of CCSS to enforce. The term "Common Core" now means so many different things that it is essentially meaningless.
Taylor does not know where the informational text requirement came from.
Taylor notes that "the new standards stipulate" that a certain percentage (50 for elementary, 70 for high school) of a student's daily reading diet should be informational. And that's as deep as she digs.
But why is the informational requirement in the Common Core in the first place? There's only one reason-- because David Coleman thought it would be a good idea. All these years later, and not one shred of evidence, one scrap of research, not a solitary other nation that has used such a requirement to good results--- there isn't anything at all to back up the inclusion of the informational reading requirement in the standards except that David Coleman thought it would be a good idea. Coleman, I will remind you, is not a teacher, not an educator, not a person with one iota of expertise in teaching and is, in fact, proud of his lack of qualifications. In fact, Coleman has shared with us his thoughts about how to teach literature, and they are -- not good. If Coleman were student teaching in my classroom, I would be sending him back to the drawing board (or letting him try his ideas out so that we could have a post-crash-and-burn "How could we do better" session).
Coleman has pulled off one of the greatest cons ever. If a random guy walked in off the street into your district office and said, "Hey, I want to rewrite some big chunks of your curriculum just because," he would be justly ignored. But Coleman has managed to walk in off the street and force every American school district pay attention to him.
Taylor does not know what we've given up to meet the new requirements
Taylor uses a quote to both pay lip service to and also to dismiss concerns about curricular cuts.
“Unfortunately there has been some elimination of some literature,” said Kimberly Skillen, the district administrator for secondary curriculum and instruction in Deer Park, N.Y. But she added: “We look at teaching literature as teaching particular concepts and skills. So we maybe aren’t teaching an entire novel, but we’re ensuring that we’re teaching the concepts that that novel would have gotten across.”
So, you see, we really only use literature in the classroom as a sort of bucket to carry in little nuggets of concept and skill. The literature doesn't really have any intrinsic value of its own. Why read the whole novel when we only really care about (aka test) a couple of paragraphs on page 142? If we were hoping to pick up some metaphor-reading skills along the way, why not just read a page of metaphor examples?
This is an attitude of such staggering ignorance and numbskullery that I hardly know how to address it. This is like saying, "Why bother with getting to know someone and dating and talking to each other and listening to each other and spending months just doing things together and sharing hopes and dreams and finally deciding to commit your lives to each other and planning a life together and then after all that finally sleeping together-- why do all that when you could just hire a fifty-dollar hooker and skid straight to the sex?" It so completely misses the point, and if neither Taylor nor Skillen can see how it misses the point, I'm not even sure where to begin.
Literature creates a complex web of relationships, relationships between the reader and the author, between the various parts of the text, between the writing techniques and the meaning.
You don't get the literature without reading the whole thing. The "we'll just read the critical part of the work" school of teaching belongs right up there with a "Just the last five minutes" film festival. Heck, as long as you see the sled go into the furnace or the death star blow up or Kevin Spacey lose the limp, you don't really need the rest of the film for anything, right?
Taylor does not know that English teachers have heard of non-fiction
Taylor makes sure to point out that sometimes, non-fiction is interesting to students. Why, thanks, ma'm! I have also heard that students enjoy the rap music and often eat more than one type of food. Also, water is wet. Taylor also doesn't know that some literature is non-fiction; like most writers on this topic, she mentions the Gettysburg Address as a new non-fiction focus, even though the speech (along with "I Will Fight No More Forever") is in every major 11th grade literature anthology in the US.
But Taylor goes with the notion, anecdotally supported by one administrator, that the English teaching world is loaded with teachers who only and always teach fiction, even though there was this one time that an administrator totally saw a class fully engaged in discussion about a real life issue.
I don't know. Maybe New York is just another world. But I find it hard to believe that Taylor could not have walked up any hall and found an English teacher who has always taught non-fiction material in her class. So if non-fiction is not news to us, then what's the big deal? Hold that thought for a few subheadings.
Taylor does not know why we teach literature in the first place
Hint: it's not just so that literature can be a bucket in which to carry other skills to the student.
The purposes of teaching literature is a topic that deserves not just its own post, but its own blog. But let me just skim the surface of the surface.
Literature lets students experience people and places and feelings and ideas that they do not encounter in their own world, and it lets them encounter things exactly like what they experience in their own, and it lets them experience both in ways that open the experience up to new understanding and expression. Literature opens up new worlds to students, and it opens up familiar worlds as well. It builds depth of understanding and depth of expression. It gives them practice and exercise in developing, holding, connecting many ideas. Reading literature is part of the process of growing and advancing and becoming more fully human.
Taylor slips in the notion that some literature is just hard and probably pointless; she recounts the story of one teacher who was happy to cut Beowulf back to an excerpt because, you know, who really wants to teach that piece of ancient junk?
But the selection of particular works is tricky, because the "right" work is found at the intersection of teacher, students, and the work itself. A literary teacher is the students' guide to that world. The best guides to a place are not the ones who either don't know it or who just plain hate it; the best guides are the people who know and love the territory. You could not pay me enough to teach Paradise Lost to high school students, but I have a colleague who does it every year with huge success. Meanwhile, I'm about the only teacher I know who likes to teach Heart of Darkness. Most on point, I teach Hamlet every year, and I teach it differently every year, partly because of me and partly because of whatever group of students I'm teaching.
