It's been less than a month since Motoko Rich traveled to San Antonio to hear a Pearson test scoring supervisor explain that scoring the tests is like making a Big Mac. Now Claudio Sanchez has made the same journey for NPR, and the results are no more flattering for Pearson than those from Rich's jaunt.
The center uses scorers from many walks of life, though a four-year degree is required. What is not required is any sort of opinion about the quality of the questions.
David Connerty-Marin, a spokesman for PARCC, says it's not up to a scorer or Pearson or PARCC to say, "Gee, we think this is too hard for a fourth-grader."
What is or is not developmentally appropriate, he says, is not an issue because the states have already made that decision based on the Common Core Standards.
One of these rainy summer days, I'll spend some time running up and down the internet and see if I can find, somewhere in the great chain of standards and testing, the person who says, "Me, I'm the one. I'm the guy who decides that this test item is appropriate for an eight year old." But until the day comes, we're stuck with test manufacturers who say, "Well, we just follow what the state tells us" and states that say, "Well, we lean on the professionals to design these things" and a whole bunch of people who point and shrug and say, "Well, you know, the standards" as if the standards were dropped down from heaven on the back of a golden cloud that deposited them on top of a burning bush.
The article's description of the scoring process reveals for the gazillionth time that the constructed open-ended responses are not any kind of open-ended response at all, but a bizarre exercise in blind matching.
Sanchez talked to one retired teacher who has worked eight years for Pearson.
She looks for evidence that students understood what they read, that their writing is coherent and that they used proper grammar. But it's actually not up to Vickers to decide what score a student deserves.
Instead, she relies on a three-ring binder filled with "anchor papers." These are samples of students' writing that show what a low-score or a high-score response looks like.
"I compare the composition to the anchors and see which score does the composition match more closely," Vickers says.
That's not an open-ended response. It's a newer, more gigantic form of multiple choice, where students choose from all the possible combinations of words in the English language in hopes of selecting the one combination that is acceptable to test manufacturers. Those folks in Texas have the same basic task as the guy checking the work of the million monkeys to see which one has typed a Shakespeare play. This is a test where students are given a box full of LEGOs and told to build something, but will only get credit if they build the right thing.
And, of course, reporters can't know any specifics about any of the actual test questions or responses.
Pearson does not allow reporters to describe or provide examples of what students wrote because otherwise, company officials say, everybody would know what's on the test.
I don't even know how to explain how insane that is. In my own classroom, my students know exactly what is going to be on a test. Any test that depends on super-duper secrecy is a terrible test. It is also possibly a test manufactured by cheap money-grubbing slackers who don't want to do the work of updating it annually.
Pearson delivers a backhanded acknowledgement that secrecy has not been their friend. One supervisor notes that since the public doesn't know what Pearson's doing, "misconceptions" abound. But Sanchez gets the last word on that subject:
Most Americans have been in the dark, says Thompson. So the risk for
Pearson, PARCC and the states is that by trying to be more transparent
this late in the game, people may very well end up with more questions
than answers.
Sunday, July 12, 2015
ICYMI: Top Eduposts of the Week (7/12)
Once again, here's some choice bits from around the edublogosphere that you should catch this week. I"m not perfect and this isn't every single thing you should read, but these are definitely pieces you should not miss.
Charter Schools Are Mired in Fraud and Failure
Paul Buchheit at Alternet takes a look at what's not to love about charter schools. This is a well-sourced compendium of many of the things we know are wrong. You might not find anything here you didn't already know, but it's a good source for finding it all in one place.
The Disturbing Forces Behind a School "Reform" Fight in Colorado
Jeff Bryant takes a closer look at the ongoing mess in Colorado, where Jefferson and Douglas County have both attracted the attention and money of reformsters from outside the area. This is the same fight featured in the film Education, Inc, and well worth studying up on. This is the blueprint for how outsiders take over a local district, and Bryant is, as always, thorough.
Testimony Regarding PARCC/MAS
Tracy Novick's testimony about choosing between the PARCC and Massachusetts' home-grown test (Novick picks None of the Above). A quick concise argument about what's wrong with the high stakes standardized testing regime.
False Sense of Security
This story leads off with the story of a student who found himself dealing with police twice-- just because he forgot his school id badge. A look at more effective approaches to school security.
Washington Post writes the most embarrassing, awful profile of Arne Duncan ever, completely misses the point
Lyndsey Layton took some flak this week for her profile of Arne Duncan, but nobody laid down the flak more precisely and thoroughly than Jeff Bryant at Salon with this too-long-for-twitter title.
