School closings seemed to be the topic of the week. With that in mind, if you're not following the news from the Dyett Hunger Strike, you should be. Here are some other reads for your Sunday edification.
Out of Control
I highlighted this report from the Alliance to Reclaim Our Schools earlier in the week, but it deserves a long, thoughtful look. The report examines the systematic disenfranchisement of African American and Latino communities through the mechanism of school takeovers.
What's Really at Stake When a School Closes?
This New Yorker piece from Jelani Cobb examines the fate of Jamaica High School in Queens, and the long, difficult history that led from a school producing three Pullitzer prize winners to being pushed out of its own auditorium for graduation. Here is what the starving, gutting and closing of a school looks like up close.
How Far We Have Fallen
A simple but artful graphic presentation highlights just how badly public education has been attacked and damaged in North Carolina.
School Closures- A National Look at a Failed Strategy
It was a mighty fine day when the Network for Public Education hired Carol Burris. Here on NPE's site she has put together a look at how school closing has failed as a strategy all across the nation (well, at least as a strategy for improving education).
We're going the wrong way in trying to get teacher evaluations right
Columnist Lloyd E. Schaeffer does a pretty good job of explaining one reason that the teacher evaluation system in Pennsylvania (and many other states) is wrong, and dumb.
Sunday, September 6, 2015
Saturday, September 5, 2015
WA: I Have the Charter Solution
The Washington State supreme court has spoken, and charter supporters are freaking out.
There's a #saveWAcharterschools tag on twitter (a little lonely, but it's there), along with several feisty charteristas who are finding ways to express their outrage.
And on Huffington Post, the heads both the national and state charter associations (each, of course, is not called "president" or "chairman," but "CEO") wrote an expression of something between panic, outrage and feistiness about the closing of charter schools. Thomas Franta and Nina Rees are concerned for the 1,200 Washington students who are suddenly school-less for next week, and I have to agree that the court's decision to sit on this ruling until the last days of summer vacation was just plain mean. At the same time, I hope that Rees, as CEO of the National Alliance for Public Charter Schools, displays some of this same outrage the next time some charter school decides to cut its losses and close up shop in the middle of a school year.
Charteristas are calling for some way to Save Charter Schools. Washington state legislator Drew Stokesbary on twitter proposes three possible solutions:
So, find ways to rewrite the law so that charter money can stay in its own little lock box in its own big silo. This seems a bit overthought and overwrought. The court's decision, as I understand it, is based on the idea that charter schools cannot receive "common school" public funds because they are not overseen by an elected school board. And if that's the case, charters can fix this very easily. Are you paying attention, charter operators? I have your solution right here.
Just submit to being overseen by an elected school board.
Act like the public schools you claim to be. Make your finances and operation completely transparent to the public.
And allow yourselves to be overseen by an elected school board instead of a collection of individuals who are not answerable to the voters or the taxpayers.
I mean-- what's more important to you? Providing a strong educational alternative for those 1,200 students, or holding on your ability to do whatever you want without having to answer to the public? Is it so important to you that you not be accountable to the public that you would rather engage in timeconsuming rewrites of state law, or even just close your doors, rather than let yourself submit to transparent and open oversight by a group of citizens elected by the very taxpayers whose money you use to run your school?
Many eyes are on Washington right now. One of the things we'll be watching to see is what charter operators do next, because their next move will be one more sign of what they really care about.
There's a #saveWAcharterschools tag on twitter (a little lonely, but it's there), along with several feisty charteristas who are finding ways to express their outrage.
And on Huffington Post, the heads both the national and state charter associations (each, of course, is not called "president" or "chairman," but "CEO") wrote an expression of something between panic, outrage and feistiness about the closing of charter schools. Thomas Franta and Nina Rees are concerned for the 1,200 Washington students who are suddenly school-less for next week, and I have to agree that the court's decision to sit on this ruling until the last days of summer vacation was just plain mean. At the same time, I hope that Rees, as CEO of the National Alliance for Public Charter Schools, displays some of this same outrage the next time some charter school decides to cut its losses and close up shop in the middle of a school year.
Charteristas are calling for some way to Save Charter Schools. Washington state legislator Drew Stokesbary on twitter proposes three possible solutions:
So, find ways to rewrite the law so that charter money can stay in its own little lock box in its own big silo. This seems a bit overthought and overwrought. The court's decision, as I understand it, is based on the idea that charter schools cannot receive "common school" public funds because they are not overseen by an elected school board. And if that's the case, charters can fix this very easily. Are you paying attention, charter operators? I have your solution right here.
Just submit to being overseen by an elected school board.
Act like the public schools you claim to be. Make your finances and operation completely transparent to the public.
And allow yourselves to be overseen by an elected school board instead of a collection of individuals who are not answerable to the voters or the taxpayers.
I mean-- what's more important to you? Providing a strong educational alternative for those 1,200 students, or holding on your ability to do whatever you want without having to answer to the public? Is it so important to you that you not be accountable to the public that you would rather engage in timeconsuming rewrites of state law, or even just close your doors, rather than let yourself submit to transparent and open oversight by a group of citizens elected by the very taxpayers whose money you use to run your school?
Many eyes are on Washington right now. One of the things we'll be watching to see is what charter operators do next, because their next move will be one more sign of what they really care about.
FL: Testing Swamp
Since the 1920's boom in swampland sales, Florida has a been a land of Things Too Good To Be True. There is no state in the union that has pulled off the Big Standardized Testing piece of the Common Core-related Reformsterama, but Florida has brought a special "panache" and "je ne sais quoi le hell I'm doing" to the deployment of Le Gran Test.
