The Other Testing Problem

It's testing season, and that means we are hearing the annual recitation of stories of despair and misery among the students, as small children are pressed to and past their breaking point. These stories are heartbreaking and rage-inducing all at the same time, but they aren't the only story. They probably aren't even the most common story, and they may not even be the most important story.

If you give a human, particularly a young human, a task to complete, one that seems difficult and yet pointless, unpleasant and yet with no real stakes for that human, what is the most common response?

A) To try their hardest because even if it seems pointless, it might not be, and I always do my best
B) This is a stupid waste of my time, so I will zip through it quickly so it wastes the least possible time
C) I will avoid frustration by not caring and not trying
D) Look, a butterfly!

Testocrats are so certain that their work is so hugely important that they can't imagine how anyone could fail to see the Importance of the Test. In a weird way, the student meltdown stories actually confirm their judgment.

But all the data, all the analysis of the data, all the conclusions based on the data-- all of that starts with the assumption that the students who took the Big Standardized Test actually tried.

Teachers have only a couple of choices here. We can try to cash in the trust we've built in our classrooms. Every fall I promise my students that I will never purposely waste their time; when BS Test time rolls around, I could just lie to them. But that seems, you know, wrong. Morally and ethically wrong.

Teachers can make the test relevant to students by making it central to the class, the culmination of learning for the year. This is what test prep really means-- not just teaching test-taking tips and material strictly because it will be on the test, but making the test the whole point of education. This seems like, you know, educational malpractice and a huge devaluation of education itself.

Teachers can also try things like flat out bribery. That seems like an admission of defeat and a betrayal of the rest of the students' education.

Or teachers can watch as students complete twenty multiple choice questions in three minutes (of course, we're not allowed to offer help or say "Get serious, Pat!") and write three word essay answers and remember that experience months later when someone is trying to claim that the BS Test tells us something useful about what Pat does or doesn't know.

Pat will whip through the test, take a nap, and leave school for the day happy and unbothered. Pat's blowing off of the test may even make a good story for Pat to tell that makes Pat look pretty cool in the circle of friends. Pat's story is neither touching nor heartbreaking. But I sure wish the people who think that Pat's test tells anybody anything could be there to watch Pat take the test. Because even if the BS Tests weren't a lousy test, Pat's results still wouldn't tell us a damn thing.

Amazing North Carolina

I'm here in North Carolina for the Network for Public Education after a ten hour drive. I've seen many things upon the way. The Mrs and I stopped to gawk at the New River Gorge Bridge, which is an amazing feat of engineering. On the way into Raleigh, we wound our way through amazingly narrow and windy street, as if Raleigh were patterned on a falling-down-drunk version of Pittsburgh streets.

After ten hours in the car, my wife and I walked all around downtown Raleigh, which is amazingly beautiful and modern-yet-classic. We ate a delicious meal, and then the miracle of facebook allowed a former student I haven't seen in almost twenty years to reach out and invite us to walk a few blocks to join her, her husband, and some friends at a restaurant to catch up./ She thanked me for my work with her decades ago, and I also got to meet three former North Carolina teachers who gave up the classroom for other lines of work.

But nothing more amazing than just a few minutes ago, when Governor McCrory appeared on my hotel to explain just ho awesome he has been for teachers in North Carolina. Nothing I have seen today was as amazing as his ability to deliver this line with a straight face. Because, to recap-- under McCrory, North Carolina's elected government has tried to get rid of tenure, both by direct assault and by offering teachers the deal of trading their job protections for a raise-- a deal that is appealing since North Carolina teachers hadn't gotten a raise in years. When they did finally come up with a raise, it was an insulting package limited to only some, while continuing to shaft the rest.

The state is losing teachers at what ought to be an alarming rate, still bolstering charters, installed an anti-education president at their primo state university system, and installed a punishing pass-or-fail testing set-up for eight year olds.

That McCrory can even think about selling himself as an education governor is the most mazing thing I have seen in North Carolina, and for a state that first showed a human could fly, that's no small feat. The good news, I guess, is now that I've seen everything, I can just relax and enjoy tomorrow. But Sunday AM McCrory is going to go on the interview show circuit to explain how his hateful, oppressive, intolerant, probably-illegal new discrimination law (which also represents the opposite of conservative small government philosophy) is just a matter of "common courtesy." That promises to be hugely amazing indeed.

Vergara Pt. II-- Now What?

So Vergara has now been successfully appealed and overturned by a unanimous decision of judges who actually have some of those critical thinking we're all fond of, recognizing the argument, "There is a bear attacking, so we should shoot the cook" is not a particularly compelling argument.

But what comes next? I don't mean what comes with the next with the case, which I'm sure will be appealed ad infinitum until some judge bonks it on the head with a sledgehammer.

I mean with teacher job protections.

There is no question that Vergara (and the New York case and the new Minnesota case) were breathed to life for one reason and one reason only-- to try to stick it to those damn unions. We know the people-- we've read their articles, talked with them on twitter, seen them in the comments section of a thousand different online conversations. They hate the union. Hate it. They think the roadblock to everything decent and good is the teachers' union, that the teachers' union is a giant scam to make teachers and union reps rich while thwarting the plans of brilliant visionaries who just want to be free to implement their grand design without having to answer to anybody, least of all the hired help. They think that public schools are a scam that the union came up with to suck the taxpayers dry while teachers sit and eat bon-bons and ignore the cries of downtrodden children. They hate the union, and like many people on many sides of many issues these days, they are looking for any argument, no matter how disingenuous and cynically constructed, that can be used to make the union shut up and go away.

These lawsuits are also backed by people who would like to slap teachers down in general, who would like to see the profession reduced to a group of hired hands who do what they're told, speak when spoken to, and are rarely kept around long enough to make trouble. Vergara is about empowering teachers like the attacks on voting rights laws are about empowering voters and attempts to shut down abortion clinics are about protecting women. It is about making sure that those little people, those women who don't do anything but work in classrooms with children all day, know their place and understand that they are Less Than and not as important as people with power and money.

And they are about plowing the field. The farmland that is public education is rich and inviting and there is a line of people who want to plant it with rich cash crops for their own purposes. Teachers are the rocks and trees in that field, making it pleasant and welcoming for a small farm, but presenting annoying obstacles for people who want to factory farm on gthe large scale, thousands upon thousands of acres at a time.

And they are people who simply don't believe that you should have to pay a teacher all that much, ever. If they get too expensive in a tight economy, you should be able to fire the expensive ones to get your costs down.

Vergara is all that.

But it would be a mistake to dismiss every single person who cropped up on the anti-tenure, anti-FILO, anti-job protection side of things.

There are people who see problems (and some of them are teachers) in places where job protections have run amok, either because some board negotiated a bad contract or some administrators don't do their jobs. Under the attack of Vergara, there have been places where conversations have popped up about how, perhaps, the system could be improved and strengthened for teachers and school districts, and there are some places where that conversation really needs to happen.

I believe that the benefits of a seniority-based system are huge. Huge. It incentivizes people to look at teaching as a career, a job to which they can devote their entire life, which in turn encourages them to be the very best they can be and to invest themselves in training and self-improvement. It gives stability and institutional memory to a school, creating ties that bind a community together and making a school a community institution that connects people to a history that matters. It helps draw good people to the work because you may not ever be paid real well, but at least you don't have to spend half your time worrying about losing your job over something stupid. And it protects teachers so that they can do their job like professionals with an educational mission instead of political appointees who are busy trying to suck up to whoever has the power to fire them this week.

At this point we could just say neener-neener to the Vergara fans and walk away. I don't think we should. Well, in some cases we should. Some of them are not interested in serious conversation because they are not interested in better schools, and they never have been.