Kansas Is Becoming a Hard Place To Teach, So Teachers Are Crossing the State Line
A Wichita public radio station notices that Kansas's anti-public ed policies are starting to drive teachers away. Complete with pics of the recruiting billboards Missouri is putting up in Kansas to poach teachers.
And finally, two pieces from Jersey Jazzman that you should not miss.
Chris Cerf's Victory Lap is a reminder that a 100% charter district is probably not the end game for privatizers. Firing Black, Experienced Teachers in Camden lays out once again, with data, how reformster programs often have a disproportionate effect on non-white teachers.
Charter Schools Are Mired in Fraud and Failure
Paul Buchheit at Alternet takes a look at what's not to love about charter schools. This is a well-sourced compendium of many of the things we know are wrong. You might not find anything here you didn't already know, but it's a good source for finding it all in one place.
The Disturbing Forces Behind a School "Reform" Fight in Colorado
Jeff Bryant takes a closer look at the ongoing mess in Colorado, where Jefferson and Douglas County have both attracted the attention and money of reformsters from outside the area. This is the same fight featured in the film Education, Inc, and well worth studying up on. This is the blueprint for how outsiders take over a local district, and Bryant is, as always, thorough.
Testimony Regarding PARCC/MAS
Tracy Novick's testimony about choosing between the PARCC and Massachusetts' home-grown test (Novick picks None of the Above). A quick concise argument about what's wrong with the high stakes standardized testing regime.
False Sense of Security
This story leads off with the story of a student who found himself dealing with police twice-- just because he forgot his school id badge. A look at more effective approaches to school security.
Washington Post writes the most embarrassing, awful profile of Arne Duncan ever, completely misses the point
Lyndsey Layton took some flak this week for her profile of Arne Duncan, but nobody laid down the flak more precisely and thoroughly than Jeff Bryant at Salon with this too-long-for-twitter title.
Kansas Is Becoming a Hard Place To Teach, So Teachers Are Crossing the State Line
A Wichita public radio station notices that Kansas's anti-public ed policies are starting to drive teachers away. Complete with pics of the recruiting billboards Missouri is putting up in Kansas to poach teachers.
And finally, two pieces from Jersey Jazzman that you should not miss.
Chris Cerf's Victory Lap is a reminder that a 100% charter district is probably not the end game for privatizers. Firing Black, Experienced Teachers in Camden lays out once again, with data, how reformster programs often have a disproportionate effect on non-white teachers.
Saturday, July 11, 2015
Jeb: Beware Big Words
Well, here's another possible explanation for why Jeb Bush favors reformster policies for breaking down public education and selling off the parts.
Jeb sat down for an interview with the New Hampshire Union Leader, and as written up, it presents a fairly boilerplate Bush campaign talk. The Union Leader reported one section of the interview like this:
"We don't have to be the world's policeman, but we have to be the world's leader," Bush said. "If we're not leading, that creates chaos and a more dangerous world."
You don’t have to be the world’s policemen, but you have to be the world’s leader and there’s a huge difference. This guy — this president and Secretary Clinton and Secretary Kerry – when someone disagrees with their nuanced approach where it’s all kind of so sophisticated it makes no sense. You know what I’m saying? Big syllable words and lots of fancy conferences and meetings and – We’re not leading. That creates chaos. It creates a more dangerous world. So restoring the alliances that have kept the world safer and our country safer – getting back to a position in the Middle East where there’s no light between Israel and the United States.
I get the Jeb is trying to paint himself as a plain-speaking, straight-shooting, git-er-done kinda guy. But his picture of the opposite-- some fancy-pants guy with his fancy conferences and big syllable words who just isn't a leader-- how does Jeb want to square that with his notion that kids need to get an education so they can compete globally and make America better?
Is his beloved Common Core supposed to provide just a basic meat-and-potatoes education without getting too fancy? Should it have a cap on number of syllables in words, or a limit on how many clauses can be put in one sentence? Will we have a federal ban on semi-colons because they're just too fancy for a simple American piece of punctuation? A limit on the number of abstract nouns used in any composition?Should we also require Microsoft to strip Word of fancy swirly script fonts? I mean, shouldn't Times New Roman be enough for any plainspoken American (okay, maybe Comic Sans for when you're feeling kind of wacky)? And the most meta of concerns-- does the word "syllable" have too many syllables?
Does any red-blooded American need a vocabulary of more than a few hundred words? Could we perhaps focus the Common Core by simply listing the, say, 500 words that every American needs to know and just drop the rest of them? Syllables, nuance, complexity-- that way lies madness and chaos.
