With the now-thankfully-defeated Murphy Amendment, Senate Democrats gave a giant middle finger to public education and a bathtub full of cold water in the face to those who keep thinking that maybe the Democrats in general and Progressives in particular are going to be our allies in our struggle to preserve the promise of public education.
They aren't.
Steven Singer lays out the shock and dismay pretty clearly.
Up until now I’ve always been with the Democrats because they had better – though still bad – education policies than the Republicans. I’m not sure I can say that anymore. In fact, it may be just the opposite.
So what's the fuss? The Murphy Amendment was an attempt to put the test-and-punish back into ESEA, including solidifying that magic "bottom 5%" rule into federal law. It was a way for Democrats to say that they actually loved them the last fifteen years of test-and-punish based ed reform and they would like still more of it. And it took the GOP to stop these dopes.
This is not entirely a shock. The Democrats have given plenty of notice that they are not friends of public education, not the least of which would be two entire Democratic administrations under Obama-Duncan. I know die-hard Dems like to imagine that Obama is some sort of outlier or that Duncan is a rogue Education Secretary, but the sad truth is that a Democrat has had the chance to set education policy, and that's what we've been living with for seven years. The Murphy Amendment doesn't represent a new shift or alliance or change in direction. It's right where they've been headed all along.
The only bright spot in any of this was that the NEA was vocal and on the right side of this and not making nice with the Democrats (because, hey, they're our political allies).
I do not know the answer to the political calculus of public education in this country, but I do know that we have got to stop blindly supporting parties and start focusing on policy. And we have got to stop pretending that the Democrats are our friends no matter what. For that matter, we need to start distinguishing between good relationships and good policies. The fact that we may have a "good relationship" with Democrats does not mean they won't screw us, and the fact that we have a "bad relationship" with some Republicans does not mean that they won't support policies that help public education work better.
Public education is a political orphan, with few politicians watching out for us. The Murphy Amendment is just one more reminder that just because you think someone's swell, that doesn't mean they stand for what you wish they stood for.
It is a dark part of Democrat dna to think that only filing reports with the feds makes the world go around, just as it is in the dark part of GOP dna to think that those who can't pay the price of admission to society's lifeboat should just be left to swim home on their own.
Both the GOP and Dems are infected with money. Neither can be trusted as a group. Certainly neither can be trusted all the time to watch out for American public education, because neither party believes in the promise of public education any more. I'm not sure what the answer is. Take personal responsibility for getting the word out (don't just say "Well, I pay union dues so they'll take care of it). Contact your representatives early and often. Convince others to do the same. Raise a fuss and make some noise. Pay attention ALL THE TIME. And remember that this is a marathon, not a sprint.
Public education needs allies. I suggest that rather than farm the job out, we start with ourselves, and make ourselves into the allies that public education needs, because the folks in DC sure as hell aren't going to do it.
Friday, July 17, 2015
Thursday, July 16, 2015
Can Third Graders "Fail"
A twitter conversation this morning turned into a discussion of the semantics of talking about test results, but any conversation that turns to phrases like "semantics of talking about test results" (39 characters) is kind of doomed on twitter. Jennifer Borgioli (@JennBinis) referred me to her article from last summer addressing the issue, "The Semantics of Test Scores."
There's a fairly detailed illustration of her argument, but her general point is that people play pretty fast and loose with the term "fail," particularly with the 3-8 grade range of tests.
Generally speaking, when we talk about a test where the resulting score is described as passing or failing, it’s in relation to the consequences for the test taker. Fail your driver’s test? You can’t drive. Pass your boards? Welcome to the profession, Doctor.
While that holds true for many high school Big Standardized Tests that are used as graduation requirements, Bergioli argues that no such "bright line" exists for BS Tests for grades 3 through 8.
There are no short-term negative consequences for students in grades 3-8 based on their performance on the state assessments.
Bergioli's example is rooted in New York; this "bright line" assertion is, of course, flat out false if we throw in states like Mississippi that like the idea of holding back third graders who score too low on the reading assessment. That, I think, qualifies pretty clearly as failing.
I do get her point. Language choice with children (particularly younger ones) is important, and it is particularly important to choose carefully when discussing success or the lack thereof. When my kids were little, their mother and I were careful to use phrases like "haven't succeeded yet" in place of "failed." When we designed graduation projects for my high school, the only outcomes we made a place for in the evaluation stage were "successfully completed" and "not successfully completed yet."
I get that some test-loving reformsters imagine a perfect world where tests are given, tests come back, and nine year olds say, "Well, that was not what I had hoped for. But I can see that I need to enrich my study and practice of identifying main ideas in paragraphs, so I guess I'll just hunker down and do that."
But in this, as in so many areas, folks who design and promote this stuff are kidding themselves.
So, while there is once again the possibility of larger, longer-term consequences to the school, the district, and the community based on how a group of students do on these tests, in the absence of a clear and bright line of a relationship between student performance on the test and consequences to the student, it’s misleading to say the student “failed” the test.
No, I don't think it's misleading at all.
First of all, the larger, long-term consequences are based on drawing a clear and bright line. The state says, "This number of your students fell on the wrong side of this clear, bright line, so you are not an effective teacher." Depending on your state and its laws, that ineffectiveness may be reflected in your evaluation, your pay, and your future employment. It will also be reflected in the rating of your school, and of course in many states that rating will be a nice, neat letter grade. Why do some policymakers like giving schools letter grades? Because it makes it easy to tell if the school is passing or failing.
Second, children are not dopes. Decades of sorting students into bluebirds and chickenhawks have fooled almost nobody-- students know whether they're winning or losing in the Big Game O' Learning Stuff. And because the stakes on test results are so high for schools, students who score Not So High on BS Tests will find themselves rewarded with extra work, extra practice, extra time in the albatross reading group. It can take a tough little kid to look at the evidence and not reach unflattering conclusions about herself, and most teachers I know do their best to keep children from reaching those conclusions. But students know when they've failed, whatever we try to call it.
We can say that these students have not technically failed, and in an academic technical sense, we are correct. But eight year olds are not known for their ability to look at things in an academic technical sense. That's one of the truly toxic effects of badly written tests-- young students lack the capacity to say, "Well, this was a poorly designed assessment." They just think, "I must be stupid."
Nor do we get a lot of nuance from the policymakers and politicians who keep talking about failing schools and failing teachers, all of which underlines clearly that there's a bright clear line, and anybody falling below it has failed.
Test manufacturing experts sometimes remind me of sad scientists in old SF movies. They design these instruments to try to tease out nuanced granular pictures of student strengths and weaknesses and then policymakers just grab the tests and say, "Never mind all that. I just wanna know how many of these kids failed."
I agree that it would be better for everyone if we could deal with these issues in a nuanced thoughtful manner. But then, if the education discussion were being run by policymakers who valued nuance, detail, and the expertise of people in the field, we'd be in a far different place than we are today. We can try to shade the meaning of "fail" so that it has a very specific meaning in very specific circumstances, but that's a hopeless exercise. Everyone knows what "fails," means-- you came in below a particular mark. And that definition fits for every test in the history of ever.
There's a fairly detailed illustration of her argument, but her general point is that people play pretty fast and loose with the term "fail," particularly with the 3-8 grade range of tests.
Generally speaking, when we talk about a test where the resulting score is described as passing or failing, it’s in relation to the consequences for the test taker. Fail your driver’s test? You can’t drive. Pass your boards? Welcome to the profession, Doctor.
While that holds true for many high school Big Standardized Tests that are used as graduation requirements, Bergioli argues that no such "bright line" exists for BS Tests for grades 3 through 8.
There are no short-term negative consequences for students in grades 3-8 based on their performance on the state assessments.
Bergioli's example is rooted in New York; this "bright line" assertion is, of course, flat out false if we throw in states like Mississippi that like the idea of holding back third graders who score too low on the reading assessment. That, I think, qualifies pretty clearly as failing.
I do get her point. Language choice with children (particularly younger ones) is important, and it is particularly important to choose carefully when discussing success or the lack thereof. When my kids were little, their mother and I were careful to use phrases like "haven't succeeded yet" in place of "failed." When we designed graduation projects for my high school, the only outcomes we made a place for in the evaluation stage were "successfully completed" and "not successfully completed yet."
I get that some test-loving reformsters imagine a perfect world where tests are given, tests come back, and nine year olds say, "Well, that was not what I had hoped for. But I can see that I need to enrich my study and practice of identifying main ideas in paragraphs, so I guess I'll just hunker down and do that."
But in this, as in so many areas, folks who design and promote this stuff are kidding themselves.
So, while there is once again the possibility of larger, longer-term consequences to the school, the district, and the community based on how a group of students do on these tests, in the absence of a clear and bright line of a relationship between student performance on the test and consequences to the student, it’s misleading to say the student “failed” the test.
No, I don't think it's misleading at all.
First of all, the larger, long-term consequences are based on drawing a clear and bright line. The state says, "This number of your students fell on the wrong side of this clear, bright line, so you are not an effective teacher." Depending on your state and its laws, that ineffectiveness may be reflected in your evaluation, your pay, and your future employment. It will also be reflected in the rating of your school, and of course in many states that rating will be a nice, neat letter grade. Why do some policymakers like giving schools letter grades? Because it makes it easy to tell if the school is passing or failing.
Second, children are not dopes. Decades of sorting students into bluebirds and chickenhawks have fooled almost nobody-- students know whether they're winning or losing in the Big Game O' Learning Stuff. And because the stakes on test results are so high for schools, students who score Not So High on BS Tests will find themselves rewarded with extra work, extra practice, extra time in the albatross reading group. It can take a tough little kid to look at the evidence and not reach unflattering conclusions about herself, and most teachers I know do their best to keep children from reaching those conclusions. But students know when they've failed, whatever we try to call it.
We can say that these students have not technically failed, and in an academic technical sense, we are correct. But eight year olds are not known for their ability to look at things in an academic technical sense. That's one of the truly toxic effects of badly written tests-- young students lack the capacity to say, "Well, this was a poorly designed assessment." They just think, "I must be stupid."
Nor do we get a lot of nuance from the policymakers and politicians who keep talking about failing schools and failing teachers, all of which underlines clearly that there's a bright clear line, and anybody falling below it has failed.
Test manufacturing experts sometimes remind me of sad scientists in old SF movies. They design these instruments to try to tease out nuanced granular pictures of student strengths and weaknesses and then policymakers just grab the tests and say, "Never mind all that. I just wanna know how many of these kids failed."
I agree that it would be better for everyone if we could deal with these issues in a nuanced thoughtful manner. But then, if the education discussion were being run by policymakers who valued nuance, detail, and the expertise of people in the field, we'd be in a far different place than we are today. We can try to shade the meaning of "fail" so that it has a very specific meaning in very specific circumstances, but that's a hopeless exercise. Everyone knows what "fails," means-- you came in below a particular mark. And that definition fits for every test in the history of ever.
Wednesday, July 15, 2015
How AFT Blew It
I wouldn't devote one more post to deconstructing Randi Weingarten's early-bird Christmas gift to Hillary Clinton except that I'm an NEA member, and I'm living in fear that NEA president Lily Ekelsen Garcia's administration will lead us down the same path.
Arguing about Clinton (or Weingarten for that matter) is a tricky dance. Clinton tends to have a destabilizing effect on the brains of people who don't like her, who proceed to froth at the mouth at start ranting about conspiracies tortured enough make a truther blush. My opposition to Clinton (and support for Bernie Sanders) is not based on any belief that she is a terrible human being, a crazy-awful person, or some evil mastermind bitch on wheels. My reluctance to support her is not even based on my perception that she is extraordinarily inauthentic (though I think that magnifies her other issues). I just don't think she is remotely a supporter of public education or the teachers who work there. I think she would be perfectly comfortable continuing the exact same policies that we've suffered under for the past fifteen years and in fact would prefer to continue with them.
The counter-argument is that she's electable while Sanders is a modern George McGovern, beloved by liberals and doomed in the general election. Maybe Clinton is electable (though if that's the case I'd ask why? Could it be that she's electable because, other than her lack of a penis, she is indistinguishable from a Republican candidate). And there's a case to be made that endorsing early and ahead of the pack earns you a better voice in policy discussions.
But if she is electable, nobody's pretending it won't be a tough sell. And that's how AFT blew it.
Let me take a moment to tell you how I have always handled advising students who are in charge of putting on Prom. First, it takes months-- mooonnnnnnths. Because we make sure every student on class council has had a chance to propose an idea and explain that idea. Then students break into groups and they research and pitch the ideas. And then they discuss the ideas until every single person has been heard just as much as they want to be. And then they decide.
The process is long and involved and inefficient and often results in exactly the same theme-and-decoration decisions that the class president or I could have simply installed by fiat at the beginning of the process. But the long involved process doesn't just result in a decision about which color of vinyl to hand behind the cardboard castle. It also results in an entire group of students who are energized, informed, and invested. They know what we're doing, why we're doing it, and why it's the best solution we could come up with. They will work for that theme, even if it wasn't the one they most wanted.
The process of deciding on a candidate to endorse could-- and should-- also be the process of getting members educated, involved and invested in the decision. But leaders of large, unruly, cat-herding groups like a teachers union are reluctant to relinquish control. The irony here is that such groups are often run with the same top-down management style that has helped make education "reform" such a train wreck.
While AFT's tiny sample was legit for sampling purposes, Daniel Katz correctly notes that the massaging of the data makes it a bit suspect. But what it mostly did was completely fail to engage the members, and now instead of delivering a groundswell of Clinton enthusiasm, Weingarten delivers a free-wheeling cat-herding argument about leadership's choice for the union. Instead, the people who are excited about the endorsement are people like DFER-- the faux Democrats (also, faux democrats) who would like teachers to be Put in Their Place and for the unions to die. That's who's excited about this.
I believe some folks have grossly over-estimated Clinton's electability, under-estimated Sander's electability, and hugely under-estimated how much Clinton really doesn't support public education and the people who work there. I suppose time will tell.
But in the meantime, I'm really, really hoping that NEA will take a more careful approach to an endorsement. I hope we don't send the Dems the message that we will always be there for them, no matter how badly they treat us. I hope we don't cut the membership out of the process and just expect them to fall in line. And I hope we endorse somebody who isn't going to, once again, stab us in the back, front, and side.
The AFT used a long questionnaire (about twenty-six questions, only eight of which directly addressed education). I'd like to see the NEA's list of questions include these two:
What did the Obama/Duncan administration get wrong about education?
What would your administration do differently going forward?
Because any candidate that wants support from teachers ought to be able to answer both of those, clearly and specifically. I'll be waiting.
Arguing about Clinton (or Weingarten for that matter) is a tricky dance. Clinton tends to have a destabilizing effect on the brains of people who don't like her, who proceed to froth at the mouth at start ranting about conspiracies tortured enough make a truther blush. My opposition to Clinton (and support for Bernie Sanders) is not based on any belief that she is a terrible human being, a crazy-awful person, or some evil mastermind bitch on wheels. My reluctance to support her is not even based on my perception that she is extraordinarily inauthentic (though I think that magnifies her other issues). I just don't think she is remotely a supporter of public education or the teachers who work there. I think she would be perfectly comfortable continuing the exact same policies that we've suffered under for the past fifteen years and in fact would prefer to continue with them.
The counter-argument is that she's electable while Sanders is a modern George McGovern, beloved by liberals and doomed in the general election. Maybe Clinton is electable (though if that's the case I'd ask why? Could it be that she's electable because, other than her lack of a penis, she is indistinguishable from a Republican candidate). And there's a case to be made that endorsing early and ahead of the pack earns you a better voice in policy discussions.
But if she is electable, nobody's pretending it won't be a tough sell. And that's how AFT blew it.
Let me take a moment to tell you how I have always handled advising students who are in charge of putting on Prom. First, it takes months-- mooonnnnnnths. Because we make sure every student on class council has had a chance to propose an idea and explain that idea. Then students break into groups and they research and pitch the ideas. And then they discuss the ideas until every single person has been heard just as much as they want to be. And then they decide.
The process is long and involved and inefficient and often results in exactly the same theme-and-decoration decisions that the class president or I could have simply installed by fiat at the beginning of the process. But the long involved process doesn't just result in a decision about which color of vinyl to hand behind the cardboard castle. It also results in an entire group of students who are energized, informed, and invested. They know what we're doing, why we're doing it, and why it's the best solution we could come up with. They will work for that theme, even if it wasn't the one they most wanted.
The process of deciding on a candidate to endorse could-- and should-- also be the process of getting members educated, involved and invested in the decision. But leaders of large, unruly, cat-herding groups like a teachers union are reluctant to relinquish control. The irony here is that such groups are often run with the same top-down management style that has helped make education "reform" such a train wreck.
While AFT's tiny sample was legit for sampling purposes, Daniel Katz correctly notes that the massaging of the data makes it a bit suspect. But what it mostly did was completely fail to engage the members, and now instead of delivering a groundswell of Clinton enthusiasm, Weingarten delivers a free-wheeling cat-herding argument about leadership's choice for the union. Instead, the people who are excited about the endorsement are people like DFER-- the faux Democrats (also, faux democrats) who would like teachers to be Put in Their Place and for the unions to die. That's who's excited about this.
I believe some folks have grossly over-estimated Clinton's electability, under-estimated Sander's electability, and hugely under-estimated how much Clinton really doesn't support public education and the people who work there. I suppose time will tell.
But in the meantime, I'm really, really hoping that NEA will take a more careful approach to an endorsement. I hope we don't send the Dems the message that we will always be there for them, no matter how badly they treat us. I hope we don't cut the membership out of the process and just expect them to fall in line. And I hope we endorse somebody who isn't going to, once again, stab us in the back, front, and side.
The AFT used a long questionnaire (about twenty-six questions, only eight of which directly addressed education). I'd like to see the NEA's list of questions include these two:
What did the Obama/Duncan administration get wrong about education?
What would your administration do differently going forward?
Because any candidate that wants support from teachers ought to be able to answer both of those, clearly and specifically. I'll be waiting.
Sad Days in PARCCland
PARCC, built on the dream of a national scale standardized testing system, has been dumped by yet another state. Governor John Kasich of Ohio two weeks ago signed a budget that severs Ohio's connection to the PARCC consortium. The dream is dying.
The PARCC had only been used in Ohio for one year-- but that year was disastrous. State Senator Peggy Lehner (who may be a saint or who may be an opportunist who saw a political opening) had set up her own committee to look into testing issues, and what she found in a survey a few months ago was that basically every sentient human in Ohio hates the PARCC test. In her survey, Lehner found exactly one superintendent who "strongly agreed" that the implementation of the tests went well.
The Ohio legislature has been after PARCC for several months, including an earlier proposal that not only cut the test but cut the education department's budget for all testing (the new bill allows for new tests, but shorter and given only once at year's end). And way back in February, 25-year veteran teacher (and BAT) Dawn Neely-Randall spoke out against the test, helping kick off an avalanche of criticism from teachers.
Governor Kasich, a Common Core True Believer who has labeled Core opposition "hysteria," has tried to defend the PARCC, but clearly has given up that fight. His Presidential aspirations may or may not be a factor, but Kasich is the only other Republican besides Jeb Bush who would conceivably not run away from Common Core. For PARCC, this is more bad news.
When the testing consortium was launched, it included twenty-three states and the District of Columbia. Ohio's defection brings the number down to ten states, plus DC. Those states are Arkansas, Colorado, District of Columbia, Illinois, Louisiana, Maryland, Massachusetts, Mississippi, New Jersey, New Mexico, and Rhode Island (that's according to the PARCC website, which hasn't been changed to reflect the new loss).
You'll notice two things about the list-- one is that some of those states are not necessarily solidly in the PARCC camp, and the other is that they are not among America's most populous. PARCC was only testing five million students when Ohio was still in; now that number grows smaller still. It's no wonder that testing advocates are pushing so hard to keep every year, every student testing mandates in the ESEA rewrite-- the market and attendant revenue stream for test manufacturers like Pearson is plummeting. (Update: Let me clarify that-- the market for state-by-state manufacturing is growing, but the chance to blanket the entire country with a single test product is falling apart.)
In fact, the indispensable Mercedes Schneider reports this morning that marketing research firm Questor now lists Pearson as a "sell," citing in particular the growing scrutiny of testing in North America.
There's no longer any question that PARCC's golden days are long behind it. It will be interesting just how small the test can get before Pearson decides that the much-unloved not-so-mega-test is no longer worth their corporate time, trouble, and investment.
This piece ran just two weeks ago at View from the Cheap Seats. I'm happy to report that in the interim, things have not looked up for PARCC.
The PARCC had only been used in Ohio for one year-- but that year was disastrous. State Senator Peggy Lehner (who may be a saint or who may be an opportunist who saw a political opening) had set up her own committee to look into testing issues, and what she found in a survey a few months ago was that basically every sentient human in Ohio hates the PARCC test. In her survey, Lehner found exactly one superintendent who "strongly agreed" that the implementation of the tests went well.
The Ohio legislature has been after PARCC for several months, including an earlier proposal that not only cut the test but cut the education department's budget for all testing (the new bill allows for new tests, but shorter and given only once at year's end). And way back in February, 25-year veteran teacher (and BAT) Dawn Neely-Randall spoke out against the test, helping kick off an avalanche of criticism from teachers.
Governor Kasich, a Common Core True Believer who has labeled Core opposition "hysteria," has tried to defend the PARCC, but clearly has given up that fight. His Presidential aspirations may or may not be a factor, but Kasich is the only other Republican besides Jeb Bush who would conceivably not run away from Common Core. For PARCC, this is more bad news.
When the testing consortium was launched, it included twenty-three states and the District of Columbia. Ohio's defection brings the number down to ten states, plus DC. Those states are Arkansas, Colorado, District of Columbia, Illinois, Louisiana, Maryland, Massachusetts, Mississippi, New Jersey, New Mexico, and Rhode Island (that's according to the PARCC website, which hasn't been changed to reflect the new loss).
You'll notice two things about the list-- one is that some of those states are not necessarily solidly in the PARCC camp, and the other is that they are not among America's most populous. PARCC was only testing five million students when Ohio was still in; now that number grows smaller still. It's no wonder that testing advocates are pushing so hard to keep every year, every student testing mandates in the ESEA rewrite-- the market and attendant revenue stream for test manufacturers like Pearson is plummeting. (Update: Let me clarify that-- the market for state-by-state manufacturing is growing, but the chance to blanket the entire country with a single test product is falling apart.)
In fact, the indispensable Mercedes Schneider reports this morning that marketing research firm Questor now lists Pearson as a "sell," citing in particular the growing scrutiny of testing in North America.
There's no longer any question that PARCC's golden days are long behind it. It will be interesting just how small the test can get before Pearson decides that the much-unloved not-so-mega-test is no longer worth their corporate time, trouble, and investment.
This piece ran just two weeks ago at View from the Cheap Seats. I'm happy to report that in the interim, things have not looked up for PARCC.
Tuesday, July 14, 2015
The Campbell Challenge: #tipsforBrown
Campbell Brown's website has launched, and it is pretty much what was expected.
There were some mis-steps; a site that was going to play the Civil Rights card probably should have double-checked to make sure that they employed something other than a Big Bunch O' White Guys, particularly if Brown was going to say things like, "I was taken with the idea that a journalist could be a voice for those who don’t have one" Pro tip: if you are afraid that certain people don't have a voice and you have a four million dollar platform, you might let those folks speak on it, rather than just going ahead and speaking for them.
There are issues that Brown doesn't deserve to be slammed for. She's pretty and she used to be on the TV. These characteristics do not qualify her to be an educational expert, but they don't prove she's a dope, either. However, there are other reasons to suspect that she is not a credible authority on the ed biz.
For instance, as reported by my esteemed colleague Edushyster, word on the street is that Brown will brook no investigatorial assaults on charterdom. There is supposedly (according to a source who prefers not to cross Brown and her powerful friends) a contractual job requirement that there will be no poking about of charter hanky-panky.
Her disingenuous claim that the site will be both journalism and advocacy is just silly. It will be advocacy. It has been live less than a week and it is clearly about advocacy. That's really okay; there are an awful lot of us out here not pretending to be anything but advocates in the edubloggosphere, and I'm pretty sure the interwebs can accommodate more. As a C-level fake education journalist, I welcome more fake journalism, and not just because it gives me more fake journalism to make fun of.
But Brown's PR department has declared that the journalistic proof will be in the internet cyber-pudding. And in that spirit, the indispensable Mercedes Schneider has reached out to make an offer. If The74 is interested in ferreting out educational malfeasance wherever it does the whole head rearing thing, Schneider has offered up a juicy lead in the form of a Louisiana charter school operator who has apparently confused the charter's credit card with his own.
It's a generous offer (well, actually, Schneider called it a challenge); launching a news site is not easy, what with the need for constant new content. They've already been reduced to running a fairly hilarious Kevin Huffman piece comparing opt-outers to anti-vaxxers; I'm worried will soon be treated to pieces about the brave teachers who wrote the Common Core.
So let's help out.
I have a tip, too. Just last week I cam across this piece about a charter operator in Florida using his charter to line his own pockets in a perfectly legal but ethically dubious manner. Right now it's just a small local story, waiting for a national news outlet to bust it open. Have at it, Campbell!
In fact, I'm calling on the whole online community to help Brown out. She wants us to understand that charter schools will not be safe from her journalistic probings. Very well. Let's offer her tips.
I'd like to propose the twitter hashtag #tipsforBrown. Find a link to a promising charter scandal and pass it along to her leads that she can use to break open a story of charter fraud and malfeasance that will just prove all the naysayers wrong. It's the least we can do to help out, and I really don't want to offer more than the least.
There were some mis-steps; a site that was going to play the Civil Rights card probably should have double-checked to make sure that they employed something other than a Big Bunch O' White Guys, particularly if Brown was going to say things like, "I was taken with the idea that a journalist could be a voice for those who don’t have one" Pro tip: if you are afraid that certain people don't have a voice and you have a four million dollar platform, you might let those folks speak on it, rather than just going ahead and speaking for them.
There are issues that Brown doesn't deserve to be slammed for. She's pretty and she used to be on the TV. These characteristics do not qualify her to be an educational expert, but they don't prove she's a dope, either. However, there are other reasons to suspect that she is not a credible authority on the ed biz.
For instance, as reported by my esteemed colleague Edushyster, word on the street is that Brown will brook no investigatorial assaults on charterdom. There is supposedly (according to a source who prefers not to cross Brown and her powerful friends) a contractual job requirement that there will be no poking about of charter hanky-panky.
Her disingenuous claim that the site will be both journalism and advocacy is just silly. It will be advocacy. It has been live less than a week and it is clearly about advocacy. That's really okay; there are an awful lot of us out here not pretending to be anything but advocates in the edubloggosphere, and I'm pretty sure the interwebs can accommodate more. As a C-level fake education journalist, I welcome more fake journalism, and not just because it gives me more fake journalism to make fun of.
But Brown's PR department has declared that the journalistic proof will be in the internet cyber-pudding. And in that spirit, the indispensable Mercedes Schneider has reached out to make an offer. If The74 is interested in ferreting out educational malfeasance wherever it does the whole head rearing thing, Schneider has offered up a juicy lead in the form of a Louisiana charter school operator who has apparently confused the charter's credit card with his own.
It's a generous offer (well, actually, Schneider called it a challenge); launching a news site is not easy, what with the need for constant new content. They've already been reduced to running a fairly hilarious Kevin Huffman piece comparing opt-outers to anti-vaxxers; I'm worried will soon be treated to pieces about the brave teachers who wrote the Common Core.
So let's help out.
I have a tip, too. Just last week I cam across this piece about a charter operator in Florida using his charter to line his own pockets in a perfectly legal but ethically dubious manner. Right now it's just a small local story, waiting for a national news outlet to bust it open. Have at it, Campbell!
In fact, I'm calling on the whole online community to help Brown out. She wants us to understand that charter schools will not be safe from her journalistic probings. Very well. Let's offer her tips.
I'd like to propose the twitter hashtag #tipsforBrown. Find a link to a promising charter scandal and pass it along to her leads that she can use to break open a story of charter fraud and malfeasance that will just prove all the naysayers wrong. It's the least we can do to help out, and I really don't want to offer more than the least.
Reformsters Discover Air, Water, but not Food
Chad Aldeman at Bellwether Ed Partners has a new report out. Mind the Gap: Re-Imagining the Way States Judge High School Quality gets a few critical questions right, but the answers still need work.
First, the big news
Keep in mind that Bellwether is a reliable member of the reformster thinky tank pantheon, often sipping free market ambrosia while sharing a cloud with the Fordham Institute. I want you to keep that in mind when you read the next quote, which would be unremarkable anywhere else:
State and federal policies on high schools typically reward schools that perform well on measures like test scores and graduation rates while forcing changes on those that don’t. When these two measures alone serve as proxies for a quality high school they paint an incomplete picture of success, one that can reflect more on the school’s demographics than its success in educating students and preparing them for the future. And instead of focusing on higher-order skills,challenging coursework, and annual progress toward college and career readiness, schools are encouraged to focus on lower-level skills and push all students through to a diploma, regardless of what they learn.
Yup. Turns out that the Big Standardized Tests doesn't give a very complete picture of student achievement. Not only that, but because the BS Tests come with such high stakes, schools tend to focus on preparing students for the test and not on giving students a great complete education.And also, this:
Accountability systems reflect these choices. Ideally they would reflect what society values, not
what’s easiest to measure.
Look, I don't want to minimize the fact that these guys finally arrived here. But at the same time, if I'm honest, my most visceral reaction is, "No shit, Sherlock" or "Duhhh" or "In other news, the sun rose in the East this morning."
One Remaining Problem
There is still a big hitch in Aldeman's gitalong, and it shows up in the assumption that a high school's job is to get a student ready for college or a career. Unstated is the idea that education might be for life or even something as old-fashioned as citizenship. That will come back to bite us in the butt, later.
Blah Blah Blah
The first segments of the paper involve pointing out that people should breathe air and drink water. No, okay, the first sections are used to re-make the arguments that some of us have been making for years now-- like what gets measured gets managed, so if you're measuring the wrong things (like narrowly targeted items on BS Tests) then those become the focus of your school and the school stops doing the work that society set it up to do in the first place. Also, if you jam your finger into your eye, your eyeball will start to hurt.
