Robin Lake, director of the Center on Reinventing Public Education as Private Business Funded by Public Tax Dollars (okay, I just added that last part for clarity) is over at Campbell Brown's million dollar charter promotion site being Very Alarmed about Washington State.
Unless the legislature acts within the next 10 days, we will be the
first state in the union to intentionally shut down a group of
high-performing schools that serve mainly disadvantaged students.
The shutdown will come because the charter set-up created in Washington state is illegal, a violation of the state's constitution. The court in Washington observed what we already know-- that a charter is not a public school because it is not answerable to a publicly elected board.
Reformsters have been pushing hard for charter schools in Washington for years, finally getting a law on the books in 2012. One charter opened in the 2014-2015 school year. Eight more opened last fall. These are the schools that Lake is so deeply concerned about.
Of course, the ruling from the court came down before the eight schools ever opened, so from Day One, they knew that the school was violating the law. They were just hoping-- and continue to hope now at the eleventh hour-- that the legislature will somehow pass a new law that makes them legal again. So any sympathy for those schools has to be balanced by the fact that the courts had already told them that the law they were depending on was illegal-- and they opened their doors anyway. It is too bad that about 1,100 students will have their school year disrupted-- but everybody knew this was the probably outcome when they walked in the door on the very first day.
But Lake assures us they are awesome schools-- even though they have been open for about five months!
It's a miracle! In just a few months, we can already tell that these schools are superb. They hold weekly ceremonies to recognize students who advance through reading levels. They have an "intentional learning culture." They have a longer school day! They swear that their students are doing really well!
This, I think, is the real story here. Not that charter schools opened in violation of the law and are now surprised that the law hasn't been changed to suit them in time. No, the real story is that Lake and her buddies know how to identify an outstanding school in just five months! See-- when push comes to shove, even they don't believe in this data-driven Big Standardized Test based evaluation of schools. You just know, because you're there, looking at the kids, and you can see it. And people should just take your word for it.
I look forward to seeing Lake apply this method to public schools, just as I continue to look for Lake and other charteristas expressing similar outrage when another charter closes in the middle of the year, sometimes with no advance notice at all.
But shame on all of us if we let misinformation and interest-group
politics shut the door on new hope and opportunity for the kids who need
it most.
Presumably she's referring to interest-group politics different from the interest-group politics that funded the passage of the illegal charter law in the first place. Or maybe she means the interest-group politics of the state constitution, or the taxpayers who want a say in how their money is spent. I am sure that Washington charter fans have not given up, and will be back with a new law soon. Maybe next time it will be a law that is actually legal.
Wednesday, March 2, 2016
Tuesday, March 1, 2016
PTA Sells Out
Shannon Sevier, vice-president for advocacy of the National PTA, took to the Huffinmgton Post this week to shill for the testing industry. It was not a particularly artful defense, with Sevier parroting most of the talking points put forth by test manufacturers and their hired government guns.
Sevier starts out by reminiscing about when her children took their Big Standardized Tests, and while there was fear and trepidation, she also claims to remembers "the importance of the assessments in helping my children's teachers and school better support their success through data-driven planning and decision-making."
I'm a little fuzzy on what time frame we'd be talking about, because Sevier's LinkedIN profile seems to indicate that she was working in Europe from 2009-2014. Pre-2009 tests would be a different animal than the current crop. But even if she was commuting, or her children were here in the states, that line is a load of bull.
"Support their success through data-driven planning and decision-making" is fancy talk for "helped design more targeted test prep in order to make sure that test scores went up." No BS Tests help teachers teach. Not one of them. There is no useful educational feedback. There is no detailed educational breakdown of educational goals provided to teachers on a timely basis, and, in fact, in most cases no such feedback is possible because teachers are forbidden to know what questions and answers are on the test.
So, no, Ms. Sevier. That never happened anywhere except in the feverishly excited PR materials of test manufacturers.
Mass opt-out comes at a real cost to the goals of educational equity and individual student achievement while leaving the question of assessment quality unanswered.
Like most of Sevier's piece, this is fuzzier than a year-old gumball from under the bed. Exactly what are the costs to equity and individual student achievement? In what universe can we expect to find sad, unemployed men and women sitting in their van down by the river saying ruefully, "If only I had taken that big standardized test in school. Then my life would have turned out differently."
The consequences of non-participation in state assessments can have detrimental impacts on students and schools. Non-participation can result in a loss of funding, diminished resources and decreased interventions for students. Such ramifications would impact minorities and students with special needs disparately, thereby widening the achievement gap.
Did I mention that Sevier is a lawyer? This is some mighty fine word salad, but its Croutons of Truth are sad, soggy and sucky. While it is true that theoretically, the capacity to withhold some funding from schools is there in the law, it has never happened, ever (though Sevier does point out that some schools in New York got a letter. A letter! Possibly even a strongly worded letter! Horrors!! Did it go on their permanent record??) The number of schools punished for low participation rates is zero, which is roughly the same number as the number of politicians willing to tell parents that their school is going to lose funding because they exercised their legal rights.
And when we talk about the "achievement gap," always remember that this is reformster-speak for "difference in test scores" and nobody has tied test scores to anything except test scores.
More to the point, while test advocates repeatedly insist that test results are an important way of getting needed assistance and support to struggling students in struggling schools, it has never worked that way. Low test scores don't target students for assistance-- they target schools for takeover, turnaround, or termination.
The Sevier segues into the National PTA's position, which is exactly like the administration's position-- that maybe there are too many tests, and we should totally get rid of redundant and unnecessary tests and look at keeping other tests out of the classroom as well, by which they mean every test other than the BS Tests. They agree that we should get rid of bad tests, "while protecting the vital role that good assessments play in measuring student progress so parents and educators have the best information to support teaching and learning, improve outcomes and ensure equity for all children."