Florida was on the testing bus early, rolling out the FCAT in 1998. They were members of the PARCC club, until it became clear that all things Common Core were going to be liabilities for politicians. So Florida jumped ship and eventually awarded its testing contract to American Institutes for Research, a test manufacturer that has been a perennial runner up in the testing contract beauty pageants.
According to various published reports, this may have led to the odd sidetrack of Florida buying into an alternative test that Utah had commissioned and then thrown out. But you won't find many Florida officials talking about the reported $5 million they paid for that test, perhaps because they've been too busy dealing with all the testing fallout.
Le rolloutte was not tres bien. Reports came rolling in that the technological infrastructure could not manage the job, leading an editorial writer at the Tampa Bay Times to give the state an F for testing, noting Buzzfeed had managed to let 41 million people vote on what color that damn dress was, with peak traffic of 670K viewers. Why, with months to prepare, could the testing computers not handle a smaller load, well known ahead of time?
Well, apparently the Tampa Bay writer choice a particularly apt analogy, because we have now arrived at a moment that is just as unclear as the color of the fabled dress.
See, the Florida legislature decided that thebest way to quiet the din of criticism next logical step was a $600K study of the BS Test. They hired Alpine Testing Solutions, a company that specializes in "psychometric and test development services." The company was well at it this summer, working to complete their study by the end of August. Because you definitely want to make sure your test is valid before you give it a second time.
But now the report has emerged and-- well, is it blue or gold or brown or what? That seems to be a bit of a contratemps regarding this point.
The State of Florida thinks that the reports says that the test is a thing of beauty and a joy forever. They point out things like how this year more tests were given than last year, and the test is totally safe from cyberattack. The big headline, though, is that despite a long, long list of issues, the test is still "valid in judging students' skills"
This is not exactly a home run. It's more, "We've talked to Mrs. Lincoln and we're pretty sure that she thought the play was swell."
You can read the report here. Well, you can try to read the report; it's written in fluent test manufacturer jargon, and would probably be easier to follow even in my pidgin French. You can go for the executive summary, but it's only shorter-- not clearer.
But digging out some specifics does not help the test's cause.
Some are simply practical, like the idea that the Utah items should be more Floridified. Because apparently around a third of the test questions are not even connected to Florida's standards. Without digging more deeply than I'm going to on a Saturday afternoon, it's hard to know just how bad that really is-- Utah and Florida are both states that faux-dropped the Common Core so that they could adopt some faux-local standards that are not too terribly different from CCSS. But there are other issues of deeper concern raised by the report.
With respect to student level decisions, the evidence for the paper and pencil delivered exams support the use of the FSA at the student level. For the CBT FSA, the FSA scores for some students will be suspect. Although the percentage of students in the aggregate may appear small, it still represents a significant number of students for whom critical decisions need to be made. Therefore, test scores should not be used as a sole determinant in decisions such as the prevention of advancement to the next grade, graduation eligibility, or placement into a remedial course.
So, the individual scores for students who took the computer version of the test shouldn't be used to make any decisions about the student, because it's entirely possible that they're wrong.
The interim passing scores were not established through a formal standard setting process and therefore do not represent a criterion-based measure of student knowledge and skills. The limitations regarding the meaning of these interim passing scores should be communicated to stakeholders.
We really need to talk about this more often. The BS Tests are not measuring students against any standard; they're just being used to stack rank students. Your child could only miss one question on the test, but if most of the other students miss zero questions, your child is still a failure. Well, assuming she actually missed the question.
The spring 2015 FSA administration was problematic. Problems were encountered on just about every aspect of the administration, from the initial training and preparation to the delivery of the tests themselves.
Test administration was a giant cluster-farfegnugen. Everything that could go wrong did.
If we take a step back and look at the larger picture, things don't look any better for this report.
First of all, while the state did hire "independent third party" to examine its test, they were only independent in the sense that they aren't directly involved in sales and marketing for this particular computer-based BS Test. But since they are in the industry, they are not going to ask some of the other necessary questions, like "Is it ever a good idea to try to give eight-year-olds a test on a computer." The report is filled with language about how aspects of FSA fell "within industry standards." There was never going to be any question about whether or not industry standards are a big pile of baloney.
Nor could these independent third party fail to notice that the people paying them $600,000 were hoping for a particular answer. Nobody in the state capital wanted to hear about having wasted a gazzillion dollars on a big pile of useless crap. There was always going to be a limit to just how much bad news Alpine could slip into the report.
Despite the unveiling of this $600K PR package, the hub-bub doesn't seem to be subsiding. A few counties are still making noise about getting away from the test, nor has there been a great upswell of parents declaring, "Tres jolie! All of my concerns have been addressed, and I know welcome the FSA as a beloved and trusted friend." In fact, if we go back and look at the concerns that were being voiced last spring, we can't help but notice that they are largely unaddressed by the Alpine report. And the Tampa Bay Times still gives the test an F. It's safe to assume that a great many Floridians would still like to bid the test, "Bon voyage!" Even if education commissioner Pam Stewart declares the report "welcome news," it seems to be fairly unconvincing. Too bad, taxpayers who forked over $600 K for nothing. C'est la vie.
Florida was on the testing bus early, rolling out the FCAT in 1998. They were members of the PARCC club, until it became clear that all things Common Core were going to be liabilities for politicians. So Florida jumped ship and eventually awarded its testing contract to American Institutes for Research, a test manufacturer that has been a perennial runner up in the testing contract beauty pageants.
According to various published reports, this may have led to the odd sidetrack of Florida buying into an alternative test that Utah had commissioned and then thrown out. But you won't find many Florida officials talking about the reported $5 million they paid for that test, perhaps because they've been too busy dealing with all the testing fallout.
Le rolloutte was not tres bien. Reports came rolling in that the technological infrastructure could not manage the job, leading an editorial writer at the Tampa Bay Times to give the state an F for testing, noting Buzzfeed had managed to let 41 million people vote on what color that damn dress was, with peak traffic of 670K viewers. Why, with months to prepare, could the testing computers not handle a smaller load, well known ahead of time?
Well, apparently the Tampa Bay writer choice a particularly apt analogy, because we have now arrived at a moment that is just as unclear as the color of the fabled dress.
See, the Florida legislature decided that the
But now the report has emerged and-- well, is it blue or gold or brown or what? That seems to be a bit of a contratemps regarding this point.
The State of Florida thinks that the reports says that the test is a thing of beauty and a joy forever. They point out things like how this year more tests were given than last year, and the test is totally safe from cyberattack. The big headline, though, is that despite a long, long list of issues, the test is still "valid in judging students' skills"
This is not exactly a home run. It's more, "We've talked to Mrs. Lincoln and we're pretty sure that she thought the play was swell."
You can read the report here. Well, you can try to read the report; it's written in fluent test manufacturer jargon, and would probably be easier to follow even in my pidgin French. You can go for the executive summary, but it's only shorter-- not clearer.
But digging out some specifics does not help the test's cause.
Some are simply practical, like the idea that the Utah items should be more Floridified. Because apparently around a third of the test questions are not even connected to Florida's standards. Without digging more deeply than I'm going to on a Saturday afternoon, it's hard to know just how bad that really is-- Utah and Florida are both states that faux-dropped the Common Core so that they could adopt some faux-local standards that are not too terribly different from CCSS. But there are other issues of deeper concern raised by the report.
With respect to student level decisions, the evidence for the paper and pencil delivered exams support the use of the FSA at the student level. For the CBT FSA, the FSA scores for some students will be suspect. Although the percentage of students in the aggregate may appear small, it still represents a significant number of students for whom critical decisions need to be made. Therefore, test scores should not be used as a sole determinant in decisions such as the prevention of advancement to the next grade, graduation eligibility, or placement into a remedial course.
So, the individual scores for students who took the computer version of the test shouldn't be used to make any decisions about the student, because it's entirely possible that they're wrong.
The interim passing scores were not established through a formal standard setting process and therefore do not represent a criterion-based measure of student knowledge and skills. The limitations regarding the meaning of these interim passing scores should be communicated to stakeholders.
We really need to talk about this more often. The BS Tests are not measuring students against any standard; they're just being used to stack rank students. Your child could only miss one question on the test, but if most of the other students miss zero questions, your child is still a failure. Well, assuming she actually missed the question.
The spring 2015 FSA administration was problematic. Problems were encountered on just about every aspect of the administration, from the initial training and preparation to the delivery of the tests themselves.
Test administration was a giant cluster-farfegnugen. Everything that could go wrong did.
If we take a step back and look at the larger picture, things don't look any better for this report.
First of all, while the state did hire "independent third party" to examine its test, they were only independent in the sense that they aren't directly involved in sales and marketing for this particular computer-based BS Test. But since they are in the industry, they are not going to ask some of the other necessary questions, like "Is it ever a good idea to try to give eight-year-olds a test on a computer." The report is filled with language about how aspects of FSA fell "within industry standards." There was never going to be any question about whether or not industry standards are a big pile of baloney.
Nor could these independent third party fail to notice that the people paying them $600,000 were hoping for a particular answer. Nobody in the state capital wanted to hear about having wasted a gazzillion dollars on a big pile of useless crap. There was always going to be a limit to just how much bad news Alpine could slip into the report.
Despite the unveiling of this $600K PR package, the hub-bub doesn't seem to be subsiding. A few counties are still making noise about getting away from the test, nor has there been a great upswell of parents declaring, "Tres jolie! All of my concerns have been addressed, and I know welcome the FSA as a beloved and trusted friend." In fact, if we go back and look at the concerns that were being voiced last spring, we can't help but notice that they are largely unaddressed by the Alpine report. And the Tampa Bay Times still gives the test an F. It's safe to assume that a great many Floridians would still like to bid the test, "Bon voyage!" Even if education commissioner Pam Stewart declares the report "welcome news," it seems to be fairly unconvincing. Too bad, taxpayers who forked over $600 K for nothing. C'est la vie.
OH: State Cheats for Charters
Ohio continues to work hard to stay on the cutting edge of charter school abuse and corruption. But as much as charteristas like to see business handled by the private sector, sometimes, when you really want to make a dark and dirty mess, you have to get some government assistance.
The Columbus Dispatch and some other Ohio papers have been behaving like an actual pack of journalists, pursuing a story that first broke a while ago. You may recall that in the middle of the summer, the Ohio Department of Educations school choice czar David Hansen was forced to resign because he had cooked the books for charter schools, using techniques that might be called "grade-fixing" or "lying" or "cheating" or "misbehavior that gets you sent to jail if you're a teacher in Atlanta." Hansen left out data that would have lowered the scores of select charter schools, making those charters look better than they actually were.
Hansen (who is the husband of John Kasich's former chief of staff and current campaign manager) has never really owned up to his misbehavior, offering observations such as "the law is really bonkers and hella unclear, so how as I to know? As near as I could see, cherry picking the data in a way that made some schools look better seemed perfectly okee dokee." (I'm paraphrasing).
Thanks to the ever-Ohio-vigilant blog Plunderbund, we know that Hansen has played this game before. In his previous work at the Buckeye Institute, Hansen cooked some charter school books for an influential donor as well.
Well, it turns out that there's more ugliness underneath all that.