Pet peeve: "making" works relevant. Either you can see how it connects to the world and your students or you can't-- there's no point in trying to force or fake it. But of course all of that also applies to non-fiction as well. Here's a delightful quote from a newly-minted assistant principal:
Ms. Thomas said she believed many students were more interested in talking about real-world issues like genetic testing than about how a character changed over the course of a novel.
Yes, because how people change and grow and develop is certainly a fake, not-real-world issue that teenagers could never relate to. Gah! The notion that fiction is somehow "fake" and unrelated to the "real" world is just so-- dumb! Literature is one more engage with what is real and true about the world, and anybody who doesn't get that is welcome to come watch my students argue endlessly about Edna Pontillier (The Awakening) and the proper role of women in the world.
Taylor does not know what the real problem with Common Core reading is
If administrators keep their heads and don't let Common Core scare them, the losses under Core reading are minimal. But if administrators start to worry about test scores, things get ugly.
Perdido Street School lays out some of the losses in New York school district that lose their heads and jump into the EngageNY pool. That's similar to what happens in places where administrators take seriously all the baloney about Close Reading 2.0, which is a thing that calls itself close reading and which is really just test prep.
For schools that decide to let the Big Standardized Test drive the curriculum bus, the path is clear-- the significant change is not read more non-fiction, but to do all reading in little chunks. The Common Core can pay lip service to reading whole works and developing an understanding of themes and ideas that are developed through an entire work, but that will never, ever be on the test.
So, as Taylor's article hints but never flat out admits, we don't cut Romeo and Juliet entirely, but we only read a few key portions. Tom Sawyer? We'll just read that fence-painting scene, thanks. We'll read literary slices and filets. We'll get our non-fiction fill with short articles. But we will never, ever again, read an entire book from front to back.
And we will always read our short selections to suit someone else's purpose. Personal responses are not the point; the point is to find the answers to the (probably multiple choice) questions in the packet, questions modeled on the BS Test so that students are better prepared for that experience. Do not stop to develop any sort of personal relationship with the reading; figure out what the questions want from you, and go look for that.
Common Core ELA supports the notion that reading, in fact all human relationships, are simple transactions in which the only real question is "What can I get from this and how can I get it?" It is dehumanizing for both teachers and students.
Outside of missing all of that, Taylor did a super job with the article. It's fluffy and to the untrained eye hardly looks like more Common Core PR at all.
Taylor focuses on the shiny new injection of "informational" reading into the English classroom, leading with the pairing of fiction and non-fiction works, like Catcher in the Rye and articles about bi-polar disorder, the Odyssey and the GI Bill, Tom Sawyer and an op-ed about teenaged unemployment.
The piece is a monument to reportorial Swiss-cheesery, and while I recognize that reporters do not have infinite space available to them, Taylor has skipped over some fairly significant parts of the story.
Here are some things that Taylor does not know.
Taylor does not know that Common Core is in the weeds
She takes a half-sentence to note that schools choose their own readings, so I'm guessing Taylor's heard that not everybody feels the CCSS love. But she fails to teach the controversy here.
She also fails to note that Common Core increasingly means whatever the local authorities want it to mean, or nothing at all. The Common Core of the actual standards is not the same as the Core in the Big Standardized Test, nor is it the same as whatever teaching materials your district has bought-- and all of that is before we get to your local administrator, who may have her own idea of what edited version of CCSS to enforce. The term "Common Core" now means so many different things that it is essentially meaningless.
Taylor does not know where the informational text requirement came from.
Taylor notes that "the new standards stipulate" that a certain percentage (50 for elementary, 70 for high school) of a student's daily reading diet should be informational. And that's as deep as she digs.
But why is the informational requirement in the Common Core in the first place? There's only one reason-- because David Coleman thought it would be a good idea. All these years later, and not one shred of evidence, one scrap of research, not a solitary other nation that has used such a requirement to good results--- there isn't anything at all to back up the inclusion of the informational reading requirement in the standards except that David Coleman thought it would be a good idea. Coleman, I will remind you, is not a teacher, not an educator, not a person with one iota of expertise in teaching and is, in fact, proud of his lack of qualifications. In fact, Coleman has shared with us his thoughts about how to teach literature, and they are -- not good. If Coleman were student teaching in my classroom, I would be sending him back to the drawing board (or letting him try his ideas out so that we could have a post-crash-and-burn "How could we do better" session).
Coleman has pulled off one of the greatest cons ever. If a random guy walked in off the street into your district office and said, "Hey, I want to rewrite some big chunks of your curriculum just because," he would be justly ignored. But Coleman has managed to walk in off the street and force every American school district pay attention to him.
Taylor does not know what we've given up to meet the new requirements
Taylor uses a quote to both pay lip service to and also to dismiss concerns about curricular cuts.
“Unfortunately there has been some elimination of some literature,” said Kimberly Skillen, the district administrator for secondary curriculum and instruction in Deer Park, N.Y. But she added: “We look at teaching literature as teaching particular concepts and skills. So we maybe aren’t teaching an entire novel, but we’re ensuring that we’re teaching the concepts that that novel would have gotten across.”
