Better Schools Dialogue: Part I

Last fall a little three way conversation on twitter led to this series of posts between Jersey Jazzman and Dmitri Melhorn on the subject of charter schools. Today another dialogue is opening here with the Melhorn. Recently Robert Pondiscio visited my comments section, I've had some good post-NPE conversations with Peter Cunningham, and Diane Ravitch actually chatted with DFER honcho Whitney Tilson. 

I know not everybody is excited about these sorts of things. "Why give these guys a platform?" Well, first of all, these guys already have access to huger (and friendlier) platforms than this blog. Second, I'm a big believer that pretty much anything can be discussed-- after all, listening to words does not oblige one to either agree with or act in harmony with those words. But as long as someone is willing to have a conversation in good faith, I'm willing to have that conversation (I define good faith as saying what you actually mean, hearing what the other person is actually trying to say, and trying to understand rather than score points). At a minimum, you can gain a better understanding of what it is the other person sees (I take it as axiomic that people mostly don't do things, even terrible things, because they are stupid and evil. Mostly.) and at a maximum you may find some points of agreement. 

I'll follow the standard back and forth approach here, letting each of us take our turn. Beyond that, there isn't much of a plan. We've agreed to start out with the general question of what a good/better/best school would look like. If you're unfamiliar with Melhorn, he's as reformy as they come on the nominally-left-leaning side of things (and he's got a book to plug). And if you're only familiar with him from twitter-- well, that medium does not exactly bring out his charming and diplomatic side. You're welcome to get your two cents in in the comments section; I will get mine in in the next post, and we will see if there are any points on which a hard-driving reformster and a c-list public ed supporting blogger can agree.


The Public School Every Parent Should Know About 


“Your son will have to repeat this grade"

For my mom, as for any parent, those words were scary. My kindergarten teacher explained further that I needed to repeat the grade because I had failed the subject of “chair sitting.”

Although my mom was a public school teacher herself, she decided I needed something different than the neighborhood elementary school. My parents scraped together the money for three years of tuition at a private Montessori school. Montessori was better suited to my needs at the time: upon my return to public schools, I was a full grade ahead of my chronological peers rather than a full grade behind. In other words, the three years I spent at Montessori made a difference of two full grade levels upon my return to public school.

My school days were not so unusual   

           My experience would not surprise education scholars. Sir Ken Robinson has shown how bad traditional K-12 schools are for many students, especially young boys. Even within traditional schools, Stanford University’s Eric Hanushek has explained that the difference between top and bottom teachers can be as much as a full year of learning per year of school (because, compared with an average teacher, a top teacher provides 150% of the learning per year, while a bottom teacher provides only 50% of the learning per year). 

This scholarship helps explain parental behavior. Parents want children to have amazing opportunities, which is why taxpayers spend roughly $600 billion per year on K-12 public schools. Those who can afford to, however, also spend billions out of their own pockets for tutors, afterschool activities, summer camps, and sometimes even private schools. For parents who live near high-performing public schools, sending their child to private school means walking away from tens of thousands of dollars per year that they have already paid in taxes – yet it happens frequently.  Even in prosperous suburbs with high-performing traditional public schools, parents worry about rote learning, inapt content, unhealthy food, and uneven teacher quality. In less prosperous areas, for families with fewer financial resources, or for parents whose children have special needs, the system can feel like a brutal and hostile bureaucracy.  

The new public schools: tailored to the needs of all children   

That is why all parents should know about a new kind of public school.  At these public schools, the technology, curriculum, and pedagogy differ from what we saw when we were students. Even the cafeteria is different: students eat whole foods instead of mass-produced tater tots stuffed with sugars and trans fats.  Tablet computers deliver customized content, such as books and multi-player games, automatically adapted to each child’s level and their style of learning. These tablets automatically measure student progress. With this ongoing monitoring, the kids never have to stop to take standardized tests; instead, the kids’ growth is constantly measured and communicated with both teachers and parents. These measurements serve as mere inputs to sophisticated assessment systems that adapt to each student and classroom and provide actionable feedback for both students and teachers. Computers also handle paperwork for the class, freeing teachers to focus on synthesis, mentoring, and individual engagement. Kids of vastly different backgrounds and abilities work together developing their full potential. The most effective teachers engage across many classrooms, communicating via technology to thousands of children.   

Just as fascinating as the classroom innovations are the economics. The school costs the same as any other public school (nationally, the average cost per pupil was $12,401 for the 2011-2012 school year). Their purchasing agents resist the lobbying of textbook, computer, and agribusiness lobbyists. They obtain nearly free content from the public domain.  They use bulk purchasing and their public mission to obtain steep discounts for hardware and supplies. The find that they can purchase healthy food, often locally grown, within existing budgets.  Additionally, mobile computing allows classrooms to go outside. Students spend so much time outdoors that they use real estate only occasionally – for athletics, performances, and certain kinds of hands-on learning. Overhead costs have plummeted, much as middle management costs were cut in the private sector decades ago.  All of these cost savings are re-invested in recruiting, training, and compensating teachers, helping attract and retain amazing talent.  

Where you can find these new public schools  

The biggest reason parents should know about these new public schools is that they don’t exist yet—at least, not entirely. In a chapter of the book Educational Entrepreneurship Today, released this month by Harvard Education Press, I describe how innovation has been blocked in traditional public schools, but how that is starting to change.  Along with several other authors, the book goes into considerable detail about how venture capitalists, venture philanthropists, teacher leaders, and public officials can achieve amazing public schools of the type I just described.     

We are already seeing the early stages of this kind of change. My Progressive Policy Institute colleague David Osborne has recently described how teacher-led schools have innovated to better meet student needs. In San Jose, California, the teachers union worked with the local district leadership to combine rigorous standards with student-specific safety nets; the result raised college attendance rates despite demographic challenges. More broadly, the teachers’ unions have started to invest in seed ideas that might lead to big changes. These efforts are not limited to cities and suburbs; for instance, a rural high school in Indiana has started to embrace “blended learning” that combines great teaching and digital empowerment. The private sector is also playing a key role.  Businesses are sprouting up to empower teachers: a former New York City public school teacher built a marketplace for lesson plans called TeachersPayTeachers, which has paid millions of dollars to teachers who have come up with outstanding ideas. More broadly, “teacherpreneurs” are finding ways to lead broad changes in the profession without leaving the classroom.  

As with all public sector services, however, change requires public demand.  Parents who want these innovative new schools must be full partners in supporting teachers and political leaders in innovation.  They can do this by accepting risks, paying taxes, engaging thoughtfully, and setting high expectations. More and more, Americans are realizing that we have the tools, the resources, and the teachers to give our children the best school system in the world.   

Dmitri Mehlhorn is one of the authors in Educational Entrepreneurship Today  (Harvard Education Press, 2016). He is a Senior Fellow with the Johns Hopkins Institute for Education Policy; a Senior Fellow with the Progressive Policy Institute; and a founding member of Hope Street Group. He writes frequently on public policy topics, including with platforms such as The Atlantic, The Daily Beast, Education Post, The 74 Million, and Dropout Nation. He is a husband and father, and a seed-stage investor with the venture group Vidinovo (which has no current or historic investments in K-12 education or technology).  

 

Better Schools Dialogue: Part II

Continuing a dialogue between me and Dmitri Melhorn on the subject of what a better school would look like. Part I was his opening statement; this will be my response.

As I mentioned in our correspondence, I think your piece actually lumps together a board assortment of issues. I'm going to follow the general flow of your essay rather that trying to create some coherent whole here.

I'm hugely sympathetic to this story of the child who flunked sitting still, because, as I've told elsewhere, my own son went through a bad experience in kindergarten because of a teacher with unrealistic expectations about how a five-year-old boy should behave. In the case of my district, there was a program for post-k, pre-first grade who had come out of kindergarten not quite ready for first grade. It restored his relationship with learning and school. 

That said, I find the idea of calling students "ahead" or "behind" not very useful, and the idea of measuring learning in "years" just absurd (how far can we break that down exactly—are there months of learning? Days? Hours?) What is 0.5 years of learning? 90 days' worth? Would that be the half from Sept-Jan, or is it the second half of the year? 

I also have to ask, "ahead" or "behind" what? Education measurement always runs into the same problem-- until we have a parallel universe-hopping time machine, we'll never know how you would have fared in a different educational setting (though I don't think that much of anybody thrives in a kindergarten classroom in which one can flunk sitting). 

I always happy to see what Sir Ken Robinson has to say about pretty much anything, but it is impossible for me to take Eric Hanushek seriously. I find his "research" asserting that six-year-olds with good teachers will grow up to be richer than their alternate-universe counterparts flimsy and unconvincing. But let's stipulate that we disagree on Hanushek but agree that in a good school, students would have good teachers. 

When you say that "this scholarship helps explain parental behavior," your implication seems to be that all this spending on private schools and lessons and tutors etc is because parents don't think their kids' schools are up to snuff, but I don't think it's that simple. First, I suspect some of these parents aren't looking for adequacy, but for an edge; in other words, my child may be getting enough algebra at school, but I want my child positioned to beat the other students, so a better school program will never make me happy, because I want my child to more better algebra than her peers. 

The other question, which might make a good one for us to discuss back and forth, is what level of service do we think schools should demand for all students. IOW, all students should get a good algebra program, but should the taxpayers be funding a big jazz and tap dance program? We've been having this argument about schools forever—what qualifies as a "frill" or an "extra"? And I suspect you and I would agree that in many cities, we've got folks deciding that X is not a frill for my students, but is absolutely unnecessary for Those Students.  