In fact, I think we need to find out right away which five hundred words should be on Jeb Bush's List of Real American Vocabulary so that we can get our lesson plans aligned for the fall. Let's see if we can get him to send us that list soon.
Jeb sat down for an interview with the New Hampshire Union Leader, and as written up, it presents a fairly boilerplate Bush campaign talk. The Union Leader reported one section of the interview like this:
"We don't have to be the world's policeman, but we have to be the world's leader," Bush said. "If we're not leading, that creates chaos and a more dangerous world."
ave to be the world's policeman, but we have to be the world’s
leader," Bush said. "If we're not leading, that creates chaos and a more
dangerous world."
- See more at: http://www.unionleader.com/article/20150709/NEWS0605/150709206/0/FRONTPAGE#sthash.8Yj14IrD.dpuf
- See more at: http://www.unionleader.com/article/20150709/NEWS0605/150709206/0/FRONTPAGE#sthash.8Yj14IrD.dpuf
"We
don’t have to be the world's policeman, but we have to be the world’s
leader," Bush said. "If we're not leading, that creates chaos and a more
dangerous world."
- See more at: http://www.unionleader.com/article/20150709/NEWS0605/150709206/0/FRONTPAGE#sthash.8Yj14IrD.dpuf
But when C-Span took a look at the raw footage, they discovered that the Union Leader might have cleaned that quote up for Jeb a bit. The full quote sounds a little more like this:- See more at: http://www.unionleader.com/article/20150709/NEWS0605/150709206/0/FRONTPAGE#sthash.8Yj14IrD.dpuf
You don’t have to be the world’s policemen, but you have to be the world’s leader and there’s a huge difference. This guy — this president and Secretary Clinton and Secretary Kerry – when someone disagrees with their nuanced approach where it’s all kind of so sophisticated it makes no sense. You know what I’m saying? Big syllable words and lots of fancy conferences and meetings and – We’re not leading. That creates chaos. It creates a more dangerous world. So restoring the alliances that have kept the world safer and our country safer – getting back to a position in the Middle East where there’s no light between Israel and the United States.
I get the Jeb is trying to paint himself as a plain-speaking, straight-shooting, git-er-done kinda guy. But his picture of the opposite-- some fancy-pants guy with his fancy conferences and big syllable words who just isn't a leader-- how does Jeb want to square that with his notion that kids need to get an education so they can compete globally and make America better?
Is his beloved Common Core supposed to provide just a basic meat-and-potatoes education without getting too fancy? Should it have a cap on number of syllables in words, or a limit on how many clauses can be put in one sentence? Will we have a federal ban on semi-colons because they're just too fancy for a simple American piece of punctuation? A limit on the number of abstract nouns used in any composition?Should we also require Microsoft to strip Word of fancy swirly script fonts? I mean, shouldn't Times New Roman be enough for any plainspoken American (okay, maybe Comic Sans for when you're feeling kind of wacky)? And the most meta of concerns-- does the word "syllable" have too many syllables?
Does any red-blooded American need a vocabulary of more than a few hundred words? Could we perhaps focus the Common Core by simply listing the, say, 500 words that every American needs to know and just drop the rest of them? Syllables, nuance, complexity-- that way lies madness and chaos.
In fact, I think we need to find out right away which five hundred words should be on Jeb Bush's List of Real American Vocabulary so that we can get our lesson plans aligned for the fall. Let's see if we can get him to send us that list soon.
WI: Cheering Public Ed Destruction
The Wisconsin Legislature passed a budget this week that dumps more funding into the already-robust voucherific choicetastic system in Wisconsin. All the budget needs is a signature from Governor Scott Walker, and the only way Walker wouldn't approve such move would be if he were disappointed that it didn't explicitly end public education and replace public school teachers with minimum-wage temps.
Also cheering for this are the boys at the Heartland Institute, a thinky tank devoted to free market causes and a better world where rich people are free to do as they wish and poor people live the crappy lives they deserve.
But these quotes certainly show what free market folks want. No surprises here, but it's nice to see them in their own words.
"This budget shows Wisconsin legislators are taking improving education seriously. They are doing so by recognizing that throwing more money at a broken public education system in need of systemic change is not the answer," says Heather Kays. She does not go on to say, "But they do recognize that throwing money at charter operators is totally awesome and magically effective."
"The primary focus of education should be children, which the Wisconsin Legislature finally recognizes by adopting a fund-the-child approach over the funding-a-system approach," says Lennie Jarratt, who does not go on to say, "That's why we're proposing that we actually just give the kids the money and let them spend it on whatever they want."