In response to a public records information request, the department has released over 100,000 pages of stuff, and reporters have been poring through that mess ever since. What they have found suggests that neither state superintendent Richard Ross nor governor and Presidential aspirant John Kasich knew anything about the cheating, a whole big bunch of other people surely did. Turns out it takes more than just one guy to really corrupt a system.
The Dispatch has found emails and notes that fall into several categories. Some are at least a little encouraging, consisting of staffers asking, "Is there really a good reason or rule for what I'm seeing happening?"
But others make it clear that staff members knew they were up to no good. Here's one of the Dispatch's juicier quotes of a text message from Hansen's assistant to a staff member:
The ratios are on your laptop. Someone needs to calculate the overall authorizer scores and walk them up to Melissa today. They have to be walked up, not emailed, not printed. Just handwritten on paper. Thanks!
This indicates not only an awareness of misbehavior, but-- well, come on. Why would you leave a message trail of your instructions not to leave a message trail? What's worse than being nefarious and sneaky? Being bad at it.
Journalists' findings don't help Hansen's protests of innocence much. Here's another exchange from when Hansen was getting cranky about numbers for three preferred charters not coming out quite right.
“Then we will put them all down as getting 92 and being exemplary in agency commitment and go from there,” Hansen wrote in an email.
Geis responded, “Can we assume you are joking about putting them down as a 92? (Looks of shock from others in the room).”
Ohio officials cling to the belief that Hansen acted alone in altering grade outcomes for charters and it's possible that we're hair-splitting here. It certainly appears that staffers gave him the tools that he asked for, and that they had to know that something hinky was going on with the rigging of data. At a bare minimum, the department had a culture of not challenging the boss when clearly unethical activities were under way. "We were just following orders," provides no comfort here. And as this has unspooled, some Ohio politicians have suggested that Superintendent Ross either A) knew what was happening or B) is a terrible, incompetent, out-of-touch administrator of the department.
Bottom line: Ohio continues to set the standard for lousy, ineffective, and corrupt oversight of charter schools.
The Columbus Dispatch and some other Ohio papers have been behaving like an actual pack of journalists, pursuing a story that first broke a while ago. You may recall that in the middle of the summer, the Ohio Department of Educations school choice czar David Hansen was forced to resign because he had cooked the books for charter schools, using techniques that might be called "grade-fixing" or "lying" or "cheating" or "misbehavior that gets you sent to jail if you're a teacher in Atlanta." Hansen left out data that would have lowered the scores of select charter schools, making those charters look better than they actually were.
Hansen (who is the husband of John Kasich's former chief of staff and current campaign manager) has never really owned up to his misbehavior, offering observations such as "the law is really bonkers and hella unclear, so how as I to know? As near as I could see, cherry picking the data in a way that made some schools look better seemed perfectly okee dokee." (I'm paraphrasing).
Thanks to the ever-Ohio-vigilant blog Plunderbund, we know that Hansen has played this game before. In his previous work at the Buckeye Institute, Hansen cooked some charter school books for an influential donor as well.
Well, it turns out that there's more ugliness underneath all that.
In response to a public records information request, the department has released over 100,000 pages of stuff, and reporters have been poring through that mess ever since. What they have found suggests that neither state superintendent Richard Ross nor governor and Presidential aspirant John Kasich knew anything about the cheating, a whole big bunch of other people surely did. Turns out it takes more than just one guy to really corrupt a system.
The Dispatch has found emails and notes that fall into several categories. Some are at least a little encouraging, consisting of staffers asking, "Is there really a good reason or rule for what I'm seeing happening?"
But others make it clear that staff members knew they were up to no good. Here's one of the Dispatch's juicier quotes of a text message from Hansen's assistant to a staff member:
The ratios are on your laptop. Someone needs to calculate the overall authorizer scores and walk them up to Melissa today. They have to be walked up, not emailed, not printed. Just handwritten on paper. Thanks!
This indicates not only an awareness of misbehavior, but-- well, come on. Why would you leave a message trail of your instructions not to leave a message trail? What's worse than being nefarious and sneaky? Being bad at it.
Journalists' findings don't help Hansen's protests of innocence much. Here's another exchange from when Hansen was getting cranky about numbers for three preferred charters not coming out quite right.
“Then we will put them all down as getting 92 and being exemplary in agency commitment and go from there,” Hansen wrote in an email.
Geis responded, “Can we assume you are joking about putting them down as a 92? (Looks of shock from others in the room).”
Ohio officials cling to the belief that Hansen acted alone in altering grade outcomes for charters and it's possible that we're hair-splitting here. It certainly appears that staffers gave him the tools that he asked for, and that they had to know that something hinky was going on with the rigging of data. At a bare minimum, the department had a culture of not challenging the boss when clearly unethical activities were under way. "We were just following orders," provides no comfort here. And as this has unspooled, some Ohio politicians have suggested that Superintendent Ross either A) knew what was happening or B) is a terrible, incompetent, out-of-touch administrator of the department.
Bottom line: Ohio continues to set the standard for lousy, ineffective, and corrupt oversight of charter schools.
Choice vs. Common Core Baloney
The reformster movement has always involved coalitions between groups that are not necessarily natural allies. This is most apparent when we consider Common Core advocates and fans of free market charters and choice.
Because here's the thing-- if every school in the country has been built around the same one-size-fits-all standards leading to the same one-size-measures-all test, how do schools compete and differentiate between themselves. If government regulations tightly control what features an automobile must have and how its performance must be measured, what difference does it make if you buy a Ford or a Chevy?
On any given day, somewhere on the interwebs, you will find stalwarts of free market and choice such as Neal McClusky of Cato or Rick Hess of AEI voicing disagreement with Common Core promoters like Mike Petrilli and Robert Pondiscio. This week it was Michael Q. McShane of AEI and/or, in this case, the Show-Me Institute, popping up in the St. Louis Post-Dispatch to rebut Petrilli and Pondiscio's recent piece in the same newspaper.