But BS Tests don't provide "the best information." The best information is provided by teacher-created, day-to-day, formal and informal classroom assessments. Tests such as PARCC, SBA, etc do not provide any useful information except to measure how well students do on the PARCC, SBA, etc-- and there is not a lick of evidence that good performance on the BS Tests is indicative of anything at all.
I'll give Sevier credit for stopping just sort of the usual assertion that teachers and parents are all thick headed ninnimuggins who cannot tell how students are doing unless they have access to revelatory standardized test scores. But PTA's stalwart and unwavering support seems to be for some imaginary set of tests that don't exist. Their policy statement on testing, says Sevier, advocates for tests that (1) ensure appropriate development; (2) guarantee reliability and implementation of high quality assessments; (3) clearly articulate to parents the assessment and accountability system in place at their child's school and (4) bring schools and families together to use the data to support student growth and learning.
BS Tests like the PARCC don't actually do any of these things. What's even more notable about the PTA policies is that in its full version, it's pretty much a cut and paste of the Obama administrations dreadful Test Action Plan which is in turn basically a marketing reboot for test manufacturers.
Did the PTA cave because they get a boatload of money from Bill Gates? Who knows. But what is clear is that when Sevier writes "National PTA strongly advocates for and continues to support increased inclusion of the parent voice in educational decision making at all levels," what she means is that parents should play nice, follow the government's rules, and count on policy makers to Do The Right Thing.
That's a foolish plan. Over a decade of reformy policy shows us that what reformsters want from parents, teachers and students is compliance, and that as long as they get that, they are happy to stay the course. The Opt Out movement arguably forced what little accommodation is marked by the Test Action Plan and ESSA's assertion of a parent's legal right to opt out. Cheerful obedience in hopes of a Seat at the Table has not accomplished jack, and the National PTA should be ashamed of itself for insisting that parents should stay home, submit their children to the tyranny of time-wasting testing, and just hope that Important People will spontaneously improve the tests. Instead, the National PTA should be joining the chorus of voices demanding that the whole premise of BS Testing should be questioned, challenged, and ultimately rejected so that students can get back to learning and teachers can get back to teaching.
Sevier and the PTA have failed on two levels. First, they have failed in insisting that quiet compliance is the way to get policymakers to tweak and improve test-driven education policies. Second, they have failed in refusing to challenge the very notion of re-organizing America's schools around standardized testing.
Sevier starts out by reminiscing about when her children took their Big Standardized Tests, and while there was fear and trepidation, she also claims to remembers "the importance of the assessments in helping my children's teachers and school better support their success through data-driven planning and decision-making."
I'm a little fuzzy on what time frame we'd be talking about, because Sevier's LinkedIN profile seems to indicate that she was working in Europe from 2009-2014. Pre-2009 tests would be a different animal than the current crop. But even if she was commuting, or her children were here in the states, that line is a load of bull.
"Support their success through data-driven planning and decision-making" is fancy talk for "helped design more targeted test prep in order to make sure that test scores went up." No BS Tests help teachers teach. Not one of them. There is no useful educational feedback. There is no detailed educational breakdown of educational goals provided to teachers on a timely basis, and, in fact, in most cases no such feedback is possible because teachers are forbidden to know what questions and answers are on the test.
So, no, Ms. Sevier. That never happened anywhere except in the feverishly excited PR materials of test manufacturers.
Mass opt-out comes at a real cost to the goals of educational equity and individual student achievement while leaving the question of assessment quality unanswered.
Like most of Sevier's piece, this is fuzzier than a year-old gumball from under the bed. Exactly what are the costs to equity and individual student achievement? In what universe can we expect to find sad, unemployed men and women sitting in their van down by the river saying ruefully, "If only I had taken that big standardized test in school. Then my life would have turned out differently."
The consequences of non-participation in state assessments can have detrimental impacts on students and schools. Non-participation can result in a loss of funding, diminished resources and decreased interventions for students. Such ramifications would impact minorities and students with special needs disparately, thereby widening the achievement gap.
Did I mention that Sevier is a lawyer? This is some mighty fine word salad, but its Croutons of Truth are sad, soggy and sucky. While it is true that theoretically, the capacity to withhold some funding from schools is there in the law, it has never happened, ever (though Sevier does point out that some schools in New York got a letter. A letter! Possibly even a strongly worded letter! Horrors!! Did it go on their permanent record??) The number of schools punished for low participation rates is zero, which is roughly the same number as the number of politicians willing to tell parents that their school is going to lose funding because they exercised their legal rights.
And when we talk about the "achievement gap," always remember that this is reformster-speak for "difference in test scores" and nobody has tied test scores to anything except test scores.
More to the point, while test advocates repeatedly insist that test results are an important way of getting needed assistance and support to struggling students in struggling schools, it has never worked that way. Low test scores don't target students for assistance-- they target schools for takeover, turnaround, or termination.
The Sevier segues into the National PTA's position, which is exactly like the administration's position-- that maybe there are too many tests, and we should totally get rid of redundant and unnecessary tests and look at keeping other tests out of the classroom as well, by which they mean every test other than the BS Tests. They agree that we should get rid of bad tests, "while protecting the vital role that good assessments play in measuring student progress so parents and educators have the best information to support teaching and learning, improve outcomes and ensure equity for all children."
But BS Tests don't provide "the best information." The best information is provided by teacher-created, day-to-day, formal and informal classroom assessments. Tests such as PARCC, SBA, etc do not provide any useful information except to measure how well students do on the PARCC, SBA, etc-- and there is not a lick of evidence that good performance on the BS Tests is indicative of anything at all.
I'll give Sevier credit for stopping just sort of the usual assertion that teachers and parents are all thick headed ninnimuggins who cannot tell how students are doing unless they have access to revelatory standardized test scores. But PTA's stalwart and unwavering support seems to be for some imaginary set of tests that don't exist. Their policy statement on testing, says Sevier, advocates for tests that (1) ensure appropriate development; (2) guarantee reliability and implementation of high quality assessments; (3) clearly articulate to parents the assessment and accountability system in place at their child's school and (4) bring schools and families together to use the data to support student growth and learning.
