Nancie Atwell Busts Some Pencils

If you are not familiar with BustEd Pencils and their "fully leaded education talk," you should be. The program/website is run by Tim Slekar and Jed Hopkins of Edgewood College's education department in Madison, WI. They have a sass-heavy style that readers of this blog can appreciate, and their podcasts include interviews with a variety of education champions and commentary on the issues of the day. Plus, regular segments with Matt Damon's mom. (And yes, the bumpers sound as if they were recorded by Pawnee's The Douche ).

The most recent episode features an interview with Nancie Atwell (in the interests of full transparency, I'll note that it also includes an interview with me, and that's about as close as I'm ever going to get to being in Atwell's league) coming a year after her crowning as Best Teacher on the Planet. Atwell is a personal hero of mine, both for her work as a teacher of reading and writing and for her connection to Maine, a state with a special place in my heart because my gandfather built a cabin on a lake that has been a gathering spot for family my whole life. Anyway-- the interview.

Atwell shares some stories from the ceremony in Dubai; the secrecy surrounding the winner was such that all ten nominees had to prepare acceptance speeches and rehearse holding the twenty pound trophy. And she talks about what the year has brought since then, including a great number of obligations and opportunities. I was particularly struck by her tale of being Grand Marshall of Bath's 4th of July parade and how people really cheered--for a teacher. Atwell said, "People do, despite all the PR, love teachers and appreciate them."

Slekar asks Atwell to reflect on her infamous poat-award suggestion that young people should not go into public school teaching right now. "I wish I'd been more thoughtful about how that answer was going to play," Atwell says. But her intent was to diss the current climate, not teachers. There are schools where teachers still have autonomy, but other places where what teachers are being asked to do with children is not what they entered the profession to do.

Atwell is blunt about reform. Common Core is a disaster-- unrealistic, developmentally inappropriate, created behind closed doors by people with no knowledge of the field who had no basis in research for their work. She calls it a "reckless intrusion into public schools" and notes that "public education has been taken hostage" by a variety of corporate interests.

It is a dynamite interview, and I've left out some of the best stuff. Who gave Atwell the most blowback on her "don't go into teaching" quote? What would it take for her to advise students to become teachers? That and more are in there.

But mostly you want to hear this interview because it's encouraging to hear someone with such stature, someone who has won awards for something other than regurgitating a corporate talking point, explain in clear, simple language just how wrong the path we're on is. Listen to this interview, and then browse the BustEd Pencils library for some interviews with some other great voices of the pro-public ed movement. 
 

StudentsFirst Demands Access To Prey

StudentsFirstNY is one wing of the StudentsFirst empire, a well-heeled advocacy group dedicated to breaking down job protections for teachers (e.g. The Vergara lawsuit in CA) and expanding the market share for charter schools.

Expanding that charter market means actively rooting for the failure of public schools, because every public school that is labeled failing is a marketing opportunity for a charter school.

That's the context of Friday's story that StudentsFirstNY is demanding that 70 New York schools be kept on the "failing" list, regardless of what improvements they may or may not have achieved. The headline says "questioned," but "threatened court action" would be more to the point, as StudentsFirstNY sent a letter to New York High Poohbah of Education MaryEllen Elia saying that if she didn't put the 70 schools back on the up-next-for-demolition list, they would "explore all available remedies to ensure compliance with the law."

It's an extraordinary statement-- is StudentsFirstNY a law enforcement agency? Do they have some direct legal interest in the status of the public schools? The answers would be "no" and "no, other than the same interest that a vulture has in a dying antelope."

The department announced in February that based on test and graduation figures from last year, the 70 schools no longer qualified as dying antelope, though a department spokesperson said that "they still need a lot of work." StudentsFirstNY has nothing to say about the vital signs of the schools in question-- they just want to argue the fine print in the law, recalling the old lawyers' adage (when the facts are against you, argue the law; when the law is against you, argue the facts; when both are against you, call your opponent names). 

