Brown Goes To Boston

Campbell Brown has decided to add her two cents to the sprawling debate about raising the charter cap in Massachusetts (and really, why not, because lord knows everyone else has added their two cents, or two million dollars).

Brown's argument is the same basic one repeated by other charter school proponents:

1) We should do it for the poor children.
2) Unions suck
3) Boston charters have had amazingly awesome results

Or as Brown puts it, "Wow. For Madeloni, her union, and their supporters, Boston charters are an extraordinary menace. Not because they are failing poor children of color, but because they are serving them so well. "

Each of these points is problematic. Let's go one at a time.

Do it for the poor children.  

Or more accurately, "do it for some poor children, but only if they speak English and are well-behaved."  Massachusetts has, to its credit, one of the best charter reimbursement formulae in the country, which means that sending Chris to a charter school doesn't mean that the ten students who stay in public school don't get totally shafted. Chris's former school still gets almost all of the per-pupil money that left with Chris-- or at least they would if Chapter 46 were fully funded, which it hasn't been for a few years now. But the proposed charter expansion is going to increase education costs for Massachusetts by many, many dollars; those dollars will either come from tax increases (unlikely) or other public education spending (more likely) or just not anywhere at all (also more likely) meaning that the charter tradition of robbing ten poor public school students to pay a charter to educate one poor student remains alive.

If charters want to do it for all the poor children, I'm listening. When you want to build a lifeboat for ten students by cannibalizing the ship that's carrying a thousand, your claim to a moral high ground is in trouble. Also, I am still waiting for charter fans to explain to taxpayers that taxes should go up so that  some few select students can be sent to private school at public expense.

Unions suck.

Brown likes the assertion that urban public schools are entirely run by the teachers' union, and that unions only oppose charters because they are trying to preserve their big seat at the public teat.

This argument gets a little fuzzy in Massachusetts because on the one hand, Mass has some of the most successful schools in the nation, but on the other hand, their schools are supposedly crippled by the evil union. The nature of the problem seems flexible, depending on the argument being made.

Of course, charter fans could disarm their evil union opponents easily-- by unionizing their charter schools. If the unions were charter stakeholders,  charter fans would find themselves with powerful allies for fights like this one. Could it be that charter operators find beating and blocking the uunions more important than opening more charters?

The awesomeness of Boston charters

The charter lobby has leaned hard on the notion that Boston charters are exceptionally awesomely awesome. Actually, that's generally all they say, as getting into any sort of evidence of that awesomeness is a little like presenting the evidence of the Loch Ness Monster's existence.

That could be because even the state auditor is unable to get enough legit data from the Department of Elementary and Secondary Education. But when the Boston Foundation did a study to show how awesome their results were, the study instead showed that charters didn't do any better than the public schools at getting students all the way to graduation. Other attempts to crunch charter numbers show that Boston charters are particularly rough on boys; their college graduation numbers for young black men are tiny and unimpressive no matter what you compare them to.

And it's a little surprising that charters don't beat the public system on these numbers, because they do not appear to be matching the demographics of surrounding communities (in particular, avoiding the non-English speaking students). Perhaps it's because the highly restrictive and controlling environment favored by so many schools teaches compliant behavior that is actually bad preparation for college and the world. 

The charter menace. 

So the charters or Massachusetts don't seem to be serving anyone-- not extra-burdened taxpayers, not students, not communities. Well, they serve their investors, the kind of well-heeled rich individuals that can hang with folks like Campbell Brown. The charter sales pitch is founded on baloney and smoke. But Brown is correct-- by trying to destabilize and replace one of the most successful school systems in the country, charter fans have turned the Massachusetts cap battle into a large and important test of the charter biz. Let's hope the right side comes out on top. 

FL: Still Stupidly Punishing Children

Sigh.

So you will probably recall that some of Florida's educational leaders have lost their damned minds, having decided that the full force of districts and state powers must be brought to bear in order to beat a bunch of nine-year-old children into compliance. In some school districts, administrators had concluded that third grade children who opted out of the Big Standardized Test could not be promoted, not based on their report cards, and not based on alternative assessments like portfolios.