But here's our winner:
“Wisconsin’s new budget, which expands school choice programs, is a big win for Wisconsin parents and taxpayers. The strategy of across-the-board expansion of choice accelerates the process of dismantling the inefficient ‘district-based’ system and the educational apartheid that system creates.” Says Bruno Behrend, who just goes right on ahead and uses the word "dismantling."
Yup-- that's the Randian view of education. Cut every kid a check, and those that are well-connected and have the resources can use that check as down-payment on a good education. Those Other People-- well, we gave them a voucher. How much more are we supposed to spend on Those People anyway? They have "access to" swell charter schools (in the same way that every citizen of Wisconsin has "access to" a Mercedes Benz and if they aren't able to convert that access to actual possession, well, they should have thought about that when they chose to be poor). Let's go ahead and scrap public education entirely.
Let's just all pay attention when Presidential Candidate Scott Walker signs this great piece of dismantling legislature.
Also cheering for this are the boys at the Heartland Institute, a thinky tank devoted to free market causes and a better world where rich people are free to do as they wish and poor people live the crappy lives they deserve.
But these quotes certainly show what free market folks want. No surprises here, but it's nice to see them in their own words.
"This budget shows Wisconsin legislators are taking improving education seriously. They are doing so by recognizing that throwing more money at a broken public education system in need of systemic change is not the answer," says Heather Kays. She does not go on to say, "But they do recognize that throwing money at charter operators is totally awesome and magically effective."
"The primary focus of education should be children, which the Wisconsin Legislature finally recognizes by adopting a fund-the-child approach over the funding-a-system approach," says Lennie Jarratt, who does not go on to say, "That's why we're proposing that we actually just give the kids the money and let them spend it on whatever they want."
But here's our winner:
“Wisconsin’s new budget, which expands school choice programs, is a big win for Wisconsin parents and taxpayers. The strategy of across-the-board expansion of choice accelerates the process of dismantling the inefficient ‘district-based’ system and the educational apartheid that system creates.” Says Bruno Behrend, who just goes right on ahead and uses the word "dismantling."
Yup-- that's the Randian view of education. Cut every kid a check, and those that are well-connected and have the resources can use that check as down-payment on a good education. Those Other People-- well, we gave them a voucher. How much more are we supposed to spend on Those People anyway? They have "access to" swell charter schools (in the same way that every citizen of Wisconsin has "access to" a Mercedes Benz and if they aren't able to convert that access to actual possession, well, they should have thought about that when they chose to be poor). Let's go ahead and scrap public education entirely.
Let's just all pay attention when Presidential Candidate Scott Walker signs this great piece of dismantling legislature.
Florida Charter Scam (Part 23,174)
Can you read one more story about how a charter school was used to scam taxpayers and make one more amateur education expert rich?
This one comes from Florida, courtesy of Andrew Marra at the Palm Beach Post. I'll give you the highlights; you should follow the link for the full deal.The story is one more example of how a charter school can be used as a giant money funnel, even if it wears the noble "non-profit" badge.
Gregory James Blount was a 40-ish-year-old former model and events producer who was working his way out of bankruptcy by teaching modeling and acting classes when he decided that getting into the charter school biz seemed like a fine career move. He recruited Liz Knowles, a teacher and private school chief, to run the school and write his "Artademics" curriculum. But Knowles walked away from Blount soon after (final straw-- discovering he had created a Artademics company to cash in). Knowles recalled Blount's argument for her to stay. "Don't worry, :Liz. You'll be rich."
The Eagle Arts Academy opened up, and Blount was cashing in. What's repeatedly impressive about these scam schools is that even people with no education experience or even successful business experience can still figure out how to make big money at this game. Blount was no exception.
The technique is familiar. The non-profit school hires other companies, and that's where you make your money. Blount set up a business that he called a "foundation," though it was not registered as one. The foundation sold uniforms to students at hefty prices, and that money went to Blount. Blount's company also ran a profitable after-school tutoring program on school grounds, rent free. And when Knowles walked away from writing the school's curriculum, Blount set up a company to do that; the school paid him for that as well-- even though the curriculum was both late. A third company charged the school for consulting services as well.
The Eagles Arts charter did include a clause saying that no board members of the school could profit directly or indirectly. Blount apparently got around that by simply resigning from the board during the periods that he was making money through his companies.
So, does this story end with Blount disgraced and in handcuffs?