I do absolutely agree that to parents with few resources or students with special needs "the system can feel like a brutal and hostile bureaucracy. " And I don't think the bureaucracy that has sprung up around managing charter-choice systems has changed that. But I agree that it would be great if something did. 

There's a lot packed in your thoughts about your better school. First, the assumption that schools today are the same as the schools "we saw when we were students." I read many people who rail against public schools who seem to believe that schools are locked in amber and that their old school is still clanging along exactly as it did decades ago. I'm in a unique position myself-- I teach at my old high school, and as I tell my old classmates, things have changed a great deal. Point being that schools which differ from the schools "we saw when we were students" already exist-- and they exist on the exact same spot of ground where the schools you attended students once stood.

 Second, tablet-based personalized education—I've spent many blogs explaining what I think the issues are there (and I teach at a one-to-one school and would never turn the clock back, so I'm not a knee jerk luddite on this). I see many huge huge problems with the rosy description you offer (e.g. what if a student's style of learning is to not use a tablet?) A good adaptive, AI-driven engaging personalized education system doesn't exist-- and I don't believe it ever will. Certainly not in an economically viable form.

What you're describing is competency based education, and I don't think that dog will hunt. Nor should we want it to. I think a great school is human centered, built around human relationships and human community. That is not what computer-based CBE promises.

The food thing is-- well, at the very least it's an issue I don't recall reading about in much ed reform writing. But I have my doubts about feasibility. I teach in a rural area, with lots of local farming—and I don't think it would ever be economically sustainable here. 

You suggest controlling costs by using free content from the internet; I cannot imagine how you can have a robust, fluid and responsive adaptive tablet-based system that is based on free content from the internet. Your adaptive CBE system will be based on the content and software sold to you by the vendor. The part about lowering building costs by always being outside actually made me laugh—here in NW PA we have all four seasons and rank second only to the Pacific Northwest in fewest days of sunlight a year. I promised my students we would go sit outside for class the first day it was warm and not raining. I made that promise about two weeks ago—still hasn't happened.  

On the other hand, I believe that learning to deal more effectively with vendors is dead on.  My wife's school district tends to fall for whatever sales pitch they hear. Meanwhile, I work with a woman whose pre-teaching job was in the advertising department for a major newspaper chain. When sales reps start in with "We can only offer this much support for your level of purchase" or "I'll only be able to hold this price for a few more days..." She just levels her gaze and tells them what they are going to offer us and how long they are going to wait for our call.  Educators are way too polite and friendly with sales reps. 

But your overall notion that there are places where we could cut fat out of the costs of school are precious. There isn't a district in the country that hasn't cut costs in every way they can think of. That, actually, is part of the problem (along with policy mavens who insist that we shouldn't throw any more money at education).

I'd ask you how you think innovation is blocked in public schools, because I think this is an underexamined sticking point in the education debates. There seem to be many conversations in which reformsters think that teachers and other educators are just being stubborn, while teachers and educators think that reformsters are suggesting ridiculous things. Ed reform advocates seem to consistently underestimate the value of teacher experience and expertise. Ed reformers and, I think, teachers themselves tend to underestimate the effects of Reform Fatigue. I've been teaching for almost forty years, and there has never been a year when someone (with no actual classroom experience) hasn't been telling me about a Revolutionary Idea that was going to Change Everything. 

You suggest that venture capitalists and venture philanthropists can help, but I do not see how. Venture folks expect returns on their investment, either in terms of money or a system that conforms to their notions of How Things Should Work. Achievement is swell. I'm much more interested in sustainability. What happens to Edpreneur High School when the Gotrox Venture Capital Group decides it's no longer in their interest to keep propping up the EHS budget? And how does the community voice factor in when the pursestrings are held by unelected guys in some boardroom?

As you might expect, I'm interested in teacher-led initiatives (though I'll cop to a bias that a venture started by someone who put in two years with TFA is not my idea of a teacher-led anything). I think that teachers could get themselves up and leading a little more often, though some districts are infinitely more hostile to teacher initiatives than others.

And in your last paragraph, when you call for support and commitment from many parties, I think we agree. I'm not, for instance, dead set against charter schools, but I am dead set against the charter laws that pretend that we can run multiple schools for the cost of one. Whatever program you want, get the real funding for it, and be honest with the taxpayers about it.  

So that's kind of all over the place. Let me close with a counter-proposal for some characteristics of a better school system.

Locally controlled-- the school must be accountable to its local community. A local school must be done with the community, not done to the community. As soon as you have folks coming in from outside telling the community what they need, so just hush up, we have a problem. That said, local control has to be balanced with some checks and balances. When local control says "Let's get those black kids out of our school" or "Let's stop spending money on anything that's not football," we have a different sort of problem.

Fully, equitably, and sustainably funded-- a quality education for all students, without any corporate strings attached.

A full and varied education under one roof-- deciding you would rather pursue science instead of the arts shouldn't require a complete change of schools. I'm a liberal arts education guy-- everybody under one roof should be exposed to a full range of human study with plenty choices for specific focus.

I could go, but this already rambly. I will run the response when it arrives.

Happy Teacher Day: USED Gets Something Right

Having hammered the current administration for their weak-sauced Presidential proclamation for Teacher Appreciation Week, I feel it's only fair to acknowledge when they get something right.

John King popped up in our inboxes with a message that is almost baloney-free. Here are the good parts:

This week, our nation recognizes and honors teachers across the country for their tireless efforts on behalf of our students, everywhere from small towns and suburbs, to rural communities and Tribal lands, to big cities. Teachers have one of the most challenging and fulfilling jobs — literally shaping and changing lives.

If you are a teacher, or if you know one, you know the long hours and hard work that go into designing challenging lessons, guiding students and providing feedback, engaging with parents and families, collaborating with colleagues, reflecting on instruction, and staying abreast of research.

But much of the work you do also is about the intangible — it’s about fostering that almost indescribable, and yet unmistakable, spark between you and your students. It’s there when you see the potential in every student who walks through your door, even when he may not yet recognize his own gifts.

He checks in with his personal story, and then gets back to the appreciating:

Teaching is truly the profession that launches every career. Thank you for sharing with your students your passion for world languages, music, literature, math, science, theater, history, and myriad other subjects. Thank you for empowering our youth and for furthering social justice by never being satisfied until every child has access to an excellent education.

Okay, sliding a little off message there, but still good.

We understand that teacher voice is a crucial part of conversations that impact your classroom and your profession, and we are committed to ensuring you are supported so you can do your best work on behalf of our children every day.

Today and every day, we celebrate and thank you for the vital role that you play in supporting students and strengthening the future of our nation.

The whole business comes attached to this video that USED released today

 

And it's... nice. It focuses on the things we actually value. Not one kid saying, "I love my teacher because she helps me score well on the standardized test" or a single blurb about "student achievement" or "higher standards." I can't even tell if these are real teachers, TFA-ers, or paid actors. 

And yes, talk is cheap, and these nice words would be more impressive if they came from a department that pursued policies that aligned with these nice words. It leaves me wondering if they are cynical or clueless, whether they don't care that their words don't match their policy goals or if they are foolish enough to think that somehow the words and policies do match.

That's fine. For today, I'm going to be happy enough that they managed to say something nice about teachers without using it as an opportunity to push their own agenda or to criticize the teachers they're supposed to be appreciating. For today, they managed to say some nice things about teachers, and for today, I will accept it. 

PTA Sells Out (Again)

The National PTA has become a one-stop shop for reformsters who want to push back against parents who insist on shrugging off the warm, reform embrace.

A recently emailed newsletter highlights the many super-duper friends that the PTA has made. For instance, they are proud to announce their keynote speaker for the Think BIG!... Think PTA 2016 National PTA Convention & Expo will be newly minted Secretary of Education John King. I'll betcha parents from New York State think that's an awesome idea. National PTA has also teamed up with Scholastic, Univision, and GreatKids (a part of the Walton and Gates funded GreatSchools)to create a Readiness Roadmap at the Be a Learning Hero website.

This is not a new thing. The National PTA has previously shilled for the standardized testing industry and offered itself up as a PR tool for the Department of Education in the bad old Duncan days. And they have their own car on the Bill Gates Gravy Train.

But none of that is as disappointing as the partnership the trumpet as the lead in this newsletter.

In partnership with leaders from across the education field, including Lee Ann Kendrick, National PTA's regional advocacy specialist, the Data Quality Campaign has developed a set of recommendations to help states enact policies that are critical to ensuring that data is used to support student learning.

The Data Quality Campaign has been around a long time in ed reform terms. DQC was put together in 2005 with ten partners:

Achieve, Inc. (www.achieve.org)
Alliance for Excellent Education (www.all4ed.org)
Council of Chief State School Officers (www.ccsso.org)
The Education Trust (www.edtrust.org)
National Center for Educational Accountability (www.nc4ea.org or www.just4kids.org)
National Center for Higher Education Management Systems (www.nchems.org)
National Governors Association Center for Best Practices (www.nga.org/center)
Schools Interoperability Framework Association (www.sifinfo.org)
Standard & Poor's School Evaluation Services (www.schoolmatters.com)
State Higher Education Executive Officers (www.sheeo.org)

You may recognize many of our old reform friends here. CCSSO is of course one of the copyright holders of the Common Core State [sic] Standards. Achieve has also been a major player since CCSS was a pup. So what did all these reform types get together to do?

Founder and CEO Aimee Rogstad Guidera worked previously for the National Center for Educational Achievement, the National Alliance of Business, and the National Governor's Association (the other copyright holder of Common Core). She's excited because ESSA provides "a timely opportunity for states to change the culture around data use."

DQC wanted to agitate for at least ten "essential elements" which are

1. Student Identifier: A unique statewide student identifier that connects student data across key databases across years
2. Student Info: Student-level enrollment, demographic, and program participation information
3. Matching Student Test Records: The ability to match individual students' test records from year to year to measure academic growth
4. Untested Student Info: Information on untested students and the reasons they were not tested
5. Teacher/Student Data Link: A teacher identifier system with the ability to match teachers to students
6. Transcript Data: Student-level transcript information, including information on courses completed and grades earned
7. College Readiness Scores: Student-level college readiness test scores
8. Graduation/Dropout Data: Student-level graduation and dropout data
9. P-12/Postsecondary Records Match: The ability to match student records between K-12 and higher education systems
10. Data Audit System: A state data audit system assessing data quality, validity, and reliability

So, DQC is about data-mining the living daylights out of students.

DQC also had lots of advice for states about how they could help "ensure that states use their longitudinal data systems to continually improve education." Oddly enough, the ten state actions are all about aggregating, crunching and sharing. #1 on the state list is "Link data systems," because nothing helps a child learn to write a paragraph better than being able to compare her test scores with the scores of students states away from her.

Periodically DQC has released reports (Data For Action) on how the business of getting all fifty states hooked up, collecting, crunching and sharing. It seems to safe that the steadily rising pushback against data mining systems, resulting in events such as inBloom being chased out of New York, has not been happy news for DQC.

Parents just don't care for having their children turned into data generating widgets for corporate fun and profit. How could DQC get parents to unclench and share and give themselves up to Big Data's loving embrace? If only there were some organization that would give them access to educationally interested parents in the US...

So PTA is throwing its weight behind Time To Act: Making Data Work for Students, a new PR push dedicated to helping everybody just stop fighting and let Big Data have its way enjoy the awesome benefits of data mining.

When information about students is provided in a timely, useful manner, every adult working with a child is able to support that student’s learning more effectively. This vision can and must become a reality for every student. States have a unique and critical role to play in bringing it to life. In partnership with leaders from across the education field, the Data Quality Campaign has developed Time to Act: Making Data Work for Students—a set of recommendations to help states enact policies that are critical to ensuring that data is used to support student learning.

Perhaps I'll walk you through the full report some other day. Here are the essentials. It advocates for the same things that DQC has been pushing for for the last decade. Although it repeats the idea that more betterer data will improve student achievement, it has no actual research or data to prove it. It talks about success in some states (like Georgia and Kentucky) but that appears to mean success in having policies adopted-- not any sort of success in educating students. And despite the promo I quoted above, few actual educators, leaders or otherwise, appear to be involved.

In stead, the DQC leadership credited for helping out includes people from organizations like the US Education Delivery Institute, Lead Edge Capital, NCTQ (the least serious group in reformdom), a VP of Jeb Bush's reform Foundation, and Chris Stewart as a rep of Education Post. The actual teachers? Four Teachers of the Year.

So this is what the National PTA has climbed in bed with this time. It's worth noting, as always, that many state and local chapters of the PTA have stood up and been feisty for public education, and the students and teachers therein. But the National PTA seems bent on letting itself be turned into an astroturf group. The item in the newsletter says that this report (and DQC) include recommendations to make sure that data is used to promote student learning, but it appears that it's simply about making sure that data is collected, crunched and used-- by somebody. It's truly unfortunate that the PTA has gotten themselves involved in this.

A Pair of Presidential Proclamations

Because somebody has a dark sense of humor, this week is both National Teacher Appreciation Week and National Charter Schools Week. And President Barrack Obama has issued proclamations for both.

There's something to be learned about this administration's feelings about both charters and teachers from looking at these two proclamations, so let's do that. Spoiler alert: there will be no pleasant surprises forthcoming.

Here's the first line from one of the proclamations. See if you can guess which one:

Our Nation has always been guided by the belief that all young people should be free to dream as big and boldly as they want, and that with hard work and determination, they can turn their dreams into realities. 

That would be the opening sentence from the proclamation in praise of charter schools.

The proclamation is laudatory, leaving one with the impression that charter schools are the whole education show. Schools are awesome, and "we celebrate the role of high-quality charter schools" in achieving this awesomeness. Also, "we honor the dedicated professionals across America who make this calling their life's work by serving in charter schools." 

Charter schools "play an important role in our country's education system" and work in our underserved communities where they can "ignite imagination and nourish the minds of America's young people" while finding new ways to do the education thing. Obama reinforces the notion that charters experiment and find new ways to help underperforming schools (though we must close them when they don't do well).  This language continues. "Forefront of innovation."

Also, "different ways of engaging students" including personalized instruction, technology and rigorous/college-level coursework. This administration has supported charters big-time because Obama has remained committed to "ensuring all of our Nation's students have the tools and skills they need to get ahead." All of which leads me to wonder A) what he thinks public schools are doing and B) if he knows that charters don't serve all students and actually sap the resources for many other students still in public schools.

Educating every American student and ensuring they graduate from high school prepared for college and beyond is a national priority. This week, we honor the educators working in public charter schools across our Nation who, each day, give of themselves to provide children a fair shot at the American dream, and we recommit to the basic promise that all our daughters and sons -- regardless of background or circumstance -- should be able to make of their lives what they will. 

Wow. That is some high praise. Those charter schools and charter teachers are like great American heroes, doing the work that, apparently, nobody else could or would do.

What about Teacher Appreciation Week?

Well, the charter proclamation was 562 words long, while the teacher appreciation one clocks in at 1,015. So maybe that means he likes teachers even better? How does this one open?

Our country's story, written over more than two centuries, is one of challenges, chances, and progress. As our Nation has advanced on our journey toward ensuring rights and opportunities are extended fully and equally to all people, America's teachers -- from the front lines of our civil rights movement to the front lines of our education system -- have helped steer our country's course. They witness the incredible potential of our youth, and they know firsthand the impact of a caring leader at the front of the classroom. 

There is a lot of civil rights language throughout this proclamation, as well as the continued assertion that teachers are the most important factor in school.

More notably, while the charter proclamation is all about the great things that charters have accomplished, the teacher proclamation focuses on all the things we haven't gotten done yet. Our nation's story is about forging a "more equal society," but "there is still work to be done." If we are going to do better, that will require work from "people that represent the wide range of backgrounds and origins that compromise our national mosaic." Our teachers need to create a Nation "that better reflects the values we were founded upon."

Obama took office intending to "foster innovation and drive change," so he has tried to "build and strengthen the teaching profession."  All of our success, defined as higher grad rates and "holding more students to high standards that prepare them for success in college and future careers" is thanks to "dedicated teachers, families and school leaders who work tirelessly." So...um... let's appreciate teachers for bearing the brunt of administration policies like Common Core?

Just as we know a student's circumstances do not dictate his or her potential, we know that having an effective teacher is the most important in-school factor for student success.

So remember-- if students aren't achieving, it's because teachers are failing. There follows an entire paragraph cataloguing policy initiatives like the stimulus funds and grants for teacher training. Oh, and they have worked to make sure that teachers have a "seat at the table." Also don't forget that requirement that all states have a plan to shuffle high quality teachers around. Hey, and remember that time in 2011 when he mentioned STEM in the State of the Union address-- wasn't that cool?

Annnnnnd Obama also just signed the Every Student Succeeds Act, which is really cool-- also his testing action plan! And computer science! We have now made it through two entire paragraphs of the Teacher Appreciation Week Proclamation without thanking teachers for anything.

Here's a good line: "Our future is written in schools across the country." Children are the something of tomorrow. "We look to the women and men standing in front of classrooms...to vest America's daughters and sons with the hard skills they will need to put their dreams within reach and to inspire them to dream even bigger."

On National Teacher Appreciation Day and during National Teacher Appreciation Week, let us ensure our educators know how much we value their service in the classroom, how much we appreciate all they do for our students and families, and how thankful we are for their contributions to our national progress. 

Oh, I call my students on this dodge in their writing all the time. Ensuring that educators know "how much we value their service" doesn't really say anything about how much that actually is.

So, bottom line.

Charter schools got some unambiguous praise, a list of specific things they're doing right (which public schools also do), and honor for being dedicated professionals who made "this calling" their life's work (even though are loaded with TFA folks and others who have no intention of making teaching their lives' work).

Teachers got a list of administration policies (including the failed ones), a reminder of how much we are to blame for what hasn't happened in schools, and a list of things we haven't achieved yet, finished off with an ambiguous line on  the order of "We hope you get exactly what you deserve."

In fact, I'd call the charter school proclamation a better appreciation of teachers than the actual proclamation about appreciating teachers.

As I said at the top-- there's not any real news here, though this is one of the rare occasions where the love of charters and the disinterest in teachers is right there under the President's name and not, say, a Secretary of Education or other functionary. Sure, Obama didn't write these himself. But they are in his name, over his signature, in his voice. Charter schools are awesome and spectacularly successful. Public school teachers-- take your week of weak praise and get back to finishing the work you haven't done yet.

And yeah, this is a picky piddly thing to get bothered by. But still, would it be so hard, just once, for an administration to actually recognize and praise the work of teachers in this country without attaching it self-congratulation for crappy policies that hurt us or unsubtle digs at how we aren't really all that great. I know they can do it-- because they did it for charter schools.

So thanks a lot, sir. You have a great week, too.

Achievement School District Doesn't

Gary Rubinstein reports here on the current status of Tennessee's Achievement School District. It's an important story, and it hasn't gotten the attention it deserves-- nor is it likely to. This is no doubt in part because of the vested interests involved as well as the fact that no organization sends out press releases announcing, "Hey, we totally failed!!" But it's also not going to be covered because literally nothing has happened. This is not a "Dog Bites Man" story-- this is a "Dog Lies on the Porch and Continues To Nap Instead of Hunt" story.

