Today the Daily News in Philly ran an editorial declaring, "Let Philly Schools Chief Hite Do His Job." The editorial writer is pretty much full of it; nevertheless, I agree that Hite should get to do his job. In fact, I wish somebody would make him do his job.
The issue at hand seems to be that Superintendent Hite is getting ready to privatize some more of the Philly school district. Some of the charter operators being brought in include Big Picture Foundation of Rhode Island and the ever-delightful Renaissance schools.
I could get into the issue of charters taking over public schools, or the track record of these particular operators, or the history of Hite and the Philly district. But I don't want to draw attention away from the most striking part of this story.
The superintendent of a major public school district is turning public schools over to charter operators.
The union says that the schools are failing because they've been starved for resources. The Daily News, saying that these schools stunk even in flush times in Philly, calls out other factors--
In fact, the thread that binds all of the schools on the list is that they are failing to educate the students who attend them. Their test scores are lower than low, some have experienced high turnover of principals and leadership staff, some have problems with school safety.
Well, if that's true and these schools have been mismanaged, led poorly, and not given the tools they need to succeed, then Hite should go right to the top, stomp into the office of the person who has the power and responsibility to-- oh. Wait a minute.I know that Philly schools are their own special kind of mess, but isn't Superintendent Hite the guy who is responsible for the failure or success of those public schools?
Help me understand. How is this NOT like the Senator Jerkovich from East Blattsfogel calling a press conference to say, "The senator from East Blattsfogel is doing a terrible job, and I think somebody should impeach him right now!" How is this NOT like the CEO of General Widgets declaring, "The management of our West Oshwoggle plant is terrible. They don't have enough support from the main office, so the only choice is to sell it to another company." How is this NOT like the head of a cafeteria announcing, "The food here is terrible, so we're going to bring in McDonald's to provide lunches."
How is this NOT like somebody whacking themselves in the head with a hammer and declaring, "This really hurts. I guess I'll have to have somebody cut my head off."
Is Hite impotent? Clueless? Because there are only a couple of possibilities here.
Possibility one: Hite has no idea how to fix the problems in those schools, no clue how to staff them, no inkling of how to get them the resources they need. So he's going to bring in charter operators to do what he doesn't know how to do himself. In which case the question really is, can Hite do his job?
Possibility two: Hite knows exactly what those schools need, and he has identified these charter operators as takeover candidates because he believes that they will provide what the schools need. In which case, if he knows what needs to be done, why can't he can do it himself?
It would seem that the Daily News' question is misplaced. It looks to me like it's not a matter of letting Hite do his job, but rather the challenge of getting him to do his. I don't know if he's clueless, powerless, or simply unwilling to do his job. But a superintendent's job is to safeguard, support, and strengthen the public school system in order to serve all the students in the district-- not to throw up his hands and abdicate his responsibilities by selling off the pieces of what should be a community resource so that somebody else can make a buck.
Monday, October 5, 2015
From the Vault: PVAAS in 2009
In one of my many side jobs, I'm a columnist at a local paper. After some of us were sent off for training in PVAAS back in October of 2009, I wrote this piece. This is where Pennsylvania was with this business six years ago.
(News-Herald, October 22) This week I was schooled by the state about more awesomeness that is Pennsylvania’s System of School Assessment (the PSSA tests). This latest big vat of coolaid was served up, ironically, in the Hemlock Room at IU6. When the state lowers itself to send consultants to instruct the poor hicks who toil in local school districts, there is always lots to learn.
For those of you still following the PSSA’s, we are down to the crunch. Remember, No Child Left Behind mandates that in four years, every single American school child will test above average. Since this is only slightly more likely than pigs flying out of Ed Rendell’s nose, the ever-benevolent state has leapt to the rescue with—more statistical tools!
The number crunching is called the Pennsylvania Value-Added Assessment System. “Value Added” is a useful term from the manufacturing world. Simple explanation: If I take a ten cent piece of sheet metal and turn it into a two dollar widget, I’ve added a buck ninety’s worth of value.
What that principle has to do with testing or educating students is not clear, unless the state means to suggest that students are the same as sheet metal and widgets. I was prepared to argue that point, but it turns out that the state’s meaning is something else; words mean whatever they want them to. And I can call my bicycle a stealth bomber.
PVAAS uses a thousand points of data to project the test results for students. This is a highly complex model that three well-paid consultants could not clearly explain to seven college-educated adults, but there were lots of bars and graphs, so you know it’s really good. I searched for a comparison and first tried “sophisticated guess;” the consultant quickly corrected me—“sophisticated prediction.” I tried again—was it like a weather report, developed by comparing thousands of instances of similar conditions to predict the probability of what will happen next? Yes, I was told. That was exactly right. This makes me feel much better about PVAAS, because weather reports are the height of perfect prediction.
It was hard not to well up with that sort of sarcasm during the indoctrination. We were there to copy numbers from websites onto papers, as if the zillions of tax dollars had suddenly crumped out before the developers could add the capability of printing reports. The consultant veered between trying to bludgeon us with jargon-filled gobbledegook and patronizing us with explanations of words like “excelling” and “improving.” And assurances that if we just taught what the state wants us to, everything will be great.
The fallacy at the heart of the PSSA remains. A bunch of multiple choice questions are a lousy measure of the reading skills of live humans. (The PSSA, we were told, is not a standardized test. Okay. I’ll think about that while I pedal my stealth bomber to the store.) You can run numbers through statistical models all day, but if the numbers are near-meaningless to start with, a massage doesn’t improve them.
The intent of the state has not changed much since they first launched the PSSA’s—Harrisburg wants to write the curriculum for every district in the state. What has changed is their tone. Ten years ago they were still trying to gently con us; now their contempt for local districts is beginning to shine through. They are really tired of talking to all these yokels; they would just as soon simply roll right over us and whip us into shape.