BS Tests like the PARCC don't actually do any of these things. What's even more notable about the PTA policies is that in its full version, it's pretty much a cut and paste of the Obama administrations dreadful Test Action Plan which is in turn basically a marketing reboot for test manufacturers.
Did the PTA cave because they get a boatload of money from Bill Gates? Who knows. But what is clear is that when Sevier writes "National PTA strongly advocates for and continues to support increased inclusion of the parent voice in educational decision making at all levels," what she means is that parents should play nice, follow the government's rules, and count on policy makers to Do The Right Thing.
That's a foolish plan. Over a decade of reformy policy shows us that what reformsters want from parents, teachers and students is compliance, and that as long as they get that, they are happy to stay the course. The Opt Out movement arguably forced what little accommodation is marked by the Test Action Plan and ESSA's assertion of a parent's legal right to opt out. Cheerful obedience in hopes of a Seat at the Table has not accomplished jack, and the National PTA should be ashamed of itself for insisting that parents should stay home, submit their children to the tyranny of time-wasting testing, and just hope that Important People will spontaneously improve the tests. Instead, the National PTA should be joining the chorus of voices demanding that the whole premise of BS Testing should be questioned, challenged, and ultimately rejected so that students can get back to learning and teachers can get back to teaching.
Sevier and the PTA have failed on two levels. First, they have failed in insisting that quiet compliance is the way to get policymakers to tweak and improve test-driven education policies. Second, they have failed in refusing to challenge the very notion of re-organizing America's schools around standardized testing.
Monday, February 29, 2016
Why Teach?
It's hard to read about the history of education and then in the same mindset say, "yay, I want to be a teacher!" Figuring this all out.— Mel Katz (@mel_katzz) September 6, 2015
Man, it just sucks to be a young person contemplating teaching these days. It's not just that so much of the news about the profession, or that states are crying about shortages while districts say they're not hiring, or that so much security is being stripped, or that so many layers of crap have been dropped on the classroom, or that poverty has become so widespread in the nation, or that looking closely at our institutions reveals embedded layers of racism and classism, or that education has so few attackers and so few supporters, or even that so many old farts will tell you, "For the love of God, young'uns-- don't go into teaching! It's a terrible idea!"
First, I want to apologize on behalf of Old Farts everywhere. We should really knock it off with delivering Discouraging Words, which are at best annoying and at worst disrespectful, as if Kids These Days are incapable of making their own career choices.
Second, I want to be clear that I teach in a rural, small town setting where we are not very wealthy, but don't have the heartbreaking level of poverty found in some parts of the country. There are hundreds of thousands of teachers who have a much harder job than mine.
There are many reasons to stay away from classrooms these days. Lack of resources, but an excess of blame. Low levels of pay, but high levels of disrespect. Large challenges to overcome, but tiny tools with which to tackle them. Many people who want to tell you what to do, but few people who want to actually help you do it. And when you start to peel back the educational onion, layers of institutionalized racism, classism, and decisions driven by politics, greed, power-- everything except the needs of the children.
So why step into a classroom? I've taken up a few miles of bloggy bandwidth considering all of these questions, but I think the bottom line is simple--
Teachers step into schools for the same reason fire fighters run into burning buildings-- because that's where you find the people who need the help.
If you want to help young humans grow and strengthen and learn and build themselves up into their best, most human selves, then you have to go into the school, into the classroom. Not that there aren't other ways and places to help, but if you want to help young humans learn to read and write and think and understand and build a greater vision of themselves, then a school is where it's at.
That school might not be in the best of shape. It may not be run by the best of leaders. It probably isn't fully funded. It may be twisted out of shape by the flames of testing and the heat of political games. And the people who are supposed to be helping you, supporting you, may be throwing flaming molotov cocktails at your head.
But all of that is background noise. The only question that matters is, "Do you want to teach students, and can you do it here?"
The answer to the second part might be no. Your tank might be empty, or the obstacles at your particular school might be too great. I'm not going to judge. You can only do what you can do.
But there have always been obstacles in the culture and problems baked into the system. I'm not saying don't fight them-- I'm saying someone who waits for perfectly calm educational seas to set sail will never get out of the harbor.
So we go into school because that's where we find the people who need us. That's where we can do the work. The obstacles aren't what keep us from doing the work-- they're the reason the work needs to be done in the first place. Let's go teach.
MA: Charters Hate Compromise
This morning's Boston Post Globe reports that a "Bitter Fight Brewing over Mass. Charter School Expansion" (though it could also have been "Mass Charter Expansion"). And while the battle has not been "brewing" so much as "going on for a while now," the article centers on one question-- can the legislature come up with a compromise on increasing the number of MA charters, or will the whole mess end up as a ballot initiative in the fall?
Massachusetts jumped on the charter bus with real enthusiasm back in 2010 when they saw it as a way to grab some Race To The Trough money (charters had been around for considerably longer, but RTTT really ramped the business up), but of course that money is no longer available, and local districts and taxpayers are noticing what charter school "hosts" everywhere notice-- that funding a new entitlement for students to attend private school at public expense is costly.
The battle is playing out mostly in the Senate-- the charter-reformster industry has already purchased themselves a governor and a House of Representatives in Massachusetts.
Reporter David Scharfenberg suggests that in the past, charter legislation has been an area of compromise, but this time offers a different summation:
“It’s the pure charter play this time,” said Martha “Marty” Walz, a management and public affairs consultant who helped usher the 2010 bill into law as cochairwoman of the Legislature’s education committee.