The case ended up in court when parents sought relief from their children's non-promotion. The details that emerged there were not pretty. Orange County allowed students to advance based on their portfolios-- just not this one particular child. Many districts played Gotcha by not informing children they had failed third grade until the very end of the school year, with no prior notice of deficiency and no attempt to put a remediation plan in place. And it also became clear that when the state wasn't hedging and hemming and hawing, it was just plain giving districts advice contrary to the actual laws of Florida. All of this, mind you, while other counties in Florida had no trouble reading, understanding, and following the law. Meanwhile, to add broader insults to the whole business, the state introduced the contention that report cards are meaningless.

You might think that the finding by Judge Karen Gievers would put the writing on the wall large enough for even the dimmest superintendent or state bureaucrat to read. But a couple of weeks ago, I wrote this:

Of course, we're not done with this yet. The state will appeal, because God forbid they let this little nine-year-old scofflaws slip through their fingers. But if they have a leg to stand on, I can't see where it is. Not that they won't try. This is Pam Stewart and the Florida Department of Education-- if they can pursue a ten year old boy on his death bed, the optics of yanking a bunch of fourth graders out of class to throw them back in a third grade classroom won't deter them. But on a planet with even a remote simulation of justice, the state will continue to lose this fight.

Sad to say, since the judge issued her public spanking, Florida officials have lived up to my low opinion of them.

School districts had defended themselves throughout the run-up to the case by declaring that their hands were tied, they were just following the law, and gosh they couldn't do anything about it because that darn state, donchaknow. And then, when the judge spoke, effectively untying their hands, not only did the state DOE appeal (no surprise there) but Orange, Seminole, Broward, and Hernando Counties also appealed the ruling. Parent activist Jinia Parker responded in an open letter

I will not accept “our hands are tied” ever again. Throughout history, “I was following orders” has been the excuse of cowards and those who lack honor.

I’m not asking for anything extraordinary. I am asking that school boards in Florida do the right thing.

In Hernando County, three of the children involved in the case waited for the ruling before reporting to their magnet school. Once it was established that they would enter fourth grade, they reported to school, where the principal met them to tell them that they no longer had seats at that school. Again, a punitive and just plain mean choice by the district, delivered in the nastiest way possible-- "No," some administrator must have said, "No letter. No phone call. Let the little sonsabitches show up all excited about starting the new year and then stick it to them. That'll teach 'em to mess with us."

As a Tampa Bay Times editorial put it, "Reason flew the coop in Hernando County, to be replaced by cruelty."

And clearly something has taken the place of reason for some Florida school leaders, who are bound and determined that nine-year-olds will be beaten into submission.

This is the kind of spectacle you get when you insist on enforcing a stupid law, and the law that says students must pass the Big Standardized Test in order to move on to fourth grade is a deeply stupid law, without a shred of science to back it up. But this is the hill on which the state has decided to fight the opt out battle, hoping that a battery of nuisance motions and legions of taxpayer-financed lawyers will somehow beat these children and their families down so that finally the Supreme Test Gods can receive their proper homage.

It's stupid not only because it's wrong (though lord knows that's reason enough) but because it's stupid politics and stupid optics. Lots and lots of people are busy demonstrating on the public stage that they are spectacularly unfit for their jobs. Let's hope that before this is all done, many of them are looking for work. In the meantime, I hope they find more and more unruly parents bothering their offices.

And if you want to help, follow this link to contribute to the legal fund. Because while the state and school districts can just keep wasting mountains of taxpayer money on this fiasco, the parents enjoy no such luxury.

Why Charters Love "Public School"

The question is up for pseudo-debate once again because of the National Labor Relations Board decided in two separate cases that charter schools are private corporations.

The decision is new, but the fact that charters are private businesses is not. While charter fans are trying to act shocked and surprised., I'm just going to go ahead and link, for the six-zillionth time, to that special occasion when Eva Moskowitz successfully took New York State to court claiming that they had no right to audit her private corporation. Charter operators have always claimed to be private corporations when it suits them.

Neal McClusky of the right-tilted Cato Institute expresses concern that this is part of union efforts to unionize charter schools. That's understandably a concern, since many charter operators depend on at-will employees that can be hired, fired, and paid as the operator wishes. McClusky's argument is that charters are public because some public entity has to give them the right to exist. I'm actually wondering if McClusky was badly quoted in the piece, because that seems like a sloppy argument for him-- "given the right to exist by a public entity" includes every business that had to meet zoning requirements and every Wal-Mart that got its lot by having local government use eminent domain.

