Would you be willing to bet your entire teaching career that you will never have students who score low on the Big Standardized Test? Would you take the bet for a little bit more money?
Alabama is hoping there are people who will take that bet, as their legislature rolls out the Rewarding Advancement in Instruction and Student Excellence Act-- RAISE!! The actual intent of this bill is telegraphed by the fact that it has often been touted as a "tenure reform bill." To read up on it, I suggest this piece, as well as the blog of Larry Lee, who has covered the act pretty thoroughly and includes many comments from affected parties.
The bill is intended to tie teacher pay and teacher employment to student test results. There will be whole new state action to make up a list of possible evaluation tools for all teachers of untested subjects. There will be requirements for student growth. There will be an opportunity for some students and parents to evaluate teachers.
The BS Test that will be used is the ACT Aspire, a pre-ACT manufactured by the ACT folks. Is it aligned in any way with Alabama's standards? If it is, nobody seems to be saying so. But those test results will be the basis of pretty much everything?
The big bet that I opened with-- that's the choice that RAISE presents teachers with. You can have a traditional tenure track or a performance track. The performance track is supposed to bring you the big bucks, with huge money on the table. The starting salary on this schedule must be $2,500 more than the lowest traditional starting schedule, so maybe not so huge in some districts. All you have to do is get your students to produce big time test scores-- in fact, once your students aren't producing those scores, your career is done. In other words, on this track, your job is literally only to prepare students for the test.
On the traditional track (called the "grandfathered salary schedule"), you will still be judged by test scores. You'll wait five years for tenure, and your tenure will be not protect you from low test scores-- two bad years and your tenure is revoked, with another five year stretch before it can be re-instated. Also, your extra education will no longer make any difference in your pay. What did you think-- that the state was going to hire you to stay smart about your field? No smarty pants extra degrees necessary in Alabama.
Teachers hired before May of 2017 get a choice of which salary schedule to choose-- but once they choose the performance schedule, they may not switch back. And if tenured teachers choose the performance track, they must give up tenure.
Also, as just a fun side note, RAISE also boosts the Alabama Longitudinal Data System, a giant data mining and storage program which will make Big Brother proud.
There are many reasons to hate this proposal, including but not limited to the way in which it reduces Alabama schools to nothing but test prep facilities. For teachers who aren't directly prepping for the ACT, it will be a crap shoot as far as what test they'll be prepping their students for. But all these tests will be tests that are given strictly to determine the pay and job standing of the teacher in the classroom.
Clearly, Alabama has entered the Drive Teachers Out of the Classroom derby. After all, who would want to take a teaching job where you made some good-ish money for a couple of years but had no hope of maintaining an actual lifetime teaching career. I mean, who would want to get into a classroom, make some bucks, just teach to a test, and then get out before they were even thirty years old? Oh, wait.
Yes, Teach for America has been in Alabama for about five years, and they've done pretty well for themselves at selling the standard narrative. When they moved into Hunstville, the local tv station coverage started with this lead: "Huntsville City Schools tout themselves as a data-driven district, which
is why they turned to Teach For America. They want to turn around the
numbers at under-performing schools." And the head of Alabama TFA managed to also land the job of executive director of the Birmingham Education Foundation, another one of those foundations that lets community leaders take charge of schools without going to the trouble of being elected to do so. So the TFA story is selling well in Alabama.
TFA's placement presence in Alabama is small so far, but if RAISE isn't tailored for exactly their kind of high-turnover, test-prep pedagogical approach, I will eat my hat (and you should see my hat).
Are there problems with the bill (I mean, you know, other than gutting the teaching profession and replacing actual education with test prep). Well, there seems to be some question about where all the extra money to pay all those performance-based raises will come from. And
You can read the draft version of the bill here, and you can say a little prayer for education in Alabama. You can prepare to add Alabama to the list of states in which actual teachers aren't really welcome (no reason for North Carolina to be lonely). And I suppose if you like the idea of betting your career against a thousand dollars or so, you can pack your bags and be Alabammy bound.
Sunday, January 17, 2016
ICYMI: A Mountain of Must-Read
This is a week in which I have actually written less because I have read more. Every one of these is a must-read.
Schooling the Secretary of Education
John King has gotten one thing right so far-- he held a sit-down with an assortment of teachers (most with high social media profiles) who had not been carefully pre-vetted for their agreement with his policies. This account of the meeting is oddly encouraging, even as it is unsurprising.
About Cost Cutting Measu-es
You know I love a good illustrative metaphorical example. Here's a great demonstration of how brutal a 3% cut can be.
The Myth of Pedagogy
Interesting take on how classroom instruction may still be in the pre-science stage. I don't know how much I really agree with all of this, but it's thought-provoking.
The 13 Best Onion Higher Ed Stories
The Chronicle of Higher Education collected their thirteen favorite higher-ed pieces from the Onion. Winners one and all.
Does Georgia Have a Teacher Evaluation System Only a Sadist Could Love
Well, the short answer is "yes," but this is a good, clear example of just how messed up it is from a Georgia teacher who's lived it.
How Measurement Fails Doctors and Teachers
In today's New York Times, Robert Wachter looks at how measurement mania is making life miserable for both doctors and teachers. Two great lines: "We're hitting the targets, but missing the point" and "The secret of quality is love."
Schooling the Secretary of Education
John King has gotten one thing right so far-- he held a sit-down with an assortment of teachers (most with high social media profiles) who had not been carefully pre-vetted for their agreement with his policies. This account of the meeting is oddly encouraging, even as it is unsurprising.
About Cost Cutting Measu-es
You know I love a good illustrative metaphorical example. Here's a great demonstration of how brutal a 3% cut can be.
The Myth of Pedagogy
Interesting take on how classroom instruction may still be in the pre-science stage. I don't know how much I really agree with all of this, but it's thought-provoking.
The 13 Best Onion Higher Ed Stories
The Chronicle of Higher Education collected their thirteen favorite higher-ed pieces from the Onion. Winners one and all.
Does Georgia Have a Teacher Evaluation System Only a Sadist Could Love
Well, the short answer is "yes," but this is a good, clear example of just how messed up it is from a Georgia teacher who's lived it.
How Measurement Fails Doctors and Teachers
In today's New York Times, Robert Wachter looks at how measurement mania is making life miserable for both doctors and teachers. Two great lines: "We're hitting the targets, but missing the point" and "The secret of quality is love."
Saturday, January 16, 2016
Relay Graduate School of (Charter) Education
Kate Peterson has put together a look at the folks behind the Relay Graduate School of Education. If you're anywhere that these folks are sinking their claws into education, you'll want to read her full policy brief at the Alliance for Philadelphia Public Schools website.
Relay GSE started out as Teacher U, a program begun by David Levin (co-founder of KIPP) and Norman Atkins (co-founder Uncommon Schools) in order to supply their charters with "high-quality" teachers. Or high quality "teachers." They brought in Dacia Toll (founder, Achievement First) to help create the program. Hedge fundie Larry Robbins kicked in $10 million, and the Robin Hood Foundation threw in another $20 mill. The very pro-charter Robin Hood Foundation is run by hedge fundie and venture philanthropist Paul Tudor Jones (you can read about him in this Forbes profile that asks if he can save American education).
Teacher U changed its name in 2011 and was chartered by the New York Regents and partnered with the NYC school system (fun nostalgia fact-- 2011 was the year that spectacularly under-qualified Cathie Black was in charge of NYC schools for three months). Relay soon spread to other cities, including New Orleans, Newark, Chicago, Houston, and Memphis. In other words, they have faithfully followed the Charter Industrial Complex players around the country.
Peterson breaks down the career arcs of the three current Relay honchos-- Atkins, Levin, and Toll-- and it is unsurprising.
Atkins holds degrees in history and educational administration. He worked as an independent journalist, then as a co-exec director at Robin Hood, then helped found and lead North Star Academy Charter of Newark in 1997, a school that has been very successful at carefully controlling who ends up in its student body. Then in 2005, apparently having figured out where the real money was, he started Uncommon Schools, a charter management company. He's also connected to Zearn, an online math program (that has also been funded by Robin Hood).
Levin started with TFA fresh out of Yale, then shortly after started KIPP. KIPP has gotten a ton of funding from the founders of Gap, Inc, and they also kick in for Relay. Levin also co-founded the Character Lab, and sits on the board of Zearn.
Toll is the head of Achievement First, a charter chain that also appears to owe its success to a carefully culled student body. Toll gathered an assortment of degrees in politics, economics and philosophy, and jumped into the charter school start-up biz after graduating from Yale (she did eventually acquire a teaching certification). She sits on the board of 50CAN, a national network of high-powered charter advocates.
In short, Relay is a teacher training school founded and operated by three people who have almost no teacher training, next to no classroom teaching experience, and who have spent their careers in the charter world.
It's a remarkable achievement. If some buddies and I got together and declared that we would open our own hospitals and train our own doctors, even though none of us have any medical training or experience, we could expect to be laughed out of the medical field. If I showed up at a law school and said, "I am ready to be a legal professor, training the lawyers of tomorrow, though I've done nothing my whole life but teach high school English," I don't think I'd be hired on the spot.
And yet Relay continues to spread like extra-stinky kudzu, in fairly astonishing ways. As Peterson notes, for example,
As outlined on Newark Public School’s website, according to its contract with Newark Teachers Union, district teachers can only receive raises for completing advanced degrees if they complete it through Relay. Although two other institutions submitted a proposal, Relay was deemed as the only institution that met the requirements established by a group of teachers, school and district administrators, and higher education representatives. The district will call for other proposals in the future, but for now, only teachers who choose to attend an organization that is unaffiliated with a college or university, that was created to supply charters with teachers trained to meet the needs of these specific charters, and that is based on the beliefs of teaching amateurs will receive raises
Peterson's piece is on a Philly-centric site because Philadelphia-Camden is the new Relay operation. Peterson digs down into the Relay "faculty," and just one "professor" will give you an idea of how this whole scam works. Zach Blattner is the "Assistant Professor of Practice." He has a BA in English Lit, spent some time temping with TFA, and he's a certified principal courtesy of Relay's Principal school. He worked as a principal at a charter school.
Reformsters have managed to build and fund an entire alternate education universe in which they make up their own credentials, their own schools, their own entire system built on a foundation of nothing but money, connections, and huge brass balls. There's never been anything like it since hucksters pitched medicinal snake oil off the back of a wagon, and it would be kind of awesomely amazing, like watching a python consume an entire elephant-- except that instead of an elephant, this parallel shadow system is gutting public education in the communities where it is most needed.
Relay GSE started out as Teacher U, a program begun by David Levin (co-founder of KIPP) and Norman Atkins (co-founder Uncommon Schools) in order to supply their charters with "high-quality" teachers. Or high quality "teachers." They brought in Dacia Toll (founder, Achievement First) to help create the program. Hedge fundie Larry Robbins kicked in $10 million, and the Robin Hood Foundation threw in another $20 mill. The very pro-charter Robin Hood Foundation is run by hedge fundie and venture philanthropist Paul Tudor Jones (you can read about him in this Forbes profile that asks if he can save American education).
Teacher U changed its name in 2011 and was chartered by the New York Regents and partnered with the NYC school system (fun nostalgia fact-- 2011 was the year that spectacularly under-qualified Cathie Black was in charge of NYC schools for three months). Relay soon spread to other cities, including New Orleans, Newark, Chicago, Houston, and Memphis. In other words, they have faithfully followed the Charter Industrial Complex players around the country.
Peterson breaks down the career arcs of the three current Relay honchos-- Atkins, Levin, and Toll-- and it is unsurprising.
Atkins holds degrees in history and educational administration. He worked as an independent journalist, then as a co-exec director at Robin Hood, then helped found and lead North Star Academy Charter of Newark in 1997, a school that has been very successful at carefully controlling who ends up in its student body. Then in 2005, apparently having figured out where the real money was, he started Uncommon Schools, a charter management company. He's also connected to Zearn, an online math program (that has also been funded by Robin Hood).
Levin started with TFA fresh out of Yale, then shortly after started KIPP. KIPP has gotten a ton of funding from the founders of Gap, Inc, and they also kick in for Relay. Levin also co-founded the Character Lab, and sits on the board of Zearn.
Toll is the head of Achievement First, a charter chain that also appears to owe its success to a carefully culled student body. Toll gathered an assortment of degrees in politics, economics and philosophy, and jumped into the charter school start-up biz after graduating from Yale (she did eventually acquire a teaching certification). She sits on the board of 50CAN, a national network of high-powered charter advocates.
In short, Relay is a teacher training school founded and operated by three people who have almost no teacher training, next to no classroom teaching experience, and who have spent their careers in the charter world.
It's a remarkable achievement. If some buddies and I got together and declared that we would open our own hospitals and train our own doctors, even though none of us have any medical training or experience, we could expect to be laughed out of the medical field. If I showed up at a law school and said, "I am ready to be a legal professor, training the lawyers of tomorrow, though I've done nothing my whole life but teach high school English," I don't think I'd be hired on the spot.
And yet Relay continues to spread like extra-stinky kudzu, in fairly astonishing ways. As Peterson notes, for example,
As outlined on Newark Public School’s website, according to its contract with Newark Teachers Union, district teachers can only receive raises for completing advanced degrees if they complete it through Relay. Although two other institutions submitted a proposal, Relay was deemed as the only institution that met the requirements established by a group of teachers, school and district administrators, and higher education representatives. The district will call for other proposals in the future, but for now, only teachers who choose to attend an organization that is unaffiliated with a college or university, that was created to supply charters with teachers trained to meet the needs of these specific charters, and that is based on the beliefs of teaching amateurs will receive raises
Peterson's piece is on a Philly-centric site because Philadelphia-Camden is the new Relay operation. Peterson digs down into the Relay "faculty," and just one "professor" will give you an idea of how this whole scam works. Zach Blattner is the "Assistant Professor of Practice." He has a BA in English Lit, spent some time temping with TFA, and he's a certified principal courtesy of Relay's Principal school. He worked as a principal at a charter school.
Reformsters have managed to build and fund an entire alternate education universe in which they make up their own credentials, their own schools, their own entire system built on a foundation of nothing but money, connections, and huge brass balls. There's never been anything like it since hucksters pitched medicinal snake oil off the back of a wagon, and it would be kind of awesomely amazing, like watching a python consume an entire elephant-- except that instead of an elephant, this parallel shadow system is gutting public education in the communities where it is most needed.
Meritocracy, Democracy, and Darnell Earley
This is the kind of thing I think of every time someone starts making noise about how teacher careers should live and die by merit, how pay should be tied to performance, and managers should be able to fire "bad" teachers instantly, at will.
You know. Just like in the "real world."
And then I think of guys like Darnell Earley.
At this point, you can find Earley's story everywhere (this coverage at eclectablog is a good one).. He's the man who poisoned the Flint, Michigan water supply so that he could save some bucks. And he did it almost single-handedly, because Flint is just one more city where, gosh, the only solution was to suspend democracy and appoint a local Czar to run the place.
Earley failed. By every conceivable measure, he failed. Even if you use the heartless metric of Saving Money, he has failed because the costs of cleaning up after the poisoning of an entire city will be huge. And that's before we even talk about the lifelong cost to the children whose health, talent and abilities have been stolen by lead poisoning. So let's be clear. Darnell Earley failed.
And his punishment was...?
Well, of course, we already know. His punishment was to be hired as the Czar for Detroit schools-- yet another place where the People in Charge decided that democracy had to be terminated.
For poisoning one feifdom, Earley got a new one, with a new hefty salary. And he is failing there as well. Detroit schools are such an appalling, unsafe miserable mess that teachers have been walking out, performing sickouts. How bad is it? The sickouts aren't even organized by the union-- they are just the actions of ordinary classroom teachers who have had enough.
In a meritocracy, Darnell Earley would be out of a job already. Not only would he be out of a job, but he would be unemployable.
Flint and Detroit schools aren't just about the failure of Darnell Earley (and a whole bunch of other people who have utterly failed at their jobs, all the way up to the governor). They are a real life full-on test of the current reformster theory of management.
Here's how it's supposed to work. You identify the very best people. You sweep democracy out of the way (because democracy let's the Wrong Sort of People have a say) and you put the Better People in charge, and give them free rein, making sure they don't have to deal with unions and government rules.
Here's how it actually works. A city poisoned. A school system in collapse. And leadership that can't tell the difference between merit and grotesque, dangerous, life-threatening incompetence. And because democracy has been suspended, no mechanism by which anybody can say, "Hey, wait a minute" or "Before we leap into this, let's talk about X" or "Convince me your plan is a good one."
