In Iowa, Clinton displayed a lack of-- well, something. Math comprehension? Education reform understanding? Thinking things through?
She wouldn't keep any school open that wasn't doing above average. So... close half the schools? Of course, once you close half the schools, then the average will have to be recalculated, and then you'll have to close half of those schools. And so on until there is only one school left. Or maybe we close parts of that school. I am suddenly remembering the many hats of Bartholomew Cubbins and imagining a Seussian school at which a sky-reaching stack of students are seated at a single desk.
But maybe what she means is close half the schools and replace them with charters, which means we'll close a new half of the schools every year. Will we allow students to move around? Will low-scoring students become educational hot potatoes, thrown off by schools who don't want to fall in the bottom half.
It will be frustrating of course-- half of the schools (a few more, actually) will always be average or lower, so every year we will close half the schools and every year we will have to farm out the students and put together new schools in time for the fall.
Maybe she just missed the decimal point. After all, this is exactly the plan favored by the current administration and various versions of state-controlled Achievement School Districts-- only those folks only talk about the bottom 5% instead of the bottom 50%.
And this is not a small picky thing. Setting an "average" level for schools is awesomely difficult. What does that even look like? How do you even calculate such a thing?
And if such a thing can be calculated, is that really your policy response-- not fix it or analyze the issues or look at contributing factors or anything else except just "close it." That's what HRC has in mind for schools in America-- just close the ones that don't measure up to whatever imaginary measure someone cobbles together??
Maybe this is just thoughtless from-the-hip rhetoric from one more politician who finds it easy to crack wise about education without thinking about what it the policy choice would mean in the real world for real students. Or maybe this is a signal to charter fans that they can stop freaking out over Clinton's supposed apostasy.
Whatever the case, it is certainly proof once again (as if any were needed) that Clinton is no friend of public education.
Tuesday, December 22, 2015
Lamar Alexander: Privatization, Cronyism, and the Big Bucks
The rich are not like you and me. In fact, many of the rich get rich through avenues not remotely available to you or me. Would you like to see how it works?
Let's take a look at Lamar Alexander.
These days Alexander is the reasonably amiable, semi-avuncular senator currently known for helping to whip up our newest version of the ESEA. But once upon a time, Alexander was an up-and-comer with White House dreams. That kind of career sparked some big-league attention, most notably captured in an article by Doug Ireland that ran in the April 17, 1995 issue of The Nation. "The Rich Rise of Lamar Alexander" is available online only through The Nation's subscriber archives (though the bulk of the content is repeated here).
Ireland's opening gives you an idea of where this was headed:
If repeated White House leaks suggesting that Bill Clinton views Lamar Alexander as his toughest potential Republican opponent next year are true, it may be because it takes on to know one. The two ex-governors are both masters of the Permanent Campaign.
Ireland suggests that as a lifelong political insider, Alexander "is even less encumbered by principles than the man whose job he covets." Alexander is repeatedly characterized as a man whose political leanings are less stable than a sapling in a hurricane. He has often remade himself to suit the campaign he was running. He has made many friends. And Ireland gave him credit for excelling in one other area.
And in one respect he has clearly surpassed Clinton: Alexander has shamelessly used his political connections to make himself a wealthy man.
It would seem that Alexander has become a millionaire either through brilliant investments, incredible luck, or generous connections. Ireland reports that when Alexander was first elected governor of Tennessee, he was worth $151,000. When George Bush appointed him Secretary of Education, he was worth somewhere between $1.5 and $3 million. More recently he has remained among the wealthiest of senators, with a net worth as high as $28 million (2004). He took a huge dip in 2012, but in 2014 he was back up to $13 million.
What sorts of genius deals has he made? Well.
In 1981, Governor Alexander got in on a deal to buy the Knoxville Journal. He swapped his stock for some Gannett stock, and sold that stock for $620,000.
In 1987, he took time off from politics to go to Australia and write a book-- Six Months Off. The Wall Street Journal gave him a $45K advance, and he wrote off $123K as a tax deduction (he also sold the movie rights). And he was on the payroll of Belmont College in Nashville, which had hired him to create a leadership institute.
But Alexander's greatest gains have come from privatization of two public sectors-- education, and prisons.
Education and Big Bucks
Alexander scored big with an investment in Corporate Child Care, Incorporated in 1987. Alexander often liked to campaign as a co-founder of the company, but that co-founding didn't seem to involve doing any work there. But in about five years, Alexander's $5K turned into $800K. Ka-ching. A biography of Alexander's wife Honey (she'll be turning up again) calls the couple "co-founders" along with Bob Keeshan (yes, that Bob Keeshan). CCCI was launched with a $2 million investment from Massey Birch, a venture capital firm whose head, Jack Massey, we shall also meet again. Actually, we've already met him-- that leadership institute Alexander was setting up was for Belmont's Massey School of Business, named after Jack Massey.
Ireland quotes a former CEO of the company saying that Alexander was instrumental as a money-raiser, but not so much daily hands on. CCCI appears at some point to have disappeared into Bright Horizons Family Solutions.
Alexander also logged some time as "CEO" of the University of Tennessee, where by many accounts he was something of an absentee president. It paid a nice six figures, though at the same time he was making about the same money from various corporate board of director's stipends. Ka-ching.
Alexander's other big education venture was Whittle Communications. By 1995, Chris Whittle had already built and destroyed the proto-privatization empire in education. He had launched Edison, a pioneering for-profit education adventure, along with Channel One, a plan to put a television in every classroom thereby giving advertisers access to every set of school student eyeballs. But in 1994 he was trying to explain why he wasn't a huckster, and Business Week was writing his professional obituary. (That turned out to be premature-- Whittle had a few more second acts in him).
In the eighties, Alexander worked as a consultant for Whittle and that earned him the right to buy some stock. Which he did. In Honey's name. With a check for $10K that nobody cashed. Until after the company was sold and Whittle bought Honey's stock back for $330K. Ka-ching.
But we're not done yet. When Alexander was being confirmed as Secretary of Education, he promised to cut ties with Whittle, which he did. Then he sold his house in Knoxville to a top Whittle executive, who paid $977,500 for the house that Alexander had bought for $570,000 the year before. Ka-ching.
The Prison Biz
Alexander has gotten plenty of negative press for his ties to the for-profit prison business.
Around 1983, Corrections Corporation of America was founded by Tom Beasley, former Tennessee GOP chair and, according to Ireland, a guy who in college had rented an above-the-garage apartment from the Alexanders. Financing came by way of Jack Massey. Honey invested $8,900 in CCS in 1984. In 1985, Tennessee prisons were in a mess, and CCA had an idea. Tom Beasley declared that "the market is limitless" and proposed that CCA could "lock them up better, quicker, and for less."
Governor Alexander pushed for CCA to take over the entire Tennessee prison system, a ballsy move in 1985. But there was a conflict-of-interest problem, so Honey traded her $8,900 share to Jack Massey for 10,000 shares in South Life Corporation, a life insurance company. When Honey cashed that out in 1989, she was paid $142,000. Ka-ching. As for privatizing Tennessee prisons, that was a massive fail-- eventually the state had to take the prisons back-- but CCA continued to try to spread its influence. But the privatized prison move started some commenters worrying about the issues still before us thirty years later-- if profits become privatized and liabilities remain with the public, who gets screwed and who gets rich? And do you actually get the service you paid for?
CCA is still alive and kicking. Its history has been scrubbed of any reference to Alexander (Lamar or Honey), but on its board we find Charles Overby, a man who has his own intriguing history. On the CCA board since 2001, he also has a history as a Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist and head of the Newseum. He has worked for the Gannett chain, and more than a few people see a serious conflict between a journalist's devotion to the First Amendment and transparency versus the private prison industry's hard work to keep their operations hidden.
Oh, and Overby has held down another job-- special assistant for administration to Governor Lamar Alexander of Tennessee.
So what have we learned?
None of this is news. None of this is new. All of this is why some folks throw phrases at Alexander like "one of the biggest non-entities in the history of modern American politics" and write posts entitled "Why I hate Lamar Alexander Today."
This is the guy who helped bring us the New! Improved! ESEA. This is a guy who has made a career and a personal fortune out of privatizing public institution, and done it largely through his personal connections. And in all the reading I've done, I've to find someone accusing him of taking a hard stand on any issue as a matter of principle.
So if it seems as if the new education law is filled with opportunities for well-connected privatizers to get their hands on public education tax dollars-- well, it's not hard to see how Alexander might have been inclined to head in that direction. After all-- what's the point of getting involved in public service if you can't cash in?
And even if Lamar Alexander is a great guy, a wonderful father and husband, and a decent human being (and I don't know the guy from Adam, so hey-- he could be all those things) his career points to a world view that is both scruple-impaired and lacking in a sense of how public goods should be preserved and maintained for public benefit. If this is how he thinks the world works-- you call some friends, you make some deals, you look out for the Right People and they look out for you, and it's all cool if this gives you an inside lead on making some huge profits from nothing but your connections-- how can that worldview not infect the legislation that you create and support?
This is not about public service or responsibility. This is a guy who regularly ranks in the top 13-14 richest Senators who has no inherited fortune and no actual job, but who has gotten rich simply by being a well-connected politician, and by using those connections to push privatized solutions that erode necessary public institutions and make life worse for the people who depend on those institutions. This is about finding new ways the Right People with the Right Connections can cash in. Ka-ching. Not the sound we're looking for in public education or a US Senator.
Let's take a look at Lamar Alexander.
These days Alexander is the reasonably amiable, semi-avuncular senator currently known for helping to whip up our newest version of the ESEA. But once upon a time, Alexander was an up-and-comer with White House dreams. That kind of career sparked some big-league attention, most notably captured in an article by Doug Ireland that ran in the April 17, 1995 issue of The Nation. "The Rich Rise of Lamar Alexander" is available online only through The Nation's subscriber archives (though the bulk of the content is repeated here).
Ireland's opening gives you an idea of where this was headed:
If repeated White House leaks suggesting that Bill Clinton views Lamar Alexander as his toughest potential Republican opponent next year are true, it may be because it takes on to know one. The two ex-governors are both masters of the Permanent Campaign.
Ireland suggests that as a lifelong political insider, Alexander "is even less encumbered by principles than the man whose job he covets." Alexander is repeatedly characterized as a man whose political leanings are less stable than a sapling in a hurricane. He has often remade himself to suit the campaign he was running. He has made many friends. And Ireland gave him credit for excelling in one other area.
And in one respect he has clearly surpassed Clinton: Alexander has shamelessly used his political connections to make himself a wealthy man.
It would seem that Alexander has become a millionaire either through brilliant investments, incredible luck, or generous connections. Ireland reports that when Alexander was first elected governor of Tennessee, he was worth $151,000. When George Bush appointed him Secretary of Education, he was worth somewhere between $1.5 and $3 million. More recently he has remained among the wealthiest of senators, with a net worth as high as $28 million (2004). He took a huge dip in 2012, but in 2014 he was back up to $13 million.
What sorts of genius deals has he made? Well.
In 1981, Governor Alexander got in on a deal to buy the Knoxville Journal. He swapped his stock for some Gannett stock, and sold that stock for $620,000.
In 1987, he took time off from politics to go to Australia and write a book-- Six Months Off. The Wall Street Journal gave him a $45K advance, and he wrote off $123K as a tax deduction (he also sold the movie rights). And he was on the payroll of Belmont College in Nashville, which had hired him to create a leadership institute.
But Alexander's greatest gains have come from privatization of two public sectors-- education, and prisons.
Education and Big Bucks
Alexander scored big with an investment in Corporate Child Care, Incorporated in 1987. Alexander often liked to campaign as a co-founder of the company, but that co-founding didn't seem to involve doing any work there. But in about five years, Alexander's $5K turned into $800K. Ka-ching. A biography of Alexander's wife Honey (she'll be turning up again) calls the couple "co-founders" along with Bob Keeshan (yes, that Bob Keeshan). CCCI was launched with a $2 million investment from Massey Birch, a venture capital firm whose head, Jack Massey, we shall also meet again. Actually, we've already met him-- that leadership institute Alexander was setting up was for Belmont's Massey School of Business, named after Jack Massey.
Ireland quotes a former CEO of the company saying that Alexander was instrumental as a money-raiser, but not so much daily hands on. CCCI appears at some point to have disappeared into Bright Horizons Family Solutions.
Alexander also logged some time as "CEO" of the University of Tennessee, where by many accounts he was something of an absentee president. It paid a nice six figures, though at the same time he was making about the same money from various corporate board of director's stipends. Ka-ching.
Alexander's other big education venture was Whittle Communications. By 1995, Chris Whittle had already built and destroyed the proto-privatization empire in education. He had launched Edison, a pioneering for-profit education adventure, along with Channel One, a plan to put a television in every classroom thereby giving advertisers access to every set of school student eyeballs. But in 1994 he was trying to explain why he wasn't a huckster, and Business Week was writing his professional obituary. (That turned out to be premature-- Whittle had a few more second acts in him).
In the eighties, Alexander worked as a consultant for Whittle and that earned him the right to buy some stock. Which he did. In Honey's name. With a check for $10K that nobody cashed. Until after the company was sold and Whittle bought Honey's stock back for $330K. Ka-ching.
But we're not done yet. When Alexander was being confirmed as Secretary of Education, he promised to cut ties with Whittle, which he did. Then he sold his house in Knoxville to a top Whittle executive, who paid $977,500 for the house that Alexander had bought for $570,000 the year before. Ka-ching.
The Prison Biz
Alexander has gotten plenty of negative press for his ties to the for-profit prison business.
Around 1983, Corrections Corporation of America was founded by Tom Beasley, former Tennessee GOP chair and, according to Ireland, a guy who in college had rented an above-the-garage apartment from the Alexanders. Financing came by way of Jack Massey. Honey invested $8,900 in CCS in 1984. In 1985, Tennessee prisons were in a mess, and CCA had an idea. Tom Beasley declared that "the market is limitless" and proposed that CCA could "lock them up better, quicker, and for less."
Governor Alexander pushed for CCA to take over the entire Tennessee prison system, a ballsy move in 1985. But there was a conflict-of-interest problem, so Honey traded her $8,900 share to Jack Massey for 10,000 shares in South Life Corporation, a life insurance company. When Honey cashed that out in 1989, she was paid $142,000. Ka-ching. As for privatizing Tennessee prisons, that was a massive fail-- eventually the state had to take the prisons back-- but CCA continued to try to spread its influence. But the privatized prison move started some commenters worrying about the issues still before us thirty years later-- if profits become privatized and liabilities remain with the public, who gets screwed and who gets rich? And do you actually get the service you paid for?
CCA is still alive and kicking. Its history has been scrubbed of any reference to Alexander (Lamar or Honey), but on its board we find Charles Overby, a man who has his own intriguing history. On the CCA board since 2001, he also has a history as a Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist and head of the Newseum. He has worked for the Gannett chain, and more than a few people see a serious conflict between a journalist's devotion to the First Amendment and transparency versus the private prison industry's hard work to keep their operations hidden.