McClusky's concern about the machinations of the teacher union may be misplaced. Some folks in the teaching biz are a bit leery of unionizing charter schools because that makes the union a stakeholder in that charter. Charter fans may well want to welcome an opportunity to co-opt the unions, even if it means they will have to offer their employees decent pay and working conditions.

Why are charter schools so attached to the word "public," anyway? Charter backers are insistent about "public," attaching it to the word "charter" every chance they get.

It makes sense as a political maneuver. Think back to how many folks are vocally opposed to Bernie Sanders' idea of "free" college for students, which the opposition views as students getting to go to college at taxpayer expense. It's another evil "entitlement." But what are charter school systems except an entitlement for K-12 students to attend a private school at taxpayer expense? So let's not say "private school."

But Emma Brown's Washington Post coverage of the decision includes a quote that probably best captures the charter industry's love of "public"-- it is a critical piece of marketing.

But Ziebarth [Todd Ziebarth, senior vice president at the National Alliance for Public Charter Schools],said he still believes that charter schools are public schools. And it’s a term that matters, he said: Americans have high regard for the importance of public education, and private schools carry connotations of exclusivity that don’t apply to charters.

"Public School" carries with it all sorts of connections. Public schools accept all students. Public schools have to listen to members of the public, like students and parents and community members. Public schools don't suddenly close up shop. Public schools aren't exclusive. Public schools have to follow certain rules about how they treat students. Public schools have to follow certain rules about how they treat and hire teachers. Public schools are run by elected members of your community who have to make all their decisions in public. Public schools have to tell you how they spend their money-- they're directly accountable to the community.

When people hear "public schools," they make a whole bunch of associations and assumptions that charter schools proceed to take advantage of.

It is, in essence, the greatest branding coup ever. It's like a new hamburger chain getting government permission to call themselves McDonalds. It's like a new automobile manufacturer getting government approval to slap the Ford nameplate on its cars. The new business gets all the benefits of being associated with the old brand, yet when it encounters anyone who doesn't love the old brand, they can just say, "Well, we're actually different and better."

So the NLRB decision is mostly bad for charters not because of its implications for unionization or lawsuits, but because it hurts their branding. It hurts the marketing. It's bad for business. But good for public schools.

Brookings Fails at Teacher Diversity Research

This is just exceptional.

In mid-August, Brookings released a report looking at the huge inequity in the teacher force, specifically the question of how to get more teachers of color in the classroom. Their conclusion, loosely paraphrased, is that the problem just can't be solved. Which seems, I don't know-- counterintuitive? improbable? wrong?

There are some red flags in this report. Right up front we note that two of the authors of this report are Hannah Putnam and Kate Walsh, "director of research" and "president" respectively of the National Council on Teacher Quality. In all the world of reformy groupd, none deserve to be taken seriously less than NCTQ, a group that has evaluated teacher education programs by looking at commencement programs, judges a teacher evaluation system based on whether or not it fails enough teachers, and whips up the US News college awesomeness list by flipping through college course catalogs. You can find critiques of its methodology here and here and here, though nothing quite beats the experience of sitting across a table from a college professor angry for being downgraded by NCTQ based on a program that her college doesn't even offer. NCTQ consistently produces the least-rigorous, least-credible research in the education world, and their technique seems to be to reverse engineer it, starting with the desired headline. NCTQ's presence here is a clear signal that this report is not to be taken seriously.

It would be nice to drive this car around today

Nevertheless, I'm going to read this you don't have to.

The paper opens with an overview and history of teacher diversity (and the lack thereof). This is basically a compendium of other folks' work and some data, and to their credit, the authors at least include some of the arguments about why increasing diversity in the teacher force to reflect the diversity in the student population is a Good Thing.

So why don't we have more non-white teachers? The authors come up with several places where the pipeline has sprung a leak.

1) A smaller percentage of Black and Hispanic students finish college, though the proportion who enter college match the proportion of the general population.

2) Non-white students are less interested in teaching than white students.

3) Non-white teachers are hired at a lower rate than white teachers.

4) Non-white teachers leave the profession at a higher rate than white teachers.

So basically we're losing teachers of color at every single point of the pipeline. We could quibble a bit at this point-- some sources disagree with #3, for instance. And the authors' consideration of #4 fails to note that one factor in retention of non-white teachers is mass firings of black teachers (e.g. New Orleans and Chicago) and the reformy closings of predominantly black and brown schools.