But StudentsFirstNY is not arguing first for students-- they are arguing that those schools ought to be a few steps closer to death, because how else are more charters going to grab another pile of those taxpayer public education dollars. It's moments like these in which some reformsters reveal just how bald and blinding their avarice, and how much education is simply another kind of business deal for them.

NM: 5 Unsurprising PARCC Supporters

D'Val Westphal at the Albuquerque Journal wants us to know that the PARCC tests are super-duper and swelleroonies. She offers what is meant to be proof of PARCC's okee-dokeetude; instead, she ends up proving that she's not a very hard working journalist.

The red flag goes up immediately. Westphal recaps the "Sturm und Drang" of last year's testing adventures, noting that there were "critics urging parents" to opt out of the tests because in their minds (Westphal loses a point for unclear pronoun reference, so don't know whose mind is being considered) the tests were so awful that "the consequences of lower school grades and lost federal funding be damned."

Couple of problems here. One is the usual assumption that any opt out parents are the unwitting dupes of test critics, and not intelligent and caring parents who made an informed decision. And then-- what are those consequences, exactly? Lower school grades would be bad why, exactly? And a pretty quick consult with Dr. Google will tell you that no state or school district has ever lost a cent of federal funding over the Big Standardized Test.

Westphal asks the question-- are the PARCC tests any good? And she has her answer lined up. Before you listen to "what teachers unions say in sound bites," Westphal wants you to consider five groups of wise experts, and what they have to say about the PARCC. Prepare to be amazed by this diverse group.

American Institutes for Research

Westphal calls them "one of the largest social science research organizations in the world," because she either didn't know or chose not to mention that AIR is also the manufacturer of the SBA-- the other Common Core test that, with PARCC, was supposed to cover the country. If you ask Coke whether or not Pepsi is any good, what do you suppose they'll say? They surely won't say, "Carbonated and heavily sweetened beverages are bad for you, and caffeine can have lots of side effects you need to watch out for."

In other words, getting an endorsement of PARCC from SBA is like getting an endorsement of automobiles form Ford Motor Company. And they have taken a ton of money from The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, the leading promoter of the Common Core and the testing programs that come with the Core (AIR has been on the Gates gravy train for quite a while).

Human Resources Research Organization

HumRRO's study is fresh off the press. If we check the acknowledgements we find that the study's lead funding came form the Gates Foundation and the study was completed with the cooperation and assistance of the companies whose products were being assessed.

More to the point, just a quick scan of the report methodology shows that the study used the CCSSO evaluation criteria-- which would be the same criteria from the overseers of Common Core and the criteria used by PARCC to design their test in the first place. So as an independent measure, not so impressive. You get a ruler out of your pocket and measure a stick, declaring, "Yeah, that's a foot long." Are you sure, I ask. "Certainly," you reply. "But check it for yourself. Here. Use my ruler."

Thomas B. Fordham Institute

Fordham has also been swimming in the sea of Gates money, including the buckets of green they collected for evaluating the Common Core State (ha!) Standards. Hypothetical situation-- Bill Gates offers you a few million dollars and says, "I want you to tell me if these standards are as good as I think they are." What do you suppose you do? That's not counting the cool million that the Gates gave Fordham just to stay in business. Fordham has been one of the most reliable salesman of ed reform, including the standards and the testing (they also make cute videos from time to time).

Center for American Progress

CAP was set up by John Podesta, who used to work in the Clinton White House and is now heading up the effort to put the Clintons back in the White House. It has never strayed from its support of Common Core and BS Testing advocacy.

And CAP has gotten plenty of that Gates money as well, some of it specifically "to support Common Core implementation."

National Network of State Teachers of the Year

Yes, them too. Here's the Gates just last year funneling a million dollars through the New Ventures Fund so that NNSTOY can advocate for the right policies. NNSTOY members have been a big hit at Gates gatherings.