Darnell Earley and all the politicians who helped enable and cover his incompetent butt are going to feel a ton of heat, and they should. But the rest of us should make note-- this is not the last time we're going to see this play out. When you substitute politician-appointed Czars for democracy, either in a city or a school system, this is what you get.
In the meantime, policy makers and thought leaders don't get to talk about meritocracy until they're willing to apply it to other members of the ruling class.
You know. Just like in the "real world."
And then I think of guys like Darnell Earley.
At this point, you can find Earley's story everywhere (this coverage at eclectablog is a good one).. He's the man who poisoned the Flint, Michigan water supply so that he could save some bucks. And he did it almost single-handedly, because Flint is just one more city where, gosh, the only solution was to suspend democracy and appoint a local Czar to run the place.
Earley failed. By every conceivable measure, he failed. Even if you use the heartless metric of Saving Money, he has failed because the costs of cleaning up after the poisoning of an entire city will be huge. And that's before we even talk about the lifelong cost to the children whose health, talent and abilities have been stolen by lead poisoning. So let's be clear. Darnell Earley failed.
And his punishment was...?
Well, of course, we already know. His punishment was to be hired as the Czar for Detroit schools-- yet another place where the People in Charge decided that democracy had to be terminated.
For poisoning one feifdom, Earley got a new one, with a new hefty salary. And he is failing there as well. Detroit schools are such an appalling, unsafe miserable mess that teachers have been walking out, performing sickouts. How bad is it? The sickouts aren't even organized by the union-- they are just the actions of ordinary classroom teachers who have had enough.
In a meritocracy, Darnell Earley would be out of a job already. Not only would he be out of a job, but he would be unemployable.
Flint and Detroit schools aren't just about the failure of Darnell Earley (and a whole bunch of other people who have utterly failed at their jobs, all the way up to the governor). They are a real life full-on test of the current reformster theory of management.
Here's how it's supposed to work. You identify the very best people. You sweep democracy out of the way (because democracy let's the Wrong Sort of People have a say) and you put the Better People in charge, and give them free rein, making sure they don't have to deal with unions and government rules.
Here's how it actually works. A city poisoned. A school system in collapse. And leadership that can't tell the difference between merit and grotesque, dangerous, life-threatening incompetence. And because democracy has been suspended, no mechanism by which anybody can say, "Hey, wait a minute" or "Before we leap into this, let's talk about X" or "Convince me your plan is a good one."
Darnell Earley and all the politicians who helped enable and cover his incompetent butt are going to feel a ton of heat, and they should. But the rest of us should make note-- this is not the last time we're going to see this play out. When you substitute politician-appointed Czars for democracy, either in a city or a school system, this is what you get.
In the meantime, policy makers and thought leaders don't get to talk about meritocracy until they're willing to apply it to other members of the ruling class.
Friday, January 15, 2016
Pearson's New CBE Product
Performance Based Education (or Competency Based Education or Outcome Based Education or personalized learning-- I do hope the industry comes up with standardized jargon for this soon) is coming. It has been given an extra boost by leveraging the anti-test movement in a clever ju-jitsu manuever. "Yes, we should get everyone out of that testing frying pan," declare policy makers and thought leaders and test manufacturers, as they usher the fleeing mob straight toward the CBE fire. Instead of one Big Standardized Test, why many standardized tests and quizzes and worksheets, all hooked into a giant data-hoovering monstrosity.
If you want to watch the onslaught arrive in agonizing detail, I recommend Emily Talmadge's Saving Maine Schools blog; Maine has been on the forefront of this, and Talmadge is on the forefront of catching it all.
But for the moment, let's just look at one particular example, courtesy of the folks at Pearson (because you know they are not going to be left out of the Next Big Goldmine).
Meet aimswebplus. It's "an efficient and effective formative assessment, data management, and reporting system." It uses "brief, valid and reliable measures of foundational skills in reading and math" and it "allows you to capture, manage and repor your assessment data in one seamless, web-based system." And you can use all that sweet, sweet data to "identify at-risk students early, to monitor progress, and to differentiate and track targeted instruction."
It's a multi-tier tool from Pearson, and while there's a whole "solution guide" you can download here, I think the short promo will give you the idea. Here's Pearson's quick, clear graphic explanation:
Tier I is the universal benchmark screening.
The student benchmark scores are "established" three times per year "using unique standardized assessment forms" and I think "unique standardized" might be my favorite new oxymoron, replacing the tired old jumbo shrimp.
If you want to watch the onslaught arrive in agonizing detail, I recommend Emily Talmadge's Saving Maine Schools blog; Maine has been on the forefront of this, and Talmadge is on the forefront of catching it all.
But for the moment, let's just look at one particular example, courtesy of the folks at Pearson (because you know they are not going to be left out of the Next Big Goldmine).
Meet aimswebplus. It's "an efficient and effective formative assessment, data management, and reporting system." It uses "brief, valid and reliable measures of foundational skills in reading and math" and it "allows you to capture, manage and repor your assessment data in one seamless, web-based system." And you can use all that sweet, sweet data to "identify at-risk students early, to monitor progress, and to differentiate and track targeted instruction."
It's a multi-tier tool from Pearson, and while there's a whole "solution guide" you can download here, I think the short promo will give you the idea. Here's Pearson's quick, clear graphic explanation:
Tier I is the universal benchmark screening.
The student benchmark scores are "established" three times per year "using unique standardized assessment forms" and I think "unique standardized" might be my favorite new oxymoron, replacing the tired old jumbo shrimp.
The Walton Billion Dollar Plan
It's only eight pages long, but it is simultaneously depressing and disturbing. It's no fun to read, but if you want to understand how the charter boosters are coming at public education, you need to read it. It's the Walton Family Foundation 2015-2020 K-12 Strategic Overview, and yes, I've read it so that you don't have to, but you probably should, anyway.
This is the story of how The Walton is going to spend $1 Billion-with-a-B on charter schools over the next five years (twice as much as Eli Broad is spending to take over the Los Angeles school district). And when that much money talks, we need to listen. Here's what it's saying.
The Baloney Kickoff
The plan kicks off with some basic background, and we know immediately that we've entered a zone high on spin and low on reality. What's the WFF mission?
They aimed to improve lives by expanding access to educational and economic opportunity. Since then, the Walton family has carried forward this vision — working to foster equal opportunity and build a more just society.
They believe they are "uniquely qualified" for this work. You know what the largest private employer in America is uniquely qualified to do? Make sure that all of its employees have a great living wage and superior benefits package. But no-- we're just going to blow up the building that is Retail America, make a bundle off the demolition, and spend a fraction of that just cleaning up the shrubberies around the charred ruins.
WFF Education History Baloney
The Walton wants to provide a little background. They've spent $1 Billion-with-a-B "investing" in order "to improve educational opportunities for America's children-- and to prove wrong the prevailing wisdom that poverty and ZIP code determine destiny." Which leads me to ask, where exactly does that "wisdom" prevail? With a billion dollars, could you not attack actual problems rather than going toe-to-toe with a big straw man?
Fun fact: One out of every four charter schools has gotten Walton money.
Next, the Walton repeats some dubious research about how awesomely better charters are, including a silly study from CREDO that claims that charters give students extra "days" of learning. The Walton blithely skips past all of the issues with charter claims to assert that if you just put poor kids in a charter school, they do way better. "Charter schools are proving that these students can learn at levels comparable to, or even higher than, their peers with greater advantages. Today, there are hundreds of examples of schools beating the odds, and doing so at scale." Well, no. There aren't. But it's a useful rhetorical strategy. I saw a dozen Yeti in my backyard this morning. I did! Go ahead and try to prove I didn't. Wiser men than I have laid out the problems with studies "proving" charter swellness, but the bottom line is that charters do not have any more success with students than public schools, and often they have considerably less.
The Walton is also proud to have helped create an entire shadow network of unqualified teachers and administrators, citing support for Relay Graduate School of Education, Teach for America, and The New Teacher Project (TNTP), all exercises in giving unqualified people a huge budget to hand each other accreditations.
Next comes the scary statistic parade to show that there's still a crisis a'brewin'. Here's the College Board's bogus "only 43% of high school students are college ready" and some chicken littling about the PISA scores-- they're low low LOW! (but we'll not mention they always have been). Achievement gaps! Opportunity gaps! Waiting lists! Teacher shortages! Every reformy talking point ever launched, no matter how often it has been debunked, is here, leading us to the overwhelming question, "How will America's schools survive?"
Lessons Learned
Okay, I know you were nodding off at the billionth re-singing of the Reformster Chorus, but now you need to sit up and pay attention, because the Walton is going to tell you what they've learned. They understand now that their old theory of change was flawed.
The thought was that more choices would generate more competition. Competition would catalyze systematic improvement.
Let's think about this for a second. Let's really think about whose theory this was. This was the Walton theory, the theory of people whose entire fortune is built on being hugely competitive, leading to several results, over and over-- the systemic destruction of most retailers in a community who aren't Wal-Mart. Nor have they achieved this by pursuing excellence-- raise your hand if you associate the Wal-Mart brand with excellence. No, the Wal-Mart brand is built on "broad mediocirty that's cheap and good enough for unwealthy people" and the very goal of their competitiveness has been to win the retail competition by eradicating other choices. Wal-Mart's business plan is not, "We will go into a community, compete by providing excellent products to the community, and when we're done, there will be a broad range of excellent choices among many retailers."
I continue to be gobsmacked that the Waltons, of all people, would imagine that school choice would spark competition that would lead to excellence, because these are people who seem to have a pretty good idea of how the free market works-- and the free market does not work in ways that go well with public education.
But they have figured out that competition is not enough, and so they have a new theory.
In order for choice and opportunity — the ultimate forms of parent empowerment — to spur change, cities need to create environments that support choice. This means creating enrollment platforms, equitable transportation access, fair funding and readily accessible, current information on schools and student performance for families and other stakeholders.
Under its 2015-20 K-12 Education Strategic Plan, the Walton Family Foundation is aiming to enhance choice, spur innovation and build more of the environmental factors that support choice in cities. It will invest $1 billion over the five-year period to expand educational opportunity across the United States.
So here come the four initiatives, the four horsemen leading the billion-dollar Walton school choice charge.
Investing in Cities
This has become evident in the new vision of Walton and in that of Eli Broad in LA as well. It's not enough to buy your own school district-- you need to own a piece of the city it's in as well. The Walton lists some cities that make the grade with "conditions supporting systemwide educational improvement and where the foundation can have the greatest impact."
This is by far the largest section of the four, and the Walton targets several areas for investment.
* Supply. They want to "build and sustain high-quality schools." This would be a better idea if they knew how to identify such schools.
* Talent. Recruit and train "more effective teachers and school leaders." We've seen how much they know about this.
* Enabling choice. Pushing systems like, presumably, unified enrollment.
* Policy. Get local lawmakers to rig the game more in favor of charters and choice.
* Community support. "Organizing, communicating and engaging directly with people who live and work in cities to understand their needs and build authentic community partnerships." This presumably does not include asking them if they would rather not have a bunch of charters move into their community, or if they can think of other ways that their slice of Walton billiony largesse could be used to help them.
Supporting the High-Quality Choice Movement
More giving devoted to creating "local environments that are friendly to choice." That means "advocating for favorable policies," as well as supporting reformy groups, and supporting organizations that help choice/charter schools "find" the facilities they need. Nice choice, that "find," as it covers building new facilities or just wrestling existing school buildings away from the public schools that already occupy them.
Also, "investing in communications to build awareness and support for high-quality choice." So, more money for lobbying, advocacy, and PR.
Innovation
The Walton would particularly like to support "novel school models" (such as those focused on career and technical education), "citywide enrollment models," and-- uh-oh-- this last one is even more Reformy 2.0:
New ways — beyond test scores — to advance long-term success, including understanding noncognitive attributes
So Competency Based Education or Performance Based Learning or whatever we will eventually call all testing, all data collection, all the time. PLUS doing the same for personality traits!
When considering innovative ideas, The Walton will ask, "Does it solve a problem? Does it fit the WFF theory of change? Is there potential for a breakthrough? Is the idea transferable? Can its success be tested objectively?" Only one of those is a legitimate question-- does it solve a problem. But "can its success be tested objectively" guarantees that whatever they fund, it won't be particularly useful.
Research and Evaluation
The fourth horseman will be arranged around initiatives centered around:
1. Research that provides rigorous, actionable informationto inform the foundation’s city, high-quality choice and innovation investments.
2. Research investigating big questions related to the foundation’s theory of change.
So, research that supports how right The Walton is about what they're doing. They propose to use evidence to "refine" the theory of change and to "identify and support the most effective grantees" and that all is exactly the right thing to say and would be very heartening, except that the earlier section covering the Waltonian version of education history shows that they are not so much interested in following the evidence wherever it might lead as they are interested in finding evidence to prove what they have already concluded is the truth.
The Wrapup
We will work to help create an environment that fosters choice and opportunity, and we will empower more low-income, high-needs students to perform at the same level of excellence as students at today’s best public schools.
Again, note that it's no longer enough just to boost choice/charter schools-- we are now targeting the entire "environment." And the theory of change still assumes that once we get low-income, high-needs students out of those awful public schools and into awesome choice/charter schools, they will be "empowered" to do better because, I guess, it's the public school that's holding them back. The Walton, while acknowledging that "change takes time," ends with a call for urgency and a declaration that "we cannot and will not stand by while the extraordinary talents of children are squandered and the quintessential American dream of opportunity goes unfulfilled.
Should we conclude that public schools are doing the squandering? I guess so. But I can't help pointing out again that if they were really concerned about the effects of poverty and the opportunity gap, the largest private employer in America could certainly help by making it that much easier for folks to find full time jobs with better-than-minimum pay and full benefits.
This is the story of how The Walton is going to spend $1 Billion-with-a-B on charter schools over the next five years (twice as much as Eli Broad is spending to take over the Los Angeles school district). And when that much money talks, we need to listen. Here's what it's saying.
The Baloney Kickoff
The plan kicks off with some basic background, and we know immediately that we've entered a zone high on spin and low on reality. What's the WFF mission?
They aimed to improve lives by expanding access to educational and economic opportunity. Since then, the Walton family has carried forward this vision — working to foster equal opportunity and build a more just society.
They believe they are "uniquely qualified" for this work. You know what the largest private employer in America is uniquely qualified to do? Make sure that all of its employees have a great living wage and superior benefits package. But no-- we're just going to blow up the building that is Retail America, make a bundle off the demolition, and spend a fraction of that just cleaning up the shrubberies around the charred ruins.
WFF Education History Baloney
The Walton wants to provide a little background. They've spent $1 Billion-with-a-B "investing" in order "to improve educational opportunities for America's children-- and to prove wrong the prevailing wisdom that poverty and ZIP code determine destiny." Which leads me to ask, where exactly does that "wisdom" prevail? With a billion dollars, could you not attack actual problems rather than going toe-to-toe with a big straw man?
Fun fact: One out of every four charter schools has gotten Walton money.
Next, the Walton repeats some dubious research about how awesomely better charters are, including a silly study from CREDO that claims that charters give students extra "days" of learning. The Walton blithely skips past all of the issues with charter claims to assert that if you just put poor kids in a charter school, they do way better. "Charter schools are proving that these students can learn at levels comparable to, or even higher than, their peers with greater advantages. Today, there are hundreds of examples of schools beating the odds, and doing so at scale." Well, no. There aren't. But it's a useful rhetorical strategy. I saw a dozen Yeti in my backyard this morning. I did! Go ahead and try to prove I didn't. Wiser men than I have laid out the problems with studies "proving" charter swellness, but the bottom line is that charters do not have any more success with students than public schools, and often they have considerably less.
The Walton is also proud to have helped create an entire shadow network of unqualified teachers and administrators, citing support for Relay Graduate School of Education, Teach for America, and The New Teacher Project (TNTP), all exercises in giving unqualified people a huge budget to hand each other accreditations.
Next comes the scary statistic parade to show that there's still a crisis a'brewin'. Here's the College Board's bogus "only 43% of high school students are college ready" and some chicken littling about the PISA scores-- they're low low LOW! (but we'll not mention they always have been). Achievement gaps! Opportunity gaps! Waiting lists! Teacher shortages! Every reformy talking point ever launched, no matter how often it has been debunked, is here, leading us to the overwhelming question, "How will America's schools survive?"
Lessons Learned
Okay, I know you were nodding off at the billionth re-singing of the Reformster Chorus, but now you need to sit up and pay attention, because the Walton is going to tell you what they've learned. They understand now that their old theory of change was flawed.
The thought was that more choices would generate more competition. Competition would catalyze systematic improvement.
Let's think about this for a second. Let's really think about whose theory this was. This was the Walton theory, the theory of people whose entire fortune is built on being hugely competitive, leading to several results, over and over-- the systemic destruction of most retailers in a community who aren't Wal-Mart. Nor have they achieved this by pursuing excellence-- raise your hand if you associate the Wal-Mart brand with excellence. No, the Wal-Mart brand is built on "broad mediocirty that's cheap and good enough for unwealthy people" and the very goal of their competitiveness has been to win the retail competition by eradicating other choices. Wal-Mart's business plan is not, "We will go into a community, compete by providing excellent products to the community, and when we're done, there will be a broad range of excellent choices among many retailers."
I continue to be gobsmacked that the Waltons, of all people, would imagine that school choice would spark competition that would lead to excellence, because these are people who seem to have a pretty good idea of how the free market works-- and the free market does not work in ways that go well with public education.
But they have figured out that competition is not enough, and so they have a new theory.
In order for choice and opportunity — the ultimate forms of parent empowerment — to spur change, cities need to create environments that support choice. This means creating enrollment platforms, equitable transportation access, fair funding and readily accessible, current information on schools and student performance for families and other stakeholders.
Under its 2015-20 K-12 Education Strategic Plan, the Walton Family Foundation is aiming to enhance choice, spur innovation and build more of the environmental factors that support choice in cities. It will invest $1 billion over the five-year period to expand educational opportunity across the United States.
So here come the four initiatives, the four horsemen leading the billion-dollar Walton school choice charge.
Investing in Cities
This has become evident in the new vision of Walton and in that of Eli Broad in LA as well. It's not enough to buy your own school district-- you need to own a piece of the city it's in as well. The Walton lists some cities that make the grade with "conditions supporting systemwide educational improvement and where the foundation can have the greatest impact."
This is by far the largest section of the four, and the Walton targets several areas for investment.
* Supply. They want to "build and sustain high-quality schools." This would be a better idea if they knew how to identify such schools.
* Talent. Recruit and train "more effective teachers and school leaders." We've seen how much they know about this.
* Enabling choice. Pushing systems like, presumably, unified enrollment.
* Policy. Get local lawmakers to rig the game more in favor of charters and choice.
* Community support. "Organizing, communicating and engaging directly with people who live and work in cities to understand their needs and build authentic community partnerships." This presumably does not include asking them if they would rather not have a bunch of charters move into their community, or if they can think of other ways that their slice of Walton billiony largesse could be used to help them.
Supporting the High-Quality Choice Movement
More giving devoted to creating "local environments that are friendly to choice." That means "advocating for favorable policies," as well as supporting reformy groups, and supporting organizations that help choice/charter schools "find" the facilities they need. Nice choice, that "find," as it covers building new facilities or just wrestling existing school buildings away from the public schools that already occupy them.
Also, "investing in communications to build awareness and support for high-quality choice." So, more money for lobbying, advocacy, and PR.
Innovation
The Walton would particularly like to support "novel school models" (such as those focused on career and technical education), "citywide enrollment models," and-- uh-oh-- this last one is even more Reformy 2.0:
New ways — beyond test scores — to advance long-term success, including understanding noncognitive attributes
So Competency Based Education or Performance Based Learning or whatever we will eventually call all testing, all data collection, all the time. PLUS doing the same for personality traits!
When considering innovative ideas, The Walton will ask, "Does it solve a problem? Does it fit the WFF theory of change? Is there potential for a breakthrough? Is the idea transferable? Can its success be tested objectively?" Only one of those is a legitimate question-- does it solve a problem. But "can its success be tested objectively" guarantees that whatever they fund, it won't be particularly useful.
Research and Evaluation
The fourth horseman will be arranged around initiatives centered around:
1. Research that provides rigorous, actionable informationto inform the foundation’s city, high-quality choice and innovation investments.
2. Research investigating big questions related to the foundation’s theory of change.
So, research that supports how right The Walton is about what they're doing. They propose to use evidence to "refine" the theory of change and to "identify and support the most effective grantees" and that all is exactly the right thing to say and would be very heartening, except that the earlier section covering the Waltonian version of education history shows that they are not so much interested in following the evidence wherever it might lead as they are interested in finding evidence to prove what they have already concluded is the truth.
The Wrapup
We will work to help create an environment that fosters choice and opportunity, and we will empower more low-income, high-needs students to perform at the same level of excellence as students at today’s best public schools.
Again, note that it's no longer enough just to boost choice/charter schools-- we are now targeting the entire "environment." And the theory of change still assumes that once we get low-income, high-needs students out of those awful public schools and into awesome choice/charter schools, they will be "empowered" to do better because, I guess, it's the public school that's holding them back. The Walton, while acknowledging that "change takes time," ends with a call for urgency and a declaration that "we cannot and will not stand by while the extraordinary talents of children are squandered and the quintessential American dream of opportunity goes unfulfilled.
Should we conclude that public schools are doing the squandering? I guess so. But I can't help pointing out again that if they were really concerned about the effects of poverty and the opportunity gap, the largest private employer in America could certainly help by making it that much easier for folks to find full time jobs with better-than-minimum pay and full benefits.
