North Carolina's leaders have made a long and strong commitment to ending teaching as a viable career in their state, and teachers continue to get the message.
Just to recap. NC legislators tried to get rid of tenure, but there were these dumb laws and things that got in their way. Then, since they couldn't manage that, the plucky leaders decided to hold teacher pay hostage-- an easy trick because North Carolina teachers have been losing ground in both real dollar wages and, well, any other kind of dollar wages, for almost a decade. The legislature offered a deal-- teachers could have a raise (just one) if they gave up job security. They've also attempted merit pay, offering a big whopping $500 bonus for teachers of students with good test scores.
On top of all that, North Carolina has also instituted destructive classroom policies. NC is one of the states where we'll flunk your third grader if she can't pass the standardized test, despite a boatload of evidence that such policies do more harm than good. Plus, North Carolina has tried to become an Ohio-style charter school paradise with the kind of oversight-free approach that lets even the most obvious grifter strike it rich.
By spring of 2014, reports showed that the program to drive teachers out of NC was working well. It wasn't looking any better the following fall. NC is bad enough that to some teachers, Georgia is looking like a better option-- but when you're 42nd in teacher and plummeting regularly, that's what you get.
Well, here's a new report to let us know that things are still looking bad.
Station WBTV reports that teachers rallied at the state capital last week to speak out about the NC budget, which includes cuts to education money, resulting in various cuts including a possible 8,500 teacher assistants. The state's second-largest school district has seen almost 1,000 teachers resign for this coming fall. The state may be bleeding classroom professionals faster than any transfusion could hope to replace-- and no transfusion is coming soon, because enrollment in NC teacher training programs is down twenty percent over three years.
The report indicates that teachers are learning the fine art of one-to-one lobbying. It remains to be seen if they can make an impression in time to save the teaching profession in their state. It is true that teachers don't go into the profession in order to make money-- but we do like to make a difference, and we do like to make our bill payments. As long as North Carolina makes it more and more difficult for teachers to do either of those things, they will continue to be strong contenders in the race to the bottom.
Saturday, June 27, 2015
Duncan: Every Family's Rights
In addressing the national PTA conference last week, Arne Duncan unveiled a new, more compact and campaign-ready version of the USED talking points, three "foundational" rights for every family.
This collects several of the talking point adjustments we've made over the past year. "College and careers" have now become "college, career and life."
USED continues its commitment to preschool without showing any understanding of what "quality" means for a preschool. That is book-ended with a commitment to affordable college. The commitment to affordable college would be more compelling were it not that the Department of Education is one of the entities profiting from college students. If the feds want college to become more affordable, there is a simple but powerful first step readily within their grasp-- start lending money to college students at the same sorts of rates they grant big time banks and other favored customers.
Sandwiched in between these, we get a now boiled-down version of the last decade-plus of reformster rhetoric. High standards (whatever that means, though we certainly won't use the C words any more), good teaching, good leadership, and resources-- families have a right to schools with all of these.
Note that families are not entitled to a democratic process for creating their own local school system.
When I say that these points are campaign ready, I was thinking specifically of the Clinton campaign. Hillary Clinton's website covers a lot of ground, but really doesn't say much about education issues at all. Her policies seem likely to be close to those of the current administration and the previous one, too, for that matter).
Her education PAC declares itself in support of five ideas:
1. Universal pre-school
2. Two free years of community college
3. Increased teacher pay and flex work options
4. Access to high quality schools for all communities
5. Full-service community schools
It all seems familiar, fluffy and foundation-free. Lordy, but I'm not looking foreward to the coming year in politics.
USED continues its commitment to preschool without showing any understanding of what "quality" means for a preschool. That is book-ended with a commitment to affordable college. The commitment to affordable college would be more compelling were it not that the Department of Education is one of the entities profiting from college students. If the feds want college to become more affordable, there is a simple but powerful first step readily within their grasp-- start lending money to college students at the same sorts of rates they grant big time banks and other favored customers.
Sandwiched in between these, we get a now boiled-down version of the last decade-plus of reformster rhetoric. High standards (whatever that means, though we certainly won't use the C words any more), good teaching, good leadership, and resources-- families have a right to schools with all of these.
Note that families are not entitled to a democratic process for creating their own local school system.
When I say that these points are campaign ready, I was thinking specifically of the Clinton campaign. Hillary Clinton's website covers a lot of ground, but really doesn't say much about education issues at all. Her policies seem likely to be close to those of the current administration and the previous one, too, for that matter).
Her education PAC declares itself in support of five ideas:
1. Universal pre-school
2. Two free years of community college
3. Increased teacher pay and flex work options
4. Access to high quality schools for all communities
5. Full-service community schools
It all seems familiar, fluffy and foundation-free. Lordy, but I'm not looking foreward to the coming year in politics.
USED Sticks It To NY Disabled Students
The United States Department of Education ordered New York to keep making life miserable for students with special needs.
The state had asked for freedom to test some students based on their developmental level rather than their chronological age. They had also asked to give new English speakers two years before giving them the 3-8 grade tests, rather than the current one.
Arne Duncan's department said no on both counts.
U.S. Assistant Education Secretary Deborah Delisle said the requirements are "necessary to ensure that teachers and parents of all students, including (English learners) and students with disabilities, have information on their students' proficiency and progress in reading/language arts and mathematics" and "to ensure that schools are held accountable for the academic achievement of all students."
The first reason is raw, unsliced baloney. First, as always, the department assumes that teachers and parents are dopes who have no idea how the student is doing until the student takes the magical test. Second, exactly how much information can really be gleaned by a test that a student cannot pass, either because it is far beyond the students intellectual capabilities or because it is in a language that a student has been using for less than a year?
The second reason is, at least, more honest. Duncan's has long expressed the belief that special needs designations are used to warehouse undesirable, difficult or underserved students, rendering them effectively invisible and allowing the schools to give up on them. Very well. Those of us who support public education need to not pretend that such things don't ever happen. But I don't believe that it happens nearly as much as the feds seem to fear, and I especially don't believe that the solution is to drag every single student with a challenge out into the center of town to be forced to fail visibly and completely.
There is nothing to be gained by forcing students to associate education with failure, to turn school into that place where they go to hear about how much they suck. It helps nobody.
Oh, I know. The most bizarrely stupid idea to become lodged in this department of education is the notion that students with special needs only do more poorly because teachers expect them to-- if teachers just expected harder, all students would do great. When it comes to English Language Learners, presumably the department is staffed with the same people who believe that when speaking to people who don't speak English, you can close the gap by speaking English at them louder, slower and harder.
So congratulations, New York, on being reminded that the feds have mandated failure for some of your most vulnerable students, and your teachers must continue to ignore their professional wisdom and personal empathy and instead continue throwing students with challenges under the bus.
The state had asked for freedom to test some students based on their developmental level rather than their chronological age. They had also asked to give new English speakers two years before giving them the 3-8 grade tests, rather than the current one.
Arne Duncan's department said no on both counts.
U.S. Assistant Education Secretary Deborah Delisle said the requirements are "necessary to ensure that teachers and parents of all students, including (English learners) and students with disabilities, have information on their students' proficiency and progress in reading/language arts and mathematics" and "to ensure that schools are held accountable for the academic achievement of all students."
The first reason is raw, unsliced baloney. First, as always, the department assumes that teachers and parents are dopes who have no idea how the student is doing until the student takes the magical test. Second, exactly how much information can really be gleaned by a test that a student cannot pass, either because it is far beyond the students intellectual capabilities or because it is in a language that a student has been using for less than a year?
The second reason is, at least, more honest. Duncan's has long expressed the belief that special needs designations are used to warehouse undesirable, difficult or underserved students, rendering them effectively invisible and allowing the schools to give up on them. Very well. Those of us who support public education need to not pretend that such things don't ever happen. But I don't believe that it happens nearly as much as the feds seem to fear, and I especially don't believe that the solution is to drag every single student with a challenge out into the center of town to be forced to fail visibly and completely.
There is nothing to be gained by forcing students to associate education with failure, to turn school into that place where they go to hear about how much they suck. It helps nobody.
Oh, I know. The most bizarrely stupid idea to become lodged in this department of education is the notion that students with special needs only do more poorly because teachers expect them to-- if teachers just expected harder, all students would do great. When it comes to English Language Learners, presumably the department is staffed with the same people who believe that when speaking to people who don't speak English, you can close the gap by speaking English at them louder, slower and harder.
So congratulations, New York, on being reminded that the feds have mandated failure for some of your most vulnerable students, and your teachers must continue to ignore their professional wisdom and personal empathy and instead continue throwing students with challenges under the bus.
Friday, June 26, 2015
Corporatized: The Movie
As the resistance to the reformster movement has grown, it has slowly developed its own video wing.
There have been highlights already. The film Building the Machine (now available for free on youtube) is a slickly produced piece from folks who are not necessarily fans of public schools, but who share public education advocates' distrust of corporate and government forced reformy programs.
Standardized is a great look at the role of standardized testing in the reformster movement. You can buy a copy of that; I've handing mine off to anybody who will watch it.
Defies Measurement, a documentary by Shannon Puckett, is also available to watch for free on line. I've reviewed it on this blog; it's a masterful blending of the larger issues of reform with the specific example of one school's struggle. You should watch it.
I am waiting for my copy of Education, Inc by filmmaker Brian Malone; once I've seen it, I'll have a full review here.
(Just to be transparent-- while I know and respect many of the people in these films, I am not in any of them. My transformation from blogger to talking head has not yet occurred).
The film I want to talk to you about today is still in the pipeline-- Corporatized:The Real Story about the Education Takeover. The film is being produced by two film-makers-- Jack Paar and Ron Halpern-- with a background in the business. Paar's wife is a teacher, and a rally in Washington that she attended piqued his interest. Here's their kickstarter reel:
The film is still working on raising funds, and they have a fairly large chunk of change in mind, but the film looks like it has its heart in the right place. If you are interested in helping, stop over to their kickstarter page and make a contribution. I mean, blogs and words are nice, but for reaching the general public, pictures that move and talk are far more powerful, and we can use all the help we can get putting out the word. Like some critics of documentaries, I doubt that documentaries change already-made-up minds-- but I think they can definitely influence minds that haven't been made up yet. As much time as we spend on these issues, I still think there's a huge chunk of the population that just doesn't know, and films like this can help people finally understand what is going on. So spread the word and make a contribution.
There have been highlights already. The film Building the Machine (now available for free on youtube) is a slickly produced piece from folks who are not necessarily fans of public schools, but who share public education advocates' distrust of corporate and government forced reformy programs.
Standardized is a great look at the role of standardized testing in the reformster movement. You can buy a copy of that; I've handing mine off to anybody who will watch it.
Defies Measurement, a documentary by Shannon Puckett, is also available to watch for free on line. I've reviewed it on this blog; it's a masterful blending of the larger issues of reform with the specific example of one school's struggle. You should watch it.
I am waiting for my copy of Education, Inc by filmmaker Brian Malone; once I've seen it, I'll have a full review here.
(Just to be transparent-- while I know and respect many of the people in these films, I am not in any of them. My transformation from blogger to talking head has not yet occurred).
The film I want to talk to you about today is still in the pipeline-- Corporatized:The Real Story about the Education Takeover. The film is being produced by two film-makers-- Jack Paar and Ron Halpern-- with a background in the business. Paar's wife is a teacher, and a rally in Washington that she attended piqued his interest. Here's their kickstarter reel:
The film is still working on raising funds, and they have a fairly large chunk of change in mind, but the film looks like it has its heart in the right place. If you are interested in helping, stop over to their kickstarter page and make a contribution. I mean, blogs and words are nice, but for reaching the general public, pictures that move and talk are far more powerful, and we can use all the help we can get putting out the word. Like some critics of documentaries, I doubt that documentaries change already-made-up minds-- but I think they can definitely influence minds that haven't been made up yet. As much time as we spend on these issues, I still think there's a huge chunk of the population that just doesn't know, and films like this can help people finally understand what is going on. So spread the word and make a contribution.
Privatizer Product Placement
Fellow blogger Steven Singer has spotted one of the more troubling trends in the current education debates.
In the Marvel Universe, he ran across two examples of privatizer ideas embedded into the fabric of shows.
In Agents of Shield, a character uses charter schooling as shorthand for loving parental care-- if you really love your kid, you put her in a charter school.
In Daredevil, a character equates the of-course-their-corrupt villainy of the teachers union with the mob and evil corporate polluters.
Check out his original post to see the particulars.
This sort of thing troubles me more than the umpty-gazillionth essay by a reformster that will be read by a small sampling of other reformsters. One of things we easily forget in these debates is that while we struggle and holler and dialogue and argue, most of the US population goes on about their business unaware that there's any problem.
Product placement in mainstream media reaches those folks, and it reaches them in an uncritical, visceral way. It's a basic rule of politics and marketing-- repeat something over and over and over and over and over again, and people will start to assume that it's just one of those things that everybody knows.
We've seen it with the idea that US public schools are failing-- everybody has heard it so many times that they simply assume that it's so.
It is possible to push back, but it takes the same dogged repetition. Reformsters stopped saying that teachers wrote the Common Core because every single time they said it, someone was there to contradict them, to hold up the truth, to challenge them for the proof they didn't have. And so they stopped saying it.
Pushing back and calling out-- that's how these battles are fought.
As Singer surmises, someone at Marvel may have been paid for a little product placement, may have been told these issues are on the corporate synergy list, or may simply be repeating something they heard. In any case, and in all cases where we find this sort of thing, the answer is to send letters, tweet, emails, whatever fits your resources.
Here's the contact information for Marvel. Let them know. Pass the word. Speak up. Every repetition counts.
In the Marvel Universe, he ran across two examples of privatizer ideas embedded into the fabric of shows.
In Agents of Shield, a character uses charter schooling as shorthand for loving parental care-- if you really love your kid, you put her in a charter school.
In Daredevil, a character equates the of-course-their-corrupt villainy of the teachers union with the mob and evil corporate polluters.
Check out his original post to see the particulars.
This sort of thing troubles me more than the umpty-gazillionth essay by a reformster that will be read by a small sampling of other reformsters. One of things we easily forget in these debates is that while we struggle and holler and dialogue and argue, most of the US population goes on about their business unaware that there's any problem.
Product placement in mainstream media reaches those folks, and it reaches them in an uncritical, visceral way. It's a basic rule of politics and marketing-- repeat something over and over and over and over and over again, and people will start to assume that it's just one of those things that everybody knows.
We've seen it with the idea that US public schools are failing-- everybody has heard it so many times that they simply assume that it's so.
It is possible to push back, but it takes the same dogged repetition. Reformsters stopped saying that teachers wrote the Common Core because every single time they said it, someone was there to contradict them, to hold up the truth, to challenge them for the proof they didn't have. And so they stopped saying it.
Pushing back and calling out-- that's how these battles are fought.
As Singer surmises, someone at Marvel may have been paid for a little product placement, may have been told these issues are on the corporate synergy list, or may simply be repeating something they heard. In any case, and in all cases where we find this sort of thing, the answer is to send letters, tweet, emails, whatever fits your resources.
Here's the contact information for Marvel. Let them know. Pass the word. Speak up. Every repetition counts.
Ohio Bushwacks Public Education
In a bald-faced attempt to snatch the Worst Sonsabitches In State Government award away from other contenders, Ohio's legislature used swift maneuvering and slick lawmaker tricks to help their Department of Education move forward in the process of giving public education away to privateers.
The Ohio Legislature's love of charters and privatization is the stuff of legends. Juliet looks at it and tells Romeo, "Why can't you love me that much?" In this legislative news, we find a carefully-buried earmark to hand $4 million to Teach for America. Even more impressive, GOP legislators killed a charter reform bill that was actually supported by many pro-charter folks such as the Fordham Institute. Even the head of the Ohio Alliance for Public Charter Schools liked most of the bill. But the GOP killed it anyway, because they'll be damned if anybody is going to handicap Ohio's quest for the award of State with Worst Charter Schools in America.
But all of that pales to the shenanigans attached to House Bill 70.
This bill started out as an innocuous piece of legislation aimed at helping schools become community learning centers. When it came up in the House the first time back in May, it passed 92 to 6. It went to the Senate this week, and that's when the shenanigans began again.
According to the Akron Beacon, on Wednesday, the president of the Ohio Federation of Teachers was ready to testify in favor of the bill when she heard about an amendment to be attached at the last minute which would allow for state takeover of schools.
When it came time for her to speak, she attempted to oppose the new provision, but was told that the amendment had not yet been offered, so she could not address it.
She sat down. The amendment was introduced and four men in line behind her who had traveled from Youngstown stepped up to give favorable testimony
The bill was then passed and sent back to the House where it passed-- this time 55 to 40.
Within twelve hours of seeing the light of day, the amended bill was on Governor John Kasich's desk. His office thinks the bill is awesometastic, blah blah save kids from failing schools blah blah. I keep waiting for someone supporting one of these bills to mess up his talking points and say that it's great we're saving children from democracy.
If we go to look at the bill (link here) we find much that seems familiar. Under the law, the state will take over a distressed school and turn it over to the Academic Distress Commission, who will hire a CEO to run the school. That CEO, who will serve at the pleasure of the commission, "shall have high-level management experience in the public or private sector" and "shall exercise complete operational, managerial and instructional control."
Creating Achievement School District style takeover mechanisms is always bad news for public education, but the installation of this law as a fast-tracked amendment to an unrelated bill really sets a new level of slimy, but it only looks worse upon examination-- Doug Livingston of the Akron Beacon reports that the Ohio Department of Education has been working on this for months.
While it is expected that Youngstown schools will be the first to be hit by this, Lorain (where I had my first teaching job) is also looking down the barrel of this mugger's gun. And the law is not specific or targeted-- it potentially applies to any district in the state that doesn't hit its numbers enough years in a row.
A list follows, and when they say complete control., they aren't kidding. The CEO can hire, fire, set salaries, set schedules, set the school calendar, determine the school configuration of grades, set curriculum, change any board-set policies, and of course, hire contractors to run things. There are more items on the list, and the CEO's powers are not limited to the list, but if it all gets too much for him, he may choose to delegate "specific powers or duties to the district board or district superintendent."
So the elected school board and district superintendent aren't completely dissolved-- they just work for the new unelected CEO. Think of it as the Roman Empire Management Model.
Speaking for the Ohio Weaselly Department of Education:
“Bottom line,” Charlton said, “is that it is not fair to the students and parents who trust their schools to provide for their educations, the local educators and community leaders who have played by the system’s rules, or the communities whose futures depend on educated, skilled citizens. It’s time for a change. Kids in academically struggling schools can’t wait any longer; we need to make immediate improvements to the support system.”
He did not go on to add "That is why we've spent months planning how to circumvent the entire democratic process and cut public ed off at the knees before anybody could raise a fuss."
My favorite quote from Livingston's piece?
Sen. Michael Skindell of Lakewood said of the potential for the program to spread. “It seems to incentivize students to go from a failing public school to a failing charter school.”
He added: “Gosh, I wish we would be moving as fast on the failing charter schools in this state.”
The Beacon-journal has done some previous work looking at the effect of charters on public schools, discovering that-- surprise-- the better students use choice (open enrollment, they call it in Ohio) to get out of places like Youngstown schools, leaving the least desirable students in a system being drained of resources, creating a larger scale "failure" in those districts.
Well, open enrollment was already draining those districts of money, but now the plucky educrats of the ODE have found a way to let someone squeeze the last drops of profit out of the husk of the public school system. Ohio's legislature remains committed to making the Buckeye State a paradise for privatizers, even if they have to subvert democracy to do it.
The Ohio Legislature's love of charters and privatization is the stuff of legends. Juliet looks at it and tells Romeo, "Why can't you love me that much?" In this legislative news, we find a carefully-buried earmark to hand $4 million to Teach for America. Even more impressive, GOP legislators killed a charter reform bill that was actually supported by many pro-charter folks such as the Fordham Institute. Even the head of the Ohio Alliance for Public Charter Schools liked most of the bill. But the GOP killed it anyway, because they'll be damned if anybody is going to handicap Ohio's quest for the award of State with Worst Charter Schools in America.
But all of that pales to the shenanigans attached to House Bill 70.
This bill started out as an innocuous piece of legislation aimed at helping schools become community learning centers. When it came up in the House the first time back in May, it passed 92 to 6. It went to the Senate this week, and that's when the shenanigans began again.
According to the Akron Beacon, on Wednesday, the president of the Ohio Federation of Teachers was ready to testify in favor of the bill when she heard about an amendment to be attached at the last minute which would allow for state takeover of schools.
When it came time for her to speak, she attempted to oppose the new provision, but was told that the amendment had not yet been offered, so she could not address it.
She sat down. The amendment was introduced and four men in line behind her who had traveled from Youngstown stepped up to give favorable testimony
The bill was then passed and sent back to the House where it passed-- this time 55 to 40.
Within twelve hours of seeing the light of day, the amended bill was on Governor John Kasich's desk. His office thinks the bill is awesometastic, blah blah save kids from failing schools blah blah. I keep waiting for someone supporting one of these bills to mess up his talking points and say that it's great we're saving children from democracy.
If we go to look at the bill (link here) we find much that seems familiar. Under the law, the state will take over a distressed school and turn it over to the Academic Distress Commission, who will hire a CEO to run the school. That CEO, who will serve at the pleasure of the commission, "shall have high-level management experience in the public or private sector" and "shall exercise complete operational, managerial and instructional control."
Creating Achievement School District style takeover mechanisms is always bad news for public education, but the installation of this law as a fast-tracked amendment to an unrelated bill really sets a new level of slimy, but it only looks worse upon examination-- Doug Livingston of the Akron Beacon reports that the Ohio Department of Education has been working on this for months.
While it is expected that Youngstown schools will be the first to be hit by this, Lorain (where I had my first teaching job) is also looking down the barrel of this mugger's gun. And the law is not specific or targeted-- it potentially applies to any district in the state that doesn't hit its numbers enough years in a row.
A list follows, and when they say complete control., they aren't kidding. The CEO can hire, fire, set salaries, set schedules, set the school calendar, determine the school configuration of grades, set curriculum, change any board-set policies, and of course, hire contractors to run things. There are more items on the list, and the CEO's powers are not limited to the list, but if it all gets too much for him, he may choose to delegate "specific powers or duties to the district board or district superintendent."
So the elected school board and district superintendent aren't completely dissolved-- they just work for the new unelected CEO. Think of it as the Roman Empire Management Model.
Speaking for the Ohio Weaselly Department of Education:
“Bottom line,” Charlton said, “is that it is not fair to the students and parents who trust their schools to provide for their educations, the local educators and community leaders who have played by the system’s rules, or the communities whose futures depend on educated, skilled citizens. It’s time for a change. Kids in academically struggling schools can’t wait any longer; we need to make immediate improvements to the support system.”
He did not go on to add "That is why we've spent months planning how to circumvent the entire democratic process and cut public ed off at the knees before anybody could raise a fuss."
My favorite quote from Livingston's piece?
Sen. Michael Skindell of Lakewood said of the potential for the program to spread. “It seems to incentivize students to go from a failing public school to a failing charter school.”
He added: “Gosh, I wish we would be moving as fast on the failing charter schools in this state.”
The Beacon-journal has done some previous work looking at the effect of charters on public schools, discovering that-- surprise-- the better students use choice (open enrollment, they call it in Ohio) to get out of places like Youngstown schools, leaving the least desirable students in a system being drained of resources, creating a larger scale "failure" in those districts.
Well, open enrollment was already draining those districts of money, but now the plucky educrats of the ODE have found a way to let someone squeeze the last drops of profit out of the husk of the public school system. Ohio's legislature remains committed to making the Buckeye State a paradise for privatizers, even if they have to subvert democracy to do it.
Pearson Sells PowerSchool
This may not be the biggest news in the education world-- unless, like me, you teach at one of the gazillion of schools that uses PowerSchool as its electronic gradebook. But the giant edubiz conglomerate has sold the giant gradebook monstrosity to a huge investment firm.
First, a confession: I don't hate PowerSchool. I know some folks do, and a lot about what is hate-able about the big PS comes down to how well your local IT configures it and supports it. But for my district, it's the most recent in a string of electronic gradebooks and the previous software was just so deeply awful in its awfulness that PowerSchool seemed like a breath of fresh air when it arrived. I still find it relatively easy to use and it mostly does the things that I want it to. I still keep a paper gradebook as my primary records, but by and large I trust PowerSchool to do its job of recording, storing, computing, and making available to parents and students the grades from my class.
Why did Pearson sell this successful program? That is an excellent question. The company is profitable, though not hugely so, but Pearson's spokesperson indicated that it didn't exactly fit Pearson's mission of owning everything in the world having to do with teaching or testing.
The sale of PowerSchool, an administrative system rather than a tool for learning, teaching or assessment, will enable us to focus more directly on learning outcomes, and further simplify Pearson as we make our products more global, digital and scalable.
Who's buying the company? Well, that's not very encouraging. The happy new owners are Vista Equity Partners, "a leading private equity firm focused on investing in software and technology-enabled businesses." They are the kind of group that describes themselves with phrases like "with more than $14 billion in cumulative capital commitments."
Or hey-- here's their investment philosophy. The large picture is "to enable good businesses to achieve their full potential"-- not exactly groundbreaking, though better than "to squeeze money out quickly and then sell the husk." Can you be more specific, Vista?
This starts by selecting well-positioned companies with best-in-class software products and related services, referenceable customers, and attractive market dynamics. We seek to align the interests of management with those of shareholders and focus on the operational processes and best practices that are critical for long-term value creation.
Uh-oh. Demerits for "referenceable customers" and an ominous shudder for "align the interests of management with those of shareholders etc." So PowerSchool has just become a company whose primary purpose is to make money for investors-- providing a useful product is actually secondary, a means to the most important end which is making somebody rich(er).
Their investment portfolio includes a bunch of software companies that you have never heard of. Every single one of them is "a provider of solutions" for some industry, from real estate to healthcare to news media to sports stats. Vista also partners with a variety of regional do-gooding organizations, including the Atlanta Academy, Bay Area Discovery Museum, Chicago Children's Hospital, the Lincoln Hills Experience (fly fishing for young people) and Squash Drive (a non-profit that promotes academic, athletic and general life success through squash-- the game, not the vegetable). While their philanthropic work tilts toward youthy stuff, they don't have any of the reformy connections here that we've come to know and love.
They did win an award for 2007 Top Performing Domestic Buyout Fund as announced by Reuters Buyouts Magazine, which is a real thing. Apparently Vista is good at what it has been doing for the past fifteen years.
The company was started in 2000 by Brian Sheth, Steven Davis and Robert F. Smith, both previously employed by Goldman Sachs. Sheth was 24 at the time and started out as an associate; Davis has since moved on and Sheth has moved up. While the company has offices in San Francisco and Chicago, it is based in Austin, Texas. A Wall Street Journal profile last year called them one of the top ten private equity companies in the world.
So for now, users of PowerSchool will be waiting to see what changes will be coming as the company shifts to its new goal of Making Money for Investors. We'll also be watching for what Pearson does to replace this giant data-hoovering capabilities of PowerSchool. Stay tuned.
First, a confession: I don't hate PowerSchool. I know some folks do, and a lot about what is hate-able about the big PS comes down to how well your local IT configures it and supports it. But for my district, it's the most recent in a string of electronic gradebooks and the previous software was just so deeply awful in its awfulness that PowerSchool seemed like a breath of fresh air when it arrived. I still find it relatively easy to use and it mostly does the things that I want it to. I still keep a paper gradebook as my primary records, but by and large I trust PowerSchool to do its job of recording, storing, computing, and making available to parents and students the grades from my class.
Why did Pearson sell this successful program? That is an excellent question. The company is profitable, though not hugely so, but Pearson's spokesperson indicated that it didn't exactly fit Pearson's mission of owning everything in the world having to do with teaching or testing.
The sale of PowerSchool, an administrative system rather than a tool for learning, teaching or assessment, will enable us to focus more directly on learning outcomes, and further simplify Pearson as we make our products more global, digital and scalable.
Who's buying the company? Well, that's not very encouraging. The happy new owners are Vista Equity Partners, "a leading private equity firm focused on investing in software and technology-enabled businesses." They are the kind of group that describes themselves with phrases like "with more than $14 billion in cumulative capital commitments."
Or hey-- here's their investment philosophy. The large picture is "to enable good businesses to achieve their full potential"-- not exactly groundbreaking, though better than "to squeeze money out quickly and then sell the husk." Can you be more specific, Vista?
This starts by selecting well-positioned companies with best-in-class software products and related services, referenceable customers, and attractive market dynamics. We seek to align the interests of management with those of shareholders and focus on the operational processes and best practices that are critical for long-term value creation.
Uh-oh. Demerits for "referenceable customers" and an ominous shudder for "align the interests of management with those of shareholders etc." So PowerSchool has just become a company whose primary purpose is to make money for investors-- providing a useful product is actually secondary, a means to the most important end which is making somebody rich(er).
Their investment portfolio includes a bunch of software companies that you have never heard of. Every single one of them is "a provider of solutions" for some industry, from real estate to healthcare to news media to sports stats. Vista also partners with a variety of regional do-gooding organizations, including the Atlanta Academy, Bay Area Discovery Museum, Chicago Children's Hospital, the Lincoln Hills Experience (fly fishing for young people) and Squash Drive (a non-profit that promotes academic, athletic and general life success through squash-- the game, not the vegetable). While their philanthropic work tilts toward youthy stuff, they don't have any of the reformy connections here that we've come to know and love.
They did win an award for 2007 Top Performing Domestic Buyout Fund as announced by Reuters Buyouts Magazine, which is a real thing. Apparently Vista is good at what it has been doing for the past fifteen years.
The company was started in 2000 by Brian Sheth, Steven Davis and Robert F. Smith, both previously employed by Goldman Sachs. Sheth was 24 at the time and started out as an associate; Davis has since moved on and Sheth has moved up. While the company has offices in San Francisco and Chicago, it is based in Austin, Texas. A Wall Street Journal profile last year called them one of the top ten private equity companies in the world.
So for now, users of PowerSchool will be waiting to see what changes will be coming as the company shifts to its new goal of Making Money for Investors. We'll also be watching for what Pearson does to replace this giant data-hoovering capabilities of PowerSchool. Stay tuned.
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