What Do They Know?

Anthony Cody has a great piece at his blog, Living in Dialogue (which should be on your must-read list) that puts the push for Competency based Education in the context of the reformster movement. In particular, this--

There are two unwritten assumptions that are constant from the beginning of NCLB and carry through to this new version. Teachers are not trusted to make judgments about what students learn, how they learn it, or how learning is assessed. Assessment is defined as the external monitoring of the work inside the classroom. The second assumption is that data and technology must be instrumental in whatever process is devised. The main innovation here is the more thorough and intrusive penetration of the classroom via computers capable of monitoring learning.

One question that naturally follows-- why, exactly, are teachers not to be trusted? Reformsters tend to fall into two camps.

One camp includes groups like DFER and Students Matter and some leaders of Teach for America, when they didn't think anyone was listening, who believe that the teacher biz is a giant, corrupt racket that the Big Teacher Unions keep in place in order to enrich themselves For an example, just flash back to Chris Christie's "punch in the face" comments.

But I believe the far larger camp is the one that thinks teachers can't be trusted because we Just Don't Know.

Turnarounds, takeovers, classroom scripts, tight national standards, externally created testing regimens, alternative educator training programs, charter schools-- these are all versions of folks shouldering teachers aside and saying, "All right, you've screwed things up enough. It's time to let somebody take charge who knows what they're doing."

In fact, one of the other unwritten premises of reformsterism has been that reformsters know the secrets of how to make education work. Just sweep aside incompetent and corrupt teachers, clear away the Education Establishment, and they will work educational miracles. Because, dammit, they Know Things.

Well, we've been doing this reformy dance for over a decade now. What do they know?

The whole point of, say, having a state take over a school district is that somewhere in the state capital is someone (or someone who knows someone) who really knows how to run the school properly.

The whole point of having charters is to give people who really Know Things the chance to take charge of a school and make educational magic.

The whole point of having tightly managed standards and instruction is that somewhere at a corporate office is somebody who really Knows Things about how to teach the material and can actually package that magic.

So where are all the successes? Where are all the programs spreading like wildfire as word spreads that this state or that charter or some educorporation has the Secret of Awesome Education?

And if all these people know the secret of teaching that has either escaped or been hidden by teachers, how is it that after over a decade, we still haven't heard about it or seen its transformative power in actual schools with actual students.

Seriously. What do they know? How much longer do we have to stumble searching for snipe under bush after bush while the emperor, wearing his new hunting clothes, keeps hollering, "No-- wait-- there it is! Over there!" If they actually Know Things, it's way past time for them to put up or shut up, to show their hand or cash in their chips, and at the very least, stop announcing as New Knowledge things that actual teachers already knew ("Hey, we've discovered that teaching poor kids can be difficult!"). It's way past time for reformsters to prove they have an answer to the question.

What do they know?

Choice $$ Lies

This little undated brief from the good people at The Heartland Institute lays out the straightforward argument for vouchers (and by extension, charter-choice systems) as a money-saver, and it's so clear and straightforward, it's easy to see where the lie is.

The Heartland Institute is a right-leaning thinky tank-- well, actually, they don't appear to be so much leaning as lying down on their right sides atop a mattress stuffed with corporate cash. Founded by a CATO Institute refugee, they're based in the Chicago area (Arlington Heights) and have previously taken such bold stands as teaming up with Phillip Morris to oppose tobacco bans. They've hooked up with some Tea Party groups, and they are a top clearing house for climate change denial.

Their argument in favor of vouchers is as simple as it is wrong.

Florida’s voucher program, for example, costs $3,950 per student, compared with a public school system that spends $7,000 per pupil. Surely even the efficiency of the free market can’t make up for a 44 percent funding deficit, right? Wrong: A Northwestern University study found no difference between achievement in students attending schools through voucher programs and those attending public schools.

I'm not even going to argue with the second part of their point, because the first part is where the lying occurs. There are several links listed with the article, and they all make the same point-- that choice systems save the taxpayer money because choice-charter-voucher schools educate students for less.

First, choice-charter-voucher schools educate students for less because they specialize in students that cost less to educate. 

Second, and perhaps more importantly, choice systems must increase the total cost of education for the taxpayers in a community. When a voucher or choice or charter payment plan or whatever removes money from a school district, that district must either replace some of that money, or cut programs, or both. That means a tax increase on the local level. Because, no-- when a student leaves a school, that school's total costs do not reduce by the amount of one student's worth of money.