So prepare next for the proposed Keystone Exams. Students currently in 7th grade may face ten exit exams in order to graduate. And because the state wants to wield a big hammer, the exams will count for a full third of students’ final grades.
The process remains a two-handed slap in teachers’ faces. On the one hand, we’re treated as if we are the problem and that schools need to be rescued from us by brave bureaucrats and consultants. On the other hand, we are pushed to do things that we know are professionally unsound. Imagine suits going into hospitals and telling doctors, “You are making all these people sick. Stop using pointy scalpels and start operating with shovels.” High stakes multiple choice tests are bad education.
And the final indignity is that after these sorts of sessions, one on one in the hall, many of these consultants will freely admit that they’re selling poisoned punch, but hey, they’re well paid and they’ve gotten used to the taste.
(News-Herald, October 22) This week I was schooled by the state about more awesomeness that is Pennsylvania’s System of School Assessment (the PSSA tests). This latest big vat of coolaid was served up, ironically, in the Hemlock Room at IU6. When the state lowers itself to send consultants to instruct the poor hicks who toil in local school districts, there is always lots to learn.
For those of you still following the PSSA’s, we are down to the crunch. Remember, No Child Left Behind mandates that in four years, every single American school child will test above average. Since this is only slightly more likely than pigs flying out of Ed Rendell’s nose, the ever-benevolent state has leapt to the rescue with—more statistical tools!
The number crunching is called the Pennsylvania Value-Added Assessment System. “Value Added” is a useful term from the manufacturing world. Simple explanation: If I take a ten cent piece of sheet metal and turn it into a two dollar widget, I’ve added a buck ninety’s worth of value.
What that principle has to do with testing or educating students is not clear, unless the state means to suggest that students are the same as sheet metal and widgets. I was prepared to argue that point, but it turns out that the state’s meaning is something else; words mean whatever they want them to. And I can call my bicycle a stealth bomber.
PVAAS uses a thousand points of data to project the test results for students. This is a highly complex model that three well-paid consultants could not clearly explain to seven college-educated adults, but there were lots of bars and graphs, so you know it’s really good. I searched for a comparison and first tried “sophisticated guess;” the consultant quickly corrected me—“sophisticated prediction.” I tried again—was it like a weather report, developed by comparing thousands of instances of similar conditions to predict the probability of what will happen next? Yes, I was told. That was exactly right. This makes me feel much better about PVAAS, because weather reports are the height of perfect prediction.
It was hard not to well up with that sort of sarcasm during the indoctrination. We were there to copy numbers from websites onto papers, as if the zillions of tax dollars had suddenly crumped out before the developers could add the capability of printing reports. The consultant veered between trying to bludgeon us with jargon-filled gobbledegook and patronizing us with explanations of words like “excelling” and “improving.” And assurances that if we just taught what the state wants us to, everything will be great.
The fallacy at the heart of the PSSA remains. A bunch of multiple choice questions are a lousy measure of the reading skills of live humans. (The PSSA, we were told, is not a standardized test. Okay. I’ll think about that while I pedal my stealth bomber to the store.) You can run numbers through statistical models all day, but if the numbers are near-meaningless to start with, a massage doesn’t improve them.
The intent of the state has not changed much since they first launched the PSSA’s—Harrisburg wants to write the curriculum for every district in the state. What has changed is their tone. Ten years ago they were still trying to gently con us; now their contempt for local districts is beginning to shine through. They are really tired of talking to all these yokels; they would just as soon simply roll right over us and whip us into shape.
So prepare next for the proposed Keystone Exams. Students currently in 7th grade may face ten exit exams in order to graduate. And because the state wants to wield a big hammer, the exams will count for a full third of students’ final grades.
The process remains a two-handed slap in teachers’ faces. On the one hand, we’re treated as if we are the problem and that schools need to be rescued from us by brave bureaucrats and consultants. On the other hand, we are pushed to do things that we know are professionally unsound. Imagine suits going into hospitals and telling doctors, “You are making all these people sick. Stop using pointy scalpels and start operating with shovels.” High stakes multiple choice tests are bad education.
And the final indignity is that after these sorts of sessions, one on one in the hall, many of these consultants will freely admit that they’re selling poisoned punch, but hey, they’re well paid and they’ve gotten used to the taste.
PA: Value-less Data
It's autumn in Pennsylvania, which means it's time to look at the rich data to be gleaned from our Big Standardized Test (called PSSA for grades 3-8, and Keytsone Exams at the high school level).
We love us some value added data crunching in PA (our version is called PVAAS, an early version of the value-added baloney model). This is a model that promises far more than it can deliver, but it also makes up a sizeable chunk of our school evaluation model, which in turn is part of our teacher evaluation model.
Of course the data crunching and collecting is supposed to have many valuable benefits, not the least of which is unleashing a pack of rich and robust data hounds who will chase the wild beast of low student achievement up the tree of instructional re-alignment. Like every other state, we have been promised that the tests will have classroom teachers swimming in a vast vault of data, like Scrooge McDuck on a gold bullion bender. So this morning I set out early to the states Big Data Portal to see what riches the system could reveal.
Here's what I can learn from looking at the rich data.
* the raw scores of each student
* how many students fell into each of the achievement subgroups (test scores broken down by 20 point percentile slices)\
* if each of the five percentile slices was generally above, below, or at its growth target
Annnnd that's about it. I can sift through some of that data for a few other features.
For instance, PVAAS can, in a Minority Report sort of twist, predict what each student should get as a score based on-- well, I've been trying for six years to find someone who can explain this to me, and still nothing. But every student has his or her own personal alternate universe score. If the student beats that score, they have shown growth. If they don't, they have not.
The state's site will actually tell me what each student's alternate universe score was, side by side with their actual score. This is kind of an amazing twist-- you might think this data set would be useful for determining how well the state's predictive legerdemain actually works. Or maybe a discrepancy might be a signal that something is up with the student. But no-- all discrepancies between predicted and actual scores are either blamed on or credited to the teacher.
