School Choice Won't Save Education

This piece popped up on my twitter feed this week. It's a hard-core pro-choice argument from David S. D'amato, an attorney as well as a policy advisor at the Heartland Institute who also does some work at Cato now and then-- so seriously Libertarian.

Is it extra-ironic that few useful Libertarian images, including the Heartland logo,  are public domain? Here's a puppy instead

His piece is pretty dry and direct, and as i read it, it struck me as a good piece for exercising a look at where exactly I disagree with the pro-choice crowd. Are my issues matter of fact, interpretation, policy, or principle? Let's see.

The United States is in the midst of an education crisis; this is not news... Almost all Americans seem to acknowledge the failures of the government school system... 

Disagreement on the facts. The education crisis is a manufactured one, including the dogged repetition that we are in an education crisis, a PR push that result in "most Americans" believing that those schools out there somewhere are in trouble, even as survey after survey shows that they think their own schools are actually dandy.

But D'amato wants to first talk about the history leading up to this alleged crisis. So let's go there with him.

In particular, Americans have forgotten the destructive philosophy upon which the government education apparatus was built. The centerpiece of that philosophy is the fallacy that centralization and monopolization equate to quality and results. 

Much more than any high-minded goal of “leveling the playing field,” early advocates of compulsory schooling sought social cohesion through forced conformity.

I'm picking quotes to get at the heart of his argument; in fairness to him, you should probably go read the whole thing. But his central point is that central planning is at the heart of public education in this country.

Disagreement on the facts, sort of. I agree that US education has often been extremely interested in homogenizing the citizenry with some, if not forced, certainly arm twisty conformity. This has not always been an ill-intended goal. Pushing, for example to get "social conformity" around the norm of literacy is not, to my mind, a bad thing. And while characterizing public education as a centrally controlled monolith suits the Libertarian view of their opponents, it doesn't really fit with a loosely connected network of locally-controlled school districts, each responsible primarily to the local voters who elect their controlling board.

Compulsory government schooling—euphemistically called “public education”—was calculated to achieve the goals of cultural and ideological uniformity. Immigrant cultures, languages and religions, perceived as inherently dangerous, were to be suppressed and eventually obliterated.

Disagreement of interpretation and philosophy. There's zero question that US culture has been hostile to immigrant culture, languages and religions. In my own small town, there were briefly schools set up for the Italian immigrants, in part because Italian immigrants who had landed jobs asked the leading employer to help set up an education program that would help their children fit in. D'amato's history of US education ignores the element of opportunity that came from education. When slaveholders wanted to obliterate the culture of Africans, one of their most common methods was to refuse to provide any sort of education that might have made it easier for Africans to find a place in this country or culture. Not sure how that's a better thing.

Classical liberalism, grounded in the ideas of the Enlightenment, had highlighted the common humanity of all people across national divides. Through the 19th century, though, liberalism’s cosmopolitan orientation was increasingly eclipsed by ascendant nationalism, characterized by a focus on, in Dewey’s words, “the realization of the ideal of the national state.” 

Yeah, the 1800's were a rise-of-nationalism kind of time, and clearly that tide is not ebbing any time soon. But I think we disagree about what that has to do with anything.

For D'amato, it connects, via John Dewey, to a progressive dismissal of the free market and limited government.

As historian Michael B. Katz argues, progressive reform efforts are best understood as attempting “to foster modes of social control” in a changing America...

And from there we jump to John King, and his inability understand the awesomeness of homeschooling because homeschooling puts a student outside the reach of government-enforced sameness. Official school remains distrustful of any schooling not certified by "qualified experts."

Difference of philosophy. D'amato says "qualified experts" like it's a bad thing, and yet I'm betting that his families health care and car repair are handled by qualified experts. D'amato became a lawyer by studying at qualified universities and notes that he was "admitted to practice" in Massachusetts and Illinois, presumably by proving that he was a qualified expert, just as he was "certified" to practice some legal specialties. His LinkdIN profile lists his many accomplishments, a method of establishing that he is a qualified expert. My question for him is a frequent question my profession has for many, many reformers-- why exactly is it that teaching is, among all the professions, one that requires no special training or expertise? What is it about teaching, as opposed to doctoring, nursing, lawyering or plumbing, that makes some folks so sure that anyone on the planet is qualified to do it right now, today?

We are in agreement, I think, that schools can too often be too focused on conformity. Some husbands are too focused on controlling their wives' behavior, but I see neither point as an argument for ending either public education or marriage.

But D'amato is ready now to move on to solutions. Here's the thesis:

The dynamism and innovation America’s schools so desperately need cannot come from a failed socialism that promotes more centralization, technocracy and bureaucracy. Rather, genuine solutions will come from the encouragement of competition and the removal of existing barriers to experimentation—that is, from school choice.

School choice can refer to any one of a range of policies designed to promote competition, expanding student options through vouchers, tax-credit scholarships, open enrollment in neighboring public schools, and other similar mechanisms.  

All right. So now we know what he wants to prove. Let's see the argument.

Under these programs, students and resources gravitate toward the schools that get results, measured using uncontroversial criteria on which Americans across partisan and ideological lines agree.

Disagreement of fact, or maybe principle. First, there are no uncontroversial criteria on which everyone can agree, and there never will be, because Americans, for the very reasons D'amato has already suggested, will never agree on what a school is supposed to accomplish. On top of that, many, if not most, of those purposes are impossible to measure. So the idea that there could be cool, clear measurement of results is one I simply don't accept.

But even if I did-- name one sector in any part of the free-ish market that operates that way. Name one product that is sold by simply laying out the clear data on the "results" it gets. There is no such sector. Every single product on the market, from breakfast cereal to automobiles to elected officials, succeeds or fails based on marketing. This is where I trot out Greene's Law-- the free market does not foster superior quality; the free market fosters superior marketing. Students and resources will gravitate toward the schools with the most attractive marketing. Or are located closest to home.

...perhaps most important of all is the basic fact that school choice “gives parents a meaningful way to hold schools accountable for performance.” 

Disagreement of fact and principle and interpretation and philosophy and I think we see entirely different realities here. School choice does not do this. School choice often provides parents with schools whose management team is nowhere nearby and does not respond to them at all. Choice provides parents with just one tool-- withdrawing the child. And that tool cannot be easily or lightly exercised. It's a simple thing to stop eating at a restaurant you no longer like; it is not a simple thing to yank your child out in the middle of third grade. And because many charter schools operate with next to no transparency, parents often have little information on which to make decisions.

D'amato attaches the "monopoly" label to public schools, but there is no monopoly in the world that has ever operated with a locally-elected board. No local citizen could call up a board member of Standard Oil or Ma Bell and say, "Straighten this out or I will work to get rid of you from the board next election." Local citizens have that coversation with school board members all the time.

But most importantly, choice gives even less power to poor parents. The free market hates poor people because you cannot make money serving poor people because they can't pay you very much. Your only options are A) serve so many poor people that economies of scale are in your favor (see: Wal-Mart) in which case you do best by offering a mediocre product or B) get the government to subsidize the market costs for the poor people so that vendors can make enough money from them, which is how most charter markets currently work and which is, of course, not a free market approach at all.

The goal of public education is to serve every single customer. The free market can't do that. There is not one single product in this country that is sold to every single citizen because that's not how a free market works. But in education, serving every customer is the gig.

Competition and choice motivate teachers and school administrators to serve student interests; ostensibly, for good teachers and administrators, those align perfectly with their own.

Disagreement of fact. The implication here is that teachers and administrators are underperforming because without competitive incentives, they just aren't motivated enough. That borders on insulting, but everything in my experience says it's counterfactual. And the research on merit pay is not promising at all. (Long time readers can enjoy my 1,562,233rd link to Daniel Pink)

School choice is dangerous to the political class precisely because it shifts power and decision-making authority back to the family unit, empowering parents and students over governments, local, state and federal. 

Disagreement of fact. Choice does not shift power to the family unit. It shifts power to the government agencies that oversee the subsidies needed by poorer families, and it most of all shifts power to the charter school operators, who get to choose which customers they serve, how much money they make, when to exit the business, who to hire, what rules to follow (or not) and most of all, which information to withhold from the public so that it doesn't interfere with their branding and marketing.

D'amato wraps up by invoking the holy trinity-- choice, competition, and accountability-- as the antidote to socialism, ignoring the gigantic ocean between those two distant shores. We probably agree that in the last decade or two, socialism has crept much further into that ocean. We disagree that the holy trinity will fix it, not because I hate the trinity because they threaten my political classiness (do I get a membership card? cookies?) but because I don't think they will do any of the things that D'amato claims they will (including reducing government meddling), and I do think they will do other, damaging things. Choice and competition are huge losers, and accountability is necessary, but only helpful if we get it right (which we haven't so far).

I appreciate D'amato laying out this pro-choice argument in clear straightforward terms, providing me with the chance to lay out in similar terms why I think he's mostly wrong. If I were willing to try my readers' patience, we could get into the parts of his argument that even pro-choicers disagree with, but I think this is enough thumb damage for smartphone based readers in one day.

David Coleman Messes Up Again

I have spent entirely much time over the past few years reading about David Coleman, the magical and super-powered wizard who manufactured the Common Core and convinced Bill Gates to become the Core's greatest patron. Coleman needed to set the Core up with a foster parent because as soon as the little tyke's wings had begun to spread, Coleman was out the door to his next gig-- a well-paying gig running the College Board and remaking the infamous SAT test.

And now Renee Dudley at Reuters brings us a detailed account of how badly Coleman screwed up that job.

None of what Dudley reports will come as a surprise to long-time Coleman watchers. The Core architect has several key characteristics that shine through.

First and foremost, Coleman is soaked in hubris. It's not just that he somehow came to believe that he should personally redefine what it means to be an educated person in this country. When you read him in interview after interview, you notice that he never gives credit to anyone. No "I depended heavily on the work of Scholar McWisdom" or "I certainly didn't do this alone. The help of Worky McColleague was invaluable." Interviewers address him as if he wrote the whole damn thing single-handedly, and he doesn't correct them. Coleman believes that he can fix the American education system, K-16, all by himself and eradicate social injustice in the process. He believes he is a Great Man, called to do Great Things.When he says that grown-ups understand that "nobody gives a shit what you think and feel," he means other people-- he's pretty sure his own thoughts and feelings are Pretty Important.

And mind you-- he started down this path when he was a twenty-something consultant who couldn't get a teaching job in New York. Coleman is proud of his lack of qualifications as a sort of humble brag about how, even without formal qualifications, he still knows better than everyone else. After all, Common Core arrived with absolutely no procedure or mechanism for review or revision-- almost as if its creator was certain that not a hair on its head would ever need to be changed.

And so the second thing to remember is that Coleman is not nearly as smart as he thinks he is. There are a mess of features that are just bad education, in particular in the lower grades, where Coleman literally had no idea what the hell he was talking about. The Core demands a particular balance of informational and fiction texts, and that ratio is based on absolutely nothing but Coleman's own preferences. And Coleman's thoughts about teaching literature? As I've said before, if Coleman had been my student teacher, we would have had to have a long talk.

The third thing? At the end of the day, Coleman is also a huckster who wants to sell some product. It'll sell, he's sure, because he's the smartest, rightest guy in the room. But he needs to move some units and make some money.

So it's not surprising that Reuters, which has been working away at the SAT's problems for a while now, would find that Coleman made a hash out of business there.

No surprise that he was so focused on rushing the new SAT so that he could capture that market share Right Now that he ignored the advice of many, many people who told him that his deadline was unrealistic and that he was breaking things trying to meet it.

No surprise that he ignored any kind of bidding process for a critical contract but instead went with a personal contact who shortly had to be fired because they couldn't do the job (again, a warning that he had received from experts within the company).

No surprise that Coleman never seemed conscious of what he didn't know-- how to run a large sprawling commercial organization, the intricacies of standardized test design, test security issues-- but instead just ignored the experts who tried to school him.

One kind of fun surprise buried in the article-- one of the colleges that has made SAT's optional for admissions is tiny Bennington College in Vermont. BC's president is Elizabeth Coleman, David Coleman's mother.

This article is a must-read, a reminder that just because somebody has a high-visibility profile and a high-paying salary in a high-ranking job does not mean that person knows what the hell he is doing. Too bad that his one success has been to con some states into using the SAT as an exit exam. Here's hoping more revelations will help colleges, universities, and state legislatures change their minds about the usefulness of the SAT.

OH: Turn Schools Over To Businessmen

Back in September, Ohio's Governor (and lonely failed Presidential candidate) John Kasich decided to unravel a puzzle-- the mismatch between Ohio's open jobs and unemployed workers.

One might think that a possible answer might be that the hundreds of thousands of blue collar workers whose jobs have been outsourced or robo-sourced do not match up with the new jobs available in the state. But Kasich decided to focus on the idea that schools were not cranking out the kind of meat widgets and cogs required by corporate leaders.

So Kasich sicced his Executive Workforce Board on the problem. The EWB is usually billed as "made up of legislators, business leaders, labor leaders, educators and others." If we break down the actual list of twenty-eight members, we get one governor, four legislators (state and fed), one county commissioner, one union guy (IUOE), one superintendent of a CTO, one emeritus community college president, the Ohio higher ed chancellor, and eighteen business and investment guys. Also, zero representatives of any sort from the K-12 public education system.

The board's recommendations include these four "top" items:

* Establish stronger connections between schools and businesses so that schools produce grads with the skills businesses want
* Fill in the skills gap so that schools produce grads with the skills businesses want
* Build awareness of employment paths that don't involve college so that grads will do a better job of graduating with the skills businesses want
* Rebrand libraries as continuous learning centers so that former grads can go learn about the skills businesses want

Just in case I haven't drawn the pattern out for you clearly enough, here are some other items from the list of forty recommendations from the board:

* Require schools to offer project-based learning
* Require school leaders to "engage" with local business leaders
* Create an "in-demand jobs" week
* Expand business engagement opportunities
* Leverage effective practices
* Create state-level data analytics infrastructure
* Focus on early employability and career readiness
* Foster a statewide learning culture

Yeah, I'm not sure what "early employability" refers to. Maybe bringing back child labor? And that fostering a statewide learning culture-- right on point, folks. I'll bet nobody has ever thought of that, and it will probably revolutionize Ohio education. 

But wait-- there's more. Some of these could be implemented by setting up middle schoolers with local businesses (so, yes to child labor?). And a personal favorite-- why not give businesses and chambers of commerce three seats on every school board in Ohio? Non-voting seats, mind you, but they would be right there, keeping all those elected officials from being distracted by, you know, stuff that voters want, and guaranteeing that the voices of business interest won't be lost in the crowd of educators and teachers and people who know what the hell they're talking about when it comes to running school districts.

Remember-- this is coming from a board that includes just two members who have any connection to education of any kind. 

I get it. We don't do our students any favors by graduating them fully-qualified to repair horse-drawn carriages or manufacture quill pens. And I am a huge fan of vocational-technical education.

But we are here to serve the interests of the students and the community first and foremost. Serving the interests of businesses is way, way down the list, particularly in this age in which business (and Ohio is just loaded with the ghosts of these guys) feels absolutely no loyalty to its workers or the community that it calls home.


I will offer business leaders the same deal I have offered them for years-- I will prepare a student specifically to work at your business if you will guarantee that student a job for life. But to train ten students for a line of work so that business can pick three and discard the other seven, and then five years from now also discard those three in favor of cheaper Chinese labor-- that is an absolute dereliction of duty for the public education system.

My job is to prepare my students to have the life that they want. My job is not to prepare meat widgets to be corporate fodder. The modern business community has proven repeatedly that it doesn't give a rat's rear about the lives of its corporate drones, and that means it's all the more necessary that public education should care.

Contrary to what amoral bloodsuckers like Rex Tillerson assert, public schools are not turning out "products" to be "consumed" by businesses. We turn out human beings, and we are trying to get them ready for life. Work is certainly part of having a life, but it is not the only thing and certainly not the only important thing.

John Kasich, you will be unsurprised to learn, thinks the board's recommendations are excellent and he can't wait to implement every single one. I know that responsible Ohioans who care about public education must get tired of saying, "Stop, no, that's a terrible idea." But it's time to say it again.

John King and the Devils

King was at the Center for American Progress today (a place that has to be a little grey these days, given their history of providing interim employment for all those folks who were supposed to be going to work in the Clinton administration) to issue a clarion call for a better educational future (For The Chidren, of course). But as always, the devil is in details, and there is a mighty swarm of devils hovering around this speech.

Here are the highlights, as presented by the USED release, and the details that bedevil King's pretty words.

For all who believe that strong, equitable public education is central to a healthy democracy and a thriving economy, now is the moment for us to set aside the policy differences that we have let divide us, and move forward together courageously to defend and extend this fundamental American institution,

Says the guy who as New York honcho, charter school boss, and education secretary, has tried to shrink the reach of public education by pushing for charter expansion. Can charters be expanded without damage to public schools? I believe it might be theoretically possible, but not with the literally zero-sum policy that is the norm right now.

And there is the same problem here as with every call to Unity ever issued-- exactly whose "differences" are we going to set aside, and whose vision are we going to unite behind. "Let's unify for the sake of the children," can just be a polite way to say, "Shut up and just go along with me."

As reported by USED, King called "on those who have been on either side of debates over issues including testing, accountability, charter schools, and effective teaching to come together around shared values." But it's hard to forget that this is the same guy who canceled public meetings in New York state because parents and teachers (whom he characterized as "special interests") wanted to disagree, vocally, with him. 

Today we have a choice to make. We can continue to argue amongst ourselves about our disagreements. Or we can work together in pursuit of larger goals.

Again, these are hollow words if King is unwilling to own his contribution to the argument.

 But I am saying that we can reject false dichotomies and disparaging rhetoric. We can stop questioning our natural allies’ intentions and fight side by side for the belief that every student in America has the right to a great public education.

Man, those devil-filled details. Which false dichotomies, exactly? And which natural allies? Because as an advocate for public education, I haven't had a natural ally in the USED for years now, and my natural ally is certainly not someone who thinks that public schools should be pushed aside by charters, nor am I allied with someone who thinks that amateur hour untested generally crappy standards should be pushed into every classroom, and I'm especially not allied with someone who thinks I should be judged by my students' standardized test results.

King runs the list of accomplishments of the last eight years. More graduates. Fewer dropouts. More kids in pre-school. Check. Achievement gaps closing. Mmmmm.... not so sure on that one. More black and Latino college students, and a really diverse group of graduates. Sure. This all conveniently skips the many goals that this administration set for education which were not so successful or admirable-- Common Core, increased data mining, ubiquitous high stakes testing, and test-driven teacher evaluation systems that would drive a system for moving "good" teachers around and driving "bad" ones out.

We must continue to press on, firm in the knowledge that when we pull others up, they do not pull us down. When the light of opportunity shines on those who lack it, it does not dim for those already in its glow.

What pretty words. But in calling for the future, King draws attention to the most devilish detail of all-- he is about to be replaced by someone who has no interest in his legacy or in progressive programs, yet who shares many of this administration's goals. There is a future for US public education, and it's an ugly one, building on the very worst of the previous sixteen years-- but John King is unlikely to be part of it.

Some details will be different, and they won't. We'll have the same feverish pursuit of charters and choice, the same attempts to beat down the teaching profession, the same test-centered approach to schooling, even the same low-key love-that-dares-not-speak-its-name pursuit of Common-like Core-ish standards. But instead of wrapping it in the language of equity and social justice, we'll get it all wrapped up in free market Jesus.

I understand the urge to run around and speak to the issues one last time, but the hardest detail, the unkindest devil of all, is this-- it doesn't make a lick of difference what John King has to say about education at this point.

Checker Finn Admits Defeat

Has a prominent reformster given up. Not quite-- but the PISA and TIMSS results have given Chester Finn pause as well as a moment of perhaps inadvertent admission that twenty-five years of reforminess have been a failure.

I can never quite get myself into the whole podcast thing, but a friend recommended I check out a recent episode of the Fordham Foundation's Gadfly podcast and it was... illuminating.

Not actually Robert Pondiscio

The show actually starts with a quick audioquote of "What Does Gadfly Say," an in-house wacky video that Fordham made a few years back, and, well, it's brave of them to keep bringing it up. But wackiness, or perhaps just mid-level jauntiness, is the tone we're after here. So no super-serious Masters of the Universe or Evil Geniuses, but just the gang hangin' out and talkin' ed policy. The program is hosted by Alyssa Schwenk and Robert Pondiscio, and they start with some introductory banter. Schwenk introduces Pondiscio as the "Adele of education reform" and I don't know what to do with that-- he's actually a talented young British woman? Pondiscio  gets a bonus point for working in "Isn't it pretty to think so," from the end of Hemmingway's The Sun Also Rises. So, we're wacky, but also well-read.

Checker Finn is given a "who needs no introduction" introduction; if you think he does, know that he is one of the Old Guard of reformsterism, long-time cheese-in-chief of Fordham, current VP of the Maryland Board of Education, frequent scolder of Kids These Days, champion of charter marketing, and common core cheerleader. He's also game for the wackiness, noting that his father had a cousin named Adele-- "does that help?"

But now it's time for business, and that means PISA and TIMSS scores. Finn notes that these measures of education achievement have placed the US in the "middle of the pack" for a very long time and that nothing has really changed in the last three years. Minor gains here, minor losses there, but all three agree that there's a bit of a "blind man's elephant effect" with the scores, meaning you can find whatever you want in the data. Finn bottom-lines it-- achievement is essentially flat, and that flatness is confirmed by NAEP, SAT, ACT, etc etc etc. We are flat, stalled. Pondiscio offers "educationally becalmed" and Finn reaches into his bag and comes up with "beset" noting it was once used to indicate a ship that was locked into the ice. So, no ambiguity about the flatness.

(It is somewhere right around here that I realize that Finn's voice reminds me of Peter Schickele. Do with that what you will. )

Pondiscio notes that the results include survey info showing that fifteen-year-olds like science more than they used to and might even like a career there. Finn pooh-poohs that there's a long history of Kids These Days thinking they're doing well when they're not (damn kids with their participation trophies and the rap music and the baggy pants). And Pondiscio asks if it will eventually hurt the US economy if we fail to catch up and I would like to ask, to whom? Where is the nation that is starting to eat our economic lunch because of their superior test-taking skills? Are we not being hurt in part because of other nations' superior Willing To Work for Subsistence Wages in Dangerous Conditions skills, and are those skills measured by the PISA? Finn says that middle of the pack will not be good enough and Pondiscio wants to know if we're running out of time, which I suppose seems like a reasonable question given that reformsters have been chicken littling this for over thirty years, at least since A Nation At Risk warned that we were going to get clobbered Any Day Now.

And here comes Finn's rather startling admission. He notes that it's been a gradual down, so it will probably be a gradual up, a slow slog. And then he says

If you look at the last twenty-five years at all the reforming we've been doing and still see [scores staying] flat and slow slog as the main outcome, it's pretty discouraging.

So then Finn and Pondiscio get into a discussion of how, after twenty-five years of failed reform policies, the reform movement needs to abandon its big failures and consider new directions in education policy, starting with greater dialogue with trained education professionals. Ha! Just kidding. They don't talk about that at all. Having noted that the policies they've pushed and pursued for twenty-five years have not produced the results they hoped for, at all, these guys then move on to discuss other stuff.

That other stuff includes a frank discussion of how their insistence on policies like Common Core have not only failed to produce results, but have also eroded public faith in the institutions of both schools and government, creating a backlash that helped pave the way for a monster like Trump to make "get rid of common core" part of his campaign and ride into office, and they feel bad about that and in the future should be more careful about-- ha!! Kidding again! They have no such discussion.

No, mostly they go on to note that "outsourcing to China" is not the only threat to jobs and lots of jobs are being lost to automation, and next someone says, "So I guess that stuff about having to be more competitive with other countries isn't all that important after all and we need to educate our students to compete with robots!!" and--oh, wait. That was me saying that, rather loudly, at my computer. Finn and Pondiscio just shift into crystal ball mode to consider some future issues.

Do the slightly better TIMSS forecast a better PISA in the future? Pondiscio asks what the forecast is for 2019. Finn glumly notes that the forecast is "flat," because twenty years of experience make it clear that "flat" is the safe call.

Can we steal ideas from the better-scoring PISA countries, like, say, non-tracking? Finn says probably not, because they are different countries. And by the way, Finland did a little worse this time, and China, finally forced to stop cheating quite so baldly on the test, did a lot worse. Finn indulges his personal sense of schadenfreude, and I don't blame him a bit.

Petrilli asks "If you are Trump's ed secretary, do you pay attention to any of this?" My answer is that, obviously, if you are Trump or Trump's secretary of anything, you don't pay attention to facts or data or expertise or anything except your own personal agenda. But Finn says ignore the policy advice (OECD is anti-ESSA and anti-Trump) but use all thermometers available to take education's temperature.

Which would sound like eminently reasonable advice if it weren't coming from people who keep saying. "Well, the data says our reform policies are failing, so let's just keep doing them more." Because when you're hammering on the wrong nail in the wrong spot, the obvious solution is to hammer harder.

I mean, maybe the PISA is one more thermometer, but if you know the temperature and you know it hasn't budged in twenty-five years and you know your stovetop hasn't budged it a bit, what more do you need to know? Taking the temperature is a pointless exercise if you're going to ignore the data that you have collected. There was a time when reformsters could argue that their ideas were new and just being launched and we had to wait a few years to see if they really worked. We waited. We can see. They didn't work. What else do you want to know?

Love and Kindness

This past weekend, my son got married. I took a personal day Friday to help decorate for the reception and the rehearsal dinner. Our wild and crazy bachelor party involved bowling (which we did not very well). Then on Saturday, my son and daughter-in-law were married on the stage of the same community theater in which they met almost a decade ago. Family members who couldn't be there because of health or distance issues watched via facebook live. Then there was food and dancing in the Elks club ballroom.

It was a good wedding, and like the best weddings brought together a wide assortment of people from the couple's life plus aunts, uncles, siblings, nieces, nephews, etc etc etc. There were plenty of people there, and it was good to see everyone.

For those of us who are divorced and remarried, even the most joyful and trouble-free weddings come with a side order of Thoughtful Reflection. For the last couple of years I have periodically posted references to a study on what makes relationships last, and lo and behold, this morning there was another article about the study from two years ago, right there on my facebook feed (h/t Anthony Cody).

Emily Esfahani Smith covered the study for the Atlantic, and the subheading pretty much summarizes the findings -- "Science says lasting relationships come down to—you guessed it—kindness and generosity."

Smith takes us back to the work of John Gottman of the Gottman Institute, an outfit set up to help couples "build and maintain loving, healthy relationships based on scientific studies." So what does some of that science say?

In 1986 Gottman and Robert Levenson (University of Washington) set up "The Love Lab," which was apparently way less sexy than it sounds. One of their big studies involved electrodes and measuring physiological responses. They sorted the couples into "masters" and "disasters" and looked for differences. With disasters, they found that physiological responses, even in simple seemingly harmless conversations, were heightened flight-or-fight mode. Even when discussing simple topics, "having a conversation sitting next to their spouse was, to their bodies, like facing off with a saber-toothed tiger." Masters, on the other hand, stayed calm, as if they felt safe and comfortable.

The masters maintained long, healthy relationships; the disasters' relationships were messy, difficult, unhappy, and often fully broken.

Now, this is worth keeping in mind when it comes to your marriage or primary relationship, but let's think about it in terms of another relationship-- that between teacher and student. Does it not make sense that when a student doesn't feel safe, when even the simplest interaction triggers a physiological flight-or-fight reflex, that student's connection to the teacher and therefor to the material, the school, the classroom, the whole educational experience-- all of those lines are going to be at best intermittently shaky and at worse just plain busted and down.

If a student feels unsafe in the classroom, the relationship with the teacher is broken and everything suffers.

Gottman went on to examine how that safety could be established or broken. What he found was subtle and simple and profound all at once. Gottman saw that couples in the course of a normal day made "bids" each other's attention and connection, at which point their partner could either turn toward them or turn away. Those who turned away became the disasters.

How good is Gottman's science? He can predict with about 94% accuracy what the future holds for a couple, regardless of factors like wealth, children and even sexual orientation.

The number one destructive factor? Contempt. The cold shoulder. The number one relationship healer and strengthener? Kindness.

Again, the implications beyond the realm of marriage seem obvious to me. Students who feel dismissed or ignored will be beaten down. Those who experience kindness and generosity of spirit-- their relationship with school will thrive, and so will they. This also seems like a model for understanding classroom dynamics; as a first grade teacher, my wife must have handled roughly six million "bids" a day from her students, while my high school juniors make fewer, and they're far more subtle.

The older I get, the more certain I am that kindness is hugely important (though I don't think kindness always looks like a warm, fuzzy Care Bear). There is science on my side; mean people really do suck, and they really do have a hard time building good relationships. We seem to have entered a pronounced mean streak as a country; the challenge will be to remember that unkind, ungenerous meanness is not beaten by more of the same.

Here's the rest of my weekend story. Sunday they headed off to her parents' to swap out some wedding paraphernalia, but instead they put their car in a ditch. So instead of heading home to spend a few days off basking in newlyweddedness, they've been staying at my house with nothing much to do but wait on repairs, play with their dog, hang around each other, play games. It has been my privilege to be the father in the house who gets to watch them be their newlyweddy selves. Yeah, they're in love, but being young and in love is easy. What's more heartwarming is to see how kind and generous and thoughtful they are too each other. Kindness really is the nutrient that makes everything else grow strong.

An A-Plus Method of Liberating Money

The Very Conservative Heritage Foundation has posted on Facebook a video with their six suggestions for the first 100 days of Betsy DeVos's attempt to drive the Department of Education into the privatization ditch (they might have phrased it a little differently).

1. Support states as they work to exit Common Core.
2. Call on Congress to pass the A-Plus Act returning power to the states.
3. Reauthorize the D.C. Opportunity Scholarship
4. Cancel the Department of Education guidance on transgender bathrooms.
5. Rescind the Obama Administration’s heavy-handed education regulations.
6. Create Education Savings Accounts for children at Bureau of Indian Education schools.

Some of these are old familiar friends, like getting rid of Common Core (or at least that name for one-size-fits-all bone-headed unproven amateur-created standards), policing student peeing, or maintaining the DC school choice program. There's even the slightly creative idea of using Native American students as lab rats for one more foot-in-the-door voucher program.

But #2 may seem unfamiliar, or like a ghost from the past. It may seem an especially odd thing for anyone to suggest DeVos get behind, because for most of its long, sad life, the A-Plus Act has been pitