Chait Sends Ed News from Alternate Universe

New York magazine ran a piece by Jonathan Chait that considers some more ed policy possibilities from the upcoming Trump administration-- but just to switch things up a bit, his article throws around pieces of news from some alternate universe.

"Will Trump Give Education Reform the Kiss of Death?" is a legitimate question, but Chait throws in some ideas that are just counterfactual. The hook here is to consider the hypothetical Ed Secretarydom of either Eva Moskowitz (Success Academy) and She Who Will Not Be Named (former DC Chancellor and reformster cover girl). These hypotheticals are certainly legitimate-- hell, Trump may well appoint Britney Spears to the post, so any conjecture has a non-zero chance of accuracy.

But in the article, Chait keeps dropping little anti-truth bombs.

First, this little piece of ed reform history:

Teachers unions revolted, eventually joining with congressional Republicans to block funding for low-income schools in order to prevent the department from influencing local control.

That's based on Chait's misunderstanding of the debate over the supplement-not-supplant argument waged between John King and Congress. It's not a particularly simple issue, involving questions like "how do we actually count the money being spent in schools" and "is it okay for the ed department to ignore the barely dry letter of the newly minted education law and just do what they'd rather." There are plenty of reasons to believe that King's idea will actually hurt poor schools, but Chait simplifies the whole debate to "King wanted to give poor schools money and the GOP and unions stood in his way." This is not so much lacking nuance as ignoring big chunks of the issues.

It is possible that the Trump administration would continue the de facto alliance it has cultivated with unions. 

I think a lot of (or "most" or even "all") folks would be surprised to learn that there was an alliance between Trump and the unions. Chait doesn't really explain himself, but I think the suggestion here is that Trump and the Unions both hate Common Core. Except that AFT and NEA leadership have mostly been for Common Core. I've been in the room for one of the many times that Randi Weingarten and Lily Eskelsen-Garcia stood up for it in front of a group that was fairly hostile to the whole thing. Chait moves straight from the Core to charter schools, on which Trump and the unions are pretty much in complete disagreement. So what his exact evidence for this "de facto alliance" might be is, well, not available in this universe.

Chait's not completely off-planet all the time. He notes that Trump surrogate (and real estate/charter school grifter) Carl Paladino's claim that Arne Duncan and the Ed Department were in the unions' pockets was completely off base, as the unions had "fought bitterly" with Duncan and demanded his resignation. Well, members did. Union leadership dragged their feet on this issue as well.

Both Rhee and Moskowitz have strong credentials as urban-school reformers. But both have pursued education in the center-left mode, which emphasizes strong central oversight, accountability, and mechanisms to evaluate and close failing schools of the charter or neighborhood variety. 

"Center-left mode"??!! What is he even talking about? Moskowitz and She Who Will Not Be Named are center-left only in the sense that they have pretended to be democrats. But they are neither red nor blue nor even purple; the color of their concern is green, and their structural model is anything that they maintain central control over.

Chait calls their approach the opposite of "Trump's know-nothing" approach, but as he himself acknowledges in this article, mostly their policies are exactly like Trump's-- expand privatization and let business people with no actual education expertise make a whole bunch of money.

Chait says this imaginary policy territory that Moskowitz and She have staked out would conflict with Trump first because Trump wants to spend all his money on other domestic policy stuff. But Trump has already declared that he'll spend $20 billion on spreading charter schools as well as demonstrating that having an actual source for all the money he plans to spend is not a big concern of his.

And then there's this whopper.

Both Rhee and Moskowitz have yielded dramatic and even revolutionary improvements in education outcome for underprivileged urban children, establishing as proof of concept a model that can wipe out the achievement gap between students in high-poverty neighborhoods and affluent ones. It is one of the most promising achievements in American social reform in decades. 

Not on this planet, they haven't. She's supposedly made great strides in DC, but it now looks like those strides had less to do with great education policy and more to do with widespread cheating on the tests. Moskowitz has shown that having political connections, a bunch of extra money to spend, intense test prep, and carefully selected students really pay off. None of that represents an innovation. Eliminate the achievement gap? Certainly not in DC, and in New York Moskowitz has never filled one of her academies with a true broad sample of poor neighborhood children. Challenging students in Moskowitz's world end up on the Got To Go list.

Chait also cites the charter defeat in Massachusetts as the result of union agitation, a profound misunderstanding of how deep and wide the parent and community grassroots was that defeated the hedge funders pushing charters on neighborhoods that didn't want them under such conditions. 

Chait correctly notes that reformsters who have tried to pitch their ideas as civil rights solutions will take a hit if their ideas are suddenly backed by "America’s most famous racist." And that brings him to his wrap up where he suggests that the Trump administration will be such a dumpster fire that reformsters should probably steer clear of it if they want to preserve the cause.

There's a worthwhile point buried in here somewhere. Lots of reformsters who have pretended to be social justice crusaders or Democrats to help further the cause now find that they are soldiers who are wearing jungle camouflage in an arctic battle, and they will need to change disguises if they hope to prosper (for reformsters who actually believe in their social justice rhetoric, these will be even harder times).

Back in May, @JeanneAllen said of Trump: "I don't want my issues coming out of his mouth." Warned he would get 2nd and 3rd stringers on edu. https://t.co/DzoQpe6YmN

— Politics K-12 (@PoliticsK12) November 16, 2016

Guilty in May. Much changed after, 4 all involved, including selecting @mike_pence & @KellyannePolls https://t.co/nwLl4YdYcs

— Jeanne Allen (@JeanneAllen) November 16, 2016

Back in may, Jeanne Allen of the charter-loving Center for Education Reform said she didn't want to hear her issues coming out of Donald Trump's mouth. She's since found a way to adjust; many other reformsters will have to follow her lead. Corporate education privatizers are going to need a new map of the territory. I just suggest that they not buy their new map from Chait.

Trump Teaching Lesson

There's an aspect of Candidate Trump's success that I think is both under-discussed and also a good lesson/reminder for those of us in the teaching biz.

Trump never made folks feel stupid.

Seriously. Members of the public would figuratively run up to him hollering, "Good lord, did you see this terrible story on the internet," and without batting an eye, Trump would respond "I know!! Incredible, right?"   Like Walt Whitman, he could declaim at length about his own awesomeness without ever having to belittle the crowd around him to embiggify himself (because he's just that awesome). He is large; he contains multitudes.

Meanwhile, Clinton could not avoid making people feel stupid. She was the stern one, incapable of not figuratively rolling her eyes at the latest stupid thing that voters had said. She would point out something stupid that Trump had said, not understanding that her message was, "How stupid do you have to be to believe this guy?"

People hate feeling stupid. Hate it. But Trump, with all the basic markers of success like money and fame and arrogance-laced confidence, still managed to say to voters, "Hey, you're all cool." And he augmented that with a natural instinct for the use of third person-- the people who were stupid or bad, those people were "them" or "they." Trump invited folks to join him in being the smart one, the smartest one of all, so smart you wouldn't even believe the smartitude. Meanwhile, Clinton et al just couldn't help letting it slip how dumb the think the yokels are, or trying to move the discussion to questions of facts and data and policy and ethical issues like how to treat other human beings, and all that wonky smarty-pants book talk also made some folks feel stupid. You've got a choice between people who make you feel stupid, and people who make you feel cool and smart-- who are you going to choose?


Certainly that was not the only dynamic at play, but it's the one I'm interested in at the moment. And, for our purposes, I'm going to skip the whole question of whether some people feel stupid because they are stupid. For the teaching perspective, that doesn't matter. Or rather, it matters because we deal professionally with people who Don't Know Some Stuff.

What we need to remember is the graphic, clear display of what people do when you make them feel stupid-- they feel resentment and anger and they step into a voting booth and vote to get rid of you.

Everyone has had that teacher-- that miserable, awful teacher that made students look stupid, feel stupid. Everyone who had that teacher remembers that teacher because they hate that teacher. If they could have voted to get rid of that teacher and replace her with Mrs. Trump, the nice one who makes everyone feel special and lucky to be in her awesome classroom, they would totally do it.

Sometimes teachers take a cold, hard, Darwinian-libertarian approach-- if you don't want to feel stupid, then study and be less stupid. But as this election reminds us, that is not how people work. Make people feel stupid and they quit. They block you out. But make them feel smart and important, valued and clever, and they will go to the wall for you.

We've occasionally tried to codify this. Recognizing "ebonics" was in part a recognition that approaching some students with a stance of, "You must be stupid if you talk like that" was not really helping anyone.

So that's one teachable reminder-- when you make people feel stupid, they get angry and withdrawn and uncooperative. And if you need to be reminded again, just watch for the next year as Trump turns out to have lied about most of his campaign promises, and a whole bunch of people get to feel stupid, again.

The Open Door

I have news. Not political news or even education news, but completely personal news.

My wife and I are expecting. In fact, we're expecting twins.

This is only partially a surprise. There was some science involved, but science does not account for the twin part. So that was a bit of a shock. We have moved past the Really Freaking Out stage for the moment. We are due in June, so we have time to plan, to paint, to stockpile two of everything.

There are other adjustments to make. That's not a bad thing, but I am reminded once again that hard-and-fast life plans are for dopes and cowards. Mind you, you should have a compass, a set of values that you steer by, a direction that you move more or less steadily. But hard and fast plans? Ha!

My life bears so little resemblance to the life I would have predicted for myself forty years ago that if I traveled back in time to confront younger me, he would bust a gut laughing. And yet the life older me is living is so much better than anything younger me imagined. It is also infinitely better than the life that older me thinks I deserve.

I don't talk a lot about my life because I don't know how to talk about it without sounding like I'm bragging because most days I feel like the most privileged, blessed, fortunate individual on the planet. Life should be kicking my ass. Karma should be bitch-slapping me on a daily basis.

See, for much of my adult life, I have been an ass. Blowing up my first marriage ended with a sign falling on me, a sign saying "You cannot keep being this person." And so the part of my life that wasn't about me being an ass was about me learning to do better, and that has been a good education, except that other people paid my tuition in heartbreak and misery. The previous Mrs. Greene was a good person, and she deserved better. Our children have grown up to be exceptionally fine human beings; I could not tell you exactly how that happened, though I know that they are good at walking through doors. My daughter's oldest child turns two today; my son is getting married in less than a month.

Which I think is one of the big tricks in life. Walking through doors. You are in a room, and on all sides there are doors, and one day the times is right, and a door opens, and you know that it's time for you to walk through it, and if you are brave and confident, or at least sure that you'll be okay, you walk through it. Mind you, lots of people don't. They say "I want that other door over there" or they try to beat down a different door or the step partway through the door, one foot on either side of the door frame, never entirely in the next room that is waiting for them. Or maybe convincing yourself that by using the proper words or plans or dance moves, you can control which door opens and when it opens. Then when the wrong door opens, it's a crisis, a disaster. Some people sit in that first room their whole lives, surrounded by doors, never stepping through any of them. Just sitting in that first room for a lifetime.

This is what I don't know (okay, there's a ton I don't know, but here's the thing I'm focusing on at the moment). I don't know how to translate what I know about How Life Works into the kind of canned, cramped education that is demanded of us these days. The notion that we think we can gaze into an eight-year-old's paperwork, then look that child in the eye and say "This is what your life is going to be" is just so-- who does that? Tarot cards and frog bump readings make just as much sense.

This is education-- You have to know as much as you can so that you understand as much as you can so that you can build a life as well as you can no matter what the terrain ahead of you turns out to be. You have to acquire as many tools as you can, and you have to understand yourself as well as you can, because then, when the door opens, you can grab your tool box and think, "Cool. I can do this, and even if it's hard or scary or unknown, I will say yes to this door because there is something for me on the other side."

And nobody can fully know who you are and nobody knows what doors you will stand in front of and nobody, really nobody at all, knows which doors will open for you or what will be on the other side, all of which means that anybody who says, "We've mapped a precise plan for you with the exact equipment you'll need, no more, no less"-- that person is selling something, and not a very good something at that.

In the meantime, I have just a few years to start thinking about education once again as a parent, considering not just the questions of how to provide education in my classroom or how to advocate for policies in my district and state and country, but also how will I help these particular tiny humans (both of them!) navigate through the world of education.

This is exciting as all get out, and my wife, who is also my best friend in the world, is a great person to enter into this adventure with. She can walk through doors like nobody's business. Door opens; she says yes. Great lesson that. In the meantime, everyone is healthy and happy and ready to start shopping for second-hand baby stuff (if anyone has just been waiting to hire me as a consultant/speaker, now is probably a good time-- also, consider giving my book as a Christmas gift to 100 people or so).

This is an adventure-- the best kind of adventure. It has prompted me to think about education on the lower end of the age scale, and it has reminded me that the classroom ought to be an adventure (though not, as one twitter wit suggested, a game of Jumanji that we can't win). It ought to be about preparing to walk through more doors, about being ready, about being willing and able and ready to grapple with the challenges and victories and defeats and about a million things more important than making sure that you generate the right sort of data on a bubble test.Let's do this. I mean, let's not go through the motions-- let's really do this.

Help Back Backpack

Sarah Mondale is a documentary filmmaker and teacher. Ten years ago, she and her partners created the multi-part documentary School: The Story of American Education (you can find the book form at many booksellers). Now she has a new project and it deserves your support.

Backpack Full of Cash is a look at the privatization of education in America, how the drive to make schools into a profitable business is dismantling one of our most basic and foundational institutions.



The film takes us to New Orleans, Philadelphia and Nashville, a pretty perfect selection of cities to give the real sense of the forms the privatization movement takes.

And I particularly love the central question that the film settles on, because I have the same question:

Why dismantle the public school system?  Why not make it work well for every child instead?

The marquee name attached to the film is Matt Damon, who reads the narration. It's a nice gesture and a necessary feature in today's market ("Oh, the narrator is someone I've heard of, so this must be a real movie.")

The production is three days away from the end of its Kickstarter campaign to collect the $31,600 needed to finalize this production. This is a story that needs to be told and a film that needs to be out there for the public to see. I'm asking you, if you're at all a fan of this blog, to head over to Kickstarter and make a contribution, however small. We can't all be filmmakers and we can't all be activists, but we can all kick in a few bucks to help amplify the voices of people who speak out on important issues. This is a story that needs to be told-- help tell it.

I've put the link in several times, but here it is again. If you're worried about public education in a Trumpian world, here's an actual concrete thing you can do to help. If you're concerned about the health of public education, here's a concrete thing you can do to help. If you want to protect the promise of public education, here's a concrete thing you can do to help. Please help.

Jeb's Charterpalooza Coming Soon

Proud to say that today's email includes my media registration invitation to this years convention thrown by Jeb Bush (out-of-work politician) & Foundation for Excellence in Education (FEE)-- Transforming Lives Through Education.

I am interested in seeing what happens next to Jeb!, who now occupies a weird sort of reformster twilight zone. On the one hand, Herr Trump appears to fully embrace Bush's education policies, or at least the Let a Million Charters Bloom part. But Bush himself--well, it seems unlikely that Jeb is in line for Trumpian Ed Secretary. And that bitter taste resting on Bush's ivy league palate must be getting only more and more bitter as it becomes obvious that President Trump will be following a lot of the policies that Candidate Trump used to smack Bush over the head. What happens when hated political enemies actually stand for pretty much the same policy ideas? How exactly do you criticize someone for pursuing policies that you totally agree with?

The conference is as always aimed at bringing lawmakers and policymakers [and money makers] together "for in-depth discussions on proven [sic] education policies and innovative [sic] strategies to improve student achievement [aka scores on bad standardized tests]." And it's a cast of all-stars.

Bush himself will be presenting the keynote address because, after all, he's got time on his hands. Also featured will be:

Condoleeza Rice, who ran the store at FEE for Bush while he was out begging for votes. She's going to moderate a panel of former ed secretaries which, honestly, should be worth the price of admission all by itself.

Angela Duckworth, working to show that the Great Goose of Grit has not yet laid its last golden egg. Though this time it's billed as the "power of perseverance." That must be the same power that gives one the endurance to keep milking the same questionable research for consulting and speaking fees.

Todd Rose is from the Harvard Grad School of Education and is the co-founder Center for Individual Opportunity, and scored a book about the end of average. He'll be there, too.

Sal Khan and David Coleman are going to talk about leveling the playing field,  by which I presume they mean leveling the marketing playing field by leveraging free tutoring videos to build brand loyalty and market penetration aka How To Use SAT Products To Push Khan Academy and Vice Versa. Hope the College Board and Khan Academy paid well for this infomercial.

Diane Tavenner is the co-founder of the Summit charter management company, and a spirited acolyte at the altar of "personalized learning." Thank goodness she has no classroom background; otherwise, she might be distracted from her vision of education by actual experience in the field.

The summit is sponsored by some of the finest names in education profiteering, including Pearson, McGraw Hill, the Walton Family, and the College Board

You can get a laid-back, sitting in his big leather retirement chair invite in the video below. As always, FEE is determined to pursue the excellence in profit-making that still waits to be tapped in public ed. And maybe share some stories about that horrible man in the White House. I'll admit-- I'm a little curious to see how the summit goes this year, but not nearly as curious as I am bout the 2017 edition. Stay tuned!

Yes, It's That Bad

We have the first names of the Trump administration, and people are worked up. The choice of Reince Priebus as Chief of Staff is one more sign that folks who wanted Trump to completely turn his back on the establishment and drain the swamp-- well, that is going to be the first of many disappointments for them.

But the choice of Steve Bannon as Chief Strategist is bad news. Exceptionally bad news.

Bannon was the previous head of the white supremacist alt-right website Breitbart. Senator Jeff Merkley released a statement today condemning the choice. Petitions have popped up opposing the choice. Many people have spoken out against this choice for a job previously associated with folks like Karl Rove, John Podesta and David Axelrod.

After the last year of campaigning, it is easy to dismiss all this as hyperbole. Some of you are telling yourselves, "Oh, surely it's not that bad. Folks on the left are just blowing this whole nazi aryan nation thing out of proportion." And it is true that it is now SOP for folks on both sides to cherry pick factoids, polish them, spin them, add a side of fake baloney, and release them in hopes of creating maximum outrage.

That's why I'm going to suggest that, if we want to get a real sense of Bannon, we not search our sources on the left, but our sources on the right. Let's not look at the people that the Left calls nazis-- let's look at the people who call themselves nazis. No tricky "gotcha" hidden cameras; just look at what they have to say. I've done it. And, yes, it's that bad.

Let me warn you right up front-- I am about to publish some vile and hateful stuff. For some of us, it's no shock, because we already know this kind of thing is out there. For some of us it will be a shock because we really, really, really like to believe that in this day and age, people just don't talk like this, think like this any more. And that's why it's all the more important that you see this-- because you have to see that this is real. You have to see this is real so that you can really understand what all those people who aren't gifted with a white penis are freaking out about. Folks are not marching in the street because they're pouty election losers. They're marching in the street because the highest office in the land has been won by a guy who is BFF's with a movement that wants to drive them away, stomp them silent, kill them.

And second, you have to see this because this, despite all our belief that we were done with this shit-- this is what we're going to be fighting for the next however-many years.

I'm going to show you a piece from a website called Infostormer, and this sentence is the last non-ugly thing I'm going to write for a bit. You've been warned.

"Stormer" is a popular suffix in the US racist movements. This particular site is not the very top of the heap, but they are plenty successful. Alexa rates them around 65,000th in the US, with a huge growth in traffic over the past month. Oh, and their subheading is "Destroying Jewish Tyranny."

I am going to link to them so you can confirm I'm not making this up, but it's not for the weak of stomach. Here are some headlines from just the past couple of weeks:

STFU CUCKOLD: Paul Ryan Claims That No Deportation Forces Will Be Formed By President Trump

Retarded Climate Scientists Claim That Donald Trump's Win Will Cause a Planetary Disaster

A Message to the SJW Faggots Shedding Endless Tears Over Trump's Victory

Jew Media Falsely Claiming Trump Is Walking back Promise To Repeal Obamacare

As I write this, the newest story opens with this lede:

Good news here. It looks like we will be seeing a new alliance formed between the United States and Russia to destroy ISIS. Donald Trump spoke with Vladimir Putin about this and the outcome sounds like it was a positive one.

But let's get back to Steve Bannon. We know that liberals are freaking out about him. What about the white supremacists? Infostormer just ran a piece about the two appointments. They're not happy about Priebus, but after explaining that Chief of Staff is really a nothing job anyway, writer "Marcus Cicero" has this to say:

The whole idea of this individual [the Chief of Staff] being a kingmaker or chancellor can only be valid if one is dealing with a weak-willed President, and we can rest assured that the current Leader is nothing of the sort.

The Chief Counselor, on the other hand, usually has the ear of the President from day to day (and often moment to moment), and in the case of Steve Bannon, probably second to second due to a personality that is almost a carbon copy of the President’s.

Look for Bannon to wield great power and sway in this new Government of the People, and let us hope that his stances on the migrant invasion, Moslem filth, and Black subhuman crime rises above the beta compromise attitude of Mr. Priebus.

My guess is that we are seeing the results of a brilliant chess move by Glorious Leader, which will keep mainstream Establishment cucks sated, while the real work and strategy continues behind the scenes through Mr. Bannon, who is far closer to our views than the average Republican you will see on the tubes.

Pure awesomeness.

Bannon is basically Trump, and Trump is our "Glorious Leader." I'm not going to retype the other odious bullshit contained here.

Meanwhile, the Daily Stormer, another neo-nazi site, is running headlines like "Yes, Trump Really Can Make America White Again – With or Without Cucked Congress" and congratulating Trump on "surrounding himself with all the right people."

People are not making this shit up. I have no doubt that there are many folks who voted for Trump who would or do find this sort of rhetoric appalling and disgusting, but they need to understand that these people are huge Trump supporters who see absolutely no reason not to believe that Trump is their guy, ready to establish a government that supports all of their favored goals. And if you have been just sort of letting all of that drift away in the background, America's neo-nazis have not-- and neither have the people who are targeted by these groups. 

This is why "Let's all come together for the sake of the country," doesn't quite cut it this time-- because it's really hard to unite with people who want to see you gone. 

Is it Bannon's fault these people love him? Actually, yes-- he's spent much of his career cultivating them as an audience. Is it Trump's fault these people think he's their Glorious Leader? You could argue that every President in forever has had some sort of lunatic fringe attached to him, I suppose. But even if that's true, it is absolutely Trump's fault that he has not repudiated some of the rhetoric thrown around in his name (I think of John McCain shutting down his own supporters over their fears about Obama) and it is absolutely Trump's fault that he has brought a man who leads and is revered by white supremacists in this country into the White House.

Do I want to see Trump succeed? I surely do, because his failure only brings more disaster to the country. But he will not be a "success" if he allows this festering rot to break forth and poison the air that all Americans breathe. Oddly enough, I think the possibility exists for him to turn back this mess precisely because although he is a man with no apparent convictions to be devoted to. He plays to whatever crowd is shiniest. And that means that Americans need to rise and shine.

Having a man like Bannon is a position of power is not normal, and it's not okay. Allowing nazis and virulent racists to claim they know and sit close to the heart of the President is not normal, and it's not okay. 

Yes, there is a whole complex web here, and it's being untied slowly and painfully in a thousand think pieces. How did Clinton lose, and why, and whose fault is it. Who put Trump in the White House, and what does that mean about us as a nation? Have we been growing some ugly new strain of racism, or is this just the same old stuff with the shielding ripped off? Etc etc etc-- there are a lot of complicated issues to untangle.

But this is not one of them. Should the US government be one that makes nazis really happy, or is that a sign that something is off track-- not a complicated question. Do nazis belong in positions of power in the US government-- that's not a complicated question. Is it okay for people in government position to advocate for the oppression of any group of American citizens-- that's not a complicated question either. Should we stand up, loudly and strongly to these kinds of people when they rise up-- one more of these very simple questions. But they are the questions before us, because, yes, it really is that bad.

OH: One Third Won't Graduate

Back in the summer of 2014, the Ohio legislature approved a New! Improved! plan for measuring student achievement. Two years later, it's not looking so good.

The plan was to expand over and above the old Ohio Graduation Test, which would be replaced with seven other tests.

Four of the new exams will be based on the new multi-state Common Core standards that Ohio is starting to use in all schools. All are in the final stages of development – many just finished having trials across the state or nation this spring – and the scores that students need to pass are not set yet.

Here's how the whole thing shook out per the Department of Education:

And then there was this ominous quote:

While the exact scores that students need on the tests have not been set, [Damon] Asbury, [director of legislative services for the Ohio School Boards Association] said that's a "technical issue" that can be worked out later, now that the structure of requirements is set. 

Technical issue, indeed. Setting cut scores is always THE issue in figuring test scores. 

Ohio was going to depend on the PARCC to fill in a couple of those testing spots, but then the students of Ohio actually took the PARCC, and nobody was happy about how that worked out-- so in 2015 the state of Ohio became yet another state to bail out of PARCC's sinking malformed ship. Since they had already hired American Institutes of Research, a rival test manufacturer, to provide other tests, AIR seemed like a logical step.

Through this year (2017), Ohio students were just following the old game plan (with some new options). But the Class of 2018, in a modified version of the 2014 plan, must get their credits and then either earn the required number of points on the exit exams OR earn an industry-recognized credential OR earn a remediation-free score on the SAT or ACT. Students can earn up to five points per exit exam.

Now Ohio superintendents are warning of a graduation apocalypse. Students are coming up way short on the scores needed on the new standardized tests.

Olmstead Falls Superintendent Jim Lloyd expects the new requirements to cut his graduation rate from 95% to 65%, and that those scary numbers will be the norm across the state. He is leading "a rally at the statehouse Tuesday morning of an estimated 200 superintendents, plus school board members from across Ohio, to call attention to this danger. They also plan to ask the state school board and legislature to seek more input from educators before creating new education laws and requirements."

What?! Input from educators before they create more education laws and requirements?! That's crazy talk.

As with all test-driven reform, what Ohio legislators expect to accomplish is unclear. Do Ohio legislators believe that their schools are universally run by liars, fools, and incompetents, rendering an Ohio diploma meaningless? And if so, is there some sort of data suggesting that one third of Ohio's residents are illiterate and un-employable, thereby providing evidence that the high school diplomas they receive are really a lie? Is someone figuring that by denying more students diplomas and thereby making them harder to employ, that will somehow provide a benefit to the state?

What is the goal here, Ohio? Punish teachers? Punish students? Provide "proof" that all public schools should be closed and replaced with charters?

If the legislature has half a brain, they will back away from this plan. Of course, even if they do, a whole bunch of Ohio students have already been thrown into panic and uncertainty about their own future. Work hard and stay in school kids, and one day, you might graduate, or you might not. Who knows? but work hard anyway.