I can use that same magical power to draw a big target on the backs of certain students. I can generate a list of students expected to fall within certain score ranges and throw them directly into theextra test prep focused remediation tank. Although since I'm giving them the instruction based on projected scores from a test they haven't taken yet, maybe I should call it premediation.
Of course, either remediation or premediation would be easier to develop if I knew exactly what the problem was.
But the website gives only raw scores. I don't know what "modules" or sections of the test the student did poorly on. We've got a principal working on getting us that breakdown, but as classroom teachers we don't get to see it. Hell, as classroom teachers, we are not allowed to see the questions, and if we do see them, we are forbidden to talk about them, report on them, or use them in any way. (Confession: I have peeked, and many of the questions absolutely suck as measures of anything).
Bottom line-- we have no idea what exactly our students messed up to get a low score on the test. In fact, we have no idea what they messed up generally.
So that's my rich data. A test grade comes back, but I can't see the test, or the questions, or the actual items that the student got wrong.
The website is loaded with bells and whistles and flash-dependent functions along with instructional videos that seem to assume that the site will be used by nine-year-olds, combining instructions that should be unnecessary (how to use a color-coding key to read a pie chart) to explanations of "analysis" that isn't (by looking at how many students have scored below basic, we can determine how many students have scored below basic).
I wish some of the reformsters who believe that BS Testing gets us rich data that can drive and focus instruction would just get in there and take a look at this, because they would just weep. No value is being added, but lots of time and money is being wasted.
We love us some value added data crunching in PA (our version is called PVAAS, an early version of the value-added baloney model). This is a model that promises far more than it can deliver, but it also makes up a sizeable chunk of our school evaluation model, which in turn is part of our teacher evaluation model.
Of course the data crunching and collecting is supposed to have many valuable benefits, not the least of which is unleashing a pack of rich and robust data hounds who will chase the wild beast of low student achievement up the tree of instructional re-alignment. Like every other state, we have been promised that the tests will have classroom teachers swimming in a vast vault of data, like Scrooge McDuck on a gold bullion bender. So this morning I set out early to the states Big Data Portal to see what riches the system could reveal.
Here's what I can learn from looking at the rich data.
* the raw scores of each student
* how many students fell into each of the achievement subgroups (test scores broken down by 20 point percentile slices)\
* if each of the five percentile slices was generally above, below, or at its growth target
Annnnd that's about it. I can sift through some of that data for a few other features.
For instance, PVAAS can, in a Minority Report sort of twist, predict what each student should get as a score based on-- well, I've been trying for six years to find someone who can explain this to me, and still nothing. But every student has his or her own personal alternate universe score. If the student beats that score, they have shown growth. If they don't, they have not.
The state's site will actually tell me what each student's alternate universe score was, side by side with their actual score. This is kind of an amazing twist-- you might think this data set would be useful for determining how well the state's predictive legerdemain actually works. Or maybe a discrepancy might be a signal that something is up with the student. But no-- all discrepancies between predicted and actual scores are either blamed on or credited to the teacher.
I can use that same magical power to draw a big target on the backs of certain students. I can generate a list of students expected to fall within certain score ranges and throw them directly into the
Of course, either remediation or premediation would be easier to develop if I knew exactly what the problem was.
But the website gives only raw scores. I don't know what "modules" or sections of the test the student did poorly on. We've got a principal working on getting us that breakdown, but as classroom teachers we don't get to see it. Hell, as classroom teachers, we are not allowed to see the questions, and if we do see them, we are forbidden to talk about them, report on them, or use them in any way. (Confession: I have peeked, and many of the questions absolutely suck as measures of anything).
Bottom line-- we have no idea what exactly our students messed up to get a low score on the test. In fact, we have no idea what they messed up generally.
So that's my rich data. A test grade comes back, but I can't see the test, or the questions, or the actual items that the student got wrong.
The website is loaded with bells and whistles and flash-dependent functions along with instructional videos that seem to assume that the site will be used by nine-year-olds, combining instructions that should be unnecessary (how to use a color-coding key to read a pie chart) to explanations of "analysis" that isn't (by looking at how many students have scored below basic, we can determine how many students have scored below basic).
I wish some of the reformsters who believe that BS Testing gets us rich data that can drive and focus instruction would just get in there and take a look at this, because they would just weep. No value is being added, but lots of time and money is being wasted.
Sunday, October 4, 2015
Temporary Police Order
This weekend features the major festival of the year in my town, and as my wife and I walked back from yesterday's round of festivating, we noticed a sign posted many times along the street. It was a no parking sign, boldly lettered "Temporary Police Order," and we made a quick joke about why temporary police would be allowed to issue orders about parking.
But it got me to thinking.
The preferred method for teaching and testing reading in the [Insert Name Here] Core Standards is to treat reading as a discrete set of skills, completely unrelated to any prior knowledge. David Coleman famously admonishes us to stay within the four corners of the text.
A really great reader, Coleman and his acolytes suggest, can read anything in his native tongue, even without prior background knowledge or contextual knowledge from outside those four corners.
And yet here is a simple text, a text so short and sweet that it fits on a tiny sign. And without prior knowledge, without information from outside the four corners, we can't understand it. We can't "read" it.
Does it announce a order issued by police who are only hired for a short period of time? Is it an order issued by the regular police that will be in effect only for a short period of time? In truth, the former seems more likely if I stay within the four corners-- wouldn't the latter be better expressed by "Police Temporary Order," as awkward and ungainly as that sounds?
Of course, the perceived awkwardness is a function of my prior knowledge of how those three words are best arranged. So using that prior knowledge is cheating.
In fact, I'm already cheating by being aware of the context of the text, which is a sign stapled to a piece of wood driven into the ground beside parking places. If I did not have the "no parking" portion of the sign in front of me, I would have no way of knowing if "order" meant a command or directive as opposed to the absence of chaos or a particular arranged sequence of police. So "temporary police order" could be a reference to the sequence in which some part-time police officers might be standing in line, or it could mean that police have quelled ongoing chaos, but that chaos can be expected to erupt again at any moment. Without the context of the sign, I might imagine that the text originally appeared on a pizza shop takeout form, and now a whole new set of possibilities open up.
