High Achievement New York, a group of Gates-funded Common Core pushing business types, is back in the new chicken littling the hell out of rejecting the Core.
This time they've managed to get Crain's New York business magazine to pass along their terrified concerns! "Oh nos!" they declaim. "If states try to replace the Core, there will be a big expensive debacle."
“Chaos ensued in both Indiana and Oklahoma after repealing the standards, creating a nightmarish situation for confused teachers and lowering the bar for students,” it claimed, adding that Indiana students now spend 12 hours per year taking standardized tests, up from six previously.
Human sacrifice. Dogs and cats living together. Mass hysteria. Run away! Run away!
You can read the report here (at least for now) in its fourteen-page glory. It depends on all the same old baloney that HANY and other Core-pushers have been repeating. Heck, HANY tried this same alarm-raising back in October, 2014.
This report (Much Ado: The Cost and Chaos of Replacing Common Core) seems aimed primarily at New York State, and they claim that there are five lessons for the Empire State based on, well, something.
1. Trying to “repeal” or substantially “replace” Common Core standards would be a waste
2. New “New York” standards must be as or more rigorous than Common Core standards
3. The review process needs to be driven by the State Education Department
4. Classroom teachers must be the driving voices in any revisions; and
5. A new name matters.
Lets look at these.
1. No reason to believe that's true. It would certainly cut into a lot of folks profit margin, and with companies like Pearson laying off 4,000 workers, I'm sure that lost revenue is a concern in some board rooms. But I think I speak for many people in education when I say that I'd rather make education decisions based on educational concerns, and not corporate bottom lines.
2. That should not be hard. The Common Core standards are not all that rigorous. In fact, the newest issue of the AASA Journal includes an article showing in detail how much below the old NJ standards CCSS actually falls. Was NY that much more rigorous and complex than NJ?
3. Well, yes. Since that department is run by lots of corporate shills, they would be the logical choice for making sure that the process watches out for the interests of businesses.
4. Oh, me! Pick me!! Okay, I'm not technically a New York teacher, but let me pick some NY teachers that I know to be a "driving voice," whatever the hell that means.
5. Yes, let's not forget that good branding help provide protective cover for replacing the old damned stupid thing with some brand new version of the same old damned stupid thing.
Once again, the Core-sters are crying, "Think of the teachers! The poor, confused teachers!" And you know what? Having to go through one more damned stupid paperwork change is hard as hell on teachers and classrooms. Of course, we could always change to a system that valued teachers' voices and gave them the freedom to use their professional judgment, instead of trying to switch one micro-managing one-size-fits-all system for another. That transition, to a teacher directed classroom, would be much easier to navigate.
Look, these guys have a point when they say that Indiana and Oklahoma spent a lot of money and caused a lot of chaos by switching to standards that were basically the Common Core pig with lipstick and a shave. But the painted pig is not the only alternative to CCSS-- there are, in fact, alternatives to a system in which teachers are reduced to glorified clerks in a content delivery system aimed at a bad test that is loosely aligned to bad standards.
The report quotes an Oklahoma 8th grade teacher:
How are you supposed to plan and prepare when you have so much uncertainty around what you’re supposed to teach and how you’re supposed to teach and how you're supposed to teach it?
I have an answer for that-- you operate an education system in which teachers do not have to wait for some top-down manager to direct them in how they are to answer those questions. You don't make teachers wait to be told exactly what they should teach and how they should teach it (and what Big Standardized Test they should teach to). Instead, you use a system where teachers are free to use their trained, professional judgment to answer those questions themselves on the local level.
The whole thing rankles because it is such transparent non-serious bullshit. Exactly what principle is being espoused here-- it's always sound policy to throw good money after bad? when you're doing something that demonstrably doesn't work, for God's sake, don't change a thing? stay the course? when you're failing, grit your teeth and fail harder? Would they apply ANY of these principles to the businesses that they run? And where were they and their deep concern for classroom confusion and the spending of great stacks of money back when Common Core was inflicted on schools in the first place?
Why were the cost and chaos of implementing Common Core such Really Good Things, but the cost and chaos of getting rid of this unpopular failed experiment suddenly cause for a giant clutching of massive pearls?
Go back to your boardrooms, boys. Get your noses out of education, stop imagining that schools exist just to serve you, and let us do our jobs.
Thursday, January 21, 2016
Free College, Charter Schools, and Irony
Yesterday's New York Times included a Room for Debate argument over free college, plugging into one of the few education related issues that (some) of the Presidential candidates have been (sort of) willing to (kind of) talk about. The debate unleashed a hurricane of irony from the commenters on the "anti" side.
Here's Andrew P. Kelly from the American Enterprise Institute arguing that "The Problem Is That Free College Isn't Free." Kelly argues that free college is a "flawed policy," because rather than being free "it simply shifts costs from students to taxpayers." If "public generosity" doesn't keep pace, then colleges won't be able to keep pace with the level of students, and they'll have to make cuts to meet their budgets.
Second, Kelly argues, " free college plans assume that tuition prices are the main obstacle to student success," and ignores other obstacles to student college success, like students who aren't fully prepared or who lack the personal resources to fully follow through.
Weighing in against free college is also our old buddy Mike Petrilli from the Fordham Institute, arguing that this would be "A Needless Windfall for Affluent Voters and State Institutions."
Nothing in life is truly free — but don’t tell that to dogmatic liberals and their pandering politicians, who would turn the first two years of college into a new universal entitlement.
Petrilli goes on to toss out some more of the standard old data points about college preparedness, including the NAEP claim that only 40% of 12th graders are prepared for college (a bogus piece of data that presumes that NAEP knows what "college-ready" means, even though previous research finds half the students they labeled unready going on to get college degrees). He also helpfully suggests that college not admit students "who are clearly unprepared academically and therefor have virtually no shot at leaving with a real degree or credentials."
On the one hand, this is a logical extension of Petrilli's thesis that some Strivers deserve an education and Those Other Students should be left behind in struggling public schools. Petrilli has long argued that education should be about separating Strivers from Those People, going so far as to defend Eva Moskowitz's push-out policies. So it makes sense that he would argue that only certain people deserve to be in college. Some day someone needs to explain exactly what society should do with all those undeserving non-strivers. But there's no irony in this part of Petrilli's argument.
On the other hand, the rest of the anti-free-college argument seems vaguely like...hmm.. the argument against charter schools.
The promise of the charter movement has been that we can open free private schools for an added cost of $0.00 over what we're currently spending. The pushback has been that no, charter schools are not free and to exist they must drain resources from other places, including the existing public school system, so that the cost of sending K-12 students to a private school is sloughed off on the taxpayers. (The addition of pricey administrative costs alone guarantees that charters add to the overall cost of K-12 education.)
Kelly's critique-- that free school assumes that getting the students into those schools is all that's needed for success-- exactly mirrors the assertion of charter fans that all we need to do is drop the barriers that keep K-12 students from entering charter schools in order for success to blossom. He says that their are other obstacles to their success that must be addressed before students can succeed; when pro-public school folks say that about charters, they are accused of making excuses and blaming poverty.
Meanwhile, as far as Petrilli's lead goes--
Nothing in life is truly free-- but don't tell that to dogmatic charter fans and their pandering politicians, who would turn twelve years of private school into a new universal entitlement.
There. I fixed that for you.
Here's Andrew P. Kelly from the American Enterprise Institute arguing that "The Problem Is That Free College Isn't Free." Kelly argues that free college is a "flawed policy," because rather than being free "it simply shifts costs from students to taxpayers." If "public generosity" doesn't keep pace, then colleges won't be able to keep pace with the level of students, and they'll have to make cuts to meet their budgets.
Second, Kelly argues, " free college plans assume that tuition prices are the main obstacle to student success," and ignores other obstacles to student college success, like students who aren't fully prepared or who lack the personal resources to fully follow through.
Weighing in against free college is also our old buddy Mike Petrilli from the Fordham Institute, arguing that this would be "A Needless Windfall for Affluent Voters and State Institutions."
Nothing in life is truly free — but don’t tell that to dogmatic liberals and their pandering politicians, who would turn the first two years of college into a new universal entitlement.
Petrilli goes on to toss out some more of the standard old data points about college preparedness, including the NAEP claim that only 40% of 12th graders are prepared for college (a bogus piece of data that presumes that NAEP knows what "college-ready" means, even though previous research finds half the students they labeled unready going on to get college degrees). He also helpfully suggests that college not admit students "who are clearly unprepared academically and therefor have virtually no shot at leaving with a real degree or credentials."
On the one hand, this is a logical extension of Petrilli's thesis that some Strivers deserve an education and Those Other Students should be left behind in struggling public schools. Petrilli has long argued that education should be about separating Strivers from Those People, going so far as to defend Eva Moskowitz's push-out policies. So it makes sense that he would argue that only certain people deserve to be in college. Some day someone needs to explain exactly what society should do with all those undeserving non-strivers. But there's no irony in this part of Petrilli's argument.
On the other hand, the rest of the anti-free-college argument seems vaguely like...hmm.. the argument against charter schools.
The promise of the charter movement has been that we can open free private schools for an added cost of $0.00 over what we're currently spending. The pushback has been that no, charter schools are not free and to exist they must drain resources from other places, including the existing public school system, so that the cost of sending K-12 students to a private school is sloughed off on the taxpayers. (The addition of pricey administrative costs alone guarantees that charters add to the overall cost of K-12 education.)
Kelly's critique-- that free school assumes that getting the students into those schools is all that's needed for success-- exactly mirrors the assertion of charter fans that all we need to do is drop the barriers that keep K-12 students from entering charter schools in order for success to blossom. He says that their are other obstacles to their success that must be addressed before students can succeed; when pro-public school folks say that about charters, they are accused of making excuses and blaming poverty.
Meanwhile, as far as Petrilli's lead goes--
Nothing in life is truly free-- but don't tell that to dogmatic charter fans and their pandering politicians, who would turn twelve years of private school into a new universal entitlement.
There. I fixed that for you.
Wednesday, January 20, 2016
CA: One More Charter Get Rich Quick Scheme
California's charter law has an odd little wrinkle-- as some folks read it, one school district can become the authorizer of a charter school within another school district's boundaries. Yup. I can sit in my district and give Bob's Big Charter School permission to set up shop in your district, to start poaching your students, and start sucking up your public tax dollars.
You can see why the district that's being raided would object. But why would any district want to get involved in some distant charter school?
Meet Steve Van Zant.
Van Zant acquired a BA in English from San Diego State in 1985 and an MS in Education Administration in 1988. He indicates that he started as "an elementary teacher with leadership responsibilities," but in 1991 he stared his first principal job and worked his way up to superintendent in 2006. In 2013 he was hired at his sixth administrative position-- superintendent of Sausalito Marin City School District, a district with deep pockets but a shrinking student body. He's been working there three days a week, but it was at his previous superintendent gig with Mountain Empire Unified School District that Van Zant really hit paydirt.
Van Zant turned into Mountain Empire into a prodigious authorizer of charter schools in other peoples' districts. And then those charters turned around and hired Van Zant's consulting firm to help them run their schools. He would scratch their back, and they would make it rain all over his. Here's how he puts it on his LinkedIn account:
Specialties: I have found my real niche is developing funding sources for schools and streamlining budgets to allow for increased innovation and technology upgrades in the classroom. Recently, I have become very involved with charter schools. I am able to provide new charter schools with assistance with their proposed authorizing distrct - or help find an authorizing district for a proposed new charter school. In addition, I can provide sound advice to charter schools and school districts regarding issues concerning school finance or charter/ district relations.
The San Diego Superior Court put it differently. Their term was "one felony count of conflict of interest." Van Zant is not in custody, and the case hasn't been settled yet, so throw "allegedly" in wherever it suits you.
The business is called EdHive because reasons. The website is still offering to help charters "make it happen" and touting their ability to "connect you with who you need to know." They also claim that "the team" has over 300 years of experience, although currently "the team" does not appear to have names or faces. And they have a collection of articles all dated from 2012. Van Zant also had a business-related twitter account-- @the_ed_buzz (hive? buzz? get it?) that started in September of 2011 and went dark at the end of December 2012 after a mere 128 tweets.
Critics say that Van Zant's behavior violated the spirit of California's charter law. San Diego is among the districts that have resorted to cease and desist letters to keep the charter vultures at bay, but attempts to rewrite/clarify the law have been unsuccessful to date. Chances are that Van Zant is not the only person in California to figure out how to use the law's vagueness to get rich quickly.
You can see why the district that's being raided would object. But why would any district want to get involved in some distant charter school?
Meet Steve Van Zant.
Van Zant acquired a BA in English from San Diego State in 1985 and an MS in Education Administration in 1988. He indicates that he started as "an elementary teacher with leadership responsibilities," but in 1991 he stared his first principal job and worked his way up to superintendent in 2006. In 2013 he was hired at his sixth administrative position-- superintendent of Sausalito Marin City School District, a district with deep pockets but a shrinking student body. He's been working there three days a week, but it was at his previous superintendent gig with Mountain Empire Unified School District that Van Zant really hit paydirt.
Van Zant turned into Mountain Empire into a prodigious authorizer of charter schools in other peoples' districts. And then those charters turned around and hired Van Zant's consulting firm to help them run their schools. He would scratch their back, and they would make it rain all over his. Here's how he puts it on his LinkedIn account:
Specialties: I have found my real niche is developing funding sources for schools and streamlining budgets to allow for increased innovation and technology upgrades in the classroom. Recently, I have become very involved with charter schools. I am able to provide new charter schools with assistance with their proposed authorizing distrct - or help find an authorizing district for a proposed new charter school. In addition, I can provide sound advice to charter schools and school districts regarding issues concerning school finance or charter/ district relations.
The San Diego Superior Court put it differently. Their term was "one felony count of conflict of interest." Van Zant is not in custody, and the case hasn't been settled yet, so throw "allegedly" in wherever it suits you.
The business is called EdHive because reasons. The website is still offering to help charters "make it happen" and touting their ability to "connect you with who you need to know." They also claim that "the team" has over 300 years of experience, although currently "the team" does not appear to have names or faces. And they have a collection of articles all dated from 2012. Van Zant also had a business-related twitter account-- @the_ed_buzz (hive? buzz? get it?) that started in September of 2011 and went dark at the end of December 2012 after a mere 128 tweets.
Critics say that Van Zant's behavior violated the spirit of California's charter law. San Diego is among the districts that have resorted to cease and desist letters to keep the charter vultures at bay, but attempts to rewrite/clarify the law have been unsuccessful to date. Chances are that Van Zant is not the only person in California to figure out how to use the law's vagueness to get rich quickly.
Drowning Bunnies To Raise Graduation Rates
Mount St. Mary's University is a relatively small school in Maryland, "located in the middle of everything." And their president would like to drown some bunnies.
Okay, only metaphorically. What Simon Newman would like to do is improve the university's retention numbers. And he would like to do it by "counseling out" students early who are judged likely to drop out later. Here's the lead from the college newspaper's story about the plan:
Even before this year’s freshman class arrived on campus in August, President Simon Newman was developing a plan to dismiss 20-25 of them before the end of September as a means of improving the Mount’s student retention numbers.
Newman was hired by the university just over a year ago. His previous experience? Thirty years in finance and investment. Perhaps that's why he used a less-than-felicitous metaphor to explain his plan. Unfortunately for him, the university apparently has a student newspaper that does real reporting, and they reported on Newman's plan-- and a few other things. As reported in Inside Higher Education:
The student newspaper also reported (and The Washington Post quoted a professor confirming) that Newman told some faculty members they needed to change the way they think of struggling students. He reportedly said, “This is hard for you because you think of the students as cuddly bunnies, but you can’t. You just have to drown the bunnies … put a Glock to their heads.”
The Mountain Echo quotes emails from Newman as they lay out the specifics of the plan to "cull the class." The entering freshmen would take a "survey" that would help decide their fate (it was not called the "Have you made a terrible mistake by coming here" survey). In discussions by email with faculty who clearly had some misgivings about the plan, Newman had this to say:
My short term goal is to have 20-25 people leave by the 25th [of Sep.]. This one thing will boost our retention 4-5%. A larger committee or group needs to work on the details but I think you get the objective.
Several groups of faculty lobbied hard to head off Newman's plan, but found him unwilling to bend. When one suggested that using the survey in this manner could result in dismissing perfectly good students, Newman reportedly replied that "there will be some collateral damage."
Ultimately, the plan was thwarted because the committee responsible for coming up with te list of students to be "dismissed" simply refused to do the job, submitting no names.
Meanwhile, the university's board chairman has responded to the Mountain Echo article-- by blasting the newspaper. In a letter to the paper (which the paper published) John E. Coyne, III, blasts the article for giving a "grossly inaccurate impression." Plus he's really upset that the journalists are using private emails. And that they're using it to "advance your journalistic interests" and are doing so "without any concern for either the individual privacy interests of the faculty involved or the damage you will render to this University and its brand." As I am neither a real journalist nor affiliated with the University and its brand, I feel comfortable saying that the letter suggests that Coyne is a tool. But then, Coyne is also an investment banker, so he may feel protective of his banking bro.
But, those damn journalists, and their interest in telling people what's actually going. Why can they not understand that brands are not damaged by people doing stupid, secret, just-plain-wrong things, but are damaged by the people who reveal those secrets? Remember-- facts are only important when they are useful facts that help your brand. Otherwise, shut up and follow the talking points.
There are many lessons here, including the one about putting investment bankers in charge of education. But perhaps the biggest one is how the Law of Unintended Consequences intersects with Campbell's Law. There are so many plans to gather data about post-secondary schools by measuring things like graduation rate and retention rates, but here's just another example of how trying to Make Your Numbers invariably conflicts with the actual purpose of the institution.
In other words, if we insist on those kinds of metrics for colleges and universities, Newman is not going to be the last unqualified university head to get caught trying to drown the bunnies. In the meantime, the university might want to work on the wording of its acceptance letter-- "Congratulations! You have probably been accepted to Mount St. Mary's University. We'll see you in the fall, but you probably shouldn't unpack for a week or two."
Hats off to the reporters and editors and advisor of the Mountain Echo. Makes me feel good to know that in this day and age, there are still people trying to do the real job of journalism. Keep it up!
Okay, only metaphorically. What Simon Newman would like to do is improve the university's retention numbers. And he would like to do it by "counseling out" students early who are judged likely to drop out later. Here's the lead from the college newspaper's story about the plan:
Even before this year’s freshman class arrived on campus in August, President Simon Newman was developing a plan to dismiss 20-25 of them before the end of September as a means of improving the Mount’s student retention numbers.
Newman was hired by the university just over a year ago. His previous experience? Thirty years in finance and investment. Perhaps that's why he used a less-than-felicitous metaphor to explain his plan. Unfortunately for him, the university apparently has a student newspaper that does real reporting, and they reported on Newman's plan-- and a few other things. As reported in Inside Higher Education:
The student newspaper also reported (and The Washington Post quoted a professor confirming) that Newman told some faculty members they needed to change the way they think of struggling students. He reportedly said, “This is hard for you because you think of the students as cuddly bunnies, but you can’t. You just have to drown the bunnies … put a Glock to their heads.”
The Mountain Echo quotes emails from Newman as they lay out the specifics of the plan to "cull the class." The entering freshmen would take a "survey" that would help decide their fate (it was not called the "Have you made a terrible mistake by coming here" survey). In discussions by email with faculty who clearly had some misgivings about the plan, Newman had this to say:
My short term goal is to have 20-25 people leave by the 25th [of Sep.]. This one thing will boost our retention 4-5%. A larger committee or group needs to work on the details but I think you get the objective.
Several groups of faculty lobbied hard to head off Newman's plan, but found him unwilling to bend. When one suggested that using the survey in this manner could result in dismissing perfectly good students, Newman reportedly replied that "there will be some collateral damage."
Ultimately, the plan was thwarted because the committee responsible for coming up with te list of students to be "dismissed" simply refused to do the job, submitting no names.
Meanwhile, the university's board chairman has responded to the Mountain Echo article-- by blasting the newspaper. In a letter to the paper (which the paper published) John E. Coyne, III, blasts the article for giving a "grossly inaccurate impression." Plus he's really upset that the journalists are using private emails. And that they're using it to "advance your journalistic interests" and are doing so "without any concern for either the individual privacy interests of the faculty involved or the damage you will render to this University and its brand." As I am neither a real journalist nor affiliated with the University and its brand, I feel comfortable saying that the letter suggests that Coyne is a tool. But then, Coyne is also an investment banker, so he may feel protective of his banking bro.
But, those damn journalists, and their interest in telling people what's actually going. Why can they not understand that brands are not damaged by people doing stupid, secret, just-plain-wrong things, but are damaged by the people who reveal those secrets? Remember-- facts are only important when they are useful facts that help your brand. Otherwise, shut up and follow the talking points.
There are many lessons here, including the one about putting investment bankers in charge of education. But perhaps the biggest one is how the Law of Unintended Consequences intersects with Campbell's Law. There are so many plans to gather data about post-secondary schools by measuring things like graduation rate and retention rates, but here's just another example of how trying to Make Your Numbers invariably conflicts with the actual purpose of the institution.
In other words, if we insist on those kinds of metrics for colleges and universities, Newman is not going to be the last unqualified university head to get caught trying to drown the bunnies. In the meantime, the university might want to work on the wording of its acceptance letter-- "Congratulations! You have probably been accepted to Mount St. Mary's University. We'll see you in the fall, but you probably shouldn't unpack for a week or two."
Hats off to the reporters and editors and advisor of the Mountain Echo. Makes me feel good to know that in this day and age, there are still people trying to do the real job of journalism. Keep it up!
Tuesday, January 19, 2016
Jebucation Follies (Part II: The Nuts, Bolts and Screws)
Jeb! Bush has a shiny new education plan, and he hopes that it will be the big lightning bolt that will shock his comatose candidacy back to life. In Part I, I examined his premises and theories, arguing that the big crack in his foundation is the conservative-thwarting oxymoron of imposed choice. In this part, I want to look at the actual nuts and bolts of Bush's grand plan.
I'm using the "backgrounder" that EdWeek is kindly hosting on its site. After three pages of general argument, the plan gets down to some nitty with a side order of gritty. Here are the pieces of this master action plan.
Empower Parents and Students with Quality Options
For some reason or other, part of this list includes some specific plans for DC. Why federal ed proposals need to keep singling out one district in the whole country remains a bit of a mystery, unless, of course, it has to do with DC-dwelling bureaucrats and policy makers wanting to exercise local control over their local school district.
Beyond the beltway, Bush wants a thousand charter schools to bloom. He invokes the oft-debunked spectre of waitlisted students. Bush wants to double the amount of money that the feds would throw at charter schools, which is curious since I keep hearing that more money is not the solution in education. Bush also threatens to use the bully pulpit, which is kind of cute, given that the bully pulpit arguably hasn't had any effect on American policy for over a century (and given that Bush's powers of oratorical persuasion are currently earning a solid "below basic" from the citizenry). Plus, fewer regulations. Let's expand charter schools so that "students around the country have all the options they want, need and deserve" which is nice but A) who decides what they deserve and B) do any of them really want more than one good school to attend (granted, you can make a case for B since many waitlist students are on multiple waitlists-- maybe they do want to attend many schools at once).
Support States With The Flexibility and Resources To Create Great Pubic Schools
Specifics include "Defend State Control of Education" by keeping the feds out of everyone's business. "The federal government cannot, and should not, impose a one-size fits all [sic] model of anything on states," says the man who pushed Common Core forever, and when he stopped saying its name still insisted that all states should adopt Core-like standards.
"States need to be held accountable for serving their citizens, not federal bureaucrats," says Jeb! But he doesn't say who will hold the states accountable, or how.
Bush wants to make Title I portable by way of bock grants to the states, so that states can be free to shaft low-income high-needs students in new and creative ways. He also wants to make IDEA funds portable because, again charter choice argle bargle. I can't think of a better example of the inefficiency of choice. How does it work to have several schools trying to duplicate the expensive technology and services required by students with special needs, instead of using one facility to consolidate those costs. But, choice!
Bush also wants to reward student success. All this involves is the federal government giving out extra money to states that match the federal government's idea of success. Somebody explain to me how this is different, in principle or in execution, from Obama/Duncan's Race to the Top program. Bush thinks it's different because those programs were bullying and punitive, but rewards are different. But this is splitting hairs. A bonus is only a bonus if all your essential needs are already taken care of, and that describes very few school districts. If you "reward" me with supper, then "not rewarding" and letting me go hungry feels an awful lot like punishment.
Reward Great Teaching and Successful Student Outcomes
Bock grants with Title II money blah blah teachers valuable resource blah blah rewarding top teachers blah blah blah and at the end of it all, student success is still defined by the feds. Want to bet it looks a lot like "good test scores."
Give Parents, Teachers and Taxpayers The Information They Need
We'll have public reports of critical student outcome measures. Who decides what qualifies as a critical outcome measure? According to ESSA, that is still mostly the feds, mostly test scores. Is Jeb running on Obama's education record? Will it be long before someone calls him Jebama?
Bush wants to guarantee parent and teacher access to information, and coming from the guy whose state went all in on meaningless letter grades for schools, that's a nice step forward. The question will be, "How much of what information?" For instance, information in the form of copies of the tests that the students took, showing how each student answered each question-- that would be great. Bush does promise teachers information about last year's test result before next year starts.
But at the same time, student privacy must be preserved with "strong governance, use of best practices in information security and privacy protection" and also more training. Sigh. I feel like 21st Skills and Knowledge include understanding that if you're going to put it in the system, somebody will be able to get at it. As we repeatedly say to starlets with nekkid online pictures, "If you don't want anyone to see it, don't put it out in the digital world to begin with."
Drive Innovation and Research To Break The Stranglehold of the Status Quo
Bush is being direct and clear-- he would like to get rid of traditional public education. He thinks schools still work like they did two generations ago (there is no excuse for this belief). And he likes blended learning and competency based education, which means he is destined to meet the same people who hammered him over Common Core, only they'll be carrying different signs.
Also, remember-- it's important to give parents and students a choice, as long as they choose the choices that Bush chooses for them. Under Bush, you can have lots of choices-- except for a traditional public school.
Post Secondary Education and Training
Jeb! has noticed that people are making an issue out of post-secondary education, so he's on that, too. He has noticed some problems in access to the level of education "critical to upward mobility" (though he hasn't noticed that upward mobility is itself in big trouble). But he has a smorgasbord of ideas:
* Education savings accounts. Complete with $50K line of credit, because more loans will help with debt? I'm not seeing how this works. Was anybody having trouble getting in debt already?
* Drive down costs and hold post-sec institutions accountable. Somehow-- also puppies for everyone. He would put institutions "on the hook" for a portion of what grads can't repay.Super. So colleges will make sure not admit or give financial aid to poor students. Genius.
* Expand student access to innovative types of training. It's possible this idea is not stupid, although how it should involve the feds is less clear.
* Give students and families the information they need to make good decision. Again, requiring that the feds decide what information they "need."
* Help existing borrowers repay their loans. Jeb-grants for everyone! No, sorry. Somehow this will be part of the Jebbified finance system that will be helping bankers make more money from college loans helping students pay for school. Also, easier bankruptcy, so there's that.
So what have we got here?
Man, if Jeb! wanted to woo back conservatives, this figleaved federalism is probably not going to do it. I mean, Rick Hess likes it, and Rick Hess is no dummy, but to me it looks like rehashed reformsterism with a side order of Same Old Thing We've Had for the Past Decade. There's not a new idea in sight, and not a single old idea that comes equipped with an example of how well it worked anywhere. I suppose Bush can get points for having scrubbed Common Core from his resume, but it's going to take a lot more than that and sucking up to all the venture vultures who want their slice of money baked in an edu-charter pie to resuscitate the Bush shot at Presidency. Certainly, I don't see anything new and exciting or worn and practical about which to get edu-excited.
I'm using the "backgrounder" that EdWeek is kindly hosting on its site. After three pages of general argument, the plan gets down to some nitty with a side order of gritty. Here are the pieces of this master action plan.
Empower Parents and Students with Quality Options
For some reason or other, part of this list includes some specific plans for DC. Why federal ed proposals need to keep singling out one district in the whole country remains a bit of a mystery, unless, of course, it has to do with DC-dwelling bureaucrats and policy makers wanting to exercise local control over their local school district.
Beyond the beltway, Bush wants a thousand charter schools to bloom. He invokes the oft-debunked spectre of waitlisted students. Bush wants to double the amount of money that the feds would throw at charter schools, which is curious since I keep hearing that more money is not the solution in education. Bush also threatens to use the bully pulpit, which is kind of cute, given that the bully pulpit arguably hasn't had any effect on American policy for over a century (and given that Bush's powers of oratorical persuasion are currently earning a solid "below basic" from the citizenry). Plus, fewer regulations. Let's expand charter schools so that "students around the country have all the options they want, need and deserve" which is nice but A) who decides what they deserve and B) do any of them really want more than one good school to attend (granted, you can make a case for B since many waitlist students are on multiple waitlists-- maybe they do want to attend many schools at once).
Support States With The Flexibility and Resources To Create Great Pubic Schools
Specifics include "Defend State Control of Education" by keeping the feds out of everyone's business. "The federal government cannot, and should not, impose a one-size fits all [sic] model of anything on states," says the man who pushed Common Core forever, and when he stopped saying its name still insisted that all states should adopt Core-like standards.
"States need to be held accountable for serving their citizens, not federal bureaucrats," says Jeb! But he doesn't say who will hold the states accountable, or how.
Bush wants to make Title I portable by way of bock grants to the states, so that states can be free to shaft low-income high-needs students in new and creative ways. He also wants to make IDEA funds portable because, again charter choice argle bargle. I can't think of a better example of the inefficiency of choice. How does it work to have several schools trying to duplicate the expensive technology and services required by students with special needs, instead of using one facility to consolidate those costs. But, choice!
Bush also wants to reward student success. All this involves is the federal government giving out extra money to states that match the federal government's idea of success. Somebody explain to me how this is different, in principle or in execution, from Obama/Duncan's Race to the Top program. Bush thinks it's different because those programs were bullying and punitive, but rewards are different. But this is splitting hairs. A bonus is only a bonus if all your essential needs are already taken care of, and that describes very few school districts. If you "reward" me with supper, then "not rewarding" and letting me go hungry feels an awful lot like punishment.
Reward Great Teaching and Successful Student Outcomes
Bock grants with Title II money blah blah teachers valuable resource blah blah rewarding top teachers blah blah blah and at the end of it all, student success is still defined by the feds. Want to bet it looks a lot like "good test scores."
Give Parents, Teachers and Taxpayers The Information They Need
We'll have public reports of critical student outcome measures. Who decides what qualifies as a critical outcome measure? According to ESSA, that is still mostly the feds, mostly test scores. Is Jeb running on Obama's education record? Will it be long before someone calls him Jebama?
Bush wants to guarantee parent and teacher access to information, and coming from the guy whose state went all in on meaningless letter grades for schools, that's a nice step forward. The question will be, "How much of what information?" For instance, information in the form of copies of the tests that the students took, showing how each student answered each question-- that would be great. Bush does promise teachers information about last year's test result before next year starts.
But at the same time, student privacy must be preserved with "strong governance, use of best practices in information security and privacy protection" and also more training. Sigh. I feel like 21st Skills and Knowledge include understanding that if you're going to put it in the system, somebody will be able to get at it. As we repeatedly say to starlets with nekkid online pictures, "If you don't want anyone to see it, don't put it out in the digital world to begin with."
Drive Innovation and Research To Break The Stranglehold of the Status Quo
Bush is being direct and clear-- he would like to get rid of traditional public education. He thinks schools still work like they did two generations ago (there is no excuse for this belief). And he likes blended learning and competency based education, which means he is destined to meet the same people who hammered him over Common Core, only they'll be carrying different signs.
Also, remember-- it's important to give parents and students a choice, as long as they choose the choices that Bush chooses for them. Under Bush, you can have lots of choices-- except for a traditional public school.
Post Secondary Education and Training
Jeb! has noticed that people are making an issue out of post-secondary education, so he's on that, too. He has noticed some problems in access to the level of education "critical to upward mobility" (though he hasn't noticed that upward mobility is itself in big trouble). But he has a smorgasbord of ideas:
* Education savings accounts. Complete with $50K line of credit, because more loans will help with debt? I'm not seeing how this works. Was anybody having trouble getting in debt already?
* Drive down costs and hold post-sec institutions accountable. Somehow-- also puppies for everyone. He would put institutions "on the hook" for a portion of what grads can't repay.Super. So colleges will make sure not admit or give financial aid to poor students. Genius.
* Expand student access to innovative types of training. It's possible this idea is not stupid, although how it should involve the feds is less clear.
* Give students and families the information they need to make good decision. Again, requiring that the feds decide what information they "need."
* Help existing borrowers repay their loans. Jeb-grants for everyone! No, sorry. Somehow this will be part of the Jebbified finance system that will be
So what have we got here?
Man, if Jeb! wanted to woo back conservatives, this figleaved federalism is probably not going to do it. I mean, Rick Hess likes it, and Rick Hess is no dummy, but to me it looks like rehashed reformsterism with a side order of Same Old Thing We've Had for the Past Decade. There's not a new idea in sight, and not a single old idea that comes equipped with an example of how well it worked anywhere. I suppose Bush can get points for having scrubbed Common Core from his resume, but it's going to take a lot more than that and sucking up to all the venture vultures who want their slice of money baked in an edu-charter pie to resuscitate the Bush shot at Presidency. Certainly, I don't see anything new and exciting or worn and practical about which to get edu-excited.
Jebucation Follies (Part I: The Conservative Conundrum)
I give Jeb! Bush credit for one thing-- sincerity. While other politicians have adopted and disinherited reformster policies quicker than you can say "political expediency," Bush has stuck to his guns, even when those guns are aimed squarely at his own feet. Even when he's dead wrong about everything.
Now Bush, whose campaign seems designed to spin rich backers money into vapor, has gone back to the education well one more time with a comprehensive-ish education plan. It really is worth a look, as long as you think of it less as "Jeb! Bush's Bold Plan for US Education" and more "A Compendium of Current Reformster Greatest Hits." I'll be using the "backgrounder" that EdWeek kindly posted on their site. Let's wade in, shall we?
I'm going to address the plan in two parts. Here in Part I, I'll take a look at the lump of self-contradictory principle that is the foundation of Bush's plan. In Part II, we'll get into the nuts and bolts.
Bush opens with a general statement of his guiding theory of change. Here's the critical paragraph:
Governor Bush’s goal is to ensure that all Americans, no matter their background or zip code, graduate from high school, college or career ready, and have the opportunity to pursue affordable post-secondary education or training. Achieving this goal requires a complete overhaul of a system from one that serves bureaucracies to one that serves the needs of families and students. Empowering individuals doesn’t require additional money or programs designed by Washington. What we need is a national focus on fueling innovation and providing quality choices for every student in this country.
We might examine the question of whether or not the current education system serves bureaucracy, and if so, how much of that bureaucracy is the one that Jeb! and other reformsters have put in place over the last decade. The notion that we can fix education without spending another cent (he later calls his plan "budget nuetral") is just foolish, as is the notion that fueling innovation and choice will magically transform the education landscape. Jeb! did his best to use charters to transform the Florida education landscape, and after all these years, there are no innovative successes to point to.
But Bush's statement of principles lays out exactly where the cognitive dissonance lies.
This platform reflects the fundamental belief that every student can learn and that parents — not bureaucrats should make decisions for their child.
Except, of course, that bureaucrats are the ones who will make the decisions about what choices are available, whether parents want those choices or not. Every single implementation of a choice system in this country has involved bureaucrats and policy makers descending on a community and telling that community that they must have choice, and they must have the choices that will be chosen for them by their Betters, even if democratic processes like locally-elected school boards have to be suspended to do it.
It is the great conservative puzzle at the center of reform-- we must empower parents and community members, and we must do it by taking away their elected school boards and telling them what choices they must have.
This paradox runs throughout Bush's plan. His four guiding principles are
* Education decisions should be made as close to the student as possible.
* Choice -- of all kinds -- should be expanded across the board
* Transparency is essential to choice, quality, and results-based accountability
* Innovation requires flexibility
So after giving us Point #1, Jeb! follows with three more points that delineate decisions that will be made at the state and federal level. Choices will be expected and expanded, irregardless of what the locals want. Transparency will provide information about school quality-- as quality is defined by federal authorities. The fourth point is baloney-- Jeb! wants to promise that the feds will hand over money without strings or rules-- except that we just said everyone has to meet accountability standards. One of the ongoing ideas for conservative reformsters has been, "Hey, the taxpayers gave you a big pile of money, and we're entitled to know how you spent it." It's not an unreasonable position, but it hardly meshes with conservative laissez faire principles, and Bush is kidding himself with his "We'll just hand out block grants of Title money and let the states do as they will."
Conservative writer Rick Hess has often observed "The problem is that Washington conservatives can have trouble tackling education in a manner that is faithful to principle." But as long as you have, on the federal level, a particular vision of how educational freedom and quality are supposed to look, you have a conservative conundrum. There's no good, traditional conservative way to say, "We are giving you freedom, and you will get it the way we want you to, and you will get the results that we define as success."
For all the conservative love for choice and freedom, it never seems to include the choice and freedom to do things that conservatives believe are Very Wrong, or to say, "We will pick our own choices to choose from, thanks." That's in part because the very idea of school choice is fundamentally flawed.
First, nobody wants choice. Rich kids don't have an advantage because they have choice-- they have an advantage because they have access to an excellent education. People want a good school. That's it. If someone gets a restaurant meal that is undercooked and cold, they don't say, "Bring me a dozen mediocre meals to chose from." They want what they want, done right.
Second, choice is not "budget neutral." When facing a tight budget, no school district says, "No need to shut down any buildings. It wouldn't save us any money." You can't operate several sets of schools (with several sets of administrators) for the cost of one. Anybody who tries to set up a choice system without a plan to fully fund it is smoking something.
Third, choice as currently conceived, disenfranchises a huge part of the electorate and cuts social responsibility out of the picture. If you don't have a child, you don't have a say in how tax dollars are spent. Choicer "it's the family's choice" rhetoric only goes so far-- nobody is seriously suggesting that vouchers be literal vouchers that students can use to go to school, buy a car, or take a vacation in Europe. Choice never seems to include "I choose no school at all." Choicers haven't suggested doing away with compulsory education, but they can't admit that it's because the students have a level of responsibility to the country that's paying for their education, because that would mean admitting that families are not the only stakeholders in education, which would conflict with the "the money belongs to the family" theory.
But even if we get past those, we arrive again at the conservative conundrum-- if you allow freedom and choice, you have to accept that people may choose things you don't like, including NOT having a bunch of choices. Conservatives-- and Bush is no exception here-- keep calling for a system of imposed choice, which is a big screaming oxymoron.
More to the point, a system of imposed choice is a conservative contradiction, a fundamental violation of traditional conservative principles. For that reason, everything that's going to follow in Part II is actually moot. Bush's foundation is not solid, and the house he tries to build upon it is doomed to fail.
Now Bush, whose campaign seems designed to spin rich backers money into vapor, has gone back to the education well one more time with a comprehensive-ish education plan. It really is worth a look, as long as you think of it less as "Jeb! Bush's Bold Plan for US Education" and more "A Compendium of Current Reformster Greatest Hits." I'll be using the "backgrounder" that EdWeek kindly posted on their site. Let's wade in, shall we?
I'm going to address the plan in two parts. Here in Part I, I'll take a look at the lump of self-contradictory principle that is the foundation of Bush's plan. In Part II, we'll get into the nuts and bolts.
Bush opens with a general statement of his guiding theory of change. Here's the critical paragraph:
Governor Bush’s goal is to ensure that all Americans, no matter their background or zip code, graduate from high school, college or career ready, and have the opportunity to pursue affordable post-secondary education or training. Achieving this goal requires a complete overhaul of a system from one that serves bureaucracies to one that serves the needs of families and students. Empowering individuals doesn’t require additional money or programs designed by Washington. What we need is a national focus on fueling innovation and providing quality choices for every student in this country.
We might examine the question of whether or not the current education system serves bureaucracy, and if so, how much of that bureaucracy is the one that Jeb! and other reformsters have put in place over the last decade. The notion that we can fix education without spending another cent (he later calls his plan "budget nuetral") is just foolish, as is the notion that fueling innovation and choice will magically transform the education landscape. Jeb! did his best to use charters to transform the Florida education landscape, and after all these years, there are no innovative successes to point to.
But Bush's statement of principles lays out exactly where the cognitive dissonance lies.
This platform reflects the fundamental belief that every student can learn and that parents — not bureaucrats should make decisions for their child.
Except, of course, that bureaucrats are the ones who will make the decisions about what choices are available, whether parents want those choices or not. Every single implementation of a choice system in this country has involved bureaucrats and policy makers descending on a community and telling that community that they must have choice, and they must have the choices that will be chosen for them by their Betters, even if democratic processes like locally-elected school boards have to be suspended to do it.
It is the great conservative puzzle at the center of reform-- we must empower parents and community members, and we must do it by taking away their elected school boards and telling them what choices they must have.
This paradox runs throughout Bush's plan. His four guiding principles are
* Education decisions should be made as close to the student as possible.
* Choice -- of all kinds -- should be expanded across the board
* Transparency is essential to choice, quality, and results-based accountability
* Innovation requires flexibility
So after giving us Point #1, Jeb! follows with three more points that delineate decisions that will be made at the state and federal level. Choices will be expected and expanded, irregardless of what the locals want. Transparency will provide information about school quality-- as quality is defined by federal authorities. The fourth point is baloney-- Jeb! wants to promise that the feds will hand over money without strings or rules-- except that we just said everyone has to meet accountability standards. One of the ongoing ideas for conservative reformsters has been, "Hey, the taxpayers gave you a big pile of money, and we're entitled to know how you spent it." It's not an unreasonable position, but it hardly meshes with conservative laissez faire principles, and Bush is kidding himself with his "We'll just hand out block grants of Title money and let the states do as they will."
Conservative writer Rick Hess has often observed "The problem is that Washington conservatives can have trouble tackling education in a manner that is faithful to principle." But as long as you have, on the federal level, a particular vision of how educational freedom and quality are supposed to look, you have a conservative conundrum. There's no good, traditional conservative way to say, "We are giving you freedom, and you will get it the way we want you to, and you will get the results that we define as success."
For all the conservative love for choice and freedom, it never seems to include the choice and freedom to do things that conservatives believe are Very Wrong, or to say, "We will pick our own choices to choose from, thanks." That's in part because the very idea of school choice is fundamentally flawed.
First, nobody wants choice. Rich kids don't have an advantage because they have choice-- they have an advantage because they have access to an excellent education. People want a good school. That's it. If someone gets a restaurant meal that is undercooked and cold, they don't say, "Bring me a dozen mediocre meals to chose from." They want what they want, done right.
Second, choice is not "budget neutral." When facing a tight budget, no school district says, "No need to shut down any buildings. It wouldn't save us any money." You can't operate several sets of schools (with several sets of administrators) for the cost of one. Anybody who tries to set up a choice system without a plan to fully fund it is smoking something.
Third, choice as currently conceived, disenfranchises a huge part of the electorate and cuts social responsibility out of the picture. If you don't have a child, you don't have a say in how tax dollars are spent. Choicer "it's the family's choice" rhetoric only goes so far-- nobody is seriously suggesting that vouchers be literal vouchers that students can use to go to school, buy a car, or take a vacation in Europe. Choice never seems to include "I choose no school at all." Choicers haven't suggested doing away with compulsory education, but they can't admit that it's because the students have a level of responsibility to the country that's paying for their education, because that would mean admitting that families are not the only stakeholders in education, which would conflict with the "the money belongs to the family" theory.
But even if we get past those, we arrive again at the conservative conundrum-- if you allow freedom and choice, you have to accept that people may choose things you don't like, including NOT having a bunch of choices. Conservatives-- and Bush is no exception here-- keep calling for a system of imposed choice, which is a big screaming oxymoron.