Oh, and Overby has held down another job-- special assistant for administration to Governor Lamar Alexander of Tennessee.
So what have we learned?
None of this is news. None of this is new. All of this is why some folks throw phrases at Alexander like "one of the biggest non-entities in the history of modern American politics" and write posts entitled "Why I hate Lamar Alexander Today."
This is the guy who helped bring us the New! Improved! ESEA. This is a guy who has made a career and a personal fortune out of privatizing public institution, and done it largely through his personal connections. And in all the reading I've done, I've to find someone accusing him of taking a hard stand on any issue as a matter of principle.
So if it seems as if the new education law is filled with opportunities for well-connected privatizers to get their hands on public education tax dollars-- well, it's not hard to see how Alexander might have been inclined to head in that direction. After all-- what's the point of getting involved in public service if you can't cash in?
And even if Lamar Alexander is a great guy, a wonderful father and husband, and a decent human being (and I don't know the guy from Adam, so hey-- he could be all those things) his career points to a world view that is both scruple-impaired and lacking in a sense of how public goods should be preserved and maintained for public benefit. If this is how he thinks the world works-- you call some friends, you make some deals, you look out for the Right People and they look out for you, and it's all cool if this gives you an inside lead on making some huge profits from nothing but your connections-- how can that worldview not infect the legislation that you create and support?
This is not about public service or responsibility. This is a guy who regularly ranks in the top 13-14 richest Senators who has no inherited fortune and no actual job, but who has gotten rich simply by being a well-connected politician, and by using those connections to push privatized solutions that erode necessary public institutions and make life worse for the people who depend on those institutions. This is about finding new ways the Right People with the Right Connections can cash in. Ka-ching. Not the sound we're looking for in public education or a US Senator.
CAP: More Silly CCSS PR Polling
In an era in which even Jeb Bush has stopped saying the name out loud, no group has cheered harder for the Common Core than the Center for American Progress (theoretically left-leaning holding pen for interregnum Clinton staffers). No argument is too dumb, no data set too ridiculous. If that dog won't hunt, CAP ties a rope around its neck and drags it.
So it's no surprise that CAP is back with yet another Pubic Policy Polling poll announced with the breathless headline "NEW POLL: WHEN NEW YORKERS SEE SPECIFIC COMMON CORE STANDARDS, THEY SUPPORT THE COMMON CORE." Partnering up on this raft of ridiculousness is High Achievement New York, a coalition of business groups like the Business Council of New York State and reformster groups like StudentsFirstNY.
The poll, found here in its entirety, is as fine an example of scrambled thinking used to fuel PR as you'll find anywhere. In the world of polling, there are two types of polls-- a poll that seeks to find out what people are really thinking, and a poll that tries to make it look like people are thinking what I want them to think. This would be the second type of poll.
There are twenty-two questions that cover basically three areas.
Math and ELA Standards
This is the basis for the headline, and it would make an excellent exercise in critical thinking for sixth graders. Here's the format. The pollster says, "I'm going to read you a list of possible language arts standards for 4th grade students, and then ask if you support or oppose students learning that standards." Then five specific goals are read, such as "Demonstrate command of the conventions of standard English capitalization, punctuation and spelling when writing." The math portion follows the same technique.
And it turns out that people support these particular standards! Huzzah! So they really DO support the Core! They like it. They really like it!
This is artful use of a forest-tree fallacy. If you like this standard, you must love Common Core. If you like this tree in your yard, you must want to live in the forest. If you like tigers, you must love zoos. If you love cheese, you must like anchovy and pineapple pizza. If you like bears, you must want a bearskin rug. If you like blonde hair on men, you must want to marry Donald Trump.
Testing and Implementation
Have you heard? The Big Standardized Test has become kind of an issue in New York State. The pollsters would like to ask some questions about improving the whole standards and BS Testing situation.
This gets us into a different type of baloney. For instance, the first questions asks if you support limiting BS Test time to no more than 1% of class time (incidentally, a whopping 27% of respondents opposed this). This of course is a question that mis-states the issue, which is that even a 1% limit does not address the hours and hours and hours and hours spent on test prep. So this is like asking, "Should this guy wear nicer shoes while he's beating you with a stick?"
Next the poll reflects what New York Education High Boss Elia thinks is part of the problem-- should school districts communicate to parents, teachers and students the purpose of the BS Test? Respondents thought this was a swell idea-- 82% supported this. CAP paints that as a plus, but to me it suggests that 82% of New Yorkers don't think it has happened yet! 82% of New Yorkers are not saying, "No, that's okay, I'm good," but are rather saying, "Yeah, they should communicate this because I still don't know why we're giving the damn things."
The actual answer is, "Because the feds say we have to," which is no answer at all. But the feds don't know why we're giving the BS Tests, and neither do state authorities. We can go back to the standard list of excuses (to compare and rank students and schools, to inform instruction, to let parents know how things are going, etc) but those are all bunk.
Then we go to a flat-out stupid question. We will now measure support for
Eliminate all tests in school
Stupid. Stoooooooooo- pid. Almost nobody has suggested this, and it doesn't have anything to do with the issue at hand. But it serves the reformster purpose to conflate all tests from all sources for all purposes as if they are all pretty much the same business. I'm sure this is partly by design, to help with smoke and mirrors and ground cover for reformster ideas. But it also smacks of the usual reformster amateurism-- they really don't understand education well enough to understand the distinctions between different tests from different sources for different purposes.
Should we ensure that tests are grade and age appropriate? 84% say yes. What if a student is operating below "grade level" or her chronological age level? Never mind. The BS Tests have never been made age and grade appropriate anyway. Should we use multiple measures for school performance? Sigh. Yeah, instead of drinking my poison straight, I'd like you to mix a few spoonfuls of sugar with it. That'll make it all okay.
Give teachers more meaningful input for "crafting a tailored curriculum that's aligned to high standards"? Did you say "more"? I think you meant "some," but sure.
Finally, do you support creating a regular process to update the Common Core standards? Now that's an interesting question, since CCSS has never, ever had such a process in place. Remember the old days, when states were only allowed to add up to 15% to the standards and weren't allowed to touch so much as Common Core comma? It's not clear how a review and revise process could work on a national level now that so few states admit to having the Core in place, and if every state does its own review and revise, then the various standard sets will go off in every which way. But since "Common Core" means so many things now that it doesn't really mean anything, sure, why not? Let's have a review and revise process.
That's All, Folks
The remaining questions are demographic. Oddly enough, 48% of respondents were Dems, while only 27% were GOP (remainder Independent). Make of that what you will. And only 32% of respondents were parents. There are more detailed breakdowns by sub-group responses, but what is there to learn about how these groups respond to dumb questions?
It is one more lame and half-baked attempt to generate positive PR for the least-beloved brand in public policy. We can only hope that this Big Not News will be largely ignored in New York and the rest of the country as well, to fade away quietly. CAP is the energizer bunny of bad education policy; I'm sure there will be more Not News soon enough.
So it's no surprise that CAP is back with yet another Pubic Policy Polling poll announced with the breathless headline "NEW POLL: WHEN NEW YORKERS SEE SPECIFIC COMMON CORE STANDARDS, THEY SUPPORT THE COMMON CORE." Partnering up on this raft of ridiculousness is High Achievement New York, a coalition of business groups like the Business Council of New York State and reformster groups like StudentsFirstNY.
The poll, found here in its entirety, is as fine an example of scrambled thinking used to fuel PR as you'll find anywhere. In the world of polling, there are two types of polls-- a poll that seeks to find out what people are really thinking, and a poll that tries to make it look like people are thinking what I want them to think. This would be the second type of poll.
There are twenty-two questions that cover basically three areas.
Math and ELA Standards
This is the basis for the headline, and it would make an excellent exercise in critical thinking for sixth graders. Here's the format. The pollster says, "I'm going to read you a list of possible language arts standards for 4th grade students, and then ask if you support or oppose students learning that standards." Then five specific goals are read, such as "Demonstrate command of the conventions of standard English capitalization, punctuation and spelling when writing." The math portion follows the same technique.
And it turns out that people support these particular standards! Huzzah! So they really DO support the Core! They like it. They really like it!
This is artful use of a forest-tree fallacy. If you like this standard, you must love Common Core. If you like this tree in your yard, you must want to live in the forest. If you like tigers, you must love zoos. If you love cheese, you must like anchovy and pineapple pizza. If you like bears, you must want a bearskin rug. If you like blonde hair on men, you must want to marry Donald Trump.
Testing and Implementation
Have you heard? The Big Standardized Test has become kind of an issue in New York State. The pollsters would like to ask some questions about improving the whole standards and BS Testing situation.
This gets us into a different type of baloney. For instance, the first questions asks if you support limiting BS Test time to no more than 1% of class time (incidentally, a whopping 27% of respondents opposed this). This of course is a question that mis-states the issue, which is that even a 1% limit does not address the hours and hours and hours and hours spent on test prep. So this is like asking, "Should this guy wear nicer shoes while he's beating you with a stick?"
Next the poll reflects what New York Education High Boss Elia thinks is part of the problem-- should school districts communicate to parents, teachers and students the purpose of the BS Test? Respondents thought this was a swell idea-- 82% supported this. CAP paints that as a plus, but to me it suggests that 82% of New Yorkers don't think it has happened yet! 82% of New Yorkers are not saying, "No, that's okay, I'm good," but are rather saying, "Yeah, they should communicate this because I still don't know why we're giving the damn things."
The actual answer is, "Because the feds say we have to," which is no answer at all. But the feds don't know why we're giving the BS Tests, and neither do state authorities. We can go back to the standard list of excuses (to compare and rank students and schools, to inform instruction, to let parents know how things are going, etc) but those are all bunk.
Then we go to a flat-out stupid question. We will now measure support for
Eliminate all tests in school
Stupid. Stoooooooooo- pid. Almost nobody has suggested this, and it doesn't have anything to do with the issue at hand. But it serves the reformster purpose to conflate all tests from all sources for all purposes as if they are all pretty much the same business. I'm sure this is partly by design, to help with smoke and mirrors and ground cover for reformster ideas. But it also smacks of the usual reformster amateurism-- they really don't understand education well enough to understand the distinctions between different tests from different sources for different purposes.
Should we ensure that tests are grade and age appropriate? 84% say yes. What if a student is operating below "grade level" or her chronological age level? Never mind. The BS Tests have never been made age and grade appropriate anyway. Should we use multiple measures for school performance? Sigh. Yeah, instead of drinking my poison straight, I'd like you to mix a few spoonfuls of sugar with it. That'll make it all okay.
Give teachers more meaningful input for "crafting a tailored curriculum that's aligned to high standards"? Did you say "more"? I think you meant "some," but sure.
Finally, do you support creating a regular process to update the Common Core standards? Now that's an interesting question, since CCSS has never, ever had such a process in place. Remember the old days, when states were only allowed to add up to 15% to the standards and weren't allowed to touch so much as Common Core comma? It's not clear how a review and revise process could work on a national level now that so few states admit to having the Core in place, and if every state does its own review and revise, then the various standard sets will go off in every which way. But since "Common Core" means so many things now that it doesn't really mean anything, sure, why not? Let's have a review and revise process.
That's All, Folks
The remaining questions are demographic. Oddly enough, 48% of respondents were Dems, while only 27% were GOP (remainder Independent). Make of that what you will. And only 32% of respondents were parents. There are more detailed breakdowns by sub-group responses, but what is there to learn about how these groups respond to dumb questions?
It is one more lame and half-baked attempt to generate positive PR for the least-beloved brand in public policy. We can only hope that this Big Not News will be largely ignored in New York and the rest of the country as well, to fade away quietly. CAP is the energizer bunny of bad education policy; I'm sure there will be more Not News soon enough.
Monday, December 21, 2015
Free Market Bad for Students with Disabilities
Disabilities Studies Quarterly, a peer-reviewed quarterly journal, published a paper back in 2012 that makes some sobering points about how a free market approach to schools works out (or not) for students with disabilities. In fact, it has a few sobering things about how free market schools treat all students.
"The Effects of Market-based School Reform on Students with Disabilities" was authored by Curt Dudley-Marling and Diana Baker at Boston College.
It begins with a history of the intersections between neo-liberalism, free market theory, and education. It's a handy primer, all fully sourced and pretty interesting. But the meat of the paper is the question of how various free market approaches work (or don't ) for students with disabilities. It's worth remembering that we're back in 2012-- but the conclusions here are still worth noticing.
Vouchers
There's not a lot of data available about the effects of vouchers on students with disabilities, but the available data is not exactly encouraging. The authors cite a study from 2011 that shows while Milwaukee has a SWD population of about 20%. However, SWD were only 1.6% of the voucher population. That seems to have been typical.
Charter Schools
The charter school system creates a new dynamic between students and schools-- specifically, it create a new role for students, and the writers of this paper explain it as well as anyone I've ever read.
...however they are structured, charter schools must produce acceptable test scores or risk the revocation of their charters (Swanson, 2004). In this context, students are transformed into "commodities" (Apple, 2000; Hursh, 2007a; Wills, 2006) who bring more or less value to charter schools. Students with high test scores enhance the reputation and, hence, the marketability of charter schools. Students who do not score well on tests threaten charters' competitiveness—and, ultimately, their survival.
Students' value is also determined by their impact on school budgets. For-profit charters, for example, seek to turn a profit; therefore, students who cost more to educate have less value than students who require fewer resources. Even in the case of charters managed by nonprofits, costly-to-educate students will have a disproportionate impact on fixed budgets. Students deemed to be disruptive will be valued least of all in such a system because these students both cost more to educate and interfere with the education (i.e., test scores) of other students. In a system where the survival of schools—and the jobs of teachers—depend on ever higher test scores, students with low scores or, worse, students who threaten the scores of other students by consuming a disproportionate share of scarce resources, including teacher attention, will be unwelcome.
Emphasis mine. And it doesn't take deep insight to see that this commodification of students has implications beyond simply the treatment of students with special needs.
The report follows up with study after study after study providing examples of how this plays up. I note in particular that it takes us back to the days when New Orleans was only largely charter, and the success of that charter sector was used to sell the idea of expansion-- even though studies showed that charters were avoiding low-value students and posting suspension rates through the roof. Boston, Texas, Chicago- the list just rolls on and on. The study also documents some of the practices such as counseling SWD out or discontinuing IEPs for students who needed them.
One can certainly argue that in the three years since the study, charters have totally cleaned up their acts, but this seems unlikely, and it tells us just how much the charters has grown without developing any plan for teaching more "costly" students other than "make them go away somehow." In other words, charters who want to deny their past better be prepared to explain what they've learned about operating differently in the last three years. They should also be prepared for folks to look dubiously upon them, since they were telling us for years that they totally had a handle on this and it turns out that perhaps they were a bit truth-impaired when they made those claims-- so how would we know that they're telling the truth this time?
Testing and Accountability
The study suggests that the standardization pushed by NCLB and its successor programs launched one-size-fits-all tests, which tend to drive one-size-fits-all curriculum, which is exactly the wrong thing for students with special needs.
The testing and accountability mandates of NCLB "define education as a commodity whose production can be quantified, standardized, and prescribed" (Lipman, 2007, p. 46).
And also this
This move toward standardization and one-size-fits-all curricula is potentially devastating for students with disabilities. Standardized curricula provide little space for teachers to make the necessary adaptations to address the specific needs of students with disabilities (Harvey-Koelpin, 2006)—as well as any student positioned outside the mythical norm (Dudley-Marling & Gurn, 2010). And when students with disabilities fail to achieve in the context of standardized curriculum, standardized assessment, and standardized instruction—all targeted to putatively "normal" students—failure is situated in the minds and bodies of students rather than in the schooling practices that produced failure in the first place (Dudley-Marling, 2004).
Yes yes yes. When we start with the assumption that our educational plan and program is perfect, and then a student fails to achieve, we can only conclude that the student is "defective."
Stating the Obvious
While the paper makes the point that free market schools (particularly as tied to the policies of two administrations) are bad for students with disabilities, it is clearly also true for students who don't have any kind of special label or diagnosis.
This paper may be a few years aged, but it lays out in clear language and supporting citations just how the reformster program creates a toxic dynamic in schools while creating an upside-down world in which students exist to serve the needs of the school-- and those who cannot serve the school well must be rejected. It's amazing the degree to which the last three years have gotten us used to this unhealthy mess; a quick trip in the wayback machine can remind us why the reformy mess must be cleaned up.
"The Effects of Market-based School Reform on Students with Disabilities" was authored by Curt Dudley-Marling and Diana Baker at Boston College.
It begins with a history of the intersections between neo-liberalism, free market theory, and education. It's a handy primer, all fully sourced and pretty interesting. But the meat of the paper is the question of how various free market approaches work (or don't ) for students with disabilities. It's worth remembering that we're back in 2012-- but the conclusions here are still worth noticing.
Vouchers
There's not a lot of data available about the effects of vouchers on students with disabilities, but the available data is not exactly encouraging. The authors cite a study from 2011 that shows while Milwaukee has a SWD population of about 20%. However, SWD were only 1.6% of the voucher population. That seems to have been typical.
Charter Schools
The charter school system creates a new dynamic between students and schools-- specifically, it create a new role for students, and the writers of this paper explain it as well as anyone I've ever read.
...however they are structured, charter schools must produce acceptable test scores or risk the revocation of their charters (Swanson, 2004). In this context, students are transformed into "commodities" (Apple, 2000; Hursh, 2007a; Wills, 2006) who bring more or less value to charter schools. Students with high test scores enhance the reputation and, hence, the marketability of charter schools. Students who do not score well on tests threaten charters' competitiveness—and, ultimately, their survival.
Students' value is also determined by their impact on school budgets. For-profit charters, for example, seek to turn a profit; therefore, students who cost more to educate have less value than students who require fewer resources. Even in the case of charters managed by nonprofits, costly-to-educate students will have a disproportionate impact on fixed budgets. Students deemed to be disruptive will be valued least of all in such a system because these students both cost more to educate and interfere with the education (i.e., test scores) of other students. In a system where the survival of schools—and the jobs of teachers—depend on ever higher test scores, students with low scores or, worse, students who threaten the scores of other students by consuming a disproportionate share of scarce resources, including teacher attention, will be unwelcome.
Emphasis mine. And it doesn't take deep insight to see that this commodification of students has implications beyond simply the treatment of students with special needs.
The report follows up with study after study after study providing examples of how this plays up. I note in particular that it takes us back to the days when New Orleans was only largely charter, and the success of that charter sector was used to sell the idea of expansion-- even though studies showed that charters were avoiding low-value students and posting suspension rates through the roof. Boston, Texas, Chicago- the list just rolls on and on. The study also documents some of the practices such as counseling SWD out or discontinuing IEPs for students who needed them.
One can certainly argue that in the three years since the study, charters have totally cleaned up their acts, but this seems unlikely, and it tells us just how much the charters has grown without developing any plan for teaching more "costly" students other than "make them go away somehow." In other words, charters who want to deny their past better be prepared to explain what they've learned about operating differently in the last three years. They should also be prepared for folks to look dubiously upon them, since they were telling us for years that they totally had a handle on this and it turns out that perhaps they were a bit truth-impaired when they made those claims-- so how would we know that they're telling the truth this time?
Testing and Accountability
The study suggests that the standardization pushed by NCLB and its successor programs launched one-size-fits-all tests, which tend to drive one-size-fits-all curriculum, which is exactly the wrong thing for students with special needs.
The testing and accountability mandates of NCLB "define education as a commodity whose production can be quantified, standardized, and prescribed" (Lipman, 2007, p. 46).
And also this
This move toward standardization and one-size-fits-all curricula is potentially devastating for students with disabilities. Standardized curricula provide little space for teachers to make the necessary adaptations to address the specific needs of students with disabilities (Harvey-Koelpin, 2006)—as well as any student positioned outside the mythical norm (Dudley-Marling & Gurn, 2010). And when students with disabilities fail to achieve in the context of standardized curriculum, standardized assessment, and standardized instruction—all targeted to putatively "normal" students—failure is situated in the minds and bodies of students rather than in the schooling practices that produced failure in the first place (Dudley-Marling, 2004).
Yes yes yes. When we start with the assumption that our educational plan and program is perfect, and then a student fails to achieve, we can only conclude that the student is "defective."
Stating the Obvious
While the paper makes the point that free market schools (particularly as tied to the policies of two administrations) are bad for students with disabilities, it is clearly also true for students who don't have any kind of special label or diagnosis.
This paper may be a few years aged, but it lays out in clear language and supporting citations just how the reformster program creates a toxic dynamic in schools while creating an upside-down world in which students exist to serve the needs of the school-- and those who cannot serve the school well must be rejected. It's amazing the degree to which the last three years have gotten us used to this unhealthy mess; a quick trip in the wayback machine can remind us why the reformy mess must be cleaned up.
Coleman to Catholics: Never Mind Common Core
In an exclusive interview with Catholic Education Daily, David Colman, architect of Common Core and head honcho at the College Board, offered some of the same old same old. But he also told Catholic schools that they could just nevermind the Common Core.
Do Catholics not love the Core?
Writer Adam Cassandra has put together a good overview of the odd and sometimes-difficult relationship between the Catholic school system and the Common Core-- or at least the Core's co-creator.
The Catholic system has been fairly direct about its resistance to the core, including a whole Catholic Is Our Core campaign. Their objections are familiar to the umpty-gazillion educators, parents and people on the street who have objections to the Common Core. For instance, Dr. Dan Guernsey and Dr. Denise Donohue of the Newman Society wrote a report last May called “Disconnect between Common Core’s Literary Approach and Catholic Education’s Pursuit of Truth.” That included this Fairly Excellent Quote:
In Catholic schools, we know we are not just producing workers and scholars, we are producing living, breathing, complex, contradictory, eternally destined, unrepeatable and immensely valuable human beings.