The clarification can further depend on my knowledge of local history. Is the use of temporary police pretty standard fare here, or does this town depend on a standing police force? Have I encountered rent-a-cops in municipalities often enough for me to think of them as common, or am I unacquainted with that police hiring technique? My own understanding will influence my ideas about which reading of the text seems more probable.
My understanding of the text rests firmly on my prior knowledge and the context in which it appears. In fact, without employing prior knowledge and context, I cannot reach a definitive reading of the text.
My point? Folks like Coleman whose conception of reading is that it is a simple decoding exercise (like dialing in the combination of a safe) or a set of skills that can be simply exercised cut off from any prior knowledge or understanding outside the four corners-- those folks have a poor understanding of just how complex the act of reading actually is and just how difficult it is to measure. You will find it nearly impossible to create a reliable measure of reading that would cut out prior knowledge, restrict readers to the four corners, and still somehow meaningfully measure reading skills. I'm not sure you could do it at all-- not even with a temporary police order.
But it got me to thinking.
The preferred method for teaching and testing reading in the [Insert Name Here] Core Standards is to treat reading as a discrete set of skills, completely unrelated to any prior knowledge. David Coleman famously admonishes us to stay within the four corners of the text.
A really great reader, Coleman and his acolytes suggest, can read anything in his native tongue, even without prior background knowledge or contextual knowledge from outside those four corners.
And yet here is a simple text, a text so short and sweet that it fits on a tiny sign. And without prior knowledge, without information from outside the four corners, we can't understand it. We can't "read" it.
Does it announce a order issued by police who are only hired for a short period of time? Is it an order issued by the regular police that will be in effect only for a short period of time? In truth, the former seems more likely if I stay within the four corners-- wouldn't the latter be better expressed by "Police Temporary Order," as awkward and ungainly as that sounds?
Of course, the perceived awkwardness is a function of my prior knowledge of how those three words are best arranged. So using that prior knowledge is cheating.
In fact, I'm already cheating by being aware of the context of the text, which is a sign stapled to a piece of wood driven into the ground beside parking places. If I did not have the "no parking" portion of the sign in front of me, I would have no way of knowing if "order" meant a command or directive as opposed to the absence of chaos or a particular arranged sequence of police. So "temporary police order" could be a reference to the sequence in which some part-time police officers might be standing in line, or it could mean that police have quelled ongoing chaos, but that chaos can be expected to erupt again at any moment. Without the context of the sign, I might imagine that the text originally appeared on a pizza shop takeout form, and now a whole new set of possibilities open up.
The clarification can further depend on my knowledge of local history. Is the use of temporary police pretty standard fare here, or does this town depend on a standing police force? Have I encountered rent-a-cops in municipalities often enough for me to think of them as common, or am I unacquainted with that police hiring technique? My own understanding will influence my ideas about which reading of the text seems more probable.
My understanding of the text rests firmly on my prior knowledge and the context in which it appears. In fact, without employing prior knowledge and context, I cannot reach a definitive reading of the text.
My point? Folks like Coleman whose conception of reading is that it is a simple decoding exercise (like dialing in the combination of a safe) or a set of skills that can be simply exercised cut off from any prior knowledge or understanding outside the four corners-- those folks have a poor understanding of just how complex the act of reading actually is and just how difficult it is to measure. You will find it nearly impossible to create a reliable measure of reading that would cut out prior knowledge, restrict readers to the four corners, and still somehow meaningfully measure reading skills. I'm not sure you could do it at all-- not even with a temporary police order.
Driven By Parent Choice
That's the dream for some reformsters-- a school system that is driven not by regulation or government edict and certainly not by the professional educators who work there, but a system that is driven by parent choice.
I believe there are probably idealistic purists among the visionaries who really do believe that we'd have a system where parents peruse sets of pure and transparent data and then make informed choices based on that data, allowing schools to compete and improve by responding to how their data plays out in the marketplace. These purists are sweet, like delightful five year olds who still wait breathlessly for Christmas morning and the proof of Santa's arrival.
But there are also advocates of choice who are less idealistic and less pure. They understand what having a system "driven by parent choice" really means. I'll give you a hint-- it doesn't mean a system driven by parent choice.
Idealists talk about parent choice as if it occurs in some sort of iron-clad vacuum, influenced by nothing by clean data and clear thinking.
That's silly. Parent choice is malleable, shapeable, bendable, and open to influence. Yes, technically, in a choice system, the ultimate decision is theoretically made by parent choice. But that parent choice does not begin and end with parents-- it is molded and directed by a hundred other forces.
Purists imagine parents poring over spreadsheets, consuming mounds of impartial school information with a tasty topping of crunched data. But as we have already seen, charters take a strong hand in what data gets to the public, spinning and angling for a good marketing picture. They direct marketing toward particular parents, and they offer benefits that go far beyond any data that can be crunched (I'm remembering Pennsylvania cyber-school ads that suggested cyber-school would make your child happier than public school).
To get money out of the tightish fist of a government agency can be tricky, what with all those rules and regulations. But to get money out of a parent (especially if it isn't actually the parent's personal money), you can appeal to emotions and prejudices with slanted, incomplete and just-plain-false pitches.
Saying that such a system would be driven by parent choice is like saying the fast food, soft drink and automotive industries are driven by consumer choice. They are-- but that consumer choice is driven by marketing that involves everything from emotional appeals that have nothing to do with product quality, to manipulating the market to do things like buy up all the shelf space in the store, to simply carpet-bombing the airways so that your product is best-known. And that at least is a market in which you aren't allowed to offer battery-acid cola or brakeless automobiles; some states (looking at you, Ohio) have not yet figured out how to keep flat-out charlatans from bilking parents with built-to-fail charter flim flams.