This is precisely what is happening in Pennsylvania, where the funding gap continues to widen. It's widening because, as money is drained from local districts, some districts have greater ability to replace that money than others.

I'm going to use simple numbers so that even a right-leaning thinky tank can understand.

Chris pays $100 for school taxes. Two children from the district leave for a charter school, so now the school only gets $80 of Chris's money. To replace some of the lost $20 and get at least $90 from Chris, the district must raise Chris's taxes. Chris now pays $110 in school taxes.

Voucher systems, choice systems, charter systems-- these are all just a way to raise taxes in order to send a few select children to a private school and pay for it with public dollars.

When someone like the Heartland folks of the Friedman thinky tank wants to tell you how much cheaper a choice system is, notice that they are talking only about state and federal costs-- ask them what happens to local costs under such a system.

Stockman: Starve the Teachers

Writer Farah Stockman took to the pages of the Boston Globe yesterday to give professional educators a big fat punch in the face.

There's a great deal of battling over education going on in Massachusetts, with the grass roots and professional educators lined up against the various grifters and privatizers who have captured state offices. State Secretary of Education Jim Peyser worked previously for reformsters New Venture Fund, where he explained how to gut public schools for fun and profit. State Commissioner of Education Mitchell Chester was the head of the governing board of PARCC, the test manufacturers profiting heavily from reformy testing programs.  Paul Grogan, head of the Boston Foundation, one of those cool foundations that allows civic minded rich guys a way to impose political pressure on serve their community, is a regular agitator for charters.

And then there's Boston Mayor Marty Walsh, who pulled a bait-and-switch to get elected and now shills hard for cutting public schools off at the knees. Privatizers have launched legal attacks on the public schools, and profiteers have had vulture conventions in town to contemplate how they can get their hands on all that sweet, sweet public tax money.

The Boston Globe has long since abandoned any pretense of objectivity; they are reliably and regularly the sort-of-journalistic voice of privatization, of gutting the public school system in order to use pubic tax dollars to fund privately owned-and-operated charter schools.

Given all that, Stockman's piece is as unsurprising as it is dishonest.

Stockman uses a rhetorical structure that basically follows the "It would be wrong to hurt you, but I am now going to club you with this stick" format.

Stockman talking about program cuts to Boston schools: "These cuts are painful and real. I hope they get reversed... While individual cuts hurt, the school system itself has more cash than ever."

Stockman says that the school system is not starving, but has grown its budget tremendously. So why is the system facing so many tremendous cuts? One guess.

Teachers.

Teachers and their damned paychecks and benefits and salaries. Stockman throws around some numbers and I'm not in a position to check them, but I can google the source-- the Boston Municipal Research Bureau. BMRB is yet another group carefully named to sound like a benevolent public agency that is actually yet another business-run group advocating for business-friendly policies.

Stockman drops some numbers for specific money-grubbing teachers, making sure to identify them as "a librarian" or "a swimming instructor." And then, at the bottom of the article, she lists every single BPS employee who makes over $100K, because public shaming is an important part of her argument.* She lists those salaries so she can write, "If that's what starving looks like, where do I sign up?" Which is an odd comment-- you can sign up at a university for a teacher training program and then apply for a job with the district. Does Stockman mean to suggest that these teachers just fell into their jobs through some secretive, suspect system? Because if she'd like to sign up for one of those jobs, she totally could (in fact, she taught for two years in Kenya). Except that her actual point is that nobody should be able to sign up for those jobs at all.

"Don't get me wrong. Teachers deserve to be paid well," she writes, and as you might guess, that's a clear signal that she's about to explain why teachers don't deserve to be paid that well at all. Sure, teachers "hold the future of our country in their hands," but so do Navy Seals, who mostly make under $60 K. This could be an argument to raise Navy Seal pay, but that's not Stockman's point-- teachers make too much money. And not just teachers. Headmasters make really good money-- one as much as $162,378-- but the national security advisor earns only $10,000 more-- "without a generous summer vacation."

Why, she wonders, do Boston schools pay teachers so much compared to other places? She considers for a moment the possibility that this is actual Free Market economics at work, but rejects that explanation in favor of-- can you guess? -- unions!

You know who doesn't have unions? Those noble and wonderful charter schools! Charter teachers work longer hours and for less pay, and "of course, charters burn through teachers much faster than a traditional public school. But you don't have to negotiate with them for years to get an extra 40 minutes added to the school day." Stockman chooses not to make a connection between treating teacher like low-paid flunkies and rapid staff churn, nor does she suggest that rapid staff turnover might be bad for students. It's cheaper and easier-- what else do you need to know?

In fact, here's what Stockman calls charters' "greatest innovation"-- "teacher who are willing to work more for less."

Well, no. That is just unvarnished baloney. It discounts the charters that have tried to create a model based on teacher pay at the same level she finds objectionable in Boston, or the many charters where teachers have tried to unionize because they're tired of general low pay and mistreatment. It discounts the effects, particularly on low SES students, of a school that is destabilized by an endless parade of new (and inexperienced) faces. She might wonder what it says about a charter if their teacher pool is composed entirely of People Who Couldn't Get a Job Somewhere Else, or people who have been recruited with the slogan "Our Charter Will Never Require You To Teach Difficult Students." She might also want to factor in the huge administrative costs of charters that may keep teachers poor, but make sure their owners and operators get rich.

In the end, Stockman has taken a long, roundabout rhetorical journey to essentially say, "Teachers get paid too much because of their evil union; that's just one more reason that charter schools are better, and one more reason that the public schools should be gutted and replaced with a charter system." There would be many things to argue about, but at least it would be an honest argument in which she simply said what she meant directly instead of trying to pretend that she was being fair and balanced. If you're going to do a hatchet job, at least hold your hatchet out in plain sight.


* Since I wrote this piece, that list at the end of the article seems to have gone away. I have no idea why.

CAP: Muddled Teacher Eval Thoughts

The Center for American Progress wants to get its two cents in on the Vergara appeal, and their thoughts are... confused. Catherine Brown is CAP's vp of Education Policy after previously serving as vice president of policy at Teach for America, policy adviser to senator and presidential candidate Hillary Clinton and senior education policy adviser for the House Committee on Education and Labor. Brown is in US News making her pitch for life over and above Vergara.

As is typical with CAP, we're a little short on actual facts or serious data, which leads Brown down the garden path and into verbal weeds like these-

Teachers largely view their performance based in part on the impact they have on student learning.

I am largely impressed in part by this sentence's attempt to assert something that is largely unsupportable while in part maintaining largely deniable language. In part. This sentence goes into my reformster gibberish hall of fame. Congratulations, Ms. Brown. Your statuette is largely in part on its way.

It's not all nonsense; Brown makes a largely unreformstery point in part with this thought:

Our collective policy goal shouldn't be to eliminate teacher protections like last-in-first-out and tenure based on seniority, but rather to render them unnecessary. We should aim to build schools with such high-performing cultures that eliminating incompetence isn't the most pressing issue, spreading excellence is.

That is not stupid (regular readers know what high praise that largely in part is). The stupid comes later, when reformsters start talking about how to build such schools and spread such excellence, but reformsters are correct (in a day late, dollar short way) to recognize that schools will not fire their way to excellence-- particularly in California where many folks are worried that the teacher supply pipeline is actually broken.

But every time Brown moves beyond the broad strokes, she largely paints herself in part into a corner. For instance:

And while states are no longer required to evaluate teachers as a matter of federal policy, there's little evidence that teachers want to go back to the old way of doing business of "close your door, and good luck to ya."

There's little evidence that teachers want that. There's little evidence they don't. I'd be more impressed if Brown just said that's what she thinks than trying to make it sound facty.

She touts a few states that she thinks have gotten things right, and then swings around to a plug for TeachStrong, a reformy program that has its own plan for making teachers largely in part more awesome. That plan, I'll note, has its own special heartfelt love for using Big Standardized Test results to measure teacher effectiveness. Look-- here's the answer key-- as long as we talk about measuring teacher effectiveness largely or in part with measures of "student achievement," we're still just talking about raising scores on BS Tests.

I am happy that CAP is leading a charge away from the old reformy idea of fixing schools by tracking down all those terrible teachers and firing them hard. I'm happy both because it's the right thing to do and because it sounds a little like CAP and others smell an upcoming reversal of the original Vergara verdict.

Brown is fundamentally correct. You don't make schools better by destroying teacher job security and firing a whole bunch of people for no good reason, just as you don't help students learn and grow by berating them and punishing them and telling them to go sit in the corner until they can get the right answer. But she is scrambling past the part where CAP and others like them have no idea how to identify teaching excellence, let along promote, foster and develop it. On that point they are still largely in part lost and confused.