And who runs, owns and operates the Teacher of the Year program on the state and national level? That would be the CCSSO, the same group that facilitated development of and holds the copyright for the Common Core. What are the chances that anybody gets to be selected TOTY with a critical attitude about Common Core and Common Core tests?

Diversity? Not So Much.

Westphal wants to sell these groups as so diverse that their agreement on the PARCC test must be a sign of something. But these groups are not even remotely diverse when it comes to education policy. Certainly the Bill Gates Foundation thinks they are all on the same page (the Gates loves Common Core page).

In fact, Westphal tries her hand at a little artful illustration of just how far apart these groups are by saying they "would likely never nominate the same person for U.S. education secretary." Let's check with Dr. Google once again, shall we?

 CAP "applauds" the decision to confirm John King as Secretary of Education. Mike Petrilli was out in front last fall saying that King should be put up for actual USED secretary rather than an "acting." CCSSO thought King was an excellent choice as secretary. NNSTOY was happy to welcome him to their annual conference last summer, and to join in with him on the Teach to Lead initiative. John King worked with AIR to develop an evaluation system back when he was Ed Commissioner of New York. Only HumRRO appears to have no particular opinion about John King as Secretary of Education, and their faith in CCSSO suggests they wouldn't have a beef with the group's choice.

So in fact this diverse group would have very little trouble coming up with a secretary of education on which they could agree, just as they agree that Common Core is swell and the PARCC test is thing of beauty and a great source of revenue joy forever.

Westphal finishes with one more swipe, suggesting that Albuquerque Public Schools leaders should be "enlightened" enough for "encouraging excellence rather than softly pandering to the loud voices of the opt-out movement." Oh, and one last dig-- the standard suggestion that opt outers and wimpy school leaders are afraid the PARCC will reveal that New Mexico students aren't ready for the big leagues. Well, either Westphal is too lazy to do her homework, or too committed to selling a particular point of view to want to do real journalism. Either way, she appears to be a little bush league herself.

High Infidelity

Over at EdSurge, Jeff Kiderman, co-founder of 2 Sigma Education, wants to unspool some ad copy lay down some truth about fidelity. In "The Elusive F Word in Personalized Learning," Kiderman wants to speak about "fidelity" as the secret ingredient in a great personalized learning system.

Kiderman notes that most schools providing personalized instruction will say that the shape of their personalization "depends." Which leads Kiderman to wonder, depends on what?

“Well,” they begin, “our teachers are talented professionals and we empower them to make their own decisions. We give them support and tools and perform observations several times a year. But ultimately we give them the flexibility they need to be successful and different teachers do things differently."

Oh, that damn flexibility. No, Kiderman wants to see more fidelity and faithfulness.

In the context of personalized learning, “fidelity” refers to the faithfulness of individual teachers and classes to the school's driving instructional philosophy and approach. Do teachers actually stick to the school’s chosen personalized learning plan? Do they use the software and review/utilize data as often as they should? Do they take advantage of the power of the model, tools, and data to differentiate instruction on a daily basis?

It occurs to me that Kiderman has confused "fidelity" with "compliance." Vendors like 2 Sigma Education are providing an excellent program in a box, with nifty materials and handy protocols. Teachers who insist on acting as if they are trained professionals who know something about education and their students just mess everything up. Follow the instructions, dammit. We laid out a perfect program-- now do as you're told, like a good little content provider.

Kiderman offers more evidence of the problem by way of conversations he has had with content providers and sales reps, and they say that shockingly few of the teachers follow the program that these good hearted vendors have provided. It is almost, one might conclude, as if teachers think they work for someone other than the content providers.

Kiderman says this "problem" is "swept under the rug." I disagree. In many schools with which I am familiar, teachers are pretty open-- as soon as the company sales rep/trainer (you know-- the fresh-faced one that taught for one year and bailed because teaching is hard but sales repping pays well) has left the room, the teachers roll their eyes at the bad advice and silly instructions provided by the rep and get to talking abot which parts of the program are actually useful, and which will need to be jettisoned.

Now you probably think that Kiderman sounds like the same sort of corporate systems and standardization guy who would compare teaching to working in a McDonalds. Nope. He's the kind of corporate tool who would compare teaching to working in a Starbucks.

If you want to experience the power of fidelity, fly halfway around the world to a country you’ve never visited and purchase a latte at Starbucks. 

I find his support for this viewpoint striking. He does not say that Starbucks or Amazon Prime or a Westin hotel are better because they are internationally standardized, but because the experience of having that service experience untouched by any specifics of locality. "there’s a certain sense of reliability and comfort that comes with being able to expect and trust that your needs will be met predictably and successfully no matter where you happen to be."

Reliable, comfortable, predictable-- yes, those are the qualities we strive for in education. A product that has a bland sameness no matter who the customer or the provider are.

I'm pretty sure that anybody who thinks Starbucks and my classroom are comparable enterprises has nothing useful to say about education. This is not fidelity. It is standardization, cold and stripped of any human qualities and filled with complete disregard for the people it purports to serve-- the students. That would be different from the people it actually serves-- the corporations that find one-size-fits-all maximizes ROI and allows scaling up operations for greater profit and less fuss. 

There's a comment section, so you can go share your thoughts. Kiderman tells us to stay tuned for Part II, in which he will explain how beautiful standardized compliance can be inflicted on the education system. Don't know if I'll make it back for that.

Micro-Credentials for Fun and Profit (In which Relay certifies your hand)

Part of the new wave of competency based education for teachers is the vogue of micro-credentials. Micro-credentials, sometimes linked to little badges, are an attempt to break down teaching into verrrrrry small competencies, and not coincidentally, monetize the certification of them. How micro can we get? Oh, you have no idea.

Meet Relay Graduate School of Education's micro-credential for Checking for Understanding Using Gestures. Relay is a charter-created fake school for teaching teachers, and this is some of their more spectacular work, presented by way of the good folks at Digital Promise.

You may look at the name of this micro-credential and think, "Can that be what it looks like? Surely there's some deeper, more clever technique that they're selling." Well, here's the full description.

Gestures are a CFU method in which the teacher asks a question and students signal their answers using some sort of visual sign (for instance, holding up a number of fingers, sign language, colored index cards). Unlike many other CFU methods in which teachers make inferences about student learning from a sample of students, with Gestures, the teacher visually records answers from the entire class. Generally, Gestures are most effective when the question is posed in a selected-response format (e.g., multiple choice, agree or disagree, or yes/no). 

So, yes. The people at Relay really are that ridiculous. But not as scary ridiculous as whatever proto-teacher needs actual instruction on how to ask students a question and have them raise their hands. We should also note that this technique dovetails nicely with the charter philosophy that emphasizes keeping students voices as silent as possible.

Now, granted, there are layers of dumb here. The suggestion that this method is different because teachers don't have to make inferences-- are we to assume that in this method, the teacher does not need to be able to tell this difference between a confident student, an uncertain student and a just-plain-guessing student. And what do you mean, "visually record answers"-- am I going to whip out my phone and take a picture? But thanks for the tip about selected-response format; I was going to go ahead and have my students answer "So what are some of the major contributing factors to the start of the Great European War?" with hand gestures.

But Relay is not done providing dumb instructions about this technique.

You should only use it "to check for understanding of important content." And you should use "visually distinct" gestures. For example-- and I swear that I am not making this up-- you should not use thumbs up and thumbs down because they are hard to tell apart. The teacher should also give "crisp, in-cue signals" about when to make the gesture, for example saying "Show me your answer when I say three-- one, two..." Also, ask follow-up questions, and make appropriate adjustments in instruction depending on what happens when you do your check for understanding.