The governor has tried to sweeten the pot by budgeting more money for the big pile used to re-imburse districts (temporarily) for the money sucked out by charters, but Senate President Stanley C. Rosenberg is moving above that, suggesting that legislators look at issues "from financing, to governance, to admission and retention of hard-to-educate populations, like special needs students and English language learners."
The charter industry doesn't much like that idea.
“We have the highest-performing public charter school sector in the nation,” said Mary Jo Meisner, executive vice president of communications at the Boston Foundation, which has been a strong charter advocate. “Opening that up to radical change is a scary thought.”
Continued Meisner, "How are we supposed to have high performing charters if we serve the same students as the public system? Our success depends on being highly selective with our student body and booting students who make us look bad back to the public schools." Ha! Kidding-- the charter industry continues to avoid anything remotely like honesty about these provisions. In fact, the charter industry and #1 Fan Governor Charlie Baker continue to read the own PR so much that they believe they would win a ballot fight (plus they know just how many giant piles of money they threaten to throw at such a ballot question- about $18 million total).
Senator Patricia D. Jehlen is unimpressed. “If a bully comes and asks for your lunch money one day and you give it to him, does that keep him from coming back the next day?”
Fighting tough union leader Barbara Madeloni has different thoughts as well.
“We want to go to the ballot box, that’s what our poll numbers are telling us,” said Barbara Madeloni, president of the union. “I really think the narrative about charter schools is shifting.”
Shift though it may, the signs are clear-- charter schools in Massachusetts have key government positions on their side and they want their giant pile of money, and they want it unencumbered by any sorts of rules that require them to be part of public education's mandate to educate all students. Once again, charters really could be a part of a robust and fully- (and honestly-) funded public education system, but in states like Massachusetts, it seems that what the current charter industry wants is to exist outside public education, in a special bubble where all they have to do is operate some very selective schools and rake in some very large piles of public tax dollars. Here's hoping that the Massachusetts voters set them straight.
Massachusetts jumped on the charter bus with real enthusiasm back in 2010 when they saw it as a way to grab some Race To The Trough money (charters had been around for considerably longer, but RTTT really ramped the business up), but of course that money is no longer available, and local districts and taxpayers are noticing what charter school "hosts" everywhere notice-- that funding a new entitlement for students to attend private school at public expense is costly.
The battle is playing out mostly in the Senate-- the charter-reformster industry has already purchased themselves a governor and a House of Representatives in Massachusetts.
Reporter David Scharfenberg suggests that in the past, charter legislation has been an area of compromise, but this time offers a different summation:
“It’s the pure charter play this time,” said Martha “Marty” Walz, a management and public affairs consultant who helped usher the 2010 bill into law as cochairwoman of the Legislature’s education committee.
The governor has tried to sweeten the pot by budgeting more money for the big pile used to re-imburse districts (temporarily) for the money sucked out by charters, but Senate President Stanley C. Rosenberg is moving above that, suggesting that legislators look at issues "from financing, to governance, to admission and retention of hard-to-educate populations, like special needs students and English language learners."
The charter industry doesn't much like that idea.
“We have the highest-performing public charter school sector in the nation,” said Mary Jo Meisner, executive vice president of communications at the Boston Foundation, which has been a strong charter advocate. “Opening that up to radical change is a scary thought.”
Continued Meisner, "How are we supposed to have high performing charters if we serve the same students as the public system? Our success depends on being highly selective with our student body and booting students who make us look bad back to the public schools." Ha! Kidding-- the charter industry continues to avoid anything remotely like honesty about these provisions. In fact, the charter industry and #1 Fan Governor Charlie Baker continue to read the own PR so much that they believe they would win a ballot fight (plus they know just how many giant piles of money they threaten to throw at such a ballot question- about $18 million total).
Senator Patricia D. Jehlen is unimpressed. “If a bully comes and asks for your lunch money one day and you give it to him, does that keep him from coming back the next day?”
Fighting tough union leader Barbara Madeloni has different thoughts as well.
“We want to go to the ballot box, that’s what our poll numbers are telling us,” said Barbara Madeloni, president of the union. “I really think the narrative about charter schools is shifting.”
Shift though it may, the signs are clear-- charter schools in Massachusetts have key government positions on their side and they want their giant pile of money, and they want it unencumbered by any sorts of rules that require them to be part of public education's mandate to educate all students. Once again, charters really could be a part of a robust and fully- (and honestly-) funded public education system, but in states like Massachusetts, it seems that what the current charter industry wants is to exist outside public education, in a special bubble where all they have to do is operate some very selective schools and rake in some very large piles of public tax dollars. Here's hoping that the Massachusetts voters set them straight.
Sunday, February 28, 2016
$100,000 Garbage Workers
Ha-- you thought that was some sort of snarky figurative expression in the title, but no-- courtesy of CNN Money, here's an article about the garbage workers in New York City that make over $100K annually.
While we keep insisting that every child must graduate from high school and immediately hit the college trail, garbage workers, including the two high school dropouts profiled in New York City make over $100K. And the article reports that garbage worker salaries are growing faster than other salaries in the country.
This looks like a fine example of the invisible hand at work. Cities (particularly huge ones) need garbage workers. Need, as in "can't function at all without them." Not a lot of people have the desire or the skills for garbage work, and so cities offer more and more pay to convince people to do the work. It's elegant and simple.
There are other blue collar jobs like this. Welders, for instance, are in constant demand. I teach many future blue collar workers, and from them I've learned about jobs that I never knew existed, like the former student who traveled for years with a hotel upgrade crew that simply traveled from city to city, remodeling the next hotel in the chain that was due to be upgraded. Roofers, construction workers, heavy machinery operators, linemen-- all sorts of jobs that, as Mike Rowe always said, make civilized life possible for the rest of us.
When we discuss work and compensation, we often fail to distinguish between different kinds of work. I don't mean blue collar vs. white collar. I mean necessary vs. unnecessary. As a culture, we employ a vast number of people doing things that nobody actually needs to do at all.