"Driven by parent choice" just means "run on the free market," and the free market runs on marketing. "Driven by parent choice" just means opening parents up to every marketing maneuver and sales shenanigans in the book.
Greene's Law of the Free Market: The free market does not foster superior quality; the free market fosters superior marketing.
Am I saying that parents are just too dumb to navigate a free marketty education system? Not at all. But I am saying that parents, like most US consumers in today's marketplace, are people who are bringing a butter knife to a gun fight. I am saying that parents who have their hands full with the daily business of holding a home and family together may have trouble doing the full-time research work necessary to cut through the fog and smoke and the lies and half-truths and spun baloney of charter marketing. I am saying that schools should not have "caveat emptor" stamped on their front doors.
And I'm saying that folks who say "driven by parent choice" as if that is a pure, clear, clean solution are either fooling themselves or trying to fool everyone else.
I believe there are probably idealistic purists among the visionaries who really do believe that we'd have a system where parents peruse sets of pure and transparent data and then make informed choices based on that data, allowing schools to compete and improve by responding to how their data plays out in the marketplace. These purists are sweet, like delightful five year olds who still wait breathlessly for Christmas morning and the proof of Santa's arrival.
But there are also advocates of choice who are less idealistic and less pure. They understand what having a system "driven by parent choice" really means. I'll give you a hint-- it doesn't mean a system driven by parent choice.
Idealists talk about parent choice as if it occurs in some sort of iron-clad vacuum, influenced by nothing by clean data and clear thinking.
That's silly. Parent choice is malleable, shapeable, bendable, and open to influence. Yes, technically, in a choice system, the ultimate decision is theoretically made by parent choice. But that parent choice does not begin and end with parents-- it is molded and directed by a hundred other forces.
Purists imagine parents poring over spreadsheets, consuming mounds of impartial school information with a tasty topping of crunched data. But as we have already seen, charters take a strong hand in what data gets to the public, spinning and angling for a good marketing picture. They direct marketing toward particular parents, and they offer benefits that go far beyond any data that can be crunched (I'm remembering Pennsylvania cyber-school ads that suggested cyber-school would make your child happier than public school).
To get money out of the tightish fist of a government agency can be tricky, what with all those rules and regulations. But to get money out of a parent (especially if it isn't actually the parent's personal money), you can appeal to emotions and prejudices with slanted, incomplete and just-plain-false pitches.
Saying that such a system would be driven by parent choice is like saying the fast food, soft drink and automotive industries are driven by consumer choice. They are-- but that consumer choice is driven by marketing that involves everything from emotional appeals that have nothing to do with product quality, to manipulating the market to do things like buy up all the shelf space in the store, to simply carpet-bombing the airways so that your product is best-known. And that at least is a market in which you aren't allowed to offer battery-acid cola or brakeless automobiles; some states (looking at you, Ohio) have not yet figured out how to keep flat-out charlatans from bilking parents with built-to-fail charter flim flams.
"Driven by parent choice" just means "run on the free market," and the free market runs on marketing. "Driven by parent choice" just means opening parents up to every marketing maneuver and sales shenanigans in the book.
Greene's Law of the Free Market: The free market does not foster superior quality; the free market fosters superior marketing.
Am I saying that parents are just too dumb to navigate a free marketty education system? Not at all. But I am saying that parents, like most US consumers in today's marketplace, are people who are bringing a butter knife to a gun fight. I am saying that parents who have their hands full with the daily business of holding a home and family together may have trouble doing the full-time research work necessary to cut through the fog and smoke and the lies and half-truths and spun baloney of charter marketing. I am saying that schools should not have "caveat emptor" stamped on their front doors.
And I'm saying that folks who say "driven by parent choice" as if that is a pure, clear, clean solution are either fooling themselves or trying to fool everyone else.
ICYMI: This Week's Edubloggery Sampler
Well, this has been a week. I will leave you to find your own pieces about John King failing upward and the NEA deciding to shove a Hillary recommendation down membership's throat. In fact, maybe you'll enjoy some reading to take your mind off all of that.
Highlighting Websites and Blogs
Nancy Bailey offers a great, mostly-organized list of some of the folks writing about the Great Public Education Debate. I include this not because she says nice things about me, but because it's always good to expand your reading horizons
Does Subject Matter Knowledge Matter As Much As We Think?
A look at some research about what has impact in the classroom. The most powerful part is seeing what does have an impact
A Charter Place Parable
Short and sweet tale of why charters are a bad idea, from the superintendent of Chapel Hill schools (so you really might have missed it)
AP Classes Are a Scam
This article from the Atlantic is actually three years old, but it's still worth a read now that the PSAT is more directly set up as a marketing tool for AP courses.
A Look Back at DeVos
Links to three videos of reformsters gabillionaire Richard DeVos talking about how public education needs to be the next frontier of trashing democracy for fun and profit. Oh, and the videos go back to 2002.
The Reformy Arguments Are Getting Worserer
This week the Jazzman got himself into an argument with one of the crack writers over at Education Post. This is the final piece of the series-- you can backtrack if you like, but this captures the Jazzman at his fact-wielding best.
Class Is In Session With Jose Luis Vilson
Vilson was profiled this week, and actually, sadly, it would be notable enough that any publication decided to profile an actual working teacher, Vilson is also an accomplished author and activist, so this profile is doubly rewarding. Lift yourself up by reading about one of the good guys who is actually making his voice heard from inside the profession.
Highlighting Websites and Blogs
Nancy Bailey offers a great, mostly-organized list of some of the folks writing about the Great Public Education Debate. I include this not because she says nice things about me, but because it's always good to expand your reading horizons
Does Subject Matter Knowledge Matter As Much As We Think?
A look at some research about what has impact in the classroom. The most powerful part is seeing what does have an impact
A Charter Place Parable
Short and sweet tale of why charters are a bad idea, from the superintendent of Chapel Hill schools (so you really might have missed it)
AP Classes Are a Scam
This article from the Atlantic is actually three years old, but it's still worth a read now that the PSAT is more directly set up as a marketing tool for AP courses.