Petrilli and Pondiscio had written that the public should not "shoot the test messenger." The piece is a pastiche of CCSS talking points. There's a reminder that state-level standards have historically sucked, and that states have been big fat lying liars who lie about how well students are doing. There's an unsubstantiated assertion that truckloads of students are arriving at college unprepared, a factoid for which there's no actual evidence (nor do we know what we're trying to fix). And what pro-Core article would be complete without a howler like this:
The Common Core should help to boost college readiness — and college completion — by significantly raising expectations, starting in kindergarten.
Yessirreebob. If we just get tough with those five-year-olds, they'll be college ready toot de suite. And then there's this:
This is a big shift, and a painful one, from the Lake Wobegon days, when, like in Garrison Keillor’s fictional town, all the children were above average.
Well, yes. Since the Big Standardized Test is graded on the curve, we will now have a world in which some students are always below average, and below average is always equated with failing. P & P point out that the standards and the tests are not perfect, but they are still an improvement because they are "a standard that promises to end the lies and games with statistics." Except that the BS Tests are all about lies with statistics, because even if every student in a state scores at least a 95% on the test, some students (and their teachers and their schools) will still be labeled "failing" because they are "below average."
To claim that this process will make students college ready is baloney. Because-- remember-- we're not saying, before the test is taken, "Everybody who can clear the bar set at six feet is ready for college." We're saying that we'll let everybody jump the bar first, we'll rank their best jumps, and we'll say that the lowest jumpers aren't ready for college-- no matter what height they cleared.
McShane is pretty brutal in his response. Despite P & P's insistence that Missouri's old standards, stunk, McShane points out that they were highly regarded. MO standards and tests had Harvard researcher Paul Peterson's stamp of approval. His criticism of the Core promoters comes down to this:
Opponents of the standards have argued that supporters are out of touch with the reality on the ground and are trying to force a one-size-fits-all solution onto the diverse landscape of the American education system. So when two prominent supporters of the standards take to the pages of the Post-Dispatch, what do they do? They demonstrate that they are out of touch with the reality on the ground and then try to push a one-size-fits-all solution.
I disagree with the Free Marketeers hugely when it comes to education; I think their belief that free market forces can create better public education are baloney. But we agree on one thing-- holding everybody to one-size-fits-all national standards will do nothing about educational excellence except get in the way of it. One-size-fits-all standards are bad news.
But McShane missed one detail of this story. On the same day this op-ed ran in the St.Louis Post-Dispatch, it also ran in the New Haven Register-- just with "Connecticut" in place of "Missouri." One size fits all, indeed.
[Update: This same piece ran yet again in USA Today!]
Because here's the thing-- if every school in the country has been built around the same one-size-fits-all standards leading to the same one-size-measures-all test, how do schools compete and differentiate between themselves. If government regulations tightly control what features an automobile must have and how its performance must be measured, what difference does it make if you buy a Ford or a Chevy?
On any given day, somewhere on the interwebs, you will find stalwarts of free market and choice such as Neal McClusky of Cato or Rick Hess of AEI voicing disagreement with Common Core promoters like Mike Petrilli and Robert Pondiscio. This week it was Michael Q. McShane of AEI and/or, in this case, the Show-Me Institute, popping up in the St. Louis Post-Dispatch to rebut Petrilli and Pondiscio's recent piece in the same newspaper.
Petrilli and Pondiscio had written that the public should not "shoot the test messenger." The piece is a pastiche of CCSS talking points. There's a reminder that state-level standards have historically sucked, and that states have been big fat lying liars who lie about how well students are doing. There's an unsubstantiated assertion that truckloads of students are arriving at college unprepared, a factoid for which there's no actual evidence (nor do we know what we're trying to fix). And what pro-Core article would be complete without a howler like this:
The Common Core should help to boost college readiness — and college completion — by significantly raising expectations, starting in kindergarten.
Yessirreebob. If we just get tough with those five-year-olds, they'll be college ready toot de suite. And then there's this:
This is a big shift, and a painful one, from the Lake Wobegon days, when, like in Garrison Keillor’s fictional town, all the children were above average.
Well, yes. Since the Big Standardized Test is graded on the curve, we will now have a world in which some students are always below average, and below average is always equated with failing. P & P point out that the standards and the tests are not perfect, but they are still an improvement because they are "a standard that promises to end the lies and games with statistics." Except that the BS Tests are all about lies with statistics, because even if every student in a state scores at least a 95% on the test, some students (and their teachers and their schools) will still be labeled "failing" because they are "below average."
To claim that this process will make students college ready is baloney. Because-- remember-- we're not saying, before the test is taken, "Everybody who can clear the bar set at six feet is ready for college." We're saying that we'll let everybody jump the bar first, we'll rank their best jumps, and we'll say that the lowest jumpers aren't ready for college-- no matter what height they cleared.
McShane is pretty brutal in his response. Despite P & P's insistence that Missouri's old standards, stunk, McShane points out that they were highly regarded. MO standards and tests had Harvard researcher Paul Peterson's stamp of approval. His criticism of the Core promoters comes down to this:
Opponents of the standards have argued that supporters are out of touch with the reality on the ground and are trying to force a one-size-fits-all solution onto the diverse landscape of the American education system. So when two prominent supporters of the standards take to the pages of the Post-Dispatch, what do they do? They demonstrate that they are out of touch with the reality on the ground and then try to push a one-size-fits-all solution.
I disagree with the Free Marketeers hugely when it comes to education; I think their belief that free market forces can create better public education are baloney. But we agree on one thing-- holding everybody to one-size-fits-all national standards will do nothing about educational excellence except get in the way of it. One-size-fits-all standards are bad news.