This is not new. Back in 2013, 130 prominent Catholic scholars signed a letter to all bishops, and it was not laudatory. As Valerie Strauss reported at the time:
It blasts the standards, saying they are “contrary to tradition and academic studies on reading and human formation,” and accuses Core proponents of seeking to “transform ‘literacy’ into a ‘critical’ skill set, at the expense of sustained and heartfelt encounters with great works of literature.”
The letter also used phrases such as "contrary to traditions and academic studies on reading and human formation" and "a recipe for standardized workforce preparation."
The Cardinal Newman society also published "10 Facts Every Catholic Should Know about the Common Core" which includes items such as "The Common Core is rushed, untested and experimental" and "The Common Core is (ultimately) about textbooks and curriculum."
The focus and concern seem to be on the Core as an agent of destruction against the liberal arts, which are a big deal for Catholics. Personally, I am not a huge Catholic school fan for a whole host of reasons, but this Guernsey quote in Cassandra's article is kind of awesome:
“We don’t open Catholic schools to get kids into college. We open Catholic schools to get them into heaven,” he said.
So what does David Coleman, who has mocked, dismissed and generally pooh-poohed people who object to the Core as being too narrow, inappropriately written, and poorly considered-- what does David Coleman have to say to these Catholics who are expressing the same concerns.
No Core? No Biggie!
Coleman has no mockery, dismissal, or poohing of the Catholic pooh.
First of all, it turns out that you don't actually really need Common Core after all.
“As president of The College Board it is my conviction that a child excellently trained in traditional liberal arts will do superbly on relevant sections of the SAT and other aspects of Advanced Placement work, ”Coleman said. “Rest assured.”
Well. This would be the same David Coleman who announced his intention to bring the SAT in line with the Common Core. So if you can do "superbly" on the SAT with a liberal arts education, and the SAT is aligned with the Common Core, the by the Transitive Property of Reformy Baloney, the Common Core are pretty much the same thing as a liberal arts education. And I'm pretty sure that nobody-- not even David Coleman nor Bill Gates-- has tried to make that argument. So somewhere in that little logic puzzle is something that is Not So.
It's in the Colemanian weasel words, as usual. The liberal arts will help you with "do superbly on relevant sections of the SAT..." says Coleman, which is kind of like handing a life jacket to a person about to cross the Sahara Desert on foot and saying, "Take this. It will help you in all the places where you have to swim across a lake."
But Cassandra has even more reality-impaired quotes from Coleman.
“The vulgar implementation of anything can have a reductive and destructive effect,” said Coleman. “My desire to celebrate, and name and specify some of the beauties and distinctive values of a religious education are precisely to avoid a leveling quality where you forget that there are special gifts that can be lost without attention.”
I would like "the vulgar implementation of anything can have a reductive and destructive effect" on a t-shirt. It is certainly the most elegant version ever of "the standards are awesome, but the implementation was botched" that I've ever seen. But Coleman can peg the needle on the baloney-meter even higher, as with this statement:
I just want to tell you how emphatically I’m trying to agree with your premise, which is a stultifying sameness is not the intention here.
Got that? Coleman's work-- his idea about what an educated person should be and his work to impose that vision on every public school student in America, both through Common Core and an SAT redesign-- that's not aimed at imposing a one-size-fits-all standard at all. Which is either a spectacularly bald-faced lie, or proof that Coleman doesn't understand what he's done at all. Pick whichever one you judge more likely from a guy who studied at Oxford.
This expressed love for religious schooling is not new for Coleman. Cassandra points us at a 2014 piece in the National Review in which Coleman sticks up for evangelical Christian Wheaton College, implying in his conclusion that religious schools, with their careful reading and quiet contemplation, do a better job of educating students than "secular colleges." (Actually, what he literally suggests is that the religious school students would write better papers).
Has David "Nobody gives a shit what you think or feel" Coleman acquired a soft spot for religion, or does he just need to keep doing his marketing for the Core and the New! Improved! SAT. Whatever the case, the National Catholic Education Association has asked Coleman to deliver the keynote address at its annual convention next March (you will be unsurprised to note that NCEA got a big Gates Core-implementation grant in 2013).
In the meantime, Coleman wants the rest of us in public schools to note that are paths to excellence beyond the Core, somehow.
I consider these remarks I’m making about the distinctive and potentially widely valuable benefits of religious training and religious education are less a challenge, frankly, towards religious schools than a challenge to all other schools — that they have much to learn from things that I think the best of religious schools do very well today.
Amen, Brother Coleman. Amen.
Do Catholics not love the Core?
Writer Adam Cassandra has put together a good overview of the odd and sometimes-difficult relationship between the Catholic school system and the Common Core-- or at least the Core's co-creator.
The Catholic system has been fairly direct about its resistance to the core, including a whole Catholic Is Our Core campaign. Their objections are familiar to the umpty-gazillion educators, parents and people on the street who have objections to the Common Core. For instance, Dr. Dan Guernsey and Dr. Denise Donohue of the Newman Society wrote a report last May called “Disconnect between Common Core’s Literary Approach and Catholic Education’s Pursuit of Truth.” That included this Fairly Excellent Quote:
In Catholic schools, we know we are not just producing workers and scholars, we are producing living, breathing, complex, contradictory, eternally destined, unrepeatable and immensely valuable human beings.
This is not new. Back in 2013, 130 prominent Catholic scholars signed a letter to all bishops, and it was not laudatory. As Valerie Strauss reported at the time:
It blasts the standards, saying they are “contrary to tradition and academic studies on reading and human formation,” and accuses Core proponents of seeking to “transform ‘literacy’ into a ‘critical’ skill set, at the expense of sustained and heartfelt encounters with great works of literature.”
The letter also used phrases such as "contrary to traditions and academic studies on reading and human formation" and "a recipe for standardized workforce preparation."
The Cardinal Newman society also published "10 Facts Every Catholic Should Know about the Common Core" which includes items such as "The Common Core is rushed, untested and experimental" and "The Common Core is (ultimately) about textbooks and curriculum."
The focus and concern seem to be on the Core as an agent of destruction against the liberal arts, which are a big deal for Catholics. Personally, I am not a huge Catholic school fan for a whole host of reasons, but this Guernsey quote in Cassandra's article is kind of awesome:
“We don’t open Catholic schools to get kids into college. We open Catholic schools to get them into heaven,” he said.
So what does David Coleman, who has mocked, dismissed and generally pooh-poohed people who object to the Core as being too narrow, inappropriately written, and poorly considered-- what does David Coleman have to say to these Catholics who are expressing the same concerns.
No Core? No Biggie!
Coleman has no mockery, dismissal, or poohing of the Catholic pooh.
First of all, it turns out that you don't actually really need Common Core after all.
“As president of The College Board it is my conviction that a child excellently trained in traditional liberal arts will do superbly on relevant sections of the SAT and other aspects of Advanced Placement work, ”Coleman said. “Rest assured.”
Well. This would be the same David Coleman who announced his intention to bring the SAT in line with the Common Core. So if you can do "superbly" on the SAT with a liberal arts education, and the SAT is aligned with the Common Core, the by the Transitive Property of Reformy Baloney, the Common Core are pretty much the same thing as a liberal arts education. And I'm pretty sure that nobody-- not even David Coleman nor Bill Gates-- has tried to make that argument. So somewhere in that little logic puzzle is something that is Not So.
It's in the Colemanian weasel words, as usual. The liberal arts will help you with "do superbly on relevant sections of the SAT..." says Coleman, which is kind of like handing a life jacket to a person about to cross the Sahara Desert on foot and saying, "Take this. It will help you in all the places where you have to swim across a lake."
But Cassandra has even more reality-impaired quotes from Coleman.