Vergara II: Here We Go Again

Today, while Acting Pretend Secretary of Education John King is being interviewed in DC for the job he already has, across the country lawyers will be teeing up in an LA appeals court over the attempt to roll back one of the most bogus court decisions in education.

Hard to believe that Vergara vs. California is a few years old at this point. The case was originally filed in 2012 and decided in 2014. Launched by Students Matter, a reformster group created and run by David Welch, a rich guy who thinks that CEO-style school leaders shouldn't have to deal with any union-created restrictions on their executive freedom. Welch rounded up nine show-pony defendants, a large pile of money, and went to work overturning tenure and LIFO rules.

Education Post is celebrating the occasion by running a piece by one of the "plaintiffs" (the use of recruited sock puppet plaintiffs by well-financed legal activists is not restricted to any side of any issue, but it remains an odious practice, both in the fake cases that it generates and in its callous use of live human beings as prop for high-priced lawyerly plays) to talk about why he wanted the case to happen.

What I wanted when I first stepped foot in the courtroom two years ago—and still want today—is to see that vision of an awesome teacher in every classroom in California’s public schools become a reality. I want all California kids, regardless of where they live, how much money their parents make, or the color of their skin, to have the quality education they deserve.

The writer also talks about how great teachers have been a great and positive influence, noting that "these are the teachers who inspired the Vergara lawsuit in the first place."

That's a lovely sentiment. It just doesn't have a single thing to do with the Vergara decision. Not a thing.

There is so much to rehash, and it has been hashed pretty thoroughly already. Evidence in the trial included the baloney science that purports to measure the effect of teachers in terms of student lifetime earnings. The notion that tenure rules are somehow responsible for segregation in schools.

But mostly the bizarre notion that great teachers will be empowered by less job security, that we can simply fire our way to excellence, that school districts in a state that is already complaining of teacher shortages will be chomping at the bit to fire teachers left and right so they can hire new teachers from the vast invisible surplus of unemployed awesome teachers, and, most of all, that teachers are the root of all educational evil.

Vergara pretends to presume that the best way to attract the best and the brightest to a field is to say, "Come work for us, and your new bosses will promise to fire you whenever the mood strikes them." What Vergara really presumes is that hero school leaders, mighty CEO's with brilliant visions, should not have to answer to the hired help.

Vergara also presumes that the full weight and energy of the law should be brought to bear on teachers, but somehow there's no need to make full-out assaults on funding or de-segregation.

So prepare yourself for more rounds of PR about how schools should be free to fire their way to excellence and hero superintendents should never have to listen to unions or rules or anything that might provide teachers with job security. And all of that will be wrapped in soaring rhetoric about how every child needs a great teacher no matter what the zip code without a single solitary word about how killing tenure of LIFO would help make that happen. This is the classic reformster construction-- the problem is real and compelling and therefor you should take our word for it that our proposed solution is actually a solution.

Vergara is about breaking unions and de-professionalizing teaching, removing one more set of on-the-ground advocates for students, leaving our most vulnerable children that much more exposed to the ill effects of corporate reform. The court will need to offer a ruling within ninety days. We'll have to wait and see what kind of protection public education, teachers, and students will receive from the court.

MD: Asking the Wrong Questions about Testing

The Maryland state school board has noticed what many other folks have noticed as well-- if you make the PARCC test your state graduation requirement, a huge number of young'uns in your state are not going to graduate from high school.

Maryland rolled out the PARCC last year, and over half of their students performed below expectations, or as folks put it more colloquially, "failed." Had the PARCC been a graduation requirement, it would have created a mess of epic proportions. So the Maryland board had what the Baltimore Sun called a "spirited debate" about the topic.

Some of the spirit was predictable, given the players. Chester Finn, a long-time reformster and former chief of the Fordham Institute, a right-tilted thinky tank that has reliably and relentlessly pushed the Common Core, Big Standardized Tests, and charter schools.

"I thought the move to PARCC was to increase standards," he said. "We are headed toward telling Maryland students they will get a Maryland diploma and they are not ready." He said a low standard would mislead the public.

Mislead in what way is not entirely clear, but Finn has a solution-- a two-tier diploma system: "one for students who passed PARCC and are considered ready for college and a second diploma, equivalent to what is given today, for students who have fulfilled the course requirements and achieve minimum passing grades on state tests."