Yes, it would be nice to include a paragraph saying, "Many critics of education reform have been pointing this out for years now and I've come around to thinking they may have a point." But hey-- that's just selfishness talking. I'm glad to find Belwether on this page, finally.
Some Data Points
Because what would a "paper" be without them. Aldeman takes a moment to note that our college drop-out rate is way up there. We're going to interpret this to mean (sigh) that these dropouts were lied to by their schools and told they were ready for college when they weren't. I don't want to side track this too much, but I will offer some alternative theories for why Chris left college.
1) Chris's high school said, "You are not ready for college, at least not THAT college," but Chris went anyway.
2) Wassamatta University accepted Chris because WU needs money, not because they thought Chris was a great prospect.
3) Chris dropped out because WU's costs turned out to be unmanageable.
The Alternative
The real goal is for Aldenman to lay out an alternative program for measuring high school successfulness. Aldeman has used the SCORE model from Tennessee as his template. I will spoil the suspense by observing that his solution needs work.
This would be where Aldeman drops the truth-grenade that test scores have a lot to do with poverty rates. Again, the news not so much in someone saying what we've already known for years, but in who is saying it.
While additional alignment and enrigorfication may help, Aldeman believes that some other factors have "predictive power" in telling us who is really ready for college. And this is where he starts to head into the weeds, mostly because he's still stuck in the notion that high school is basically vocational training, or pre-vocational training for people who will get their vocational training in college. And that still-narrow too-limited view of the purpose of education will lead Aldeman to some cramped solutions to the accountability puzzle.
For his accountability model, Aldeman will keep test results plus advanced course passing rate as 40% of the school's score. The course passage rate strikes me as extremely game-able, but mostly this part is the same old same old.
Next, Aldeman tries some sleight-of-hand. Let's look at actual progression and graduation rates as compared to a reasonable prediction of how the students would have done-- hey, wait a minute!! That's VAM! Aldeman wants to use the magic of VAM sauce to measure the whole school. For 20%. Well, that's just a crock. And the fact that he studiously avoids the usual language of VAM suggests that Aldeman knows he's trying to sneak that wolf into the shepherd's party dressed in a sheep suit.
Aldeman throws in 5% for school environment measures, which is a fair idea, though I'm a little surprised to find a modern reformster measuring inputs instead of outputs. I thought inputs were so fifteen years ago.
His final piece is intriguing. Aldeman proposes measuring post-high school outcomes-- college attendance rates (actual compared, sigh, to predicted, which means it will eventually top out and the school's rating will tank), college credit accumulation, employment, employment earnings!!
On the one hand, I think an after-graduation follow-up has merit. My colleagues and I regularly do informal follow-up with our grads-- how did we do preparing you, what helped, what did you need, that sort of thing. On the other hand, Aldeman is suggesting that we stop relying on data that is highly influenced by the students' socio-economic background and start including some other factors that are highly influenced by the students's socio-economic background. We know that social mobility is limited, and that poor students from poor communities mostly don't end up in the top 5% of income sets. In other words, I'm not sure that Aldeman's system doesn't continue the business of punishing poor schools in poor neighborhoods for having poor students.
The Best Sentence
So Aldeman's paper has a great deal of work to do yet. Good job of identifying the problem; not such a great job of designing a solution. But I will give Aldeman a bonus point or two for this sentence:
Public school accountability systems should measure what society values out of its education system.
In this respect, we are in perfect agreement. And if we can agree that society does not most value students getting scores on Big Standardized Tests, we have a basis to move forward. We might even be able to talk about higher aspirations than simply educating to get a job.
First, the big news
Keep in mind that Bellwether is a reliable member of the reformster thinky tank pantheon, often sipping free market ambrosia while sharing a cloud with the Fordham Institute. I want you to keep that in mind when you read the next quote, which would be unremarkable anywhere else:
State and federal policies on high schools typically reward schools that perform well on measures like test scores and graduation rates while forcing changes on those that don’t. When these two measures alone serve as proxies for a quality high school they paint an incomplete picture of success, one that can reflect more on the school’s demographics than its success in educating students and preparing them for the future. And instead of focusing on higher-order skills,challenging coursework, and annual progress toward college and career readiness, schools are encouraged to focus on lower-level skills and push all students through to a diploma, regardless of what they learn.
Yup. Turns out that the Big Standardized Tests doesn't give a very complete picture of student achievement. Not only that, but because the BS Tests come with such high stakes, schools tend to focus on preparing students for the test and not on giving students a great complete education.And also, this:
Accountability systems reflect these choices. Ideally they would reflect what society values, not
what’s easiest to measure.
Look, I don't want to minimize the fact that these guys finally arrived here. But at the same time, if I'm honest, my most visceral reaction is, "No shit, Sherlock" or "Duhhh" or "In other news, the sun rose in the East this morning."
One Remaining Problem
There is still a big hitch in Aldeman's gitalong, and it shows up in the assumption that a high school's job is to get a student ready for college or a career. Unstated is the idea that education might be for life or even something as old-fashioned as citizenship. That will come back to bite us in the butt, later.
Blah Blah Blah
The first segments of the paper involve pointing out that people should breathe air and drink water. No, okay, the first sections are used to re-make the arguments that some of us have been making for years now-- like what gets measured gets managed, so if you're measuring the wrong things (like narrowly targeted items on BS Tests) then those become the focus of your school and the school stops doing the work that society set it up to do in the first place. Also, if you jam your finger into your eye, your eyeball will start to hurt.
Yes, it would be nice to include a paragraph saying, "Many critics of education reform have been pointing this out for years now and I've come around to thinking they may have a point." But hey-- that's just selfishness talking. I'm glad to find Belwether on this page, finally.
Some Data Points
Because what would a "paper" be without them. Aldeman takes a moment to note that our college drop-out rate is way up there. We're going to interpret this to mean (sigh) that these dropouts were lied to by their schools and told they were ready for college when they weren't. I don't want to side track this too much, but I will offer some alternative theories for why Chris left college.
1) Chris's high school said, "You are not ready for college, at least not THAT college," but Chris went anyway.
2) Wassamatta University accepted Chris because WU needs money, not because they thought Chris was a great prospect.
3) Chris dropped out because WU's costs turned out to be unmanageable.
The Alternative
The real goal is for Aldenman to lay out an alternative program for measuring high school successfulness. Aldeman has used the SCORE model from Tennessee as his template. I will spoil the suspense by observing that his solution needs work.