But as it turns out, we don't have to get into anything all that granular, because now we've established the background and analyzed the problem, so we're ready to do the heavy research needed to consider possible solutions. And the paper considers each possible pipeline hole in turn and asks "what would happen if we fixed that." Mind you, it doesn't ask "how would we fix that" or "what are the different ways we could try to fix that and how relatively effective would each of those techniques be." And each of the four considerations is accompanied by a graph. I'm going to paste just one of those graphs here; let's see if you can spot the flaw in their research method--

Source: Estimates based on the authors' calculations.

Seriously. That's the basis of this whole paper. "We spitballed some back-of-the-envelope numbers and this is the best we think we can do." But the good news is that they do figure that if we plug all four holes at once "setting aside the practical considerations about resource allocations and limitations" there would be parity between black teachers and black students in 2044. Hispanic parity would not come until... well, some time after 2060, because at 2060 they ran out of space on the back of the envelope.

Now the paper moves into the Just Thinking Out Loud portion, where the authors deal a bit more in specifics. How exactly do we get this train a-rollin' down the tracks?

In our view, the fundamental bottleneck here is not so much the failure of efforts by districts’ human resources offices to hire and retain trained minority teachers (in truth, changing hiring practices can barely nudge the needle on teacher diversity); rather, the problem comes both from the low rate of college completion by black and Hispanic students and then the inability to persuade them to consider a career in the teaching profession. 

So this is not so much an actual "research" paper as just an "in our view" paper. Good to know, on page 15/24. But the good news is that we know all about making teaching more attractive, and about getting students to finish college. So, you know, just do that stuff.

However, they caution us, don't get so excited about quantity that we overlook quality. Did I mention that earlier they said alternative initiatives like TFA were swell, but not big enough to really help?

At any rate, this will be a long term solution. Does the research general idea-thinking suggest any short-term solutions? Well, schools could "leverage" other staff positions to get some non-white folks in there with the students. Schools could put policies in place to "mitigate" the effects of white racial attitudes on students of color. That would have been an interesting paper, but here it's just a paragraph. Third, teachers can be educated about the effects of the diversity gap. So, more professional development? That should totally help.

And it's all over but the references pages.

This is a serious issue that deserves serious consideration and should be addressed by serious solutions. I do not know what this report is, but it's definitely not serious, which is unfortunate. 

Honestly, some days I think I should just incorporate myself as the Curmudgucation All-Beef Baloney Sandwich Institute, get myself a fancier header and start fishing for grants to fund whatever writer-babblings I wanted to pull out of my butt so that I could essentially do what I always do, but get paid in money and fame (you know-- on top of the fame I'm already earning). Instead of lowly blog posts I could issue "reports." I could put graphs with them, and I estimate that by 2027 (probably around the second Tuesday in May) I could retire with enough money to buy a really nice car. Maybe then I could become an economist.

ICYMI: Fall kick-off edition (9/4)

As always, if you see something that really speaks to you, share it.

Michigan Spends $1 Billion on Charter Schools But Fails To Hold Any Accountable

Well, that headline for this Detroit Free press pretty well covers it.

Schools Open, Schools Close-- Charter Schools and the Ties That Bind

From Harvard, a thoughtful consideration of the real costs of school closures

Rubric for the Rubric Concerning Students' Core Competency in Reading Things in Books and Writing About Them

McSweeney's comes through with some edujargon fun

Education Matters but Direct Anti-Poverty and Inequality Reduction Efforts Matter More

Ben Spielberg puts together some basic facts about the effects of poverty

Screens in Schools are a $60 Billion Hoax

Time magazine pulls no punches in calling the push for education computer tech a huge scam

Between the World and John Deasy

Joshua Leibner lays out the sordid, failing-ever-upward career of Deasy and his ilk

Public Schools Aren't Businesses

Or, "If businesses had to run like public schools..."

Field Tripping

First hand account of touring a charter school with clueless economists.

Some Gates Charter Personalized Love

Don Shalvey has been pushing charter schools for many, many years. He was serving a superintendent of the San Carlos School District when he launched the first charter school in California. That was 1992. In 1998 he joined with Reed "Elected Schools Boards Suck" Hastings (Netflix) to for Californians for Public School Excellence, an astroturf group created to push charter school legislation through California. Shalvey then immediately (with the help of some Hastings money) co-founded Aspire Public [sic] charter management, a chain that has spread across the country, where he was CEO for eleven years. Aspire has attracted attention at various times for ejecting difficult students, spending lots of money on marketing, and operating their own teacher training program based on some questionable practices.