First, a recap of what the Achievement School District was supposed to do.

The ASD approach is simple. The state finds the bottom 5% of schools and takes them over, putting them in a state-run separate "district." Then the state brokers these schools, pimping them out to whatever charter operator or turnaround specialist they like.

The bottom 5% part is the genius element to this approach-- because there will always be a bottom 5%. If every school in your state is graduating 100% ivy league college entrants and every student in every school gets top scores on the SAT and ACT, it doesn't matter because still, somewhere in your state, are the schools that rank in the bottom 5%.

The promise in Tennessee was that those ASD schools would be moved from the bottom 5% to the top 25%. We should remember that even if the ASD had been able to accomplish this feat, it would mean absolutely nothing to the state system as a whole because the only way those schools could be moved out of the bottom 5% would be if other schools moved into the bottom 5% to take their place. In other words-- and I can't believe I have to say this, but given the vigor with which ASD's have been pushed in many states, I feel I must-- you will never arrive at a place where the state has no schools in the bottom 5%.

But as it turns out, that doesn't really matter, because the Tennessee ASD is absolutely failing. As Rubinstein reports, the initial six schools are still in the bottom of the pack (five in the bottom 2.5% with one all the way up to the bottom 7%). This is after four years; it was only supposed to take five to put them in the top quartile.

Chris Barbic, the reformster who was going to achieve this miracle, has already moved on to a new job. On the way out the door, he did unleash some of what he has learned, which included this:

Let’s just be real: achieving results in neighborhood schools is harder than in a choice environment.  I have seen this firsthand at YES Prep and now as the superintendent of the ASD.  As a charter school founder, I did my fair share of chest pounding over great results. I’ve learned that getting these same results in a zoned neighborhood school environment is much harder. [my emphasis]

In other words, it's hard to turn around a school if you can't swap out the students and have to just work with the same ones. Meanwhile, the ASD has been taken over by a Broadie, and the state standardized test has collapsed in total failure, opting out the entire state.

This is a story that needs to be passed on, because the ASD idea is super popular with the reformy crowd; it has been pushed everywhere from Georgia to Pennsylvania to Michigan, and folks need to hear that it's a flat-out unqualified failure. Spread the word. Remember-- ASD is just "sad" spelled sideways.

Yet Another Core Apologist

At this point, Common Core fans are kind of like those legendary Japanese soldiers who came stumbling out of Pacific island caves long after 1945, unaware that the war was over and they had already lost. Well, the analogy would work better if Pacific island caves were like clown cars, because not only Core fans clueless, but it seems as if there's always just one more.

This week it was Douglas Holtz-Eakin. Holtz-Eakin was an economic and budgetary advisor for Bush II, so of course he is (like all economists) highly qualified to discuss education policy. Holtz-Eakin was also economic advisor to the 2008 McCain campaign. He's from "suburban Pittsburgh" and half of his hyphenated name is the maiden name of his first wife. He was on the "Say no to Obamacare" circuit in 2010. If you want him to come talk to you, you can book him through Leading Authorities for just a cool five figures (depending on travel). And, of course, he is the head of a right-leaning thinky tank, American Action Network, as well as running a related superPAC.

This week, Holtz-Eakin was in US News arguing that there is "A Hidden Benefit to Common Core," which I suppose is the next logical argument to make, since there is no obvious or visible benefit. We'll jst keep rooting around our cave. There must be a benefit here somewhere that we just can't see.

He starts with the premise that the cost of college is a problem these days, though he cites some of his own thinky tank's research that suggests that it's college aid that is making college costs blow up. That seems like a tough bridge to build, but the research showing that college is now too expensive for too many people is certainly out there.

But we're breezing past that conversation so that we can land on the old favorite-- college remediation. Students are arriving at college and taking remedial courses. That's its own discussion; it's not entirely clear what remedial course enrollment tells us. Are colleges seriously loosening entrance requirements in order to fill seats and make bank? Are colleges jamming students into remedial courses to run up some more charges and raise revenue? Are placement tests crap? Holtz-Eakin doesn't want to have that conversation-- remedial classes equal inadequate readiness.

It's a bold argument to make, since the current crop of college freshmen are the students who have been Common Cored through their entire high school careers. So what's the benefit of the Core again?

Holtz-Eakin is going to make another bold move here, and use the NAEP (the Nation's Report Card) as a measure of student achievement. And he's going to drag in some research from his thinky tank that shows that if NAEP scores were higher, the economy would currently be awesome.

Here We Go Again

The American Action Forum finds that had average NAEP math scores been 10 percent higher in 2003, then by 2013 individuals would have benefited enormously. There would have been 14.6 million more adults with a high school degree and 10.3 million more with a bachelor's degree. It also translates into better economic performance, with 12.4 million additional jobs and $1.27 trillion in additional economic growth. 