To earn this micro-credential, you need to submit two videos and a write up, and the handy guide and rubric is here, and one cannot help wonder in what hollow village of the damned is any of this necessary? If you actually have to be taught how to do this, is there the remotest possibility that you will be fit to work in a classroom with live small humans? But this micro-credential carries a December 2014 copyright, so no doubt your school is loaded with people who are officially credentialed to ask student questions like "Who thinks the answer is A?" and then have students raise their hands.

Here are some of the other excellent micro-credentials being made available for teachers:

Calling Students By Name

Research indicates that students are more responsive when the teacher uses their name. This micro-credential will certify that you can learn a student's name and insert it in a spoken sentence. (Note: Making eye contact is a separate micro-credential).

Acronyming

Why talk about "check for understanding," a phrase that anyone can understand, when you can say CFU instead and sound really special. This micro-credential (MC) will train the teacher to create acronyms for any occasion (AFAO) so that you can credential obvious versions of educational reality (COVER) when you align school standards (ASS). Once you have mastered educational habits everyone already does (HEAD) , you can increase your bazillion useless teacher trainings (BUTT) as well as wield a zillion obnoxious obsfucatory trainings (WAZOOT) and have a million minor educational revelations (HAMMER). So as you COVER your ASS and with HEAD, up your BUTT, you can MC HAMMER your way to excellence out the WAZOOT.

Walking and Talking

Teachers are sometimes called upon to both walk and talk at the same time in a classroom. This micro-credential certifies that the teacher is able to both speak words and move feet nearly simultaneously. A companion credential to our popular Walk and Chew Gum micro-credential.

Passing Out Papers

Teachers will focus on how to spot the student name on the paper and then identify the student who has that name in the classroom. Teacher will then grasp the paper with her own hand and extend that hand toward the identified student. This micro-credential can become more powerful when combined with the Calling Students By Name micro-credential.

Eating Lunch

Teacher will be certified in the use of all three major utensils and demonstrate the ability to divide food into smaller pieces that can reasonably be expected to fit in the teacher's mouth, inserting those pieces, chewing, and swallowing. Note: Solids only. Eating Soup for Lunch is a separate micro-credential.

Breathing

Research suggests that teachers who breathe are generally more effective in increasing student achievement. We considered creating Inhaling and Exhaling as separate micro-credentials, but eventually you reach a point where it foolish to keep breaking down ordinary actions regularly performed by sentient beings into tiny micro-credentials.

Note

There have been requests for credentials centered around interacting with young carbon-based life forms as if both they and the teachers are thinking, feeling human beings who can enter into a teacher-student relationship that allows for communication and understanding that is enhanced by the teacher's professional knowledge, training and experience. We repeat our position that such an approach is far too broad and messy to ever be offered as a micro-credential. We'll just stick with classics like How To Have Your Students Raise Their Hands When You Ask a Question.

Zombie Core

The Common Core State (ha!) Standards have seen better days. By now, actually, they really ought to be dead-- stabbed in the back by their former politician BFFs, torn up by a constant barrage of criticism, knocked about the sconce by angry parents, repeatedly done in by their own deep flaws, and just generally bearing a whole lot of slings and arrows (plus, of course, all the problems that happened to them because of bad implementation).

Now they just shamble around the education landscape, broken and twisted and barely able to stumble in any direction, but absolutely unwilling to lie down and die. The Core is now a zombie, a walking dead policy. And the signs are everywhere.

We still get a steady trickle of teacher-written pieces about How The Core Made My Classroom Awesome! Here's an interview from Louisiana with two teachers who love the Core very much. Rhea-Claire Richard and Bailey Debardelen teach fourth grade in the Lafayette Parish, where the whole staff is "past the point of opposition" and "All of our teachers love Common Core." The two do admit that at first teachers were resistant, but they blame that on teachers' fears that students and teachers would not be able to live up to rigorous standards and not, say, a concern that the standards were amateur hour junk.