Nope. It ends with Blount talking about plans for opening the school for its second year in August. Hey, he admits to making mistakes, but a guy's gotta make a living. And while this may all sound shady as hell, we're only reading about it because a newspaper decided to pursue it. Blount doesn't appear to have done anything illegal under Florida law. Here's the quote from the article:
“Do we like it? No,” said Jim Pegg, who oversees the county’s charter schools for the Palm Beach County School District. “Is it legal? Yes.”
So, hats off to you, Florida, for continuing your tradition of fostering some of America's finest scams. Nice to know that even with no more swampland left to sell, Florida still offers the chance to make plenty of money in the swamps of charter schools.
This one comes from Florida, courtesy of Andrew Marra at the Palm Beach Post. I'll give you the highlights; you should follow the link for the full deal.The story is one more example of how a charter school can be used as a giant money funnel, even if it wears the noble "non-profit" badge.
Gregory James Blount was a 40-ish-year-old former model and events producer who was working his way out of bankruptcy by teaching modeling and acting classes when he decided that getting into the charter school biz seemed like a fine career move. He recruited Liz Knowles, a teacher and private school chief, to run the school and write his "Artademics" curriculum. But Knowles walked away from Blount soon after (final straw-- discovering he had created a Artademics company to cash in). Knowles recalled Blount's argument for her to stay. "Don't worry, :Liz. You'll be rich."
The Eagle Arts Academy opened up, and Blount was cashing in. What's repeatedly impressive about these scam schools is that even people with no education experience or even successful business experience can still figure out how to make big money at this game. Blount was no exception.
The technique is familiar. The non-profit school hires other companies, and that's where you make your money. Blount set up a business that he called a "foundation," though it was not registered as one. The foundation sold uniforms to students at hefty prices, and that money went to Blount. Blount's company also ran a profitable after-school tutoring program on school grounds, rent free. And when Knowles walked away from writing the school's curriculum, Blount set up a company to do that; the school paid him for that as well-- even though the curriculum was both late. A third company charged the school for consulting services as well.
The Eagles Arts charter did include a clause saying that no board members of the school could profit directly or indirectly. Blount apparently got around that by simply resigning from the board during the periods that he was making money through his companies.
So, does this story end with Blount disgraced and in handcuffs?
Nope. It ends with Blount talking about plans for opening the school for its second year in August. Hey, he admits to making mistakes, but a guy's gotta make a living. And while this may all sound shady as hell, we're only reading about it because a newspaper decided to pursue it. Blount doesn't appear to have done anything illegal under Florida law. Here's the quote from the article:
“Do we like it? No,” said Jim Pegg, who oversees the county’s charter schools for the Palm Beach County School District. “Is it legal? Yes.”
So, hats off to you, Florida, for continuing your tradition of fostering some of America's finest scams. Nice to know that even with no more swampland left to sell, Florida still offers the chance to make plenty of money in the swamps of charter schools.
Friday, July 10, 2015
Competing Globally
On the list of empty rhetoric that's thrown into the ring for the reformster dog and pony show, we should include "compete globally."
It is frequently used as the bottom line for the reformster argument. We need standards so we can raise test scores so we can prove that students are career and college ready? Why? So that they can compete globally.
What does that even mean? Compete with which parts of the globe? Compete at what?
I mean, there are many areas in which we are not winning global competitions. While Americans go hungry and tons of tons of edible food end up in landfills, France has made it illegal for stores to throw food away. While Americans (and their government) try to get rich off of men and women trying to get a college education, many countries recognize the benefits of making it easy to home-grow educated adults with no-cost colleges. And while we commit so many acts of policy and profit "for the children," we remain one of the absolute worst countries in the world for child-care leave. Anything for the children-- except letting them have their mothers handy during the first months of life.
And Estonia? That country we're worried about catching up to? I learned this week that they are the leaders in free wifi for everybody (instead of preserving it as private source of corporate profit).
Nevertheless, aren't we still a major world power? Is China not still trying to imitate us economically? Are we not among the world's leaders, economically and politically? Also, our women just won the world cup, so in your face, global competition.
So what do our students need to be doing about competing globally?
No, when reformsters talk about competing globally, they're generally talking about jobs and economics. Like this sentence that leads off a White House essay about competing globally:
To create true middle class security, we must out-innovate, out-educate and out-build the rest of the world, positioning American companies to thrive in a 21st century economy.
There are two problems here.
The first is the use of the term "American companies." I'm not sure that anybody even knows what that means anymore. GE is a quintessential American company; we can all remember various GE products being advertised no matter how old or young we are. But of GE's roughly 300,000 employees, fewer than half (about 134,000) are in the US. "American" automaker Chrysler barely employs more Americans than "Japanese" Toyota.