But I'm a big believer that there's nothing that can be hurt by simply talking about it and considering it and wondering, "If we had a blank slate for this issue, what would we write on it/"

I'm not saying I have a better idea, a proposal I want to sell. Basing job security on student results on crappy tests is an exceptionally crappy idea. We can always play with the probationary period at the beginning of a career, but I haven't seen much to indicate that would really make any difference. We probably should spend more time strengthening what happens in the grey area between a solid teacher and one that needs to be fired. But no, I don't have any particular proposals. I suspect that a FILO system coupled with job protections that mean good teachers can't be fired for bad reasons-- I think that's about as good as it gets.

But by refusing to even talk about it, we fueled things like the Vergara baloney lawsuit. Yes, the people who instigate these things are not operating in good faith, and so no good faith responses will affect them. But I think they attracted many people to their side who are operating in good (if somewhat confused) faith, and there's no reason not to talk to them.

Every classroom should have a great teacher in it. Nobody believes that more than teachers. Nobody understands how complicated and challenging achieving that goal is than teachers, and it's in everyone's interest for us to keep tying to explain just how complicated and challenging that is.

It has been difficult. It is difficult to put forth any argument that feels even a little vulnerable when some folks are charging at you with torches and pitchforks. But for the moment, the courts have told the Vergara wackjobs to put their pitchforks down, and it might be a good time for us to try talking to the people they conned into joining their merry assault. I'm not saying to roll over, play dead, and give up the farm. I'm just saying let's not brush off our hands, say "Glad that's over" and go home. Because first of all, it's not over, and it will never be over as long as there are rich and powerful union-loathing teacher-dissing folks out there (and that will be forever), and because there will always be a need to talk about how to keep the teacher pipeline and school classrooms filled with good people, and that's a conversation we should not walk away from.

John King Still Doesn't Get It

News comes that today in Vegas, John King will try to use his bully speaker's podium to lay down some words about education. Here's the short version of his message, from Emma Brown at the Washington Post:

The nation’s schools have focused so intently on improving students’ math and reading skills that, in many cases, they have squeezed out other important subjects, such as social studies, science and the arts.

Close. Actually, the nation's schools have focused so intently on improving students' math and reading scores that the squeezage has occurred.

But throughout his comments, King shows that, like his predecessor, he just doesn't get what has happened.

For instance, Brown reports that King plans to say that No Child Left Behind had the unintended consequences of narrowing the curriculum. I can believe that, at least for some people, the consequences may have been unintended. But they were completely predictable, and in fact people on both side of the ed reform divide predicted it.

Brown reports the criticism, including the observation that what NCLB made bad, the Obama administration made worse, "especially by pushing for teacher evaluations tied to those test scores." But King objects to that criticism, "saying that the administration’s efforts always emphasized a more holistic approach to teacher evaluations than the political rhetoric suggested."

No, sir, they did not. At best you can say that the administration paid lip service to a more rounded view of education. But their efforts were always toward emphasizing results of the narrow Big Standardized Test. The administration spent a ton of money to develop what were supposed to be the two national tests (SBA and PARCC). And at every turn, the administration demanded that teacher evaluation be tied to "student achievement," which always and only meant "test scores."

In fact, this administration made an example of Washington State by yanking their NCLB waiver because they refused to link teacher evaluation to student test scores.  

The administration has always emphasized test scores, and the BS Tests have always emphasized reading and math. The administration could not have more fully and directly narrowed the curriculum of American schools if they had deliberately tried to do so.

King's speech opens with a personal story from his teaching days (he does not mention that those teaching days were in a charter and few days indeed) and then moves to an impassioned call for wider education. Then he starts slinging baloney.

I’ve been clear, as have the president and my predecessor Arne Duncan, that in many places in this country, testing became excessive, redundant, and overemphasized, and our Department is serious about helping states and districts to change that.