If all the garbage workers in the country vanished overnight, we would have a major crisis on our hands within a week, and virtually everybody in the country would be alarmed. On the other hand, if every McDonald's in the country vanished overnight, there would be no crisis for anyone except the people who work in Micky D's and the people who make money from it.
That distinction makes a huge difference in leverage. Whenever someone argues against a living wage by saying, "If they want to make better money, they should take a better job in a cheaper city," I want to ask, "But don't you need somebody to do that job in your city?" However, the answer to my question in many cases is, "No. " But not with garbage workers-- we need somebody in our city to do that job, and so we pay whatever it takes to make that happen.
And so, while contemplating the $100K garbage workers, it hit me-- it's not just that many folks think anybody can do a teacher's job, or that reformsters are trying hard to turn teaching into a low-skills job that anybody can do. It's also that lots of folks think it's a job that doesn't need to be done. Nobody, the thinking goes, really needs to learn about quadratic equations or the Boer War or that Shakespeare guy. Sure, reading and writing are swell, but don't we all pretty much have a handle on that by fourth grade or so? After that, isn't it all just training for a particular line of work? Do we really need middle and high school for anything?
We are disinclined to pay a lot of money for people to do a job that we don't think actually needs to be done.
In this arena, reformsters are both helping and hurting. On the one hand, corporations like Wal-Mart and McDonald's benefit from having very wealthy constituencies, the corporate chiefs who depend on the corporation for wealth and use that wealth and power to look after their business interests. Until the rise of corporate reform, with its big money charters and multi-billion dollar testing manufacturers, education had no such constituency. Nobody was making Walton-style money from public education. On the other hand, reformsters have done their best to reduce education to the process of getting ready for and taking a Big Standardized Test, which is an outstanding example of a job that doesn't need to be done at all.
And so we get hit pieces like the Boston Globe opinion piece slamming school district employees who make over $100K. The writer was comparing teachers to Navy Seals when she should have been comparing them to garbage workers-- "Over a 100 grand! Who do they think they are?! Garbage workers??"
I don't begrudge those workers a cent. New York needs them in a way that it doesn't need any other profession (including banksters on Wall Street). But I do envy them their recognition for being an essential part of life in the Big Apple, and I question the single-minded tunnel vision education focus on college as a goal for all students. Go to college, kids, so you can make good money. Who knows? Study hard, and some day you might even make garbage worker money!
While we keep insisting that every child must graduate from high school and immediately hit the college trail, garbage workers, including the two high school dropouts profiled in New York City make over $100K. And the article reports that garbage worker salaries are growing faster than other salaries in the country.
This looks like a fine example of the invisible hand at work. Cities (particularly huge ones) need garbage workers. Need, as in "can't function at all without them." Not a lot of people have the desire or the skills for garbage work, and so cities offer more and more pay to convince people to do the work. It's elegant and simple.
There are other blue collar jobs like this. Welders, for instance, are in constant demand. I teach many future blue collar workers, and from them I've learned about jobs that I never knew existed, like the former student who traveled for years with a hotel upgrade crew that simply traveled from city to city, remodeling the next hotel in the chain that was due to be upgraded. Roofers, construction workers, heavy machinery operators, linemen-- all sorts of jobs that, as Mike Rowe always said, make civilized life possible for the rest of us.
When we discuss work and compensation, we often fail to distinguish between different kinds of work. I don't mean blue collar vs. white collar. I mean necessary vs. unnecessary. As a culture, we employ a vast number of people doing things that nobody actually needs to do at all.
If all the garbage workers in the country vanished overnight, we would have a major crisis on our hands within a week, and virtually everybody in the country would be alarmed. On the other hand, if every McDonald's in the country vanished overnight, there would be no crisis for anyone except the people who work in Micky D's and the people who make money from it.
That distinction makes a huge difference in leverage. Whenever someone argues against a living wage by saying, "If they want to make better money, they should take a better job in a cheaper city," I want to ask, "But don't you need somebody to do that job in your city?" However, the answer to my question in many cases is, "No. " But not with garbage workers-- we need somebody in our city to do that job, and so we pay whatever it takes to make that happen.
And so, while contemplating the $100K garbage workers, it hit me-- it's not just that many folks think anybody can do a teacher's job, or that reformsters are trying hard to turn teaching into a low-skills job that anybody can do. It's also that lots of folks think it's a job that doesn't need to be done. Nobody, the thinking goes, really needs to learn about quadratic equations or the Boer War or that Shakespeare guy. Sure, reading and writing are swell, but don't we all pretty much have a handle on that by fourth grade or so? After that, isn't it all just training for a particular line of work? Do we really need middle and high school for anything?
We are disinclined to pay a lot of money for people to do a job that we don't think actually needs to be done.
In this arena, reformsters are both helping and hurting. On the one hand, corporations like Wal-Mart and McDonald's benefit from having very wealthy constituencies, the corporate chiefs who depend on the corporation for wealth and use that wealth and power to look after their business interests. Until the rise of corporate reform, with its big money charters and multi-billion dollar testing manufacturers, education had no such constituency. Nobody was making Walton-style money from public education. On the other hand, reformsters have done their best to reduce education to the process of getting ready for and taking a Big Standardized Test, which is an outstanding example of a job that doesn't need to be done at all.
And so we get hit pieces like the Boston Globe opinion piece slamming school district employees who make over $100K. The writer was comparing teachers to Navy Seals when she should have been comparing them to garbage workers-- "Over a 100 grand! Who do they think they are?! Garbage workers??"
I don't begrudge those workers a cent. New York needs them in a way that it doesn't need any other profession (including banksters on Wall Street). But I do envy them their recognition for being an essential part of life in the Big Apple, and I question the single-minded tunnel vision education focus on college as a goal for all students. Go to college, kids, so you can make good money. Who knows? Study hard, and some day you might even make garbage worker money!