But Shalvey has since moved on to a new job-- deputy director of K-12 education at the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. So if you have any doubts about where the Gates stands on charters, here's some more evidence that the foundation is just chock full of charter adoration.

Shalvey took to the pages of the NonProfit Quarterly to talk about that very subject. "What Drives My Education Work at the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation" illuminates some of the flaws in the Gates charter argument.

Once he's rehearsed his CV, Shalvey throws out the old, "Despite our arguments, we're all in it for the education of the kids and not because charters are a great way to invest money and make a bundle while getting the little people to shut up and just do what we know is good for them." Okay, I added on that last part. Next up-- Gaping Hole #1.

This is one idea that we all can agree on: A high-quality education is a bridge to opportunity in the United States.

Well, no. We can't agree on that. Particularly if we're going to allow our opinion to be shaped actual facts. I take no pleasure in poking holes in this, because I really want to believe in the power of education. I've devoted my entire adult life, my entire life's work, to promoting and providing the power of education to my students. But what we know is that the bridge to opportunity has a foundation of money and power and socio-economic status of families of origin. Mind you, I still absolutely believe in the importance of education and the possibilities for many, varied, awesome futures for all of my students. But to pretend that All You Need Is Education, particularly when you come from a low-SES family, is just mean, like telling a girl who wants to be Miss America that all she needs is just a nice hairdo. It's not the whole truth.

And here comes Gaping Hole #2.

And one of the best examples of this belief in action is at Summit Public Schools, a charter management organization with schools in California and Washington. Summit is one of the national leaders in personalized learning. 

Shalvey is about to launch into a sales pitch for Summit and Personalized [sic] Learning. But before we go there, let me point out that this does not provide a "best example" or even a "fair example" of how high-quality education is a bridge to success. A "best example" would involve two parts-- a part where we had proof of the quality of education provided, and then a part where we looked at data showing just how awesomely successful the students became in their lives. Spoiler alert: our discussion of Summit is not going to provide either of those things.

Shalvey is going instead to tout the awesomeness of computer-based learning, something that has been failing to get traction in the education world for decades now. Remember how Rocketship Academies were going to revolutionize education by hooking every student up to computerized instruction. And then they didn't?

Shalvey wants us to know about Summit's success rate. So do some other folks, like the student who complains that computerized "go at your own pace" learning with unseasoned teachers is not very educational. Or the researcher who determined that Summit's attrition rate is nothing to brag about. That includes their retention of teachers, and a look at the Glassdoor reviews hints why. Though many reviews are positive, there are also some like these:

The educational model is seriously flawed and failing students

The culture is unprofessional and emotionally unsafe

Summit (the organization) abuses teachers. As an at-will employee you have no rights.

The management style is top-down, with examples like a single evaluation rubric that allegedly all teachers must use for all students. And Summit is tied to the usual web of reformsters, plus ties to Dell Computers who could be expected to be big fans of a model that requires every student to work at a computer.

And what would a reformster program be without "research." Shalvey directs us to "research" showing that computer-based personalized learning is super-duper. And look! It's a report sponsored and published by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation-- so researched sponsored by Gates to prove that the Gates-sponsored programs are doing great.

Shalvey's final plug is for the assimilation of public schools collaboration between charters and public schools, citing the Summit Basecamp program from this year, which brought together a bunch of public school teachers to test-market become familiar with Summit's in-house personalized learning platform (not the first one they've had, actually, but this one was developed with help from facebook!) back in their own classrooms with a hand from their own Summit sales rep instructional mentor, with progress for students measured by looking at MAP test results and oh good lord I can't even-- There are just days when trying to follow every thread of this big reformy mess is like trying untangle a Grand Canyon-sized spider web. But hey-- you know this kind of assimilation collaboration works real good because here's a study conducted on the very subject and can you guess who sponsored the study? Of course you can.

At any rate, it looks as if at the very least, Summit Charters will be a good launching pad for a bunch of competency-based education personalized learning software. Oh, the so many ways to make money while dismantling public education and electing yourself Overlord of US Education.

Is Poverty No Longer a Thing?

Mike Petrilli was over at Campbell Brown's place this week where A) he was oddly billed as a research fellow at Stanford's Hoover Institution and a book author, but not as the head honcho of the Fordham Institute and B) suggesting that we might need to reconsider our stances on poverty, now that it's not so much of a thing.