More to the point, a system of imposed choice is a conservative contradiction, a fundamental violation of traditional conservative principles. For that reason, everything that's going to follow in Part II is actually moot. Bush's foundation is not solid, and the house he tries to build upon it is doomed to fail.
CA: Teacher Spanked for Tech Generosity
A story from California reminding us that reformsters are not responsible for every single stupid thing that school administrations do.
Chowchilla is a small place, located on the highway between Bakersfield and Modesto, just a little north of Fresno. So, not the lush, money-soaked part of California. This story comes from the Modesto Bee.
Union High School English teacher Kim Kutzner thought she could team up with her husband to help her students out, and the two of them bought a reported almost $80,000 worth of used laptops at auction. The mister refurbished the ninety computers and hooked them into a custom-made classroom network. The classroom network has no internet access; Kutzner talks mostly about using the computers for writing projects.
Chowchilla is not a large place, with a population of around 19,000-- counting the population of the men's and women's prisons in town. Otherwise it is an agricultural town, "completely surrounded by farmland and dairies." Free and reduced lunch school population runs around 67%, but with a graduation rate of 92%. The high school has about 950 students, and over 50% of them are Hispanic. The school has some computer labs, but few classrooms have sets. The school has one computer tech and one IT director (whose education includes Evergreen Valley, San Jose State and University of Phoenix).
So you would think having someone who wanted to go ahead and provide the equipment and expertise to wire up her own classroom would be counted as a win.
But the district says no. Well, at first it said, "That's great of you." Then it said no. The report is a little fuzzy on why, exactly.
Chowchilla Union Principal Justin Miller said the concern is with district policies about outside equipment and whether student data, and what students have access to, is protected under Kutzner’s custom system.
“The biggest concern the district has is making sure that it’s safe and passes all the rules and state and federal governmental regulations, since it was brought in from the outside,” he said. “Depending on the filter and things like that, they might not be safe, so we are reviewing everything and trying to be as safe as possible.”
"Outside equipment." I am trying to imagine a school okaying every piece of... well, anything, that was to come into a building. But it's the technoconcerns that are facepalm-worthy. Kutzner's network is not connected to the internet, but even if it were connected, it would be through the school's internet which the school could then monitor. I'm looking at the school on Google maps, and the only free wi-fi in town appears to be at a Starbucks, a KFC and a Micky D's, all several blocks away from the school. I teach in a school that has one-to-one computing and wi-fi for BYOD (bring your own device) coverage, and every single thing that gets in and out of the building over the internet passes through our firewalls and is monitored. Is it perfectly undefeatable or supremely secure? Of course not. Neither are the cell phones all my students carry.
My point is that if a school is scared that any activated computer can let the demons in that will let students do Terrible Things, A) welcome to the 21st century and B) there are technological tools for dealing with these issues.
But to freak out because somebody brought a computer into the building without having it expressly approved is just kind of bizarre. Do Chowchilla students bring computers from home? Do they carry smart phones?
And to spank a teacher who used her professional judgment and access to donated expertise to upgrade her own classroom is just one more example of an administration's failure to trust the expertise of their professional staff. This is, after all, a teacher described by the superintendent as "one of our best teachers in the district."
I appreciate the district's desire to be cautious about what their students come in contact with; that's an appropriate stance for a district. But it's 2016 and way past time for administrators to have more than just a smattering of technological savvy, and not just view pieces of computer tech as some sort of scary monster that might make Vaguely Bad Things happen.
Chowchilla is a small place, located on the highway between Bakersfield and Modesto, just a little north of Fresno. So, not the lush, money-soaked part of California. This story comes from the Modesto Bee.
Union High School English teacher Kim Kutzner thought she could team up with her husband to help her students out, and the two of them bought a reported almost $80,000 worth of used laptops at auction. The mister refurbished the ninety computers and hooked them into a custom-made classroom network. The classroom network has no internet access; Kutzner talks mostly about using the computers for writing projects.
Chowchilla is not a large place, with a population of around 19,000-- counting the population of the men's and women's prisons in town. Otherwise it is an agricultural town, "completely surrounded by farmland and dairies." Free and reduced lunch school population runs around 67%, but with a graduation rate of 92%. The high school has about 950 students, and over 50% of them are Hispanic. The school has some computer labs, but few classrooms have sets. The school has one computer tech and one IT director (whose education includes Evergreen Valley, San Jose State and University of Phoenix).
So you would think having someone who wanted to go ahead and provide the equipment and expertise to wire up her own classroom would be counted as a win.
But the district says no. Well, at first it said, "That's great of you." Then it said no. The report is a little fuzzy on why, exactly.
Chowchilla Union Principal Justin Miller said the concern is with district policies about outside equipment and whether student data, and what students have access to, is protected under Kutzner’s custom system.
“The biggest concern the district has is making sure that it’s safe and passes all the rules and state and federal governmental regulations, since it was brought in from the outside,” he said. “Depending on the filter and things like that, they might not be safe, so we are reviewing everything and trying to be as safe as possible.”
"Outside equipment." I am trying to imagine a school okaying every piece of... well, anything, that was to come into a building. But it's the technoconcerns that are facepalm-worthy. Kutzner's network is not connected to the internet, but even if it were connected, it would be through the school's internet which the school could then monitor. I'm looking at the school on Google maps, and the only free wi-fi in town appears to be at a Starbucks, a KFC and a Micky D's, all several blocks away from the school. I teach in a school that has one-to-one computing and wi-fi for BYOD (bring your own device) coverage, and every single thing that gets in and out of the building over the internet passes through our firewalls and is monitored. Is it perfectly undefeatable or supremely secure? Of course not. Neither are the cell phones all my students carry.
My point is that if a school is scared that any activated computer can let the demons in that will let students do Terrible Things, A) welcome to the 21st century and B) there are technological tools for dealing with these issues.
But to freak out because somebody brought a computer into the building without having it expressly approved is just kind of bizarre. Do Chowchilla students bring computers from home? Do they carry smart phones?
And to spank a teacher who used her professional judgment and access to donated expertise to upgrade her own classroom is just one more example of an administration's failure to trust the expertise of their professional staff. This is, after all, a teacher described by the superintendent as "one of our best teachers in the district."
I appreciate the district's desire to be cautious about what their students come in contact with; that's an appropriate stance for a district. But it's 2016 and way past time for administrators to have more than just a smattering of technological savvy, and not just view pieces of computer tech as some sort of scary monster that might make Vaguely Bad Things happen.
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