A Look Back at DeVos
Links to three videos of reformsters gabillionaire Richard DeVos talking about how public education needs to be the next frontier of trashing democracy for fun and profit. Oh, and the videos go back to 2002.
The Reformy Arguments Are Getting Worserer
This week the Jazzman got himself into an argument with one of the crack writers over at Education Post. This is the final piece of the series-- you can backtrack if you like, but this captures the Jazzman at his fact-wielding best.
Class Is In Session With Jose Luis Vilson
Vilson was profiled this week, and actually, sadly, it would be notable enough that any publication decided to profile an actual working teacher, Vilson is also an accomplished author and activist, so this profile is doubly rewarding. Lift yourself up by reading about one of the good guys who is actually making his voice heard from inside the profession.
Saturday, October 3, 2015
An Open Letter to Jerry Oleksiak (PSEA President)
Dear Jerry:
It has been a disappointing couple of days, what with the announcement of the announcement that the terrible Arne Duncan will be replaced with the even-worse John King. On top of that, we get the NEA's announcement of the early endorsement of Hillary Clinton. Now, today, on Facebook, I find your rationalized spin for that endorsement. I am beyond disappointed, but rather than simply stomp off angrily without saying anything except, "Cancel my membership," I want to address your comments, despite the fact that this endorsement fiasco drives home the fact that nobody in the state or local union is paying the slightest damn attention to the members. I am in my thirty seventh year of teaching in a classroom. I'm a registered Democrat who votes in every single election, and I'm a past local president of my union. So understand that I am not just some random crank, but an experienced and long-involved crank.
After presenting the background of your involvement in NEA's decision, you ask this question.
As you make your own decisions about whom you will support, I would encourage you to ask yourself this question: "Does this candidate support public education, our schools, and our students?"
It is an excellent question to ask, and one that I have asked myself. In fact, it's in asking this question that I arrive at my personal decision not to support Clinton. But before I talk about my own data on the issue, I want to see how that question leads you and NEA to an endorsement of Hillary Clinton. So let's look at what you've got.
I have spoken to many PSEA members over the past year, and one concern I hear again and again is that public education in the United States is at a crossroads. Our colleagues you elected to the NEA board have heard similar sentiments, as have their NEA Board colleagues in other states. That is why they felt it was so important to act early and decisively to recommend someone for president who is the right person to take our country in the right direction.
Do not talk to us as if we are children. First of all, the NEA higher-ups did not get together to endorse "somebody" as the right person. You got together to consider endorsing Hillary Clinton, and you did it in hopes that by stepping in to save her flagging candidacy at the point it's beginning to circle the drain, the NEA would earn some favors, or at least some standing with a possible Clinton administration. If Clinton were not starting to worry about Bernie Sanders, the NEA would never have been having this conversation.
Secretary Clinton is a longtime supporter of public education and a longtime friend of NEA. She has worked throughout her career to make sure every child has access to preschool, and every child has access to quality healthcare through the CHIP program.
Those two examples mean nothing in terms of supporting public education. And if you want to convince me she's a friend of NEA, you'd better get specific, because while it's hard to prove a negative, I'm damned if I can think of a single time she's done something for the union.
She opposes over-testing of students, and has fought for greater resources for our schools.
When? How? You follow with a quote in which she says something nice about public education, but general platitudes are not reassuring, particularly when we're talking about someone who praised Jeb Bush's work on education in Florida.
Secretary Clinton will also be a voice for our professions. She supports higher salaries for educators and collective bargaining rights. Secretary Clinton has said, "It's time to stand up to efforts across our country to undermine worker bargaining power, which has been proven again and again to drive up wages."
Surely the NEA leadership is not that obtuse. Higher salaries for teachers is popular talking point among many education reformers, who see higher pay-- for some-- as a useful tool in de-professionalizing teaching. Some like the idea of higher pay--linked to test results. Others like the idea of well-paid super-sardinemasters, with teachers handling hundreds of students in a single class.
And if Senator Clinton feels strongly about bargaining rights, why has she not spoken out strongly about any of the direct attacks on those rights.
She will listen to our ideas, be sensitive to our policy recommendations, and appoint a secretary of education who will do what's right for our schools and students.
Who do you mean by "our" exactly? Because apparently I can't even get my own union to listen to my ideas, so I'm not thinking members concerns will get passed on. "Be sensitive to" is the weakest kind of weasel language, as is the line about the secretary of education.
I mean, part of my issue here is that this is a bunch of weak-sauced general pablum at a time in which we face very specific, very direct attacks on our profession. If the candidate can't talk about specifics, I'm going to assume that the candidate is either ignorant of them or chooses not to address them because the candidate thinks I wouldn't like what she/he has to say. If soldiers from East Bottlevania were landing on the beaches of New Jersey, slaughtering civilians and blowing up cities, I would not be looking for a President who says, "In general, we are sensitive to the idea that foreign nationals should not be entering our nation's mainland and doing things that make our citizens upset."
There has been speculation out there that NEA has not followed its prescribed process in making this recommendation.
Again, you can't be this obtuse. The speculation has not been that NEA is not following its process-- the speculation is that NEA's process sucks. I can think you can find plenty of members who have always thought it sucked, but generally felt that A) they couldn't do anything about it and B) it didn't usually involve really damaging decisions. This time is different. This time teachers are feeling really, really pushed into a corner and attacked, and meanwhile, their state and national unions aren't hearing them or addressing the problem. The proscribed process is one more way in which rank and file members are left feeling unheard and ignored by their own leadership. I don't care if you followed the letter of the rules that you set up for yourselves. The rules stink.
Additionally, as I've written before, this was exact;y the wrong for this type of political maneuvering. Democratic processes are under attack in this country, and to take action that makes a blatant lie out of Eskelsen-Garcia's "This is what democracy looks like" statement is exactly the wrong action at the wrong time. I don't care if it follows the policy and procedures manual or not.