No. The USED is not serious about helping, and they never have been. If they had been, they could have done away with the federal mandate for testing every child every year. If they had been, they would have done away with the federal requirement that teacher evaluations be significantly linked to test results. What they have been serious about is maintaining that federal level of testing, making it really count, and when called on the over-testing of US students, shifting focus by claiming that it's all those other tests that are the problem.

King makes an attempt to somehow link NCLB to social justice and civil rights. And he admits that maybe emphasis has shifted from classes that are important. He gives a single-sentence paragraph emphasis to the statement, "And the research is clear that a well-rounded education matters."

You understand a reading or a lesson better when it touches on knowledge or experiences you’ve encountered before – which is why students with wider knowledge read and learn more easily.

King is correct-- and yet what he's saying runs contrary to the whole reading philosophy of Common Core, which treats reading as a group of discrete skills that exist in a vacuum, independent of any content. It is also contrary to the BS Tests, which are designed to use reading excerpts specifically chosen to level the playing field by being obscure (so no prior student knowledge) and boring (so no student interest).

Then he goes on to talk about how science and STEMmy things can stimulate math ability. So King is telling us that math and reading aren't the only important areas of study. Other areas are also important-- insofar as they help with math and reading!

King is excited because he believes that ESSA will let states redefine what "education" means so that it includes non math-and-reading things.

And then. Then King talks about how he sees all this through his daughters' eyes. You know-- the daughters that attend a Montessori school where none of the reforms of NCLB and Common Core and BS Testing are followed. Yeah-- their school does really awesome stuff?  Shouldn't all schools be that awesome, wonders John King as if he is not sitting in the head office of the government agency that has worked for over a decade to insure that all schools are not like that.

King shares one other characteristic with his predecessor-- he can occasionally say the right thing (even if it has nothing to do with the department's actual policies). Here's his finish, spinning off from his daughters' education:

Their education will shape the people they will become, not just what they will achieve academically. Both of them have studied music, dance, and theater. I don’t know if either of them will become a concert pianist or a famous guitarist or a professional ballerina. But I do know that they are developing a kind of aesthetic appreciation that will bring them joy and widen their world for the rest of their lives.

And really, that’s what this is about: that inextricable intersection between what our kids learn and who they become. I am who I am because a teacher and a school believed it was worth the time and effort to widen my horizons. 

That’s what every student in this country deserves. Let’s work together to make it possible.

 One of the things that has always puzzled me about King is that his story is powerful and moving and real-- yet King himself does not seem to understand any of the lessons that story teaches. It appears that this policy-level blindness has followed him directly into the secretary's office. How the cognitive dissonance between his messages and the policies his office supports and approves-- I don't know how that doesn't make his head blow up.

MN: Another Baloney Attack on Tenure

From today's New York Times:

Opening a new front in the assault on teacher tenure, a group of parents backed by wealthy philanthropists served notice to defendants on Wednesday in a lawsuit challenging Minnesota’s job protections for teachers, as well as the state’s rules governing which teachers are laid off as a result of budget cuts.

Close, but not quite.

Opening a new front in the assault on teacher tenure, a group of wealthy philanthropists using parents as a front, served notice etc...

There. Fixed that for you.

The anti-tenure lawsuit is funded by the usual suspects-- the Partnership for Education Justice (funded by the Walton family and Eli Broad), and Students for Education Reform (an astroturf group used as a front by Education Reform Now, the lobbying brother of Democrats for Education Reform, an astroturf group of hedge funders which is also heavily funded by Broad and Walton).

It is a bullshit lawsuit. Here is how we know.

Exhibit A:

“These laws have the effect of poorly performing, ineffective teachers staying in the classroom for years on end,” said Jesse Stewart, a lawyer who will be arguing the case on behalf of the plaintiffs. “You have teachers who are demonstrably ineffective teaching students who need the best that’s out there,” Mr. Stewart added.

This is a lie. If a teacher were "demonstrably ineffective," they would be demonstrably fire-able. For the umpty-gazzillionth time-- tenure does not protect demonstrably incompetent teachers from getting fired. I have seen it done, even in my little small town corner of the world. say it with me. Tenure does not keep incompetent teachers from being fired. What does? Bad administrators. Lazy administrators. Sloppy administrators. Let me quote myself-- behind every teacher who shouldn't have a job is an administrator who isn't doing his. And all the tenure "reforms" (and this is tenure reform in the same sense that a building demolition is construction reform) in the world will not turn a crappy administrator into a good one. Give a lazy, sloppy, bad administrator the power to fire bad teachers, and it still won't happen.

An apartment building is reformed







But the plaintiffs don't actually mean "demonstrably ineffective." What they mean is "standing in the classroom with a bunch of poor kids."

In one example cited in the legal complaint, teachers at a school in Minneapolis where nearly all the students identify as minorities and are eligible to receive free or reduced price lunches had the lowest average performance ratings in the district.

Well, yes. Of course they did. We already know that poverty levels are excellent predictors of test scores. Take a classroom with no roof. When it rains, all the students in the room get wet, and so the teacher gets wet too. If you fire that teacher and go get a dry one, the students will still get wet when it rains-- and so will every replacement teacher you ever put in there. Claiming that a really good teacher would keep everyone dry is baloney.

If you are going to fire every teacher who teaches poor kids who get bad Big Standardized Test scores, you will never make headway. Can a teacher help poor students do better. Abso-fricking-lutely. But you have to build a roof, because you cannot fire your way to better test scores (we will forgo, for the moment, whether test scores even mean jackity-poo to begin with).

Exhibit B:

Tiffini Flynn Forslund, one of the named plaintiffs and the mother of a 17-year-old high school junior in the Anoka-Hennepin School District, said her older daughter’s beloved fifth-grade teacher was laid off during budget cuts because he had less seniority than other teachers in the school.

Here's is how I know that nobody filing this suit actually gives a rat's ass about teacher quality-- if they did, they would also be aggressively addressing the issue of budget cuts.

Tiffini should not have had to lose her beloved fifth grade teacher (six years ago-- one wonders why the family waited till now to act). But neither should some other student in Tiffinni's school. The assumption here is that somewhere in Tiffini's school was some Terrible Teacher, so odious and incompetent that they clearly should have been marked for removal (but somehow was not, despite the administration's power to do so).

But what if that's not the case. What if every single teacher in the building was beloved by some deserving child? Why should Tiffini's teacher be spared while someone else's beloved teacher is axed.

Well, you know which beloved teacher should be furloughed due to budget slashing in a poor school? None! Nobody!! Instead, the plaintiffs should be (as some are in other states) taking the state/city/district to court to demand that school be funded properly. Plaintiffs should be arguing that Tiffini's school should not be forced to cut staff at all!

The fact that these "advocates" and their twitter cheer squad are troubled by the cutting of Tiffini's teacher, but not at all troubled by the slashing of Tiffini's budget or the reduction Tiffini's teaching staff or the loss of Tiffini's resources tells me that they are far more interested in attacking teacher tenure and job protections than they are concerned about Tiffini.

Look-- there are plenty of legitimate conversations to be had about teacher job protections, hiring and firing practices, etc. But this lawsuit, like Vergara in California and Campbell Brown's lawsuit in NY, is not an attempt to have that conversation. It's simply an attempt to break the teachers' union and destroy teacher job protections so that teaching staff costs can be kept low and teachers themselves can be cowed and bullied into silence and compliance.

Put another way, this is not remotely pro-student, and is strictly anti-teacher. It's thick-sliced unvarnished baloney, and the fact that it is an attack on teachers is bad enough, but in attacking teachers, it also leaves unquestioned the attacks on student facilities, schools and resources, while trying to make conditions inside schools that much worse. It's cynical, it's destructive, and it's just plain mean. Let's hope this doesn't drag over another few years to another lousy conclusion.

Are Educators Rising?

Another day, another group setting out to get education All Fixed Up. Today, let's meet Educators Rising.