“The vulgar implementation of anything can have a reductive and destructive effect,” said Coleman. “My desire to celebrate, and name and specify some of the beauties and distinctive values of a religious education are precisely to avoid a leveling quality where you forget that there are special gifts that can be lost without attention.”
I would like "the vulgar implementation of anything can have a reductive and destructive effect" on a t-shirt. It is certainly the most elegant version ever of "the standards are awesome, but the implementation was botched" that I've ever seen. But Coleman can peg the needle on the baloney-meter even higher, as with this statement:
I just want to tell you how emphatically I’m trying to agree with your premise, which is a stultifying sameness is not the intention here.
Got that? Coleman's work-- his idea about what an educated person should be and his work to impose that vision on every public school student in America, both through Common Core and an SAT redesign-- that's not aimed at imposing a one-size-fits-all standard at all. Which is either a spectacularly bald-faced lie, or proof that Coleman doesn't understand what he's done at all. Pick whichever one you judge more likely from a guy who studied at Oxford.
This expressed love for religious schooling is not new for Coleman. Cassandra points us at a 2014 piece in the National Review in which Coleman sticks up for evangelical Christian Wheaton College, implying in his conclusion that religious schools, with their careful reading and quiet contemplation, do a better job of educating students than "secular colleges." (Actually, what he literally suggests is that the religious school students would write better papers).
Has David "Nobody gives a shit what you think or feel" Coleman acquired a soft spot for religion, or does he just need to keep doing his marketing for the Core and the New! Improved! SAT. Whatever the case, the National Catholic Education Association has asked Coleman to deliver the keynote address at its annual convention next March (you will be unsurprised to note that NCEA got a big Gates Core-implementation grant in 2013).
In the meantime, Coleman wants the rest of us in public schools to note that are paths to excellence beyond the Core, somehow.
I consider these remarks I’m making about the distinctive and potentially widely valuable benefits of religious training and religious education are less a challenge, frankly, towards religious schools than a challenge to all other schools — that they have much to learn from things that I think the best of religious schools do very well today.
Amen, Brother Coleman. Amen.
Sunday, December 20, 2015
ICYMI: December 20
This week was a full assortment of rehearsals for a local performance of The Messiah, and this weekend is the first time my entire family has gathered in one place for a long time, so if I've seemed a little distant and busy, dear reader, that's why. But I do have a whole stack of things for you to check out today while my family is opening presents and we're singing the Messiah matinee.
The New Preschool Is Crushing Kids
The genre of "here's how ugly and awful early childhood ed has become under the test-and-punish era of education" articles is crowded, but everybody needs to be reminded that this is happening and that it sucks. They need to be reminded repeatedly until we put an end to it. Here's one more stark and painful example.
For Profit Charter Schools Are Fading and Failing
Jessica Huseman misses a few of the finer points (particularly the ways in which non-profits mirror for-profits), but on balance this is a good analysis of why the For Profit charter industry is turning out to be (surprise) a failed experiment.
Worst and Dumbest: The Sequel
Florida's remarkably idiotic plan to give teachers a bonus for their high school SAT scores is back-- and this time it wants to be permanent. A good study in how a bill that nobody thinks is smart can still end up becoming a law.
Stand for Children Louisiana Is an Evil and Malicious Corporate Front Group for Evil People and Organizations
Crazy Crawfish tells us what he really thinks. Because while some reformsters are folks with a different perspective or different understandings of how schools can best serve students, some are just scruples-free rotters trying to get their hands on money and power.
Ethical ELA
I'm always amazed how, no matter how much I've read and explored, there are still chunks of the interwebs that I've never stumbled into. This is an entire website dedicated to discussing issues of how to ethically teach all the various aspects of language. Worth a look.
This week the Edublog Awards were unveiled and this post of mine about music won an award for being one of the most influential posts of the year. Like most of these sorts of awardy things, it's a nice selection of sites and posts with which you may not be familiar. In particular I was struck by this post:
What Being Gay Has Taught Me About White Privilege
You may or may not agree with everything that the blogger at Crawling out of the Classroom has to say, but her level of honesty and openness is impressive.
Creativity Is the Key to Happiness
If you're not familiar with the concept of "flow," this is a simple and accessible look at it and the idea that creativity is the key to a happy life.
The New Preschool Is Crushing Kids
The genre of "here's how ugly and awful early childhood ed has become under the test-and-punish era of education" articles is crowded, but everybody needs to be reminded that this is happening and that it sucks. They need to be reminded repeatedly until we put an end to it. Here's one more stark and painful example.
For Profit Charter Schools Are Fading and Failing
Jessica Huseman misses a few of the finer points (particularly the ways in which non-profits mirror for-profits), but on balance this is a good analysis of why the For Profit charter industry is turning out to be (surprise) a failed experiment.
Worst and Dumbest: The Sequel
Florida's remarkably idiotic plan to give teachers a bonus for their high school SAT scores is back-- and this time it wants to be permanent. A good study in how a bill that nobody thinks is smart can still end up becoming a law.
Stand for Children Louisiana Is an Evil and Malicious Corporate Front Group for Evil People and Organizations
Crazy Crawfish tells us what he really thinks. Because while some reformsters are folks with a different perspective or different understandings of how schools can best serve students, some are just scruples-free rotters trying to get their hands on money and power.
Ethical ELA
I'm always amazed how, no matter how much I've read and explored, there are still chunks of the interwebs that I've never stumbled into. This is an entire website dedicated to discussing issues of how to ethically teach all the various aspects of language. Worth a look.
This week the Edublog Awards were unveiled and this post of mine about music won an award for being one of the most influential posts of the year. Like most of these sorts of awardy things, it's a nice selection of sites and posts with which you may not be familiar. In particular I was struck by this post:
What Being Gay Has Taught Me About White Privilege
You may or may not agree with everything that the blogger at Crawling out of the Classroom has to say, but her level of honesty and openness is impressive.
Creativity Is the Key to Happiness
If you're not familiar with the concept of "flow," this is a simple and accessible look at it and the idea that creativity is the key to a happy life.
Saturday, December 19, 2015
Avoid the SAT
This story has been circulating pretty steadily, but if you teach juniors (or have one in your home) you need to be paying attention, because all indications are that when the new SAT rolls out in a few months, high school juniors should avoid it
The most recent sign that the College Board doesn't really know what the heck they're doing is the announcement that PSAT scores will not be out till January, a good month later than the usual unveiling. And really, we have only the College Board's assurance that they will meet the new January due date-- just as we had their assurance that scores would be out in December.
The PSAT score return is critical because it's the first chance for juniors to see how they line up with the upcoming New! Improved! SAT. Now they'll be waiting for that.
This is not the first we've heard that the New! Improved! SAT should be avoided like a bad haircut.
Way back in April, Dan Edmonds (Noodle) was in Forbes giving three reasons to avoid the revamped SAT. His reasons were
1) Lack of test prep options. Nobody has had a chance to get prepped and ready to get students prepped and ready.
2) Late results. College Board has said they won't release March test results until after the May tests. This may make sense from a "let's see what we've got here" test-norming standpoint, but still-- late is late.
3) The New! Improved! SAT is trying to look like the ACT. If you're going to take a test like the ACT, why not take the ACT?
Test prep experts have been speaking out against taking that New! Improved! SAT. Back in March, Adam Ingersoll of the Compass Group was encouraging students not to be guinea pigs for the College Board. At the same time, that advice was being echoed by Anthony Green, one of the top test prep gurus in the US, who said he's advising all of his clients to skip the new test.