Five years ago, when McKinsey was beating the drum at the front of the reformy parade, they weren't even bothering to talk about "American companies" so much as "multinational companies headquartered in the US."
Multinationals owe no allegiance to a particular country, nor even to a particular way of life. Robert Reich included this quote in a 2012 look at the issue:
An Apple executive says “We don’t have an obligation to solve America’s problems. Our only obligation is making the best product possible.”
Nor, for that matter, is Apple obliged to solve China's problems either, and so Apple, like many companies, benefits from a culture where sacrificing one's life for a meager paycheck. China's working conditions suck, but that's not the multinational's problem. It is, in fact, to their benefit.
And that brings us to the second problem with the White House statement.
Reformsters repeatedly talk about this global competition as if it's just a matter of education instead of a matter of controlling costs. This "paper" by the Center for American Progress gives exactly one sentence to the issue
We are quite familiar with what economists call “global labor arbitrage,” the substitution of high-wage workers in advanced economy countries with low-wage workers in developing economies.
Having noted their familiarity, the writers spend the rest of the paper speaking as if competitiveness is strictly a matter of education and training, and not a willingness to provide labor at the lowest possible costs.
The examples are endless. GE is sitting on a mountain of money, and yet they even as they have moved jobs to cheaper overseas locations, they have slashed benefits and created two-tier pay systems for their American workers. Does the recent kerfluffle about Microsoft laying off workers with one hand while pressing Congress for more guest worker visas with the other-- does that all seem familiar? That's because we went through exactly the same kerfluffle a year ago. Google "do we need more STEM workers" and watch the arguments line up.
We aren't losing jobs because we can't "out-innovate, out-educate or out-build" the rest of the world, but because we don't have enough people willing to work for far less money in far crappier conditions. (Even if we were, you don't raise people who can out-innovate anyone by forcing students through a one-size-fits-all, test-driven straightjacket of an education program-- even China understands that.)
Competing how?
It is true that American students are poorly equipped to compete in a marketplace when what they've been told is, "I've got ten Chinese workers willing to live in a dorm away from home and work 80-hour weeks for peanuts. Can you beat that?" But it's not entirely clear how college and career ready standards, backed up by high stakes testing fueling a big stick threat-heavy approach to public schools will help.
I can find plenty of writing about the issues in big broad terms, but try as I might, I can't find somebody who lays out the direct connection. I'm eighteen and I've proven I can pass a test about literature taught the David Coleman way-- exactly what will that allow to say in a job interview that will make a potential employer say, "Yes, I definitely want to hire you, and not that guy in China."
Exactly what is the connection between passing PARCC and scoring a good middle class job?
Reformsters keep trying to frame the issue as an issue or worker worthiness. Surely our American workers would be better paid at better jobs if they deserved to be. The fact that they aren't is proof that they don't deserve to be. I have no doubt that when Jeb Bush says American workers should work more hours, he's displaying the reformster disconnect, not even noticing that 1) vast number of employers won't hire people for more than part-time jobs and 2) employers just fought hard for their right to screw workers out of overtime pay.
In other words, we have somehow taken a broad economic problems-- the human costs of corporations that want to pay absolute bottom dollar for labor-- and turned it into the workers' fault. Don't whine to me, Mr. Smith-- if you had gotten a better education, working part time at the widget store would pay better.
The global competition is to scour the globe to find the cheapest good-enough labor to be found so that corporate coffers can be crammed full. Multinationals are on their way to reducing national governments to the role of human resources department-- get us a good applicant pool for jobs, take care of health care costs and any other maintenance costs for keeping the human capital in working order. And so nations are in a global competition to see which can bring the most good-enough human capital under budget. Who's going to compete for the job of looking out for the interests of the human capital. Turns out that there is no global competition to be best at that job.
It is frequently used as the bottom line for the reformster argument. We need standards so we can raise test scores so we can prove that students are career and college ready? Why? So that they can compete globally.
What does that even mean? Compete with which parts of the globe? Compete at what?
I mean, there are many areas in which we are not winning global competitions. While Americans go hungry and tons of tons of edible food end up in landfills, France has made it illegal for stores to throw food away. While Americans (and their government) try to get rich off of men and women trying to get a college education, many countries recognize the benefits of making it easy to home-grow educated adults with no-cost colleges. And while we commit so many acts of policy and profit "for the children," we remain one of the absolute worst countries in the world for child-care leave. Anything for the children-- except letting them have their mothers handy during the first months of life.