Fine. What's this one up to?

What's their mission? And what are their standards for future teachers?

Educators Rising cultivates highly skilled educators by guiding young people on a path to becoming accomplished teachers, beginning in high school and extending through college and into the profession.

ER is "powered by" Phi Delta Kappa, and their mission is to pump up the ever-more-empty teacher pipeline, starting by recruiting and supporting high school students who might pursue a teaching career. It is not the only program of its kind (South Carolina's Center for Recruitment, Retention and Advancement had a teacher cadet program that was not too shabby), but the PDK nameplate gives it some clout and national reach, and that also means it's not just one more Gatesian style astroturf group.

They've come up with standards for high school students planning on entering teaching-- standards that are currently open for commenting. We'll get to those in a bit.

Who runs this group?

Co-director Dan Brown earned a degree in Film and Television and became a New York Teaching Fellow (the NYC district's in-house version of TFA), then wrote a memoir about his first year in the classroom. Moved from elementary to high school, got a Masters in teaching, and served a year as a USED Teaching Fellow in the Arne Duncan years. He has a TED talk. He's written and worked as a talking head. All of this in the last ten years or so. I give him a point for this line in his official government bio: "Dan Brown did not write The Da Vinci Code, and he is okay with that."

Co-director Ashley Kincaid has been in the education biz for even less time (seven whole years) after a career in management consultancy as well as communications boss for the Girl Scouts.

PDK CEO Josh Starr has been a superintendent with a stint in Stamford, followed by a somewhat contentious stint in Maryland. Read both the piece linked to and the comments with it-- Starr's legacy is complicated.

So not exactly mainstream education folks, but not the usual gang of reformsters, either.

What problem are they trying to solve? 

Add this group to the list of people who have noticed that the teacher pipeline is drying up. They have also noticed that turnover is particularly bad in poor, urban schools where the need is great. Their breakdown of the problem hits all the familiar notes. Some are not entirely accurate (only 62% of teachers felt prepared when they started) and some are worth noting (10% of "special ed" teachers aren't licensed) and some signal a real problem (80+% of teacher pool is white, over 50% of students are not).

Amidst those data points, Brown adds an interesting note-- 60% of teachers teach within 20 miles of their old high school.

Which means that most of the future teachers in any given school are already sitting there in student desks. Which means that if we can find them and support them, we could make sure more of them make it through the pipeline and become successful teachers who stay in the profession for more than two or three years.

The Standards

To that end, Educators Rising has a rough draft of some standards for high school students who are prospective future educators. Those standards are currently open to review through a simple surveymonkey form, though you'll need to set aside some moments to really look at them. I will warn you that when you get to the list where you declare your organizational affiliation, you will see some choices that are disheartening.

The actual standards can be found here, complete with notice that they are draft standards that are not to be cited or quoted, and I'm going to try to respect that, mostly. Here are some things I think you will notice about the standards.

First of all, there are eight of them. Here's the list.

Standard I: Understanding the Profession
Standard II: Learning About Students 
Standard III: Gaining Content Knowledge
Standard IV: Engaging in Responsive Planning 
Standard V: Implementing Instruction 
Standard VI: Using Assessments and Data 
Standard VII:Engaging in Reflective Practice 

Second of all, you may notice some things that do not appear among the standards. I didn't find any language to the effect that teachers must build their lessons by aligning to college and career ready standards. I did not find anything suggesting that teachers should learn to measure their own success based on student achievement aka test scores. And I didn't find anything suggesting that students interested in a teaching career should get a college degree in whatever and then hit five weeks of summer school to be classroom-ready.

Third of all-- jargon. There's lots of stuff like this (sorry--I'm going to quote):

They strive to build mutual respect and a positive rapport with colleagues and students. Accomplished teachers work productively and intentionally with other educators to promote vertical alignment, strengthen interdisciplinary connections, and create a culture of innovative practice.