Board member James H. DeGraffenreid, one more guy whose educational expertise consists of his time in corporate offices, thinks that's a bad idea because it would institutionalize the achievement gap instead of closing it. He wants to phase the standards in, which is admittedly marginally less foolish than simply dumping them on the schools like a bathtub full of ice water.

The Sun dug up some more comments, like this one:

"There is no state in the U.S. that has made the high school graduation requirement the same as a college-readiness requirement," said David Steiner, executive director of the Johns Hopkins Institute for Education Policy.

While the board was debating these issues, here are some questions they did not ask:

Is there any reason to believe that making 100% of high school graduates college-ready is a worthwhile goal? Is it realistically achievable, and will it provide the students or society with any actual benefits?

Is there any reason to believe that scores on PARCC's BS Test of reading and math skills are actually a true measure of a student's college readiness?

Is there any reason to believe that colleges and universities would be prepared to deny students admission because those students had only a Old Standard Diploma and not a Shiny PARCC Super-diploma?

And other than supposedly gaining students admission to colleges or universities, what other benefits would Finn's Super-Duper PARCC Diploma provide? Better pay on the job? Happier life? More attractive spouse? Exactly why would high school students give a rat's rear whether they got a shiny PARCC diploma?

We tried this in Pennsylvania about fifteen years ago. The problem with our BS Tests at the time was exactly the same fundamental problem with the current crop--  students know an irrelevant, pointless waste of their time when they see one. This repeatedly drives the Powers That Be to alternately offer threats and bribes like an incompetent camp counselor. If you don't take this test seriously, it will go directly on your permanent record, young man! And if you do take it seriously, we'll give you a sticker.

PA was going to slap "diploma seals," aka "shiny stickers" on the diplomas of PA grads who had done well on the BS Tests. Those yielded almost immediately to "certificates" that were to become part of student transcripts. (Ha! You thought I was just kidding with those "sticker' and "permanent record" cracks.) People were pretty worked up about them at the time, but within just a few years, it didn't matter, because nobody cared. Colleges did not, and do not, care about student BS Test scores. Students really did not and do not care beyond the need to surmount one more pointless obstacle to get that diploma.

So Maryland could probably go ahead and give Finn his Super-Special PARCC Super-diplomas, because odds are not a soul will care.

Reformsters and ed leaders get so invested in this stuff, they just lose sight of how silly their antics will look on the ground. They are absolutely invited to come to a classroom full of sixteen year olds and solemnly explain that if the students try really hard on the BS Test, they will get an extra piece of paper that no college, employer or any other human being will ever care about. See how that goes over.

When any performer takes the stage, she either commands the attention of the audience, or she doesn't. If she doesn't, no amount of cajoling or bribery will make the audience take her seriously. The PARCC (and the rest of its BS Test brethren) are failed performers on a stunted stage, and neither threats nor shiny toys will change the audience's mind. There is no reason to take it seriously, no reason to believe that it measures any of the things it claims to measure, no reason to believe that it adds one iota of value to students' educational experience. And if reformsters think teenagers don't know all that, they are kidding themselves in addition to trying to con the rest of us.

The last question that the board didn't debate, but should have, is this:

Even if you have your two-tiered diploma system, what makes you think that Maryland's teenagers will be moved or motivated by it?

NJ: Lawyers Over Schools

Here's a nice clear metric for telling when you have a problem in your school district.

PIX11 reports that in 2014-2015, the school district of Elizabeth, New Jersey spent over $5.98 million on lawyers, both in house and outside firms. That works out to $237 per student. For comparison, the district spent roughly $750,000 on books in that same year.

School board member Jose Rodriguez notes that the board had to raise taxes to bring in an additional $7.1 million while cutting 81 positions in the district. The district has reportedly hired a forensic auditor, but I'm pretty sure a civilian amateur could figure out how many of those positions could have been saved with $5.98 million.

Elizabeth schools have had money issues before. In April of 2015 they were fined a chunk of money (over $300K) after it was determined that they had spent money state and federal lunch money to cater school board meetings. That investigation came on the heels of the school board president's conviction for falsifying her own child's free lunch documents. If we go back to 2011, we find even more accounts of graft and nepotism and shaking down staff for money for board members.

Okay, so maybe the hefty legal costs for the district make sense, given district leadership's apparent love of not-entirely-legal behavior. But it seems like it would be way cheaper to just send the lawyers home and just obey the law instead.