I'm not an economist and I don't play one on tv (though economists pretend to be education experts all the time, so maybe I should just throw caution to the wind), so I'm leery of wrestling with Petrilli's contention that the poverty rate has dropped to 7.8%. But I can say this with confidence-- there's a huge amount of disagreement about what the poverty rate actually is.

The census folks said that in 2014, the poverty rate was 14.8%. But median income rate stayed flat. The poverty rate dropped from 19% in 1967 to around 15% today. Maybe those numbers are all really low because the poverty cut score is set too low, and the true number is much higher. Or maybe the true poverty rate is actually 4.5%. One sometimes suspects that economists do not know what the hell they are talking about.

Petrilli is leaning on a study by Scott Winship. Winship is a fellow at the Manhattan Institute and at Brookings (maybe-- they really should annotate their website more carefully). So, not exactly a lefty here. Winship's idea is that when you count people's earnings, you should count all their government benefits as well, as in "Well, you're not really poor because you've got food stamps and tax credits and other non-cash benefits." He also thinks the Census Bureau's inflation calculator overstates things. Let's say that not everyone agrees with Winship's method of computing.

Petrilli is willing to note that Winship's method of figuring clearly implies that there would be waaaayyyyy more people in poverty if welfare-slashers in DC had their way. And he also acknowledges that just even if you're a bit over the poverty line, you're probably still having a Very Rough Time. Yet he also dismisses Free and Reduced Lunch numbers as a good measure of poverty.

But he's going to go on talking as if the 7.8% number is accurate so that we can consider the implications.

Part of his considering is baloney stapled to a straw man.

For the teachers unions and other traditional education groups, it raises hard questions about their familiar contention that America’s lackluster student achievement is due to poverty—that we must “fix poverty first” before our schools will improve.

The contention may be familiar, but only because reformsters keep repeating it and attributing it to their opponents. I don't know any serious voice on the non-reformy side of the debate who says, "We must fix poverty before students can learn." The fact that folks in the public education sphere see poverty as a factor does not mean that they see it as an excuse. If I have a student who wants to race, but she's in a wheelchair, I'm not contending that she must be cured and on her legs before she can race. But the preparations and  training for that student will be different from those of a wheelchair-unbound student. If I think the solution for the athlete in the wheelchair is simply push her through the same training program I'd use with a non-wheelchair athlete, I'm a dope. She needs preparation that fits her situation.

Petrilli knows all this, and acknowledges in the piece that "a strong link remains between students’ socioeconomic status and achievement." (As always, we don't really mean "achievement"-- we mean "score on a narrow standardized test.")

But, Petrilli says, if poverty is lessened, then it can't be causing our "educational underachievement"-- which means at this point he is discussing the correlation between two data points (student achievement failure, lessening of poverty) neither of which has actually been established as a true thing.

We are doing better by our poorest citizens, including our poorest children, than we were 20 years ago. And we should expect them to be doing better in school as a result.  

But we don't really know if we're doing better by our poorest citizens or not, and we have no real indication that they aren't doing better in school for any number of reasons, including but not limited to A) policy wonks don't have a decent measure of student achievement and B) we have no way to measure the differences between what schools asked of students twenty years ago and what they asked today. 

One implication that Petrilli doesn't address-- one reformster school (the one favored by the current administration) is that better education will cure poverty. So if poverty has been reduced, I suppose they could declare victory. Of course that would also mean they could stop pushing new reformy ideas. But the linchpin of their entire theory is still unproven-- that a child who gets a good score on the Big Standardized Test will end up with a better-paying job, as if employers are sitting out there thinking, "Well, I would pay more for this minimum wage job, but I'm waiting to hire someone who got a really high PARCC score."

The other factor that Petrilli is leaving out is the importance of support from government and policy makers. He notes that society is more stratified, with a greater gap between the wealthy and the not-wealthy; it's worth asking how much that stratification leads to the systemic under-support of schools in poor communities. We could also take a look at reports that show schools are handling 1 million more students with 200K fewer teachers under the headline that the recovery has not reached schools, raising the question: what happens if student poverty gets better, but school under-funding gets worse? He says that we should expect poor students to be doing better in school; I'd say we should expect federal, state and local government to do a better job of supporting those schools that the poor are students in.