Have we found at last a colony where the Core roams whole and happy? Not likely-- look at this explanation of how Lafayette handles the ELA standards.

I see rich discussion in my classroom. I see deep thinking about what they’re reading or concepts that they’re learning, and I see that they are able to form their own validated opinions based off of what they read. They can articulate their thinking using evidence, and I’ll give you an example. One of our old GLEs used to be “identify a main character in a story.” That’s a very low-level thinking standard to just identify something, whereas now, I may ask my students, “How do the actions of the main character affect the plot of the story?” Well, they’re going so much deeper. They’re having to look at the author’s craft, how the author wrote what they did and why they chose the words they used. 

Here's the thing. "How do the actions of the main character affect the plot of the story" has nothing to do with the Fourth Grade Literacy Standards. It's a perfectly good question. It was a perfectly good question under the old standards, and it's a perfectly good question under the Zombie Core, and it would be a perfectly good question if Lafayette Parish threw all the standards out the window. There isn't a reason in the world to think that any set of standards, and most especially not the zombie core, would be needed to prompt a teacher to ask this question.

The two are being interviewed to argue against Louisiana's threatened jettisoning of the Zombie Core, and Debardelen has this to say:

I think that within our school and within the four walls of my classroom and Rhea-Claire’s classroom, there are aspects of the Common Core that I don’t feel like I will ever stray away from. 

In other words, these two (who are relative newbs) will do what all professional educators do-- they follow their own best judgment and ignore whatever paperwork instructions they've been handed. They didn't need the core to think of good ways to teach, and they won't lose those ideas if the core goes away.

This is what we're seeing again and again and again. Teachers have "adapted to" and "adjusted to" and "become numb to" the zombie core by simply using their own best professional judgment and disregarding everything about the core they don't like (and are allowed to ignore). Experienced teachers know how this works. The easiest way to "align instruction" to a set of standards is to do what you were going to do anyway and check off whatever alignment paperwork your district has given you to play with. And for every local teacher, the only version of the core that you really need to understand and acknowledge is the version that your district adheres to, which is probably the original core with a few fingers and toes chopped off.

While that process is knocking some of the flesh off the zombie core, states help out by chiseling off the common core brand name, or by rewriting portions of the standards into some other messy version. In some part of the zombie core's remaining brain matter, it thinks fondly of the days when states had to promise not to change a word of the standards and add no more than 15% of new material. That very quickly became, "Do whatever you want. Nobody will stop you."

And testing has chewed several organs out of the zombie core's guts. Core fans can talk all day about how the core promote critical thinking; they may be full of it, but there's no point having that argument because the Big Standardized Tests don't have the faintest breath of critical thinking anywhere on them, and if it's not on the test, it doesn't matter. Every part of the zombie core that isn't on the test has been reamed out and discarded.

What are we left with? A shambling tattered husk that some still call common core, but has long since its identity and only vaguely resembles its original ugly self. Folks like the Lafayette teachers or the many groups still trying to make a buck from the core can all praise the core, but they are talking about a memory, a phantom, a tottering doddering hollowed-out hulk that nobody really, truly embraces. Zombie core can still cause some damage and hurt people, but mostly it stumbles along in slow steady decay, looking less and less like its early self and more and more like a slow monster searching for brraaaaaaainnnss. Maybe there will be a final kill shot, or maybe it will just keep wasting away into nothingness. Either way, the zombie core is on its last brittle fleshless legs.

Charter Barrier Baloney

In today's US News, Rachel Campos-Duffy of the Libre Initiative is busily deploying tired charter talking points against Hillary Clinton.

Campos-Duffy is a journalist who got her start on MTV's The Real World, and has since graduated to Fox News, The View, and other guest pop-ups. She authored a book in praise of stay-at-home mothering, and she's married to Sean Duffy, a Wisconsin congressman and fellow Real World alumnus. He got some attention a few years ago for talking about how hard it was to make it on his $174K Congressional salary.