This would be where Aldeman drops the truth-grenade that test scores have a lot to do with poverty rates. Again, the news not so much in someone saying what we've already known for years, but in who is saying it.
While additional alignment and enrigorfication may help, Aldeman believes that some other factors have "predictive power" in telling us who is really ready for college. And this is where he starts to head into the weeds, mostly because he's still stuck in the notion that high school is basically vocational training, or pre-vocational training for people who will get their vocational training in college. And that still-narrow too-limited view of the purpose of education will lead Aldeman to some cramped solutions to the accountability puzzle.
For his accountability model, Aldeman will keep test results plus advanced course passing rate as 40% of the school's score. The course passage rate strikes me as extremely game-able, but mostly this part is the same old same old.
Next, Aldeman tries some sleight-of-hand. Let's look at actual progression and graduation rates as compared to a reasonable prediction of how the students would have done-- hey, wait a minute!! That's VAM! Aldeman wants to use the magic of VAM sauce to measure the whole school. For 20%. Well, that's just a crock. And the fact that he studiously avoids the usual language of VAM suggests that Aldeman knows he's trying to sneak that wolf into the shepherd's party dressed in a sheep suit.
Aldeman throws in 5% for school environment measures, which is a fair idea, though I'm a little surprised to find a modern reformster measuring inputs instead of outputs. I thought inputs were so fifteen years ago.
His final piece is intriguing. Aldeman proposes measuring post-high school outcomes-- college attendance rates (actual compared, sigh, to predicted, which means it will eventually top out and the school's rating will tank), college credit accumulation, employment, employment earnings!!
On the one hand, I think an after-graduation follow-up has merit. My colleagues and I regularly do informal follow-up with our grads-- how did we do preparing you, what helped, what did you need, that sort of thing. On the other hand, Aldeman is suggesting that we stop relying on data that is highly influenced by the students' socio-economic background and start including some other factors that are highly influenced by the students's socio-economic background. We know that social mobility is limited, and that poor students from poor communities mostly don't end up in the top 5% of income sets. In other words, I'm not sure that Aldeman's system doesn't continue the business of punishing poor schools in poor neighborhoods for having poor students.
The Best Sentence
So Aldeman's paper has a great deal of work to do yet. Good job of identifying the problem; not such a great job of designing a solution. But I will give Aldeman a bonus point or two for this sentence:
Public school accountability systems should measure what society values out of its education system.
In this respect, we are in perfect agreement. And if we can agree that society does not most value students getting scores on Big Standardized Tests, we have a basis to move forward. We might even be able to talk about higher aspirations than simply educating to get a job.
Monday, July 13, 2015
Who Is Served by the Unions?
We're going to have this argument again because folks are pissed about the early endorsement of Hillary Clinton by the AFT. But there's another issue quietly simmering on the union back burner that is far more significant in dealing with the question of which interests, exactly, are served by the big teachers unions.
Who am I?
This whole topic is so fraught and land-miney that I feel the need to place myself on the union spectrum before leaping in. If you don't particularly care, you can skip ahead to the next subheading.
I don't have a lot of patience for the dopes at groups like Free To Teach who are sure that the union is holding them back from being rich and wildly successful as teachers. If you think you would get a better deal for yourself without a union, you really don't understand the situation. I have been a local union president during contract negotiations and a strike, and I know how invaluable the assistance and expertise of the state union can be. Regardless of how confused they get at times, the union still provides some powerful protection for teachers who need it and deserve it. I have no patience for bashing unions as a way to bash teachers.
At the same time, I'm never going to go along with the union just because they think I should. Calls for unity that are actually calls to shut up and go along do not move me (except occasionally in the opposite direction). I am acutely aware that sometimes the interests of the union, the interests of local teachers, and the interests of public education do not always perfectly align.
It's that misalignment that brings up the topic of discussion at hand.
The Noisy Political Issue
Political endorsements are the most visible of national leadership activities, and as witnessed by the continuing blowback over Randi Weingarten's endorsement of Hillary Clinton (an early Christmas gift that helps push Clinton up and away from Bernie Sanders without requiring her to actually acknowledge him).
I have complained to my state leaders about their endorsement of politicians who sucked for education. The standard response is some combination of A) we want a seat at the table and B) you should see how much the other guy sucks.
These are not completely invalid arguments. A teachers union can't do anything for its members if nobody with actual power doesn't listen to it, and that means political horse-trading for a seat at the table. I know there are people who believe that we should simply stand out in the yard, far away from the table, throwing a tantrum and refusing to come inside for anything less that 100% purity and compliance by politicians. Insisting on political purity may be satisfying, but it doesn't get a damned thing done in the real world.
But it's also true that in the real world, politicians say all the right things to make supporters happy until those supporters realize they are sitting at the children's table and nobody is paying them a damn bit of attention (see, for example, George W. Bush and the religious right, who supported him and didn't get a bit of help stopping The Gays).
What did or will AFT get out of endorsing Clinton? I'm going to predict the answer is "Nothing At All." Particularly now that she landed the endorsement without even having to make a show of backing public education. This is not realistic politicking. This is giving away milk for free in hopes that someone will then decide to buy your cow.
Teachers do have an interest in having their unions cultivate political power. But the union leaderships interest in political power does not always align with the interests of teachers.
The Quiet Charter Issue
That mis-alignment could get even worse.
Not as sexy as discussions of testing and Common Core are the ongoing discussions of if or how to bring charter school teachers into the union fold. There are several arguments in favor of this.
1) Making charters deal with unionized teachers will make chartering less attractive and make charter operators behave better if they do still enter the business.
2) Charter teachers are teachers, mostly, sort of, so why not include them in the unions?
3) The unions are desperate for members and would enroll my dog if they could.
I get the value behind the first two possibilities. And I understand how it would be good for the union to have more members. More dues, more clout, more reach, and fewer headlines about shrinking unions.
But there's an inevitable side effect. If charter school teachers are members of the union, the union has an obligation to represent them, and that means a conflict between old members and new. Because charter schools, as currently structured in every state in the union, cannot thrive without sucking the life blood from public schools.
How will things work in this alternate universe? A bad charter is about to close, and that will mean the loss of many union teacher jobs-- will the union fight for the survival of that bad charter? Yet the closing of the charter will stop some of the money-sucking damage to the public school-- will the union support that?
As the charter system in this country is currently set up, charter schools and public schools are competing interests. How can a union serve both? This brings us back to the original question:
Who is served by the unions?
Does the union serve the interests of teachers? Any teachers? All teachers? And does that mean that the union has a vested interest in the survival of anyone who employs those teachers?
Does the union serve the interests of public education? Lots of folks who see the union as obstructionist think so, but are they right? And if the union does have a vested interest in public education, how can it ally itself with those who would tear public education apart?
Does the union serve the interests of the union? And if so, does that mean that all schools and all teachers need to watch their backs in dealing with a union that may screw them any time such screwage serves its own interests?
As the traditional public school system is attacked, broken, busted down for parts, and sold off, will the unions stand with teachers to fight for it, or will they set their sails for whatever way the wind is blowing? And if that's the plan, how can they possibly hope to hold onto and recruit members to survive?
These are not easy questions to answer, but the answers are going to determine the future of the unions and the fate of teachers who depend on them. On the national level, the news has not been good for a while, with support for Common Core and AFT's endorsement of the Very Reformy Clinton signs that sails are set and teachers need to either grab on tight or be thrown overboard. But for those of us who care about the unions, we need to stop reacting to the issue du jour and start paying attention to the bigger picture, the answers our leaders are coming up with for the question-- just who is served by the unions?
Who am I?
This whole topic is so fraught and land-miney that I feel the need to place myself on the union spectrum before leaping in. If you don't particularly care, you can skip ahead to the next subheading.
I don't have a lot of patience for the dopes at groups like Free To Teach who are sure that the union is holding them back from being rich and wildly successful as teachers. If you think you would get a better deal for yourself without a union, you really don't understand the situation. I have been a local union president during contract negotiations and a strike, and I know how invaluable the assistance and expertise of the state union can be. Regardless of how confused they get at times, the union still provides some powerful protection for teachers who need it and deserve it. I have no patience for bashing unions as a way to bash teachers.
At the same time, I'm never going to go along with the union just because they think I should. Calls for unity that are actually calls to shut up and go along do not move me (except occasionally in the opposite direction). I am acutely aware that sometimes the interests of the union, the interests of local teachers, and the interests of public education do not always perfectly align.
It's that misalignment that brings up the topic of discussion at hand.
The Noisy Political Issue
Political endorsements are the most visible of national leadership activities, and as witnessed by the continuing blowback over Randi Weingarten's endorsement of Hillary Clinton (an early Christmas gift that helps push Clinton up and away from Bernie Sanders without requiring her to actually acknowledge him).
I have complained to my state leaders about their endorsement of politicians who sucked for education. The standard response is some combination of A) we want a seat at the table and B) you should see how much the other guy sucks.
These are not completely invalid arguments. A teachers union can't do anything for its members if nobody with actual power doesn't listen to it, and that means political horse-trading for a seat at the table. I know there are people who believe that we should simply stand out in the yard, far away from the table, throwing a tantrum and refusing to come inside for anything less that 100% purity and compliance by politicians. Insisting on political purity may be satisfying, but it doesn't get a damned thing done in the real world.
But it's also true that in the real world, politicians say all the right things to make supporters happy until those supporters realize they are sitting at the children's table and nobody is paying them a damn bit of attention (see, for example, George W. Bush and the religious right, who supported him and didn't get a bit of help stopping The Gays).
What did or will AFT get out of endorsing Clinton? I'm going to predict the answer is "Nothing At All." Particularly now that she landed the endorsement without even having to make a show of backing public education. This is not realistic politicking. This is giving away milk for free in hopes that someone will then decide to buy your cow.
Teachers do have an interest in having their unions cultivate political power. But the union leaderships interest in political power does not always align with the interests of teachers.
The Quiet Charter Issue
That mis-alignment could get even worse.
Not as sexy as discussions of testing and Common Core are the ongoing discussions of if or how to bring charter school teachers into the union fold. There are several arguments in favor of this.
1) Making charters deal with unionized teachers will make chartering less attractive and make charter operators behave better if they do still enter the business.
2) Charter teachers are teachers, mostly, sort of, so why not include them in the unions?
3) The unions are desperate for members and would enroll my dog if they could.
I get the value behind the first two possibilities. And I understand how it would be good for the union to have more members. More dues, more clout, more reach, and fewer headlines about shrinking unions.
But there's an inevitable side effect. If charter school teachers are members of the union, the union has an obligation to represent them, and that means a conflict between old members and new. Because charter schools, as currently structured in every state in the union, cannot thrive without sucking the life blood from public schools.
How will things work in this alternate universe? A bad charter is about to close, and that will mean the loss of many union teacher jobs-- will the union fight for the survival of that bad charter? Yet the closing of the charter will stop some of the money-sucking damage to the public school-- will the union support that?
As the charter system in this country is currently set up, charter schools and public schools are competing interests. How can a union serve both? This brings us back to the original question:
Who is served by the unions?
Does the union serve the interests of teachers? Any teachers? All teachers? And does that mean that the union has a vested interest in the survival of anyone who employs those teachers?
Does the union serve the interests of public education? Lots of folks who see the union as obstructionist think so, but are they right? And if the union does have a vested interest in public education, how can it ally itself with those who would tear public education apart?
Does the union serve the interests of the union? And if so, does that mean that all schools and all teachers need to watch their backs in dealing with a union that may screw them any time such screwage serves its own interests?
As the traditional public school system is attacked, broken, busted down for parts, and sold off, will the unions stand with teachers to fight for it, or will they set their sails for whatever way the wind is blowing? And if that's the plan, how can they possibly hope to hold onto and recruit members to survive?
These are not easy questions to answer, but the answers are going to determine the future of the unions and the fate of teachers who depend on them. On the national level, the news has not been good for a while, with support for Common Core and AFT's endorsement of the Very Reformy Clinton signs that sails are set and teachers need to either grab on tight or be thrown overboard. But for those of us who care about the unions, we need to stop reacting to the issue du jour and start paying attention to the bigger picture, the answers our leaders are coming up with for the question-- just who is served by the unions?
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