Over the recent summer and into the fall, we have watched the presidential campaign kick into high gear. We have witnessed several candidates stake out positions of support for:
- Cutting funding to public schools;
- Linking educator pay to student test scores;
- Expanding private school vouchers;
- Weakening collective bargaining rights; and
- Testing kids even more than we do now.
Some candidates even want to go so far as to get rid of the U.S. Department of Education!
The subtext here is supposed to be, "But the GOP is really, really worse," I suppose, and I cannot begin to tell you how thoroughly deeply completely utterly sick I am of having my union leadership tell me, "Well, we have to support the guy who will cut off our legs, because the other guy will cut off our legs and arms both." I have had this argument with your predecessors, because this is a stupid, self-defeating line of reasoning, and we have suffered decades of misery because of it. The appropriate response to two candidates who each want to hurt us severely is to support NONE of them.
But your list is particularly galling because some of the things listed here are much-beloved by Hillary Clinton. She is a long-time fan of vouchers and privatizing schools through charters. The Center for American Progress has close ties to the Clinton campaign (John Podesta, previous CAP head and current Clinton campaign chief is just one example), and CAP has pushed for charters, high stakes testing, Common Core, and teacher evaluations tied to testing.
Faced with these grim realities, the NEA board chose to support a candidate who can win this election and will be a champion for our schools, our students, and our professions.
Yes, ultimately, this is about NEA leadership's belief in Clinton's ability to win-- at least, if she's not too bloodied by Sanders. But for the love of God-- if there is a credible reason to believe that Clinton will be a champion for any of those things, you had better share it with us, because I'll be damned if I've seen it.
Look-- beyond individual candidates, PSEA and NEA need to take a good hard look at their relationship with the Democratic party. In Pennsylvania, Ed Rendell was a disaster for public education, and nationally, the Obama-Duncan administration has been the most destructive ever. Like good little soldiers, we teachers keep sending our support, and our elected Democratic politicians keep stabbing us in the back. I'm pretty sure I'm not the only teacher who's had enough, and now I see us pushing a Clinton Presidency, which for education looks like more Obama Presidency, which simply doubled down on the worst policy choices of the Bush Presidency.
Other states found the backbone to stand up to the national union on this. It would have been heartening to see Pennsylvania do the same. Instead, once again, here comes the union leadership with carefully crafted spin and PR designed to manage the members and get them to fall into line. Honestly, I suppose I'll stew over quitting the union for a while and ultimately not do it, for a variety of unrelated reasons. But it's a union affiliation that am now ashamed of. This was a bad choice, divisive and destructive of NEA bargaining strength and dismissive of members at a time when we really don't need to be ignored by one more national organization, as well as supportive of a politician who we have no reason to believe will have our backs, ever. All the more ironic when NEA leadership has admitted that another candidate is much more in tune with our concerns.
PSEA has been trying to address the questions of 1) how to get more young teachers into the union and 2) how to get better PACE participation. Pretty sure this will not help. "Hey, young teacher, please join PSEA. We would love to have your dues, and we will be happy to tell you what you think." Not a winner. Also, "Give us money to support politicians who will only stomp on you a little," is not a great sales pitch.
This was a bad call, and your attempt to justify it only made it sting worse. Feel free to contact me with any information that would help me better understand. In the meantime, I'm just going to continue being pissed off.
Sincerely,
Peter Greene
It has been a disappointing couple of days, what with the announcement of the announcement that the terrible Arne Duncan will be replaced with the even-worse John King. On top of that, we get the NEA's announcement of the early endorsement of Hillary Clinton. Now, today, on Facebook, I find your rationalized spin for that endorsement. I am beyond disappointed, but rather than simply stomp off angrily without saying anything except, "Cancel my membership," I want to address your comments, despite the fact that this endorsement fiasco drives home the fact that nobody in the state or local union is paying the slightest damn attention to the members. I am in my thirty seventh year of teaching in a classroom. I'm a registered Democrat who votes in every single election, and I'm a past local president of my union. So understand that I am not just some random crank, but an experienced and long-involved crank.
After presenting the background of your involvement in NEA's decision, you ask this question.
As you make your own decisions about whom you will support, I would encourage you to ask yourself this question: "Does this candidate support public education, our schools, and our students?"
It is an excellent question to ask, and one that I have asked myself. In fact, it's in asking this question that I arrive at my personal decision not to support Clinton. But before I talk about my own data on the issue, I want to see how that question leads you and NEA to an endorsement of Hillary Clinton. So let's look at what you've got.
I have spoken to many PSEA members over the past year, and one concern I hear again and again is that public education in the United States is at a crossroads. Our colleagues you elected to the NEA board have heard similar sentiments, as have their NEA Board colleagues in other states. That is why they felt it was so important to act early and decisively to recommend someone for president who is the right person to take our country in the right direction.
Do not talk to us as if we are children. First of all, the NEA higher-ups did not get together to endorse "somebody" as the right person. You got together to consider endorsing Hillary Clinton, and you did it in hopes that by stepping in to save her flagging candidacy at the point it's beginning to circle the drain, the NEA would earn some favors, or at least some standing with a possible Clinton administration. If Clinton were not starting to worry about Bernie Sanders, the NEA would never have been having this conversation.
Secretary Clinton is a longtime supporter of public education and a longtime friend of NEA. She has worked throughout her career to make sure every child has access to preschool, and every child has access to quality healthcare through the CHIP program.
Those two examples mean nothing in terms of supporting public education. And if you want to convince me she's a friend of NEA, you'd better get specific, because while it's hard to prove a negative, I'm damned if I can think of a single time she's done something for the union.
She opposes over-testing of students, and has fought for greater resources for our schools.
When? How? You follow with a quote in which she says something nice about public education, but general platitudes are not reassuring, particularly when we're talking about someone who praised Jeb Bush's work on education in Florida.