"I'm recommending that none of my students take the first three rounds of the new SAT (March, May, and June of 2016)," Green said. "Why let students be guinea pigs for the College Board's marketing machine?"
Tell us what you really think, Anthony.
The "new SAT" is basically a poorly disguised marketing gimmick that's trying to:
A) Make the SAT much more like the ACT. If you look at the changes being made, you'll find that all of them are an attempt to make the test's format and material more similar to the ACT.
B) Get rid of the essay (it's now optional) and bring the grading scale back to the old, familiar 1600 that everyone knows and loves (or hates). In essence, they're admitting that the current version of the test was a mistake.
C) Attempt to make people forget that this test is an inherently unfair mechanism designed to gauge student income levels
Are test prep specialists just pissed that David Coleman's New! Improved! SAT is supposed to be test prep impervious, or maybe the test prep is being given away free by Khan Academy-- the PR is a little fuzzy on this point. Coleman has repeatedly insisted that the test now measures what high schools students really do to prepare for college-- but it's important to understand that Coleman thinks this is true because this is the same David Coleman who foisted the Common Core on US public education. He insisted that the Core would prepare students for college, and now he wants the SAT to measure what they learned under the Core.
Coleman was also hired to save the SAT, which is currently Number Two behind the ACT folks. This is the second SAT redesign in a decade (the last one gave us the SAT essay which nobody on earth thinks is an actual measure of anything).
I've looked at the marketing and the samples, and I feel comfortable saying that every failure of true educational assessment that we've seen on the Big Standardized Tests is right there in the New! Improved! SAT. This test is a crapfest-- and not just a crapfest, but an untested, unproven crapfest from a company that just rolled out the first part of its new suite of tests and now can't get the results back to students on time.
And while personalities may not be fair to factor in, and the company certainly has more hands on deck than Coleman's, David Coleman has so far in his educational leadership career (which at this point isn't even a decade old) has show far more more hubris than ability to learn, adapt, and grow. It's also worth remembering that along with no experience or knowledge of the education world, Coleman also has no experience or knowledge of the sales and marketing world. Finding powerful and connected backers won't do any good if the actual product crashes and burns and chases the customers away in droves. (Not that he hasn't tried to work around that-- watch your local state to see people fighting to make PSAT and SAT tests mandatory for all students, or part of the evaluation process).
The New! Improved! SAT has the potential to be a disaster of epic proportions, and that might be an occasion for schadenfreude if not for one thing-- a whole host of eleventh graders are counting on those scores to help them get into college. Yes, we can talk about how screwed up that whole business is, but in the meantime it's the world our students have to live in, and in that world, this spring, the ACT is their best shot.
This will be a real wrenching change for some folks. In many schools, taking the PSAT and SAT is just something you do, and students believe these issue forth from the same immutable government authorities as vaccine requirements and rules about how many courses one must complete to graduate. But as always, folks need to understand that the College Board is a company that makes a living selling a particular product, just like Ford Motor Company and Coca-Cola. That means it's caveat emptor time, and this time around, the smart emptors should avoid the SAT, and those of us who teach juniors have a responsibility to say so.
You don't have to take the SAT-- and this year at least, you shouldn't.
The most recent sign that the College Board doesn't really know what the heck they're doing is the announcement that PSAT scores will not be out till January, a good month later than the usual unveiling. And really, we have only the College Board's assurance that they will meet the new January due date-- just as we had their assurance that scores would be out in December.
The PSAT score return is critical because it's the first chance for juniors to see how they line up with the upcoming New! Improved! SAT. Now they'll be waiting for that.
This is not the first we've heard that the New! Improved! SAT should be avoided like a bad haircut.
Way back in April, Dan Edmonds (Noodle) was in Forbes giving three reasons to avoid the revamped SAT. His reasons were
1) Lack of test prep options. Nobody has had a chance to get prepped and ready to get students prepped and ready.
2) Late results. College Board has said they won't release March test results until after the May tests. This may make sense from a "let's see what we've got here" test-norming standpoint, but still-- late is late.
3) The New! Improved! SAT is trying to look like the ACT. If you're going to take a test like the ACT, why not take the ACT?
Test prep experts have been speaking out against taking that New! Improved! SAT. Back in March, Adam Ingersoll of the Compass Group was encouraging students not to be guinea pigs for the College Board. At the same time, that advice was being echoed by Anthony Green, one of the top test prep gurus in the US, who said he's advising all of his clients to skip the new test.
"I'm recommending that none of my students take the first three rounds of the new SAT (March, May, and June of 2016)," Green said. "Why let students be guinea pigs for the College Board's marketing machine?"
Tell us what you really think, Anthony.
The "new SAT" is basically a poorly disguised marketing gimmick that's trying to:
A) Make the SAT much more like the ACT. If you look at the changes being made, you'll find that all of them are an attempt to make the test's format and material more similar to the ACT.
B) Get rid of the essay (it's now optional) and bring the grading scale back to the old, familiar 1600 that everyone knows and loves (or hates). In essence, they're admitting that the current version of the test was a mistake.
C) Attempt to make people forget that this test is an inherently unfair mechanism designed to gauge student income levels
Are test prep specialists just pissed that David Coleman's New! Improved! SAT is supposed to be test prep impervious, or maybe the test prep is being given away free by Khan Academy-- the PR is a little fuzzy on this point. Coleman has repeatedly insisted that the test now measures what high schools students really do to prepare for college-- but it's important to understand that Coleman thinks this is true because this is the same David Coleman who foisted the Common Core on US public education. He insisted that the Core would prepare students for college, and now he wants the SAT to measure what they learned under the Core.
Coleman was also hired to save the SAT, which is currently Number Two behind the ACT folks. This is the second SAT redesign in a decade (the last one gave us the SAT essay which nobody on earth thinks is an actual measure of anything).
I've looked at the marketing and the samples, and I feel comfortable saying that every failure of true educational assessment that we've seen on the Big Standardized Tests is right there in the New! Improved! SAT. This test is a crapfest-- and not just a crapfest, but an untested, unproven crapfest from a company that just rolled out the first part of its new suite of tests and now can't get the results back to students on time.
And while personalities may not be fair to factor in, and the company certainly has more hands on deck than Coleman's, David Coleman has so far in his educational leadership career (which at this point isn't even a decade old) has show far more more hubris than ability to learn, adapt, and grow. It's also worth remembering that along with no experience or knowledge of the education world, Coleman also has no experience or knowledge of the sales and marketing world. Finding powerful and connected backers won't do any good if the actual product crashes and burns and chases the customers away in droves. (Not that he hasn't tried to work around that-- watch your local state to see people fighting to make PSAT and SAT tests mandatory for all students, or part of the evaluation process).
The New! Improved! SAT has the potential to be a disaster of epic proportions, and that might be an occasion for schadenfreude if not for one thing-- a whole host of eleventh graders are counting on those scores to help them get into college. Yes, we can talk about how screwed up that whole business is, but in the meantime it's the world our students have to live in, and in that world, this spring, the ACT is their best shot.
This will be a real wrenching change for some folks. In many schools, taking the PSAT and SAT is just something you do, and students believe these issue forth from the same immutable government authorities as vaccine requirements and rules about how many courses one must complete to graduate. But as always, folks need to understand that the College Board is a company that makes a living selling a particular product, just like Ford Motor Company and Coca-Cola. That means it's caveat emptor time, and this time around, the smart emptors should avoid the SAT, and those of us who teach juniors have a responsibility to say so.
You don't have to take the SAT-- and this year at least, you shouldn't.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)