So, you see, we really only use literature in the classroom as a sort of bucket to carry in little nuggets of concept and skill. The literature doesn't really have any intrinsic value of its own. Why read the whole novel when we only really care about (aka test) a couple of paragraphs on page 142? If we were hoping to pick up some metaphor-reading skills along the way, why not just read a page of metaphor examples?
This is an attitude of such staggering ignorance and numbskullery that I hardly know how to address it. This is like saying, "Why bother with getting to know someone and dating and talking to each other and listening to each other and spending months just doing things together and sharing hopes and dreams and finally deciding to commit your lives to each other and planning a life together and then after all that finally sleeping together-- why do all that when you could just hire a fifty-dollar hooker and skid straight to the sex?" It so completely misses the point, and if neither Taylor nor Skillen can see how it misses the point, I'm not even sure where to begin.
Literature creates a complex web of relationships, relationships between the reader and the author, between the various parts of the text, between the writing techniques and the meaning.
You don't get the literature without reading the whole thing. The "we'll just read the critical part of the work" school of teaching belongs right up there with a "Just the last five minutes" film festival. Heck, as long as you see the sled go into the furnace or the death star blow up or Kevin Spacey lose the limp, you don't really need the rest of the film for anything, right?
Taylor does not know that English teachers have heard of non-fiction
Taylor makes sure to point out that sometimes, non-fiction is interesting to students. Why, thanks, ma'm! I have also heard that students enjoy the rap music and often eat more than one type of food. Also, water is wet. Taylor also doesn't know that some literature is non-fiction; like most writers on this topic, she mentions the Gettysburg Address as a new non-fiction focus, even though the speech (along with "I Will Fight No More Forever") is in every major 11th grade literature anthology in the US.
But Taylor goes with the notion, anecdotally supported by one administrator, that the English teaching world is loaded with teachers who only and always teach fiction, even though there was this one time that an administrator totally saw a class fully engaged in discussion about a real life issue.
I don't know. Maybe New York is just another world. But I find it hard to believe that Taylor could not have walked up any hall and found an English teacher who has always taught non-fiction material in her class. So if non-fiction is not news to us, then what's the big deal? Hold that thought for a few subheadings.
Taylor does not know why we teach literature in the first place
Hint: it's not just so that literature can be a bucket in which to carry other skills to the student.
The purposes of teaching literature is a topic that deserves not just its own post, but its own blog. But let me just skim the surface of the surface.
Literature lets students experience people and places and feelings and ideas that they do not encounter in their own world, and it lets them encounter things exactly like what they experience in their own, and it lets them experience both in ways that open the experience up to new understanding and expression. Literature opens up new worlds to students, and it opens up familiar worlds as well. It builds depth of understanding and depth of expression. It gives them practice and exercise in developing, holding, connecting many ideas. Reading literature is part of the process of growing and advancing and becoming more fully human.
Taylor slips in the notion that some literature is just hard and probably pointless; she recounts the story of one teacher who was happy to cut Beowulf back to an excerpt because, you know, who really wants to teach that piece of ancient junk?
But the selection of particular works is tricky, because the "right" work is found at the intersection of teacher, students, and the work itself. A literary teacher is the students' guide to that world. The best guides to a place are not the ones who either don't know it or who just plain hate it; the best guides are the people who know and love the territory. You could not pay me enough to teach Paradise Lost to high school students, but I have a colleague who does it every year with huge success. Meanwhile, I'm about the only teacher I know who likes to teach Heart of Darkness. Most on point, I teach Hamlet every year, and I teach it differently every year, partly because of me and partly because of whatever group of students I'm teaching.
Pet peeve: "making" works relevant. Either you can see how it connects to the world and your students or you can't-- there's no point in trying to force or fake it. But of course all of that also applies to non-fiction as well. Here's a delightful quote from a newly-minted assistant principal:
Ms. Thomas said she believed many students were more interested in talking about real-world issues like genetic testing than about how a character changed over the course of a novel.
Yes, because how people change and grow and develop is certainly a fake, not-real-world issue that teenagers could never relate to. Gah! The notion that fiction is somehow "fake" and unrelated to the "real" world is just so-- dumb! Literature is one more engage with what is real and true about the world, and anybody who doesn't get that is welcome to come watch my students argue endlessly about Edna Pontillier (The Awakening) and the proper role of women in the world.
Taylor does not know what the real problem with Common Core reading is
If administrators keep their heads and don't let Common Core scare them, the losses under Core reading are minimal. But if administrators start to worry about test scores, things get ugly.
Perdido Street School lays out some of the losses in New York school district that lose their heads and jump into the EngageNY pool. That's similar to what happens in places where administrators take seriously all the baloney about Close Reading 2.0, which is a thing that calls itself close reading and which is really just test prep.
For schools that decide to let the Big Standardized Test drive the curriculum bus, the path is clear-- the significant change is not read more non-fiction, but to do all reading in little chunks. The Common Core can pay lip service to reading whole works and developing an understanding of themes and ideas that are developed through an entire work, but that will never, ever be on the test.
So, as Taylor's article hints but never flat out admits, we don't cut Romeo and Juliet entirely, but we only read a few key portions. Tom Sawyer? We'll just read that fence-painting scene, thanks. We'll read literary slices and filets. We'll get our non-fiction fill with short articles. But we will never, ever again, read an entire book from front to back.
And we will always read our short selections to suit someone else's purpose. Personal responses are not the point; the point is to find the answers to the (probably multiple choice) questions in the packet, questions modeled on the BS Test so that students are better prepared for that experience. Do not stop to develop any sort of personal relationship with the reading; figure out what the questions want from you, and go look for that.
Common Core ELA supports the notion that reading, in fact all human relationships, are simple transactions in which the only real question is "What can I get from this and how can I get it?" It is dehumanizing for both teachers and students.
Outside of missing all of that, Taylor did a super job with the article. It's fluffy and to the untrained eye hardly looks like more Common Core PR at all.
NY: Toxic Dollars
Polishing the Apple might well have been entitled Poisoning the Apple. The new report from Common Cause delineates just how much money has poured into New York education politics, from where, and to whom. It is not a pretty picture.
The full report runs over fifty pages, so I'm not going to try to capture the full Brobdinagian wreck here. But let me share some of the most striking findings.
The report lumps pro-ed-reform groups under the heading "privatizers," and I have no disagreement there.
2014 was a huge year for reformsters spending, with the privatizers outspending the union for the first time. There is a whole other conversation to be had about how much the union does or does not represent actual opposition to the privatizers, particularly those who fly the Democrat flag, but we'll let that go for now.
The union is not outspent in all areas-- between 2005 and 2014, the union (and friends) spent over $144 million on lobbying, while reformsters dropped a measly $44 mill. Reformsters are, however, catching up, with a staggering jump in reformster lobbying spending in 2014, when those expenditures jumped up to $12-ish million, over twice what the unions spent.
Who are the major players?
The biggest reformster player by far is the group Families for Excellent Schools, Inc; these guys are pumping tens of millions of dollars into the political arena. FES was founded in 2011 by five individuals, four of them Wall Street players. The group became the high-profile face of opposition to Bill DeBlasio, staging rallies and running expensive ad campaigns to thwart his plan to put a leash on NYC charter expansion. The group, which shares the same address as StudentsFirst of NY, has steadfastly refused to admit where their funding comes from. Mercedes Schneider has pierced a little of that fog, and the results are unsurprising-- FES has close ties to (among others) the Broad Foundation, the Walton Foundation, and the Tapestry Project, a group whose executive director is Eva Moscowitz's husband. The group also tried to produce some "research" to support their point of view, but as Bruce Baker showed, that research probably didn't cost them more than a couple of bucks. The FES motto is "Don't Steal Possible," which appears to be short for, "Don't Steal Possible When You Can Just Go Ahead and Buy It."
Families for Excellent Schools, Inc, is spending more money on NY politics than anybody-- and nobody otside of their organization knows where that money is coming from.
How to raise money
The union and reformsters have different techniques for raising money, and the difference tells us a great deal.
Pro-privatization campaign contributions totaled $46.1 million raised through 5,700 contributions from less than 400 wealthy individuals, associated organizations and PACs.
Got that? The reformsters gathered over $46 million from just 400 contributors. The top five: Michael Bloomberg ($9.2 million), James Simons ($3 million), Paul Singer ($2.2 million), Daniel Loeb ($1.9 million) and David Koch ($1.6 million).
Meanwhile, the union raised over $87 million in campaign funds from over 18,000 contributors.Their top five contributors were organizations, including the union itself.
Befriending Andy Cuomo
Between 2005 and 2014, privatizers contributed a little over $3 million to the Cuomo campaign coffers. During that same period, the union contributed $153,892.06 to Cuomo's campaign (it is not clear whether that includes the cost of Randi Weingarten's 11th-hour robo-call in support of Cuomo's Lt. Governor).
Privatizers also kicked in $5 million to the Senate GOP Housekeeping Account (because "housekeeping" is a prettier word than "slush") while the union contributed less than half a million-- so less than a dime for every every reformster dollar.
Patterns of Campaign Support
This may seem like an arcane point here, but once the union and the reformsters collect their money, they spend it differently, and those differences have implications for the exercise of influence.
The vast majority of union money goes to PACs, and that translates mainly to advertising and PR campaigns to support particular positions, to sway the public in a particular direction. However, the reformster money goes not only to PACs, but to the party and candidate committees.
So even though the union had twice the money to spend that the reformsters did, the union only gave about $1 million to the candidate committees, while reformsters gave $14 million to individual candidate committees. The union gave under $7 million to the party, but the reformsters contributed almost three times the amount.
In other words, the union is trying to influence the election, but the reformsters are influencing the candidates and the parties. We can argue (and should, really) just how separate from the candidates the individual PACs are, but the PACs are certainly one more step removed form the candidate than his actual campaign committee. This is the difference between saying, "We're going to help you by cleaning up the neighborhood," and "We're going to help you by giving you money to furnish your house." This is about reformsters stocking up on favors.
Does this pay off?
I cannot recommend enough that you go read this entire report to get all the details, specifics, and painful facts and figures. But the bottom line here is that where you find heavy contributions from reformsters, you find New York legislators working hard to make sure privatizers can make a profit.
FES, Inc.'s visible lobbying and ads and rallies in Albany may be the more obvious exercises of their money and reach, but when the Senate GOP Committee is raking in $5 mill from charterific contributors and then making sure that the State of New York sets aside tax dollars just to support charters, that should give us pause as well. Andrew Cuomo has announced his intent to break public education; privatizers are getting their $3 million's worth.
One can argue that the money is not corrupting the system, but simply following its own interests. In other words, maybe it's not that Cuomo attacks public ed because he's been paid to, but that reformsters support him because he is already a public ed-hating troll. But if Cuomo and the GOP are already firmly on your side, why do you need to give them more money the God? Sure, you support the people who favor your interests-- that's politics. But this isn't support-- this is SUPPPOOOORTTTTTT!!!!! And it's support given straight to the politicians, not to organizations that support their interests. This kind of money doesn't just say, "Keep up the good work." This is the kind of money that says, "Don't forget who your friends are."
The Marketplace of Ideas
This sort of toxic money flinging, repeated in state after state across the country, is a reminder of the weakness of the reformster ideas.
Remember when it took millions of dollars to politicians to get Civil Rights legislation passed? Or the way that a small group of billionaires convinced a few states' legislators to legalize same-gender marriage?That's right-- those things didn't happen. They didn't need to.
If the people of the US overwhelmingly, strongly desired to tear down our system of public education and replace it with privatized profit-making charter schools, we'd be there. If the system of disenfranchising local people and replacing their community schools with smaller, more exclusive, more expensive charters was really appealing, folks would be outside state capitals clamoring for it. Groups like Families for Excellent Schools would have actual real live grass roots support instead of relying on 400 shadowy contributors who don't even have enough courage of their convictions to be public and visible.
Not that the collective political voice of America is always wise or right. But if you have to buy friends for your child, that tells you something about your child. If your political agenda can only survive on the strength of your checkbook and the depth of your pockets and the powerful friends you can buy to look after it, maybe you are backing the wrong horse.
The full report runs over fifty pages, so I'm not going to try to capture the full Brobdinagian wreck here. But let me share some of the most striking findings.
The report lumps pro-ed-reform groups under the heading "privatizers," and I have no disagreement there.
2014 was a huge year for reformsters spending, with the privatizers outspending the union for the first time. There is a whole other conversation to be had about how much the union does or does not represent actual opposition to the privatizers, particularly those who fly the Democrat flag, but we'll let that go for now.
The union is not outspent in all areas-- between 2005 and 2014, the union (and friends) spent over $144 million on lobbying, while reformsters dropped a measly $44 mill. Reformsters are, however, catching up, with a staggering jump in reformster lobbying spending in 2014, when those expenditures jumped up to $12-ish million, over twice what the unions spent.
Who are the major players?
The biggest reformster player by far is the group Families for Excellent Schools, Inc; these guys are pumping tens of millions of dollars into the political arena. FES was founded in 2011 by five individuals, four of them Wall Street players. The group became the high-profile face of opposition to Bill DeBlasio, staging rallies and running expensive ad campaigns to thwart his plan to put a leash on NYC charter expansion. The group, which shares the same address as StudentsFirst of NY, has steadfastly refused to admit where their funding comes from. Mercedes Schneider has pierced a little of that fog, and the results are unsurprising-- FES has close ties to (among others) the Broad Foundation, the Walton Foundation, and the Tapestry Project, a group whose executive director is Eva Moscowitz's husband. The group also tried to produce some "research" to support their point of view, but as Bruce Baker showed, that research probably didn't cost them more than a couple of bucks. The FES motto is "Don't Steal Possible," which appears to be short for, "Don't Steal Possible When You Can Just Go Ahead and Buy It."
Families for Excellent Schools, Inc, is spending more money on NY politics than anybody-- and nobody otside of their organization knows where that money is coming from.
How to raise money
The union and reformsters have different techniques for raising money, and the difference tells us a great deal.
Pro-privatization campaign contributions totaled $46.1 million raised through 5,700 contributions from less than 400 wealthy individuals, associated organizations and PACs.
Got that? The reformsters gathered over $46 million from just 400 contributors. The top five: Michael Bloomberg ($9.2 million), James Simons ($3 million), Paul Singer ($2.2 million), Daniel Loeb ($1.9 million) and David Koch ($1.6 million).
Meanwhile, the union raised over $87 million in campaign funds from over 18,000 contributors.Their top five contributors were organizations, including the union itself.
Befriending Andy Cuomo
Between 2005 and 2014, privatizers contributed a little over $3 million to the Cuomo campaign coffers. During that same period, the union contributed $153,892.06 to Cuomo's campaign (it is not clear whether that includes the cost of Randi Weingarten's 11th-hour robo-call in support of Cuomo's Lt. Governor).
Privatizers also kicked in $5 million to the Senate GOP Housekeeping Account (because "housekeeping" is a prettier word than "slush") while the union contributed less than half a million-- so less than a dime for every every reformster dollar.
Patterns of Campaign Support
This may seem like an arcane point here, but once the union and the reformsters collect their money, they spend it differently, and those differences have implications for the exercise of influence.
The vast majority of union money goes to PACs, and that translates mainly to advertising and PR campaigns to support particular positions, to sway the public in a particular direction. However, the reformster money goes not only to PACs, but to the party and candidate committees.
So even though the union had twice the money to spend that the reformsters did, the union only gave about $1 million to the candidate committees, while reformsters gave $14 million to individual candidate committees. The union gave under $7 million to the party, but the reformsters contributed almost three times the amount.
In other words, the union is trying to influence the election, but the reformsters are influencing the candidates and the parties. We can argue (and should, really) just how separate from the candidates the individual PACs are, but the PACs are certainly one more step removed form the candidate than his actual campaign committee. This is the difference between saying, "We're going to help you by cleaning up the neighborhood," and "We're going to help you by giving you money to furnish your house." This is about reformsters stocking up on favors.
Does this pay off?
I cannot recommend enough that you go read this entire report to get all the details, specifics, and painful facts and figures. But the bottom line here is that where you find heavy contributions from reformsters, you find New York legislators working hard to make sure privatizers can make a profit.
FES, Inc.'s visible lobbying and ads and rallies in Albany may be the more obvious exercises of their money and reach, but when the Senate GOP Committee is raking in $5 mill from charterific contributors and then making sure that the State of New York sets aside tax dollars just to support charters, that should give us pause as well. Andrew Cuomo has announced his intent to break public education; privatizers are getting their $3 million's worth.
One can argue that the money is not corrupting the system, but simply following its own interests. In other words, maybe it's not that Cuomo attacks public ed because he's been paid to, but that reformsters support him because he is already a public ed-hating troll. But if Cuomo and the GOP are already firmly on your side, why do you need to give them more money the God? Sure, you support the people who favor your interests-- that's politics. But this isn't support-- this is SUPPPOOOORTTTTTT!!!!! And it's support given straight to the politicians, not to organizations that support their interests. This kind of money doesn't just say, "Keep up the good work." This is the kind of money that says, "Don't forget who your friends are."
The Marketplace of Ideas
This sort of toxic money flinging, repeated in state after state across the country, is a reminder of the weakness of the reformster ideas.
Remember when it took millions of dollars to politicians to get Civil Rights legislation passed? Or the way that a small group of billionaires convinced a few states' legislators to legalize same-gender marriage?That's right-- those things didn't happen. They didn't need to.
If the people of the US overwhelmingly, strongly desired to tear down our system of public education and replace it with privatized profit-making charter schools, we'd be there. If the system of disenfranchising local people and replacing their community schools with smaller, more exclusive, more expensive charters was really appealing, folks would be outside state capitals clamoring for it. Groups like Families for Excellent Schools would have actual real live grass roots support instead of relying on 400 shadowy contributors who don't even have enough courage of their convictions to be public and visible.
Not that the collective political voice of America is always wise or right. But if you have to buy friends for your child, that tells you something about your child. If your political agenda can only survive on the strength of your checkbook and the depth of your pockets and the powerful friends you can buy to look after it, maybe you are backing the wrong horse.
Saturday, June 20, 2015
Privatization Primer
Every once in a while I try to take the many complicated and twisty threads, back up, and tie them into a bigger picture. Think of this as the kind of post you can share with people who don't read blogs about education every single day (no kidding-- there are such people, and they're too busy doing the work to spend time reading about doing the work).
There are many threads to the reformy movement in education, but perhaps the most predominant one is the push for privatization. Many folks look at education and they just see a gigantic pile of money that has previously gone untouched. To them, education is a multi-billion dollar industry that nobody is making real profit from.
Many of the aspects and features of what I'm about to lay out appeal to other sorts of folks for other sorts of reasons, but here is how they fit into the agenda of privatizers.
Step One: Create Failure
Use metrics for measuring school success that will guarantee failure (that's where Common Core testing fits in). For instance, base the measure of school and teacher success on bad standardized tests that don't actually measure academic achievement as well as they measure poverty. These tests will also narrow the definition of success so that fewer students will fit through the eye of the needle (a brilliant musician who tests poorly in math and English will be counted as a failure). Norm these tests around a curve, so that somebody will always be on the failing end.
The testing will create the appearance of failure, but policy can also create actual failure by stripping resources from schools. Every voucher and charter system drains money away from public schools; in some states (e.g. Pennsylvania) there are even caps on raising taxes so that local districts couldn't replace the shortfall even if they wanted to.
Concentrate these efforts on non-white, non-wealthy districts, which are both the most vulnerable and the least "protected" because their community has little political clout.
Use stack ranking so that whatever your metric, somebody is always in the bottom X% of the spread (5% has been a popular number).
If it seems as if your state has instituted policies that will force schools to fail, this is why. If there are no failing schools, there's no crisis, and if there's no crisis, there's no trigger for step two.
Step Two: Consolidate Power
Once there's a crisis from the proliferation of failing schools, it's time to step in.
You may hear the terms "turnaround" or "rescue" or even "takeover," but the basic process is the same-- the end of local control. Currently rising in popularity is the Achievement School District model, based on the Recovery School District of New Orleans and most fully attempted in Tennessee.
The basic principle is simple. These schools are failing, therefor the state must take them over. The state will put somebody, or a board of somebodys, in charge of the district, and the new boss will answer only to someone in the state capitol. The local school board is out. The new school boss will be given the power to do whatever is necessary.
Step Three: Cash In
"Whatever is necessary" will never turn out to mean "invest in public schools." Because, remember, they are failing.
Charter schools will be set up to compete with the public school (further stripping it of resources). Or charter schools will be brought in to replace the public schools, or to take them over. The system may be called a school choice system, but it will be the schools that get to choose, so that they can select those students who are profitable. The students who are too expensive to work with (aka not good revenue generators) or who can't be made to generate "successful" numbers will be left in the public schools.
Note: It makes no difference whether the charters bill themselves as for-profit or non-profit. They are always profitable. Non-profits know many tricks for still turning a profit (eg, hiring themselves to run the school, or leasing the building back form themselves). A non-profit charter is just a for-profit charter with a money-laundering department.
These schools may operate under their own set of rules which do away with teacher job protections or school code requirements for seniority considerations. The majority of special rules are designed to allow school operators to control costs so that their school-flavored business can remain profitable.
Epilogue: The Long Term
You may wonder how this is sustainable. It isn't, and it isn't meant to be. Charters routinely drop out of the business, move on, dissolve and reform under new names, getting out of Dodge before they have to offer proof of success. This churn and burn is a feature, not a bug, and it is supposed to foster excellence. To date, there is no evidence that it does so.
But in the long term, we get a two-tier system. One is composed of private, profit-generating school-like businesses that will serve some of the students. The other is a vestigal public system, under-funded and under-served, but still serving as "proof" that public schools are failure factories and so we must have a state-run system.
Discussion: But Is This a Bad Thing
"I realize," you say, "that turning schools into profit-generating businesses is automatically repulsive to some folks, but if they get the job done, isn't this a win?"
Here's the short form for why I think the privatization of education is a bad thing.
First, all the numbers show that charters are, as a group, no more "successful" than public schools. Furthermore, what success they have is often simply the result of being careful and selective about their student body. How they do this is a whole other discussion, but the short answer is 1) they mostly don't do any better than public schools and 2) public schools could also "improve" if they were allowed to get rid of problem students. In other words, we're not talking about a new way to do public school-- we're talking about a new definition of what a public school is supposed to be.
Second, the privatization machine involves the end of local control. It is the end of any democratic control and accountability in a fundamental community institution. This is doubly troubling because so far, the people who are having democracy stripped away are mostly black, brown, and poor.
Third, turning education into a business means that business concerns will take precedence over student concerns. The purpose of a public school is to educate students. The purpose of a business is to make money. That does not make a business evil, but look around the rest of the world and ask yourself if businesses make money primarily by devoting themselves to creating the most excellent products. Operators of a school-flavored business will always have interests that are in conflict with the interests of their students. That cannot be good for education.
We are looking at a movement to change schools from a public good, a service provided by communities for their members, into a profit-generating business. Maybe that's a change we want as a society, and maybe a public discussion about such a transformation would lead us to that conclusion. I hope not, but maybe it's so. But we're not having that discussion. Instead, some folks are making changes in policy and regulation to create that transformation without anybody having a chance to object. That is not okay; it's a discussion we need to have whether some folks want us to have it or not.
There are many threads to the reformy movement in education, but perhaps the most predominant one is the push for privatization. Many folks look at education and they just see a gigantic pile of money that has previously gone untouched. To them, education is a multi-billion dollar industry that nobody is making real profit from.
Many of the aspects and features of what I'm about to lay out appeal to other sorts of folks for other sorts of reasons, but here is how they fit into the agenda of privatizers.
Step One: Create Failure
Use metrics for measuring school success that will guarantee failure (that's where Common Core testing fits in). For instance, base the measure of school and teacher success on bad standardized tests that don't actually measure academic achievement as well as they measure poverty. These tests will also narrow the definition of success so that fewer students will fit through the eye of the needle (a brilliant musician who tests poorly in math and English will be counted as a failure). Norm these tests around a curve, so that somebody will always be on the failing end.
The testing will create the appearance of failure, but policy can also create actual failure by stripping resources from schools. Every voucher and charter system drains money away from public schools; in some states (e.g. Pennsylvania) there are even caps on raising taxes so that local districts couldn't replace the shortfall even if they wanted to.
Concentrate these efforts on non-white, non-wealthy districts, which are both the most vulnerable and the least "protected" because their community has little political clout.
Use stack ranking so that whatever your metric, somebody is always in the bottom X% of the spread (5% has been a popular number).
If it seems as if your state has instituted policies that will force schools to fail, this is why. If there are no failing schools, there's no crisis, and if there's no crisis, there's no trigger for step two.
Step Two: Consolidate Power
Once there's a crisis from the proliferation of failing schools, it's time to step in.
You may hear the terms "turnaround" or "rescue" or even "takeover," but the basic process is the same-- the end of local control. Currently rising in popularity is the Achievement School District model, based on the Recovery School District of New Orleans and most fully attempted in Tennessee.
The basic principle is simple. These schools are failing, therefor the state must take them over. The state will put somebody, or a board of somebodys, in charge of the district, and the new boss will answer only to someone in the state capitol. The local school board is out. The new school boss will be given the power to do whatever is necessary.
Step Three: Cash In
"Whatever is necessary" will never turn out to mean "invest in public schools." Because, remember, they are failing.
Charter schools will be set up to compete with the public school (further stripping it of resources). Or charter schools will be brought in to replace the public schools, or to take them over. The system may be called a school choice system, but it will be the schools that get to choose, so that they can select those students who are profitable. The students who are too expensive to work with (aka not good revenue generators) or who can't be made to generate "successful" numbers will be left in the public schools.
Note: It makes no difference whether the charters bill themselves as for-profit or non-profit. They are always profitable. Non-profits know many tricks for still turning a profit (eg, hiring themselves to run the school, or leasing the building back form themselves). A non-profit charter is just a for-profit charter with a money-laundering department.
These schools may operate under their own set of rules which do away with teacher job protections or school code requirements for seniority considerations. The majority of special rules are designed to allow school operators to control costs so that their school-flavored business can remain profitable.
Epilogue: The Long Term
You may wonder how this is sustainable. It isn't, and it isn't meant to be. Charters routinely drop out of the business, move on, dissolve and reform under new names, getting out of Dodge before they have to offer proof of success. This churn and burn is a feature, not a bug, and it is supposed to foster excellence. To date, there is no evidence that it does so.
But in the long term, we get a two-tier system. One is composed of private, profit-generating school-like businesses that will serve some of the students. The other is a vestigal public system, under-funded and under-served, but still serving as "proof" that public schools are failure factories and so we must have a state-run system.
Discussion: But Is This a Bad Thing
"I realize," you say, "that turning schools into profit-generating businesses is automatically repulsive to some folks, but if they get the job done, isn't this a win?"
Here's the short form for why I think the privatization of education is a bad thing.
First, all the numbers show that charters are, as a group, no more "successful" than public schools. Furthermore, what success they have is often simply the result of being careful and selective about their student body. How they do this is a whole other discussion, but the short answer is 1) they mostly don't do any better than public schools and 2) public schools could also "improve" if they were allowed to get rid of problem students. In other words, we're not talking about a new way to do public school-- we're talking about a new definition of what a public school is supposed to be.
Second, the privatization machine involves the end of local control. It is the end of any democratic control and accountability in a fundamental community institution. This is doubly troubling because so far, the people who are having democracy stripped away are mostly black, brown, and poor.
Third, turning education into a business means that business concerns will take precedence over student concerns. The purpose of a public school is to educate students. The purpose of a business is to make money. That does not make a business evil, but look around the rest of the world and ask yourself if businesses make money primarily by devoting themselves to creating the most excellent products. Operators of a school-flavored business will always have interests that are in conflict with the interests of their students. That cannot be good for education.
We are looking at a movement to change schools from a public good, a service provided by communities for their members, into a profit-generating business. Maybe that's a change we want as a society, and maybe a public discussion about such a transformation would lead us to that conclusion. I hope not, but maybe it's so. But we're not having that discussion. Instead, some folks are making changes in policy and regulation to create that transformation without anybody having a chance to object. That is not okay; it's a discussion we need to have whether some folks want us to have it or not.
Friday, June 19, 2015
CA: What Else Could We Do...?
I've just returned from a visit to my son and his fiance. They live in the Koreatown neighborhood of Los Angeles, and over the past few years, I've noted some desultory building activity in the lots across the street from their building. But this trip, work was in full bloom.
This is not a small piece of construction, sitting on a big chunk of neighborhood. "What the heck is that?" I asked. My future daughter-in-law told me that it's a charter school. How did she know? The pastor of the church across the street told her (and, apparently, that the church was working with the charter).
Wow.
I'm just looking at the construction, the huge amount of money that must be pouring into that site, and mostly I'm thinking, "What could a public school that is already in place, that already exists, that already has a lot and a building-- what could that school do with the money being poured into that charter construction?"
It's one thing to consider all this in theory, but to actually look at the pile of money that must be going into securing the lot, building the structure, adding the bells and whistles, while meanwhile back at my own school, there's basic maintenance on things like doors that won't be done this year because we're a little stretched on the budget.
What, I wonder, will not get done in a Koreatown school this year because a river of money has been diverted so that this shiny new building can go up.
You figure out opportunity costs by asking questions like, "If you had a couple million dollars to spend on your district, what are the first five things that would go on your list?" I can't imagine that there are leaders in any school district who would say, "Not spend any of it on facilities we already have, but build whole new facilities somewhere else." I mean, look at that pile of bricks. What could we build with that many bricks at a school that already exists? What could we have done with our broken-down walls if we had the money that went into that pretty orange facing?
The school may be shiny and swell. The people behind it may be bighearted and well-intentioned. But that none of that changes the fact that in order to spend the money to create a new charter school, that money had to be taken away from public schools. It seems wasteful and inefficient and just foolish.
Wow.
I'm just looking at the construction, the huge amount of money that must be pouring into that site, and mostly I'm thinking, "What could a public school that is already in place, that already exists, that already has a lot and a building-- what could that school do with the money being poured into that charter construction?"
It's one thing to consider all this in theory, but to actually look at the pile of money that must be going into securing the lot, building the structure, adding the bells and whistles, while meanwhile back at my own school, there's basic maintenance on things like doors that won't be done this year because we're a little stretched on the budget.
What, I wonder, will not get done in a Koreatown school this year because a river of money has been diverted so that this shiny new building can go up.
You figure out opportunity costs by asking questions like, "If you had a couple million dollars to spend on your district, what are the first five things that would go on your list?" I can't imagine that there are leaders in any school district who would say, "Not spend any of it on facilities we already have, but build whole new facilities somewhere else." I mean, look at that pile of bricks. What could we build with that many bricks at a school that already exists? What could we have done with our broken-down walls if we had the money that went into that pretty orange facing?
The school may be shiny and swell. The people behind it may be bighearted and well-intentioned. But that none of that changes the fact that in order to spend the money to create a new charter school, that money had to be taken away from public schools. It seems wasteful and inefficient and just foolish.
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