But McShane missed one detail of this story. On the same day this op-ed ran in the St.Louis Post-Dispatch, it also ran in the New Haven Register-- just with "Connecticut" in place of "Missouri." One size fits all, indeed.
[Update: This same piece ran yet again in USA Today!]
Friday, September 4, 2015
OMGZ!! SAT!!
As surely as students head off to school with shiny new trapper-keepers in hand, we must have the annual handwringing over dropping SAT scores.
Some outlets went with a bare, facts-only approach, while many went with some scary use of the "lowest point in decade" headline, a proven winner that has been winning clicks for years.
Is this exciting? Should we panic? Does it prove anything about anything?
Eliza Gray correctly notes that one way for the average score to go down is to have more and more non-wealthy students (who generally do more poorly on standardized tests) take the test. The old pattern was the panic headline would be followed by broken-out-by-group analysis that, for decades, has been pointing out that while the overall average is headed down, the averages for subgroups are headed up. But more low-scoring subgroups taking the test drag the average down. This is not nothing-- it demands a look at why some sub-groups always score low. But that's a different problem from "OMGZ!! THe Kidz is getting dumberer!!"
Unfortunately, it looks like sub-group growth reversed over the past few years (though again-- overall drop, or more low-scoring students taking the test). It is worth noting that by now, the awesomeness of Common Core and other reformster programs should be reaping rewards in heightened SAT scores, but that doesn't seem to be the case. I can think of a zillion reasons for that non-result. Pick your favorite.
But keep in mind that the upcoming SAT will be super-duper Common Core attuned. This is truly one of the most awesomely audacious scams in the history of ever. David Coleman rewrites the nation's standards (and curriculum) to fit what he thinks an educated person should be, and then he goes to head up the College Board and rewrite the SAT so that his test measures how great his standards are. There is no question that Coleman has the most massive brass cojones in the world.
Here's how Gray puts it {with corrections]
In an effort to make the test more reflective of what [David Coleman said] students [should] do in high school—and therefore make preparing for standardized tests [from David Coleman's company] a more productive exercise in getting ready for college—the SAT is launching a [Coleman-directed] redesigned test in March...
But we really need to remember that the College Board is not, as Gray sadly suggests by her treatment of them, some sort of impartial arbiter of college readiness. They are a company with products to sell-- products that are grouped around the issue of college readiness. More specifically, they are a company concerned about growing their revenue stream and market share.
The Connecticut Post did one of the better jobs covering the annual story-like event, including talking to Bob Schaeffer of FairTest. Here's a fun juxtaposition:
While Schaeffer points to the growing number of colleges that have have dropped ACT/SAT requirements, Coleman points to the growing number of states giving the SAT to all high students.
In other words, "Neener, neener, we found a way to work around that problem with our product sales." The College Board has done an outstanding job of getting government to serve as a College Board marketing department. Some states (such as mine) now count AP course offerings toward school ratings. Others have been convinced to buy the SAT test product for every student. There is no real reason to believe that any of these things actually improve education, but they sure do wonders for the College Board revenue stream. It's like Ford convincing the feds to require all teachers to drive a Taurus to work.
So, there are many questions raised by this annual exercise in chicken-littling. Are SAT scores truly dropping? What is causing this drop, if it's actually happening? If this year's scores are so meaningful, why are students taking a different SAT next year?
But I would propose a different question: Why should anyone (who isn't financially invested in the College Board) care?
Sure, you care about how your own child did (though maybe you really shouldn't worry all that much). But do the big picture figures tell us anything about anything that we need to care about? That, unfortunately, will not take up much of the frantic score coverage.
Some outlets went with a bare, facts-only approach, while many went with some scary use of the "lowest point in decade" headline, a proven winner that has been winning clicks for years.
Is this exciting? Should we panic? Does it prove anything about anything?
Eliza Gray correctly notes that one way for the average score to go down is to have more and more non-wealthy students (who generally do more poorly on standardized tests) take the test. The old pattern was the panic headline would be followed by broken-out-by-group analysis that, for decades, has been pointing out that while the overall average is headed down, the averages for subgroups are headed up. But more low-scoring subgroups taking the test drag the average down. This is not nothing-- it demands a look at why some sub-groups always score low. But that's a different problem from "OMGZ!! THe Kidz is getting dumberer!!"
Unfortunately, it looks like sub-group growth reversed over the past few years (though again-- overall drop, or more low-scoring students taking the test). It is worth noting that by now, the awesomeness of Common Core and other reformster programs should be reaping rewards in heightened SAT scores, but that doesn't seem to be the case. I can think of a zillion reasons for that non-result. Pick your favorite.
But keep in mind that the upcoming SAT will be super-duper Common Core attuned. This is truly one of the most awesomely audacious scams in the history of ever. David Coleman rewrites the nation's standards (and curriculum) to fit what he thinks an educated person should be, and then he goes to head up the College Board and rewrite the SAT so that his test measures how great his standards are. There is no question that Coleman has the most massive brass cojones in the world.
Here's how Gray puts it {with corrections]
In an effort to make the test more reflective of what [David Coleman said] students [should] do in high school—and therefore make preparing for standardized tests [from David Coleman's company] a more productive exercise in getting ready for college—the SAT is launching a [Coleman-directed] redesigned test in March...
But we really need to remember that the College Board is not, as Gray sadly suggests by her treatment of them, some sort of impartial arbiter of college readiness. They are a company with products to sell-- products that are grouped around the issue of college readiness. More specifically, they are a company concerned about growing their revenue stream and market share.