Also, if we could get people to eat more margarine, there would be fewer divorces in Maine. Don't believe me? Check the data:

If we follow the link to the American Action Forum research (released just the day before Holtz-Eakin's piece), we find not so much "research" as "claims." And we find, once more, Erik Hanushek. Hanushek has made a career for himself pushing the baseless baloney that good teachers will make students grow up to be richer; Hanushek is sort of a cheap Raj Chetty knockoff, stitching together a bunch of baseless correlations, weak suppositions, and unproven baloney. Rich kids do well on tests. Rich kids get well-paying jobs as adults. Therefor, good test scores lead to well-paying jobs. SMH. When AAF says that they based their analyses "on the methods employed" by Hanushek et. al, that's really all we need to know.

I could spend all day poking holes in the classic Hanushek claim that a better first grade teacher will result in more adult income, but let's just look at the assertion before us-- higher NAEP scores in 2003 would have resulted in a better economy in all fifty states in 2013. I don't know. Can anybody think of anything that happened between 2003 and 2013 that had a huge effect on the economy, personal earnings, employment and wealth, that had absolutely nothing to do with scores on a standardized test? Anybody?

How To Tell An Economist from an Educator

Clearly, better educational achievement should be a priority.  

An economist is a person who thinks that you get to that sentence by setting up a whole bunch of specious research to show that higher test scores will yield financial and economic benefits. An educator is a person who believes that providing a better education is a premise, not a conclusion you have to create an argument for. An economist is a person who thinks they need to create research-based data-driven case for the economic benefits of kissing your spouse. An educator is a person who kisses their spouse because they want to because some things really don't require fancy arguments.

The Baloney Gets Deeper

Holtz-Eakin will now demonstrate how many things he does not know.

The most effective way to improve achievement is to utilize educational standards.

Is there any proof that this is true? Any at all? No, there is not. (Also, one point off for using "utilize" which is a fancy doily of a word, unnecessary as long as we have the word "use" in the language).

Holtz-Eakin notes that No Child Left Behind called for standards and tests. But having laid out in the last paragraph that standards are a list of "what students are expected to know and be able to do at specific stage," he now adds another requirement. NCLB let states pick their own standards and  "As a result, the rigor of the standards was as varied as the individual states, and there was essentially no ability to make cross-state comparisons." He is going to skip right over the question of why cross-state comparison is useful, necessary or in any way efficacious. It's a good question to skip, as there is no reason to believe that cross-state comparison in any way improves education.

In Holtz-Eakin's story, folks noticed that state test scores and NAEP scores didn't match up. I would suggest that's because America's Report Card makes a lousy benchmark, but  Holtz-Eakin smells declining rigor, and so...

A state-led effort, the Common Core standards were drafted by experts and teachers from across the country. They genuinely demanded that schools meet sensible metrics and provided parents and policymakers a way to check the quality of their schools against those in other states.

Only intense loyalty and a decade in a Pacific island cave could lead someone to declare that the standards were any of the above. Not state led. Not drafted by experts or teachers. No reason to think that being able to compare your child to a child a thousand miles away was important, necessary, or useful.

Holtz-Eakin also defines the Core as standards "that have been shown to be more rigorous and effective." That link he includes is a ballsy choice, because it leads to the Fordham Institute study of Core standards, paid for by Bill Gates, one of the Core's top sponsors. If Bill Gates hires a firm to compare Microsoft Windows and Apple OS, what result do you think we can expect? Particularly if the firm hired has more expertise in PR and marketing than in computers. And given all of that, look at the report and see that Fordham found some states actually already had better standards than the Core.

None of this is news. Only in a Pacific island cave would this have been news.

Chicken Littling It Home

Holtz-Eakin wants us to know that rolling back the Core will be bad for the country and hurt us all economically. This would perhaps be more compelling if he could show one shred of evidence that the Core has been helping. But of course timing is not on his side as this week also saw the release of the lackluster-- actually, they were bad enough that we could call them suckluster-- results of the latest round of NAEP scores. Just look at this story about stagnant scores. Oops! Sorry-- that story is from 2014. Try this one about the drop in NAEP math scores. No, sorry. That's from 2015. Here we go. Here's the newest bad news. Carry on.

Lowering or eliminating standards will harm economic growth. It will reduce the attainment of educational degrees. But most harmful, it will exacerbate the trend toward under-prepared college students, lengthened time to completion and inflated tuition costs for families.

Did having the Core help economic growth? Did it increase attainment of educational degrees? Did it decrease the amount of remediation at college campuses? Because it seems like answering those questions would be a critical part of Holtz-Eakin's argument. But instead, Holtz-Eakin's argument rests on some "research" claiming that if test scores had been better in 2003, life would have been better in 2013. The proof of his argument rests in some alternate dimension, some parallel universe that can only be accessed by a portal in some mysterious location, like a cave on an island somewhere in the Pacific.