ICYMI: A Stack for the End of February
We've collected a whole bunch this week, campers. Let's get cracking.
I Don't Want To Be Liberal
Blue Cereal Education tells a story that seems really familiar. Raised to be conservative, inclined to be conservative, and yet, somehow, forced to be a liberal.
TN(Not)Ready-- What's Really Changed
Tennessee's testing fiasco and the effects of disorganized, change-your-mind accountability
Who's Raking in the Big Bucks in Charterworld
Just how rich are charter school leaders getting on the backs of a small number of students?
Will Competency Based Learning Rescue the Testocracy
Anthony Cody looks at how Competency Based baloney fits into the arc of reformster policy.
Robbing Public Schools to Pay Private Charters
Former lawmaker Paula Dockery takes on a proposed Florida bill intended to steal more public tax dollars to enrich private schools.
How Charters Get the Students They Want
This Stephanie Simon piece is from three years ago, but it's still essential reading. A vivid picture of just how charters can rig the admission process so that they get only the students they want while still looking as if they're open to all.
Seventh Grade Reflections on Stereotypes and Assumptions
Brief but poignant-- what seventh graders know about the assumptions they are painted with by others.
No, You Cannot Test My Child
Daniel Katz runs the table on arguments that his child should be tested, batting each one down. Perfect reading for anyone psyching themselves up to take the opt-out plunge.
A Light Moment in Senate Ed Committee-- and Some UNlight Reading
Claudia Swisher catches the OK ALEC crowd trying to deal with someone appropriating their terminology. And she adds an outstanding reading list about vouchers programs.
I Don't Want To Be Liberal
Blue Cereal Education tells a story that seems really familiar. Raised to be conservative, inclined to be conservative, and yet, somehow, forced to be a liberal.
TN(Not)Ready-- What's Really Changed
Tennessee's testing fiasco and the effects of disorganized, change-your-mind accountability
Who's Raking in the Big Bucks in Charterworld
Just how rich are charter school leaders getting on the backs of a small number of students?
Will Competency Based Learning Rescue the Testocracy
Anthony Cody looks at how Competency Based baloney fits into the arc of reformster policy.
Robbing Public Schools to Pay Private Charters
Former lawmaker Paula Dockery takes on a proposed Florida bill intended to steal more public tax dollars to enrich private schools.
How Charters Get the Students They Want
This Stephanie Simon piece is from three years ago, but it's still essential reading. A vivid picture of just how charters can rig the admission process so that they get only the students they want while still looking as if they're open to all.
Seventh Grade Reflections on Stereotypes and Assumptions
Brief but poignant-- what seventh graders know about the assumptions they are painted with by others.
No, You Cannot Test My Child
Daniel Katz runs the table on arguments that his child should be tested, batting each one down. Perfect reading for anyone psyching themselves up to take the opt-out plunge.
A Light Moment in Senate Ed Committee-- and Some UNlight Reading
Claudia Swisher catches the OK ALEC crowd trying to deal with someone appropriating their terminology. And she adds an outstanding reading list about vouchers programs.
Saturday, February 27, 2016
Can Conservatives and Unions Play Nice?
Andy Smarick is a partner at Bellwether Partners and a senior fellow at Fordham Institute, two reliably reformy right-leaning thinky tanks, so it's safe to say that he favors the reformster view of the education debates. But I also find him to be thoughtful and intellectually honest, particularly when it comes to considering the role of conservatism in the reform movement.
I've been saving a Smarick piece from last week's Weekly Standard to mull over (it's show week, and my close reading time has been replaced by rehearsal time). In "Don't Scoff," Smarick considers the possibility of collaboration between conservatives and unions, particularly in light of two events-- the passage of ESSA and the Friedrich's case. Granted, the Friedrich case is not looking quite so game-changing now that Scalia has shuffled off this mortal coil, but Smarick's points are still worth considering. I do recommend that if you want a fuller understanding of his argument, you read his piece.
Where he sees the "key overlap in the conservative/union Venn diagram is a respect for local custom and knowledge." Both conservatives and teachers wanted the feds out of the education business, and so ESSA-- a sort-of rejection of Big Government and a extra-rare example of a federal agency being stripped of powers.
The corollary is that cocksure D.C.-dwellers not only lack the right answers; they also inadvertently warp local practice by concocting policies that serve the purposes of central administrators. The cognoscenti may view the local leader as helplessly parochial, but conservatives and unions can recognize her as informed, no-nonsense, and prudent.
Smarick sees this as a larger trend. In a term that I fully intend to steal, he refers to our recent past as The Decade of Mistakes by Experts. The failure of bankers, the economy, the border patrol, "even the New Orleans levees" has provided example after example, alarming folks all across the spectrum. "We were told ISIS was a JV team, that we could keep our health care if we liked it, that Iraqi WMDs were a slam-dunk." You may disagree with some of the failures on Smarick's list, but that's kind of the point-- no matter what your political inclination, the experts have screwed up something that you care about. While we may disagree on the particulars, all Americans have shared the experience of seeing federal experts and bureaucrats make a hash out of something important.
Smarick believe that this trend feeds directly the traditional conservative desire for decentralized, local government, and I agree with that notion even as I question just how much traditional conservatism is still alive in America. Just hold that thought for a few paragraphs.
Smarick sees Friedrich as a catalyst for what he views as a useful change-- unions dropping their political focus for a more tradespersonlike approach, a union more focused on strengthening the practices and craft of the field, thereby helping more clearly establish teachers as Local Experts who are better positioned to take the reins of local control. He does acknowledge other possible outcomes, but it looks like we don't really need to discuss the possible effects of the plaintiffs winning the appeal, so I'm going to stick to his vision of a less-politicized union.
I see a couple of problems with Smarick's vision.