Secretary Clinton will also be a voice for our professions. She supports higher salaries for educators and collective bargaining rights. Secretary Clinton has said, "It's time to stand up to efforts across our country to undermine worker bargaining power, which has been proven again and again to drive up wages."
Surely the NEA leadership is not that obtuse. Higher salaries for teachers is popular talking point among many education reformers, who see higher pay-- for some-- as a useful tool in de-professionalizing teaching. Some like the idea of higher pay--linked to test results. Others like the idea of well-paid super-sardinemasters, with teachers handling hundreds of students in a single class.
And if Senator Clinton feels strongly about bargaining rights, why has she not spoken out strongly about any of the direct attacks on those rights.
She will listen to our ideas, be sensitive to our policy recommendations, and appoint a secretary of education who will do what's right for our schools and students.
Who do you mean by "our" exactly? Because apparently I can't even get my own union to listen to my ideas, so I'm not thinking members concerns will get passed on. "Be sensitive to" is the weakest kind of weasel language, as is the line about the secretary of education.
I mean, part of my issue here is that this is a bunch of weak-sauced general pablum at a time in which we face very specific, very direct attacks on our profession. If the candidate can't talk about specifics, I'm going to assume that the candidate is either ignorant of them or chooses not to address them because the candidate thinks I wouldn't like what she/he has to say. If soldiers from East Bottlevania were landing on the beaches of New Jersey, slaughtering civilians and blowing up cities, I would not be looking for a President who says, "In general, we are sensitive to the idea that foreign nationals should not be entering our nation's mainland and doing things that make our citizens upset."
There has been speculation out there that NEA has not followed its prescribed process in making this recommendation.
Again, you can't be this obtuse. The speculation has not been that NEA is not following its process-- the speculation is that NEA's process sucks. I can think you can find plenty of members who have always thought it sucked, but generally felt that A) they couldn't do anything about it and B) it didn't usually involve really damaging decisions. This time is different. This time teachers are feeling really, really pushed into a corner and attacked, and meanwhile, their state and national unions aren't hearing them or addressing the problem. The proscribed process is one more way in which rank and file members are left feeling unheard and ignored by their own leadership. I don't care if you followed the letter of the rules that you set up for yourselves. The rules stink.
Additionally, as I've written before, this was exact;y the wrong for this type of political maneuvering. Democratic processes are under attack in this country, and to take action that makes a blatant lie out of Eskelsen-Garcia's "This is what democracy looks like" statement is exactly the wrong action at the wrong time. I don't care if it follows the policy and procedures manual or not.
Over the recent summer and into the fall, we have watched the presidential campaign kick into high gear. We have witnessed several candidates stake out positions of support for:
- Cutting funding to public schools;
- Linking educator pay to student test scores;
- Expanding private school vouchers;
- Weakening collective bargaining rights; and
- Testing kids even more than we do now.
Some candidates even want to go so far as to get rid of the U.S. Department of Education!
The subtext here is supposed to be, "But the GOP is really, really worse," I suppose, and I cannot begin to tell you how thoroughly deeply completely utterly sick I am of having my union leadership tell me, "Well, we have to support the guy who will cut off our legs, because the other guy will cut off our legs and arms both." I have had this argument with your predecessors, because this is a stupid, self-defeating line of reasoning, and we have suffered decades of misery because of it. The appropriate response to two candidates who each want to hurt us severely is to support NONE of them.
But your list is particularly galling because some of the things listed here are much-beloved by Hillary Clinton. She is a long-time fan of vouchers and privatizing schools through charters. The Center for American Progress has close ties to the Clinton campaign (John Podesta, previous CAP head and current Clinton campaign chief is just one example), and CAP has pushed for charters, high stakes testing, Common Core, and teacher evaluations tied to testing.
Faced with these grim realities, the NEA board chose to support a candidate who can win this election and will be a champion for our schools, our students, and our professions.
Yes, ultimately, this is about NEA leadership's belief in Clinton's ability to win-- at least, if she's not too bloodied by Sanders. But for the love of God-- if there is a credible reason to believe that Clinton will be a champion for any of those things, you had better share it with us, because I'll be damned if I've seen it.
Look-- beyond individual candidates, PSEA and NEA need to take a good hard look at their relationship with the Democratic party. In Pennsylvania, Ed Rendell was a disaster for public education, and nationally, the Obama-Duncan administration has been the most destructive ever. Like good little soldiers, we teachers keep sending our support, and our elected Democratic politicians keep stabbing us in the back. I'm pretty sure I'm not the only teacher who's had enough, and now I see us pushing a Clinton Presidency, which for education looks like more Obama Presidency, which simply doubled down on the worst policy choices of the Bush Presidency.
Other states found the backbone to stand up to the national union on this. It would have been heartening to see Pennsylvania do the same. Instead, once again, here comes the union leadership with carefully crafted spin and PR designed to manage the members and get them to fall into line. Honestly, I suppose I'll stew over quitting the union for a while and ultimately not do it, for a variety of unrelated reasons. But it's a union affiliation that am now ashamed of. This was a bad choice, divisive and destructive of NEA bargaining strength and dismissive of members at a time when we really don't need to be ignored by one more national organization, as well as supportive of a politician who we have no reason to believe will have our backs, ever. All the more ironic when NEA leadership has admitted that another candidate is much more in tune with our concerns.
PSEA has been trying to address the questions of 1) how to get more young teachers into the union and 2) how to get better PACE participation. Pretty sure this will not help. "Hey, young teacher, please join PSEA. We would love to have your dues, and we will be happy to tell you what you think." Not a winner. Also, "Give us money to support politicians who will only stomp on you a little," is not a great sales pitch.
This was a bad call, and your attempt to justify it only made it sting worse. Feel free to contact me with any information that would help me better understand. In the meantime, I'm just going to continue being pissed off.
Sincerely,
Peter Greene
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