Thursday, January 14, 2016
ESSA Accountability: Part II (P.S. Mike)
Almost as soon as my head hit the pillow, I realized that I had left out an important part of my accountability plan. You can read the first part of this wonkery here-- now for the addendum (hey-- I've already shown that I'm a scofflaw, so why not blow through the 2,000 word limit for submissions)
I don't know where this fits, but for accountability we need full and open school audits.
Visits from a team that includes folks from the state capital and working educators. They will visit the school, have free rein to walk in and out of any classroom, to examine records, curriculum, watch teachers in action, interview students and faculty and parents.
I fully agree that "Just take our word for it" is not an accountability system. Neither is "Prove yourself with paperwork." You want to see if somebody is doing their job-- go look.
The audit team visits for a week and makes an evaluation of the school's strength and weaknesses, creating a full description of the school's impact on children and the state of the children it is serving. Look at all the items mentioned in the first part of the proposal, including student health and well-being, breadth and depth of programs, effectiveness of the staff, degree to which school is meeting the needs of the children and community.
Response to First Replies
Imagine my delight to wake up this morning and find my plan had already been looked at. I can already taste-- what are we getting for this, Mike? Money? Fame? A box of fudge?
It's true that my plan may not meet the letter of the ESSA. I'm okay with that. And I'm not sure what Polikoff's objection is-- not enough hard numbers? Too many things outside the test? How exactly does my plan eviscerate accountability?
But this exchange reminds me that the ESSA leaves me with the same old question about accountability-- accountable to whom, and for what?
Because the answer in ESSA, buried in some new language, seems to be the same old "accountable to the federal government for test scores." Except that the feds can no longer be specific about how the scores should look and what happens if you "fail," making ESSA vaguer and unlikely to satisfy literally anybody at all except test manufacvturers.
Because any accountability system that is based on standardized testing materials produced and assessed on a large scale and covering only a sliver of the school program-- that's an accountability system that's a piece of useless crap, like checking the health and well-being of an elephant by analyzing its toenail clippings. Not completely and utterly useless-- just mostly useless, and a waste of resources.
So the challenge for any accountability system under ESSA will be to design a system that can co-exist with the federal regulations that mandate measures that don't provide accountability at all.
Look-- we know this! We've been doing the kind of test-based accountability called for by ESSA for over a decade, and it has accomplished absolutely bupkus other than to provide marketing fodder for the charter-based privatization of public schools, which in turn has also produced bupkus in terms of improving education. We have been trying test-based accountability and it does not work.
I would love to see real accountability for schools. But a test-based rating system is not it. So to have real accountability, we're going to have to do more than put lipstick on that pig-- we're going to have to bury that pig way inside some other structure, maybe slaughter and cook that pig and feed it to a lion.
Sure, there are nuts and bolts to work out, but I'm not giving that stuff away for free! I need something to start my consulting business with.
Okay, I'm done now. When you're ready, let me know, and I'll tell you where to send my check. Or the fudge.
I don't know where this fits, but for accountability we need full and open school audits.
Visits from a team that includes folks from the state capital and working educators. They will visit the school, have free rein to walk in and out of any classroom, to examine records, curriculum, watch teachers in action, interview students and faculty and parents.
I fully agree that "Just take our word for it" is not an accountability system. Neither is "Prove yourself with paperwork." You want to see if somebody is doing their job-- go look.
The audit team visits for a week and makes an evaluation of the school's strength and weaknesses, creating a full description of the school's impact on children and the state of the children it is serving. Look at all the items mentioned in the first part of the proposal, including student health and well-being, breadth and depth of programs, effectiveness of the staff, degree to which school is meeting the needs of the children and community.
Response to First Replies
Imagine my delight to wake up this morning and find my plan had already been looked at. I can already taste-- what are we getting for this, Mike? Money? Fame? A box of fudge?
@mpolikoff @palan57 Fair enough but also clarifying. It shows that #ESSA doesn't allow "anything goes" or the evisceration of accountability
— Michael Petrilli (@MichaelPetrilli) January 14, 2016
It's true that my plan may not meet the letter of the ESSA. I'm okay with that. And I'm not sure what Polikoff's objection is-- not enough hard numbers? Too many things outside the test? How exactly does my plan eviscerate accountability?
But this exchange reminds me that the ESSA leaves me with the same old question about accountability-- accountable to whom, and for what?
Because the answer in ESSA, buried in some new language, seems to be the same old "accountable to the federal government for test scores." Except that the feds can no longer be specific about how the scores should look and what happens if you "fail," making ESSA vaguer and unlikely to satisfy literally anybody at all except test manufacvturers.
Because any accountability system that is based on standardized testing materials produced and assessed on a large scale and covering only a sliver of the school program-- that's an accountability system that's a piece of useless crap, like checking the health and well-being of an elephant by analyzing its toenail clippings. Not completely and utterly useless-- just mostly useless, and a waste of resources.
So the challenge for any accountability system under ESSA will be to design a system that can co-exist with the federal regulations that mandate measures that don't provide accountability at all.
Look-- we know this! We've been doing the kind of test-based accountability called for by ESSA for over a decade, and it has accomplished absolutely bupkus other than to provide marketing fodder for the charter-based privatization of public schools, which in turn has also produced bupkus in terms of improving education. We have been trying test-based accountability and it does not work.
I would love to see real accountability for schools. But a test-based rating system is not it. So to have real accountability, we're going to have to do more than put lipstick on that pig-- we're going to have to bury that pig way inside some other structure, maybe slaughter and cook that pig and feed it to a lion.
Sure, there are nuts and bolts to work out, but I'm not giving that stuff away for free! I need something to start my consulting business with.
Okay, I'm done now. When you're ready, let me know, and I'll tell you where to send my check. Or the fudge.
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