First, I remain skeptical of how much traditional conservatism, the conservatism of my father and grandfather, is still a force in the world. I don't, for instance, think that Trump is a rejection of the conservative GOP establishment, but the miscalculated-but-all-too-predictable outcome of it. The right has been trying to panic voters with a long list of Terrible Things That The Government Must Put a Stop To Right Now; they simply failed to realize how effective the panic would be and how completely successful a candidate shameless enough to give the subtext voice would be. Trump is not a revolt against the GOP-- he has simply put his money where their mouth has been.
Meanwhile, Trump's Democrat counterpart is not Sanders, but Clinton, who is also a fully-manufactured product of the establishment. In her case, it's just a fulfillment of the establishment big-money purchase of politicians. They are both exactly what one could expect from the system as it stands.
At any rate, I don't see any real candidate for much of anything who actually represents the traditional small-government, trust people with local control conservative.
Nor do I think that education reform as practiced has much to do with conservative, liberal or progressive philosophies. What we have is an establishment sleight-of-hand designed to make everybody happy. "Look," say faux conservatives. "We will starve the government schools and get the centralized education monopoly out of schools." Meanwhile, liberals announce, "We will make sure that the needs of various constituencies like the non-wealthy and the non-white are thoroughly met."
And what all this actually means is that we will starve the central government into the business of being essentially a contractor who hands tax dollars over to various subcontractors. I find it telling that this ed reform pattern is repeated with Republicans, Democrats, conservatives and liberals. It's not about a political philosophy; it's just about the politics of directing public tax dollars to private corporate pockets. The beauty of it is that it can be dressed up with the rhetoric of the left ("Helping the poor"), the traditional right ("Getting government out of the X business"), or the corporate right ("Letting the free market's invisible hand sort things out"). Folks who really believe those things can and do sign up to be part of the journey, but I'm not sure they ever get to actually drive the bus.
Meanwhile, the teacher unions, even in a parallel universe where Friedrich was settled against them, can never leave politics alone, because politics can never leave education alone.
Back in the early years of my career, I subscribed to the notion that I should just do my job, teach my students, and leave politics alone. But the more I paid attention, the more I realized that every dumb rule that got in my way and even the occasional smart rule that helped me do my job-- every single one of them had been birthed by politicians working with other politicians to do some political stuff. If there's a family of angry badgers living in your house, you can tell yourself, "Well, they're not actually members of our family, and I don't really know anything about badgers or badger control," but after they keep busting up the furniture and eating the food and pooping the living room, you eventually understand that you have to get involved in the badger game. Politicians are the badgers in the house of education, and the only hope education has is for some to work badger control. Nobody in the political world has the interests of schools, students, or teachers very high on their priority list; teachers cannot afford to sit silent while other disinterested uninformed parties decide our fates.
This has created its own set of issues. Union leadership and union membership interests are not always perfectly aligned, and leadership's desire to have a seat at the proverbial table often puts union leadership out of step. Union leaders were all in on Common Core and Arne Duncan while members were still not so enamored of either, just as both NEA and AFT leaders threw their weight behind Hillary Clinton to the distaste of many, many members. And that's before we get to the many teachers who are happily registered Republicans.
So the fracture between conservatives and teacher unions is, for me, overlaid with dozens of other fractures-- traditional conservatives vs. values voters, rand and file vs. leadership, establishment vs. upstarts, corporate interests vs. public interests, centralized power vs. local control, and the unending debates about who should get to make mistakes and who should get to judge whether or not they are mistakes. No matter what labels we're playing with or what tribes we're identifying, I remain convinced that there's almost always somebody Over There who shares some of your values and you are going to have to decide whether you follow your labels or your values.
I think Smarick's idea that teacher unions could become depoliticized tradesperson groups is unlikely given where the controls of the education biz lie-- but they can certainly focus more on the craft and profession of teaching. I think Smarick gives traditional conservatives more credit for power and, well, existence than is supported by reality-- but there are such people out there. I think it's possible to reach agreement that DC should not be running the show, but I think that agreement evaporates about the moment we start discussing what should be driving the bus. I have zero faith in the Free Market's ability to improve education for many reasons, but I have great faith that it would open the door to renewed federal meddling (all free markets are "maintained" by government). I am perfectly okay with true local control with little or no provision for being able to compare schools from state to state, but I'm pretty sure Smarick is not excited about that idea.
At root, the education debate always runs into the same snag-- as a country, we have no shared vision of what a school is supposed to do, what excellence looks like, or how to achieve any of those things. We have fundamental disagreements about how the world works and what that means to teachers in a classroom. I have no doubt that for specific issues, we can all find unlikely allies in unexpected places if we're just willing to look. But I don't think we get much further than that.
I've been saving a Smarick piece from last week's Weekly Standard to mull over (it's show week, and my close reading time has been replaced by rehearsal time). In "Don't Scoff," Smarick considers the possibility of collaboration between conservatives and unions, particularly in light of two events-- the passage of ESSA and the Friedrich's case. Granted, the Friedrich case is not looking quite so game-changing now that Scalia has shuffled off this mortal coil, but Smarick's points are still worth considering. I do recommend that if you want a fuller understanding of his argument, you read his piece.
Where he sees the "key overlap in the conservative/union Venn diagram is a respect for local custom and knowledge." Both conservatives and teachers wanted the feds out of the education business, and so ESSA-- a sort-of rejection of Big Government and a extra-rare example of a federal agency being stripped of powers.
The corollary is that cocksure D.C.-dwellers not only lack the right answers; they also inadvertently warp local practice by concocting policies that serve the purposes of central administrators. The cognoscenti may view the local leader as helplessly parochial, but conservatives and unions can recognize her as informed, no-nonsense, and prudent.