Meanwhile, the Libre Initiative is an astroturf group standing up for "the principles and values of economic freedom" in the US Hispanic community. You'd better sit down as I tell you that they got a huge pike of their funding from the Koch brothers, that they are run by veteran GOP staffers, and that Fox News thinks they are swell (and real).

So that is Campos-Duffy's context as she pops up to lecture Clinton on the need for charter schools.

As is typical for charteristas, Campos-Duffy characterizes the private school funded with public dollars as "the surest way to give children the best shot as a better life." She throws in her qualifications (mother of seven children) and notes that she has "taken advantage of educational options" for her own kids, which I'm sure is a challenge for a family trying to get by on a the money made by being a Congressman and being a media figure.

But Campos-Duffy is interested in commentary, and not actual evidence. She notes that charter-choice has "clearly worked for Hispanic families in Florida, Nevada, Arizona and elsewhere," and I'd like to ask her how she arrives at that "clearly." Florida charters have a variety of problems, including a 30% failure rate. And while Florida's school letter grades are a bogus joke, it's the game reformsters wanted to play, and in that game charters are pulling failing grades at three times the rate of public schools. And that's before we get to the many ways that Florida's mostly-unsupervised charter industry has bilked the taxpayers.

Campos-Duffy quotes Clinton from last year: "I want parents to be able to exercise choice within the public school system – not outside of it."

Campos-Duffy forgets the correct charterista talking response, which is that charter schools are public schools, but she can be forgiven for forgetting that talking point because it's not actually true. But she certainly remembers the rest of the charter fan theme song:

 As a mother myself, I cannot imagine a more heartless response to the millions of children whose lives depend on access to charter schools. No child's future should ever be dictated by what zip code they were born in. Yet with their families lacking the resources for a private school education, they are left with no choice but to carry on in despair. 

These all seem like great arguments in support of other things? Charters are life-saving? Then why not a call for better regulation and some sort of protection for the many students who are left high and dry when charters suddenly close. No child's future should be determined by zip code? That sounds like a call for more aggressive approaches to systemic poverty and racism. Which is why the last sentence is also baloney. No choice? There's a choice. There has always been a choice-- and the choice is for state and federal leaders to demand that schools in poor communities have the same sort of resources that wealthier districts have. Parents don't want a variety of choices nearly as much as they want their child in one good school.

Campos-Duffy follows up with more baloney. She touts higher test scores for charters and larger waiting lists, sourcing various pro-charter "research" groups. She makes the claim that charters achieve their mediocre results with less public money, which is a two-part equivocation. First, charters supplement that money with private contributions, meaning they do not know the secret of providing a cheaper education. Second, the local taxpayers will still pay more, because taxes must be raised to replace some of the money that charters have sucked out of the public schools.

And third, charter results depend on selective student bodies. Campos-Duffy calls that "simply untrue," which is simply untrue. Charters have a variety of techniques for being selective, from ad campaigns that make it clear which students are welcome and which are not, to "random lottery" processes that require a certain level of savvy and smarts to navigate. And that's before we get to techniques like the Success Academy infamous "got to go" list. And all of that is before we get to the more complicated business of using charters to gentrification in certain neighborhoods, pushing out the local poor folk and bringing in a Better Class of folks.

Campos-Duffy tsk-tsks the "special interests" involved in this debate, but the debate is only happening because the special interests behind the modern charter industry have pushed so hard for their access to the charter gravy train. She calls charters "extraordinarily successful nearly everywhere they've been tried, which is just not true.

She does correctly note that Clinton used to be a charter industry BFF, and as a pro-public ed guy, I have to say that Campos-Duffy is probably way too worried for no good reason-- I fully expect that if elected, Clinton will continue to serve the big-money interests that back charter schools. So Campos-Duffy's argument is largely bogus, but it's also largely unnecessary. Maybe those two things cancel each other out.