The Connecticut Post did one of the better jobs covering the annual story-like event, including talking to Bob Schaeffer of FairTest. Here's a fun juxtaposition:
While Schaeffer points to the growing number of colleges that have have dropped ACT/SAT requirements, Coleman points to the growing number of states giving the SAT to all high students.
In other words, "Neener, neener, we found a way to work around that problem with our product sales." The College Board has done an outstanding job of getting government to serve as a College Board marketing department. Some states (such as mine) now count AP course offerings toward school ratings. Others have been convinced to buy the SAT test product for every student. There is no real reason to believe that any of these things actually improve education, but they sure do wonders for the College Board revenue stream. It's like Ford convincing the feds to require all teachers to drive a Taurus to work.
So, there are many questions raised by this annual exercise in chicken-littling. Are SAT scores truly dropping? What is causing this drop, if it's actually happening? If this year's scores are so meaningful, why are students taking a different SAT next year?
But I would propose a different question: Why should anyone (who isn't financially invested in the College Board) care?
Sure, you care about how your own child did (though maybe you really shouldn't worry all that much). But do the big picture figures tell us anything about anything that we need to care about? That, unfortunately, will not take up much of the frantic score coverage.
Brookings: Common Core Will Prevail
Brookings has been running a series of pieces about Common Core and the pushback against it, adapted from a piece by Patrick McGuinn. The first two installments are eminently skippable, comprised of a summary of Common Core opposition that would be familiar to anybody interested enough in the topic to click on the link in the first place.
But Part III, which went up on Wednesday, wants to reach a conclusion which is boldly telegraphed in the title: The complicated politics of national standards: Why Common Core proponents have struggled but are likely to come out on top (Part 3.
In the world of education commentary, Brookings has established itself as a source for analysis that is especially clueless and disconnected, and this declaration of the Core's inevitable triumph is no exception.
Common Core advocates failed to anticipate the political backlash against the standards that emerged in recent years, or to respond to it in a rapid or coordinated manner.
I don't know how strong a case you can make for this, but there's evidence that reformsters certainly feel that it's true. The $12 million reformster rapid-response flack site Education Post was set up because reformsters felt they were being outgunned and out-organized by the resistance. Calling pro-public ed forces "organized" is kind of hilarious, and the financial balance is definitely tilted against us (I don't know anybody on the pro-public ed side who has a $12 million website). But it is true that as a group, we believe what we say and what we say resonates with many people, while the reformsters have had a hard time, despite their many slick and well-funded advocacy groups, achieving market penetration beyond people who make money loving the Core. Hence the next sentence in McGuinn's piece:
They [CCSS advocates] also have struggled to combat the volume and speed of opponents’ messaging on social media, where information (and misinformation) is being disseminated rapidly and widely, often unbeknownst to proponents.
To dismiss this problem, McGuinn turns to the Consortium for Policy Research in Education's research report about Common Core discussions on twitter. It was a report that looked to address exactly who was talking to whom about Common Core on twitter while trying to tease out what the networky connections were. It was a challenging piece of research which yielded some interesting connections and some really cool graphics. But it's ultimately not at all helpful, because it started with the premise that everyone who talks about Common Core on twitter uses the hashtag #CommonCore. It's safe to assume that the project examines only the tiniest sliver of the actual twitter conversations about the standards.
Beyond that, McGuinn somehow reads the research to "reveal" that only a handful of individuals are creating all the anti-Common Core buzz on twitter. Also, there's no actual debate-- just folks in echo chambers.
McGuinn also tosses in the idea that the Core looks like it's having a hard time because of politician turnover (he's talking about pro-Core pols being replaced with less invested successors, not pro-Core pols turning over a new position on the issue). This seems oddly behind the times, particularly given the GOP field's spirited race away from Core-vania.
Why the Core will live on
McGuinn offers a few pieces of evidence for the Core's inevitable survival.
First, since the Core is a proxy for many issues, and a lot of different people hate it for a lot of different reasons, McGuinn believes that they won't come up with "a sustained political alliance or agreement on an alternate vision for American education that can compete with the Core." McGuinn's huge mistake here is assuming that the only way to get rid of the one-size-fits-all national-scale Common Core vision for education is to displace it with some other one-size-fits-all national-scale vision for education.
In fact, the Core is already largely disintegrated. Like bad copies of copies of copies executed on a thousand Xerox machines, the various Cores are already displacing the Original. The Core that appears on various Big Standardized Tests is not the same as the Core that appears in various textbooks which is not the same as the Core that has been interpreted by various bureaucrats, administrators and professional developers, which is not the same as the Core that has been rewritten and tweaked by various states-- and none of these are the same as the Core that is implemented in actual classrooms. The Common Core as originally envisioned is already dead, and schools across the country are being haunted by a thousand ghost versions of it.
McGuinn also thinks schools and states will not walk away from the sunk costs. That would probably be a more convincing idea if I didn't remember how many sunk costs districts walked away from to install Common Core baloney in the first place.
McGuinn points out that most Americans have not heard of the Core (probably true) and that while the "brand" has been damaged, people still poll in favor of the general idea of strong national standards. Therefor, he reasons, once the Public Relations bugs have been ironed out and "the misconceptions about the Core can be cleared up," everything will be hunky dory.
This notion that people object to the Core because of bad PR and a lack of knowledge is the saddest kind of wishful thinking. It assumes that there is nothing wrong with the Core itself. But love for national standards does not mean that the Core are good national standards. I may really want a car, but that doesn't mean I'll be excited if you try to sell me a busted-down Yugo with a missing wheel and a rusted-out body. CCSS is a busted-down Yugo.
The last reality-impaired hope is pinned on "several steps" that have been taken. Folks announced that the amount of testing will be reduced (but not really), test scores in teacher evals will be postponed (the beatings will occur tomorrow instead of today), the new ESEA is likely to expressly forbid the feds from getting involved (much in the same way the law already forbids it), states should get better at implementation issues like the computerized testing (right after the crop of money trees comes in), and students and teachers will becomecomfortably numb more fully acclimated to the new regime. And then he wraps up the whole thing with a link to a story from December of 2014.
Brookings is whistling in the dark (which is appropriate, because it seems to arrive at most of its educational insights in the dark). The Core is already on its last legs, abandoned by almost all of its former friends, it's defense led primarily by people who have a vested interest in its survival. Many of its original goals are dead (remember "students will be able to move between states without losing a step" and "we'll be able to compare students across state lines"). McGuinn is kidding himself and convincing nobody.
But Part III, which went up on Wednesday, wants to reach a conclusion which is boldly telegraphed in the title: The complicated politics of national standards: Why Common Core proponents have struggled but are likely to come out on top (Part 3.
In the world of education commentary, Brookings has established itself as a source for analysis that is especially clueless and disconnected, and this declaration of the Core's inevitable triumph is no exception.
Common Core advocates failed to anticipate the political backlash against the standards that emerged in recent years, or to respond to it in a rapid or coordinated manner.
I don't know how strong a case you can make for this, but there's evidence that reformsters certainly feel that it's true. The $12 million reformster rapid-response flack site Education Post was set up because reformsters felt they were being outgunned and out-organized by the resistance. Calling pro-public ed forces "organized" is kind of hilarious, and the financial balance is definitely tilted against us (I don't know anybody on the pro-public ed side who has a $12 million website). But it is true that as a group, we believe what we say and what we say resonates with many people, while the reformsters have had a hard time, despite their many slick and well-funded advocacy groups, achieving market penetration beyond people who make money loving the Core. Hence the next sentence in McGuinn's piece:
They [CCSS advocates] also have struggled to combat the volume and speed of opponents’ messaging on social media, where information (and misinformation) is being disseminated rapidly and widely, often unbeknownst to proponents.
To dismiss this problem, McGuinn turns to the Consortium for Policy Research in Education's research report about Common Core discussions on twitter. It was a report that looked to address exactly who was talking to whom about Common Core on twitter while trying to tease out what the networky connections were. It was a challenging piece of research which yielded some interesting connections and some really cool graphics. But it's ultimately not at all helpful, because it started with the premise that everyone who talks about Common Core on twitter uses the hashtag #CommonCore. It's safe to assume that the project examines only the tiniest sliver of the actual twitter conversations about the standards.
Beyond that, McGuinn somehow reads the research to "reveal" that only a handful of individuals are creating all the anti-Common Core buzz on twitter. Also, there's no actual debate-- just folks in echo chambers.
McGuinn also tosses in the idea that the Core looks like it's having a hard time because of politician turnover (he's talking about pro-Core pols being replaced with less invested successors, not pro-Core pols turning over a new position on the issue). This seems oddly behind the times, particularly given the GOP field's spirited race away from Core-vania.
Why the Core will live on
McGuinn offers a few pieces of evidence for the Core's inevitable survival.
First, since the Core is a proxy for many issues, and a lot of different people hate it for a lot of different reasons, McGuinn believes that they won't come up with "a sustained political alliance or agreement on an alternate vision for American education that can compete with the Core." McGuinn's huge mistake here is assuming that the only way to get rid of the one-size-fits-all national-scale Common Core vision for education is to displace it with some other one-size-fits-all national-scale vision for education.
In fact, the Core is already largely disintegrated. Like bad copies of copies of copies executed on a thousand Xerox machines, the various Cores are already displacing the Original. The Core that appears on various Big Standardized Tests is not the same as the Core that appears in various textbooks which is not the same as the Core that has been interpreted by various bureaucrats, administrators and professional developers, which is not the same as the Core that has been rewritten and tweaked by various states-- and none of these are the same as the Core that is implemented in actual classrooms. The Common Core as originally envisioned is already dead, and schools across the country are being haunted by a thousand ghost versions of it.
McGuinn also thinks schools and states will not walk away from the sunk costs. That would probably be a more convincing idea if I didn't remember how many sunk costs districts walked away from to install Common Core baloney in the first place.
McGuinn points out that most Americans have not heard of the Core (probably true) and that while the "brand" has been damaged, people still poll in favor of the general idea of strong national standards. Therefor, he reasons, once the Public Relations bugs have been ironed out and "the misconceptions about the Core can be cleared up," everything will be hunky dory.
This notion that people object to the Core because of bad PR and a lack of knowledge is the saddest kind of wishful thinking. It assumes that there is nothing wrong with the Core itself. But love for national standards does not mean that the Core are good national standards. I may really want a car, but that doesn't mean I'll be excited if you try to sell me a busted-down Yugo with a missing wheel and a rusted-out body. CCSS is a busted-down Yugo.
The last reality-impaired hope is pinned on "several steps" that have been taken. Folks announced that the amount of testing will be reduced (but not really), test scores in teacher evals will be postponed (the beatings will occur tomorrow instead of today), the new ESEA is likely to expressly forbid the feds from getting involved (much in the same way the law already forbids it), states should get better at implementation issues like the computerized testing (right after the crop of money trees comes in), and students and teachers will become
Brookings is whistling in the dark (which is appropriate, because it seems to arrive at most of its educational insights in the dark). The Core is already on its last legs, abandoned by almost all of its former friends, it's defense led primarily by people who have a vested interest in its survival. Many of its original goals are dead (remember "students will be able to move between states without losing a step" and "we'll be able to compare students across state lines"). McGuinn is kidding himself and convincing nobody.
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