Smarick sees this as a larger trend. In a term that I fully intend to steal, he refers to our recent past as The Decade of Mistakes by Experts. The failure of bankers, the economy, the border patrol, "even the New Orleans levees" has provided example after example, alarming folks all across the spectrum. "We were told ISIS was a JV team, that we could keep our health care if we liked it, that Iraqi WMDs were a slam-dunk." You may disagree with some of the failures on Smarick's list, but that's kind of the point-- no matter what your political inclination, the experts have screwed up something that you care about. While we may disagree on the particulars, all Americans have shared the experience of seeing federal experts and bureaucrats make a hash out of something important.
Smarick believe that this trend feeds directly the traditional conservative desire for decentralized, local government, and I agree with that notion even as I question just how much traditional conservatism is still alive in America. Just hold that thought for a few paragraphs.
Smarick sees Friedrich as a catalyst for what he views as a useful change-- unions dropping their political focus for a more tradespersonlike approach, a union more focused on strengthening the practices and craft of the field, thereby helping more clearly establish teachers as Local Experts who are better positioned to take the reins of local control. He does acknowledge other possible outcomes, but it looks like we don't really need to discuss the possible effects of the plaintiffs winning the appeal, so I'm going to stick to his vision of a less-politicized union.
I see a couple of problems with Smarick's vision.
First, I remain skeptical of how much traditional conservatism, the conservatism of my father and grandfather, is still a force in the world. I don't, for instance, think that Trump is a rejection of the conservative GOP establishment, but the miscalculated-but-all-too-predictable outcome of it. The right has been trying to panic voters with a long list of Terrible Things That The Government Must Put a Stop To Right Now; they simply failed to realize how effective the panic would be and how completely successful a candidate shameless enough to give the subtext voice would be. Trump is not a revolt against the GOP-- he has simply put his money where their mouth has been.
Meanwhile, Trump's Democrat counterpart is not Sanders, but Clinton, who is also a fully-manufactured product of the establishment. In her case, it's just a fulfillment of the establishment big-money purchase of politicians. They are both exactly what one could expect from the system as it stands.
At any rate, I don't see any real candidate for much of anything who actually represents the traditional small-government, trust people with local control conservative.
Nor do I think that education reform as practiced has much to do with conservative, liberal or progressive philosophies. What we have is an establishment sleight-of-hand designed to make everybody happy. "Look," say faux conservatives. "We will starve the government schools and get the centralized education monopoly out of schools." Meanwhile, liberals announce, "We will make sure that the needs of various constituencies like the non-wealthy and the non-white are thoroughly met."
And what all this actually means is that we will starve the central government into the business of being essentially a contractor who hands tax dollars over to various subcontractors. I find it telling that this ed reform pattern is repeated with Republicans, Democrats, conservatives and liberals. It's not about a political philosophy; it's just about the politics of directing public tax dollars to private corporate pockets. The beauty of it is that it can be dressed up with the rhetoric of the left ("Helping the poor"), the traditional right ("Getting government out of the X business"), or the corporate right ("Letting the free market's invisible hand sort things out"). Folks who really believe those things can and do sign up to be part of the journey, but I'm not sure they ever get to actually drive the bus.
Meanwhile, the teacher unions, even in a parallel universe where Friedrich was settled against them, can never leave politics alone, because politics can never leave education alone.
Back in the early years of my career, I subscribed to the notion that I should just do my job, teach my students, and leave politics alone. But the more I paid attention, the more I realized that every dumb rule that got in my way and even the occasional smart rule that helped me do my job-- every single one of them had been birthed by politicians working with other politicians to do some political stuff. If there's a family of angry badgers living in your house, you can tell yourself, "Well, they're not actually members of our family, and I don't really know anything about badgers or badger control," but after they keep busting up the furniture and eating the food and pooping the living room, you eventually understand that you have to get involved in the badger game. Politicians are the badgers in the house of education, and the only hope education has is for some to work badger control. Nobody in the political world has the interests of schools, students, or teachers very high on their priority list; teachers cannot afford to sit silent while other disinterested uninformed parties decide our fates.
This has created its own set of issues. Union leadership and union membership interests are not always perfectly aligned, and leadership's desire to have a seat at the proverbial table often puts union leadership out of step. Union leaders were all in on Common Core and Arne Duncan while members were still not so enamored of either, just as both NEA and AFT leaders threw their weight behind Hillary Clinton to the distaste of many, many members. And that's before we get to the many teachers who are happily registered Republicans.
So the fracture between conservatives and teacher unions is, for me, overlaid with dozens of other fractures-- traditional conservatives vs. values voters, rand and file vs. leadership, establishment vs. upstarts, corporate interests vs. public interests, centralized power vs. local control, and the unending debates about who should get to make mistakes and who should get to judge whether or not they are mistakes. No matter what labels we're playing with or what tribes we're identifying, I remain convinced that there's almost always somebody Over There who shares some of your values and you are going to have to decide whether you follow your labels or your values.
I think Smarick's idea that teacher unions could become depoliticized tradesperson groups is unlikely given where the controls of the education biz lie-- but they can certainly focus more on the craft and profession of teaching. I think Smarick gives traditional conservatives more credit for power and, well, existence than is supported by reality-- but there are such people out there. I think it's possible to reach agreement that DC should not be running the show, but I think that agreement evaporates about the moment we start discussing what should be driving the bus. I have zero faith in the Free Market's ability to improve education for many reasons, but I have great faith that it would open the door to renewed federal meddling (all free markets are "maintained" by government). I am perfectly okay with true local control with little or no provision for being able to compare schools from state to state, but I'm pretty sure Smarick is not excited about that idea.
At root, the education debate always runs into the same snag-- as a country, we have no shared vision of what a school is supposed to do, what excellence looks like, or how to achieve any of those things. We have fundamental disagreements about how the world works and what that means to teachers in a classroom. I have no doubt that for specific issues, we can all find unlikely allies in unexpected places if we're just willing to look. But I don't think we get much further than that.
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