The document makes teaching sound generally as inspiring and as exciting as accounting and as opaque as studying French deconstructionism. I read the document and wondered exactly what the audience was supposed to be, because if it's supposed to be the actual high school students we're trying to recruit, this thing needs a massive rewrite.

.Well, this guy is excited









There are points on which to quibble, like the idea of embracing many points of view, which sounds swell, except that content knowledge really ought to include the ability to recognize that some points of view are not actually legitimate (e.g. Holocaust denial or eating fried liver). 

But this is actually the first time in a while that I've read a document from someone who wanted to fix any part of education and not felt like I needed a long shower afterwards (note to PDK-- feel free to use that line as promotional endorsement). Not saying I agree with every bit of it, but at least it's a serious opening to a serious discussion. I recommend that you actually go over, take a look, and leave some comments, because my biggest fear is that someone is going to stop by and explain to them that it's not reformy enough. 

Lamar Alexander Takes John King To Woodshed

Well, that didn't take long.

John King was in front of the Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor and Pensions, and while King may be the new Secretary of Education, it was Sen. Lamar Alexander who took him to school.

Alexander starts with a history lesson. He reminds King that Alexander supported the Secretary's appointment so that ESSA could be properly implemented. And he provides a reminder of why ESSA passage was a big deal, and why it was possible to bring together one of the most wide-ranging coalitions ever to pass it.

The reason we were able to achieve such unusual unanimity and consensus is that people had gotten tired of the Department of Education telling them so much of what they ought to be doing.

It wasn’t just Republicans or governors who were fed up, it was school superintendents, teachers, principals, parents, state legislatures, school boards, and chief state school officers.

Point-- the USED was acting like the nation's school board, ignoring all outside voices, and pissing off everyone. Everyone.

Which brings him to his actual point:

Today, we’re holding our second hearing of at least six to oversee the implementation of this law and already we are seeing disturbing evidence of an Education Department that is ignoring the law that each of this committee’s 22 members worked so hard to craft.

Alexander then zeros in on the idea of compatibility and the slightly arcane art of computing per pupil expenditures and whether or not the process should include teacher salaries.

You can go look up the details; they're already being well covered. I'm interested in the bigger picture, which is that King got caught trying to rewrite the law, and Alexander called him on it in very clear language.

But here’s what your department did on April 1 – you tried to do what Congress wouldn’t do in Comparability by regulating another separate provision in the law.

In a negotiated rulemaking session, your department proposed a rule that would do exactly what the law says it shall not do

He lists off the specific problems of what the department proposed (including a complex and costly massive mess) and then returns to the heart of the matter:

But I’m not interested in debating today whether what you’ve proposed is a good idea or a bad one – the plain fact of the matter is that the law specifically says you cannot do it.

Not only is what you’re doing against the law, the way you’re trying to do it is against another provision in the law.

And the Senator is not having it. He notes that a December Politico story quoted Duncan saying that USED lawyers are smarter than the lawmakers. But "we in Congress are smart enough to anticipate your lawyers' attempts to rewrite the law."

And then Alexander moves directly to the threat stage.

He promises to use every power of Congress "to make sure the law is implemented the way we wrote it." If the USED tries to force states to follow the lawbreaking regulations, he will encourage the state ask for a hearing-- and if they lose, he will suggest they take the department to court.

Bottom line-- Alexander is making it clear right up front that the law will be implemented the way it was written, or else.

Sooo..

John King was going to repair the USED terrible, terrible relationship with Congress. That does not seem to be going well. Who could have predicted that John King would try to do whatever he damn well pleased regardless of what other stakeholders said or did? Oh, that's right-- pretty much everyone in New York State would have predicted it.

King looks to be cut from the same cloth as Arne Duncan, but Lamar Alexander seems determined not to go down that same road again. These are definitely going to be interesting days ahead.

(PS- Just in case there was any doubt that this was meant to be a public spanking, all of the above comes directly from the Senate committee's press release.)