And Estonia? That country we're worried about catching up to? I learned this week that they are the leaders in free wifi for everybody (instead of preserving it as private source of corporate profit).
Nevertheless, aren't we still a major world power? Is China not still trying to imitate us economically? Are we not among the world's leaders, economically and politically? Also, our women just won the world cup, so in your face, global competition.
So what do our students need to be doing about competing globally?
No, when reformsters talk about competing globally, they're generally talking about jobs and economics. Like this sentence that leads off a White House essay about competing globally:
To create true middle class security, we must out-innovate, out-educate and out-build the rest of the world, positioning American companies to thrive in a 21st century economy.
There are two problems here.
The first is the use of the term "American companies." I'm not sure that anybody even knows what that means anymore. GE is a quintessential American company; we can all remember various GE products being advertised no matter how old or young we are. But of GE's roughly 300,000 employees, fewer than half (about 134,000) are in the US. "American" automaker Chrysler barely employs more Americans than "Japanese" Toyota.
Five years ago, when McKinsey was beating the drum at the front of the reformy parade, they weren't even bothering to talk about "American companies" so much as "multinational companies headquartered in the US."
Multinationals owe no allegiance to a particular country, nor even to a particular way of life. Robert Reich included this quote in a 2012 look at the issue:
An Apple executive says “We don’t have an obligation to solve America’s problems. Our only obligation is making the best product possible.”
Nor, for that matter, is Apple obliged to solve China's problems either, and so Apple, like many companies, benefits from a culture where sacrificing one's life for a meager paycheck. China's working conditions suck, but that's not the multinational's problem. It is, in fact, to their benefit.
And that brings us to the second problem with the White House statement.
Reformsters repeatedly talk about this global competition as if it's just a matter of education instead of a matter of controlling costs. This "paper" by the Center for American Progress gives exactly one sentence to the issue
We are quite familiar with what economists call “global labor arbitrage,” the substitution of high-wage workers in advanced economy countries with low-wage workers in developing economies.
Having noted their familiarity, the writers spend the rest of the paper speaking as if competitiveness is strictly a matter of education and training, and not a willingness to provide labor at the lowest possible costs.
The examples are endless. GE is sitting on a mountain of money, and yet they even as they have moved jobs to cheaper overseas locations, they have slashed benefits and created two-tier pay systems for their American workers. Does the recent kerfluffle about Microsoft laying off workers with one hand while pressing Congress for more guest worker visas with the other-- does that all seem familiar? That's because we went through exactly the same kerfluffle a year ago. Google "do we need more STEM workers" and watch the arguments line up.
We aren't losing jobs because we can't "out-innovate, out-educate or out-build" the rest of the world, but because we don't have enough people willing to work for far less money in far crappier conditions. (Even if we were, you don't raise people who can out-innovate anyone by forcing students through a one-size-fits-all, test-driven straightjacket of an education program-- even China understands that.)
Competing how?
It is true that American students are poorly equipped to compete in a marketplace when what they've been told is, "I've got ten Chinese workers willing to live in a dorm away from home and work 80-hour weeks for peanuts. Can you beat that?" But it's not entirely clear how college and career ready standards, backed up by high stakes testing fueling a big stick threat-heavy approach to public schools will help.
I can find plenty of writing about the issues in big broad terms, but try as I might, I can't find somebody who lays out the direct connection. I'm eighteen and I've proven I can pass a test about literature taught the David Coleman way-- exactly what will that allow to say in a job interview that will make a potential employer say, "Yes, I definitely want to hire you, and not that guy in China."
Exactly what is the connection between passing PARCC and scoring a good middle class job?
Reformsters keep trying to frame the issue as an issue or worker worthiness. Surely our American workers would be better paid at better jobs if they deserved to be. The fact that they aren't is proof that they don't deserve to be. I have no doubt that when Jeb Bush says American workers should work more hours, he's displaying the reformster disconnect, not even noticing that 1) vast number of employers won't hire people for more than part-time jobs and 2) employers just fought hard for their right to screw workers out of overtime pay.
In other words, we have somehow taken a broad economic problems-- the human costs of corporations that want to pay absolute bottom dollar for labor-- and turned it into the workers' fault. Don't whine to me, Mr. Smith-- if you had gotten a better education, working part time at the widget store would pay better.
The global competition is to scour the globe to find the cheapest good-enough labor to be found so that corporate coffers can be crammed full. Multinationals are on their way to reducing national governments to the role of human resources department-- get us a good applicant pool for jobs, take care of health care costs and any other maintenance costs for keeping the human capital in working order. And so nations are in a global competition to see which can bring the most good-enough human capital under budget. Who's going to compete for the job of looking out for the interests of the human capital. Turns out that there is no global competition to be best at that job.
Thursday, July 9, 2015
TWB
Teaching While Black has been problematic for decades.
If we roll the clock back to the Brown vs. Board of Education, we discover a response that some folks have just forgotten all about.
If we roll the clock back to the Brown vs. Board of Education, we discover a response that some folks have just forgotten all about.
In the spring of 1953, with the Brown vs. Board
of Education desegregation case pending in the U.S. Supreme Court,
Wendell Godwin, superintendent of schools in Topeka, sent letters to
black elementary school teachers. Painfully polite, the letters couldn't
mask the message: If segregation dies, you will lose your jobs.
"Our Board will proceed on the assumption that
the majority of people in Topeka will not want to employ negro teachers
next year for White children," he wrote.
The USA Today piece from 2004 lists a variety of chilling statistics. In 1954, there were 82,000 Black educators; in the eleven years after Brown, 38,000 of them lost their jobs in the Southern block of states. Number of Black teachers hired in Arkansas desegregated districts between 1958 and 1968-- zero. Black principals were driven out of the profession even more aggressively. Between 1967 and 1971, the number of Black principals in North Carolina dropped from 620 to 40.
The practice of nudging, pushing, shoving, ramrodding Black teachers out of the profession has been around for decades. They are, in fact, Exhibit A in the argument in favor of tenure. In the same article, we're reminded that Black teachers were also fired for voting and for joining the NAACP.
So are we doing better nowadays, now that we've dubbed education the Civil Rights Issue of our time? Ha!
Education reform has not made the prospect of Teaching While Black any more attractive than ever. Beyond the more isolated incidents, like the bizarre incident in which a Black principal fired Black teachers for teaching too much Black History (at a middle school at historic Black Howard University), or the appalling NYC principal who called some teachers "nappy-haired," "big-lipped" and "gorilla in a sweater" before firing them.
Most notable in the recent past is the massive firing of Black teachers in post-Katrina New Orleans. The teaching force went from 71% Black to less than 50%, not just a blow to equity in the classroom, but a gut shot to New Orleans' middle class.
And then there's this, from the ever-erudite Jersey Jazzman. He and his research partner Bruce Baker have often noted the disproportionate impact of reformster activity in New Jersey, but this newest piece makes it plainer than ever. I strongly suggest you read the whole thing, but I'm going to focus on what I found most stunning.
NJ has targeted five schools in Camden for "transformation." This is nominally because they are the most struggling schools in Camden. As JJ shows, they are not.
In fact, one school, Francis K. McGraw Elementary School, is one of the top schools in terms of the math growth measure and they are right in the middle for the ELA growth measure. McGraw is on par with some of Camden's carefully creamed charters for beating the statistical predictions that go with their demographic make-up. And in fact, none of the five targeted schools have the most struggling statistics for any measure.
You know what McGraw does have the most of? Black teachers.
In fact, take a look at this chart that I am going to borrow from Jazzman's piece:
Because, notice which schools have the lowest percentage of Black teachers? The charter schools.
Look, I'm not even going to argue about whether we need more Black teachers in the classroom. We do. Students don't need to be taught exclusively by folks who look like they do, but no child should spend a day in a school where no adult looks like that child. We know that we are losing non-white teachers faster than we lose white ones. Good lord, even Teach for America gets that they need to aggressively pursue non-white TFA temps-- and what do they get for the effort? Racist blather.
We see it over and over. Failing schools keep turning out to be full of non-white, non-wealthy students, and "rescuing" those students keeps meaning that we silence their parents and neighbors and then shove out their non-white teachers.
After crunching the Camden numbers, Jazzman* reach this conclusion:
Put
simply: black and experienced teachers are more likely to have to
reapply for their jobs under the Camden "transformation" plan than white
and inexperienced teachers, even when taking into account their
schools' student populations and growth scores.
And all of this is before we even talk about what non-white teachers deal with if they aren't pushed out. The problems of TWB are not new, and they're not exclusive to places under the thumb of reformsters. But reformsters sure aren't making things better by continuing to act as if better teachers are somehow whiter ones.
*Update: The earlier version of this noted Baker as a co-author of this particular brief. That was incorrect.
*Update: The earlier version of this noted Baker as a co-author of this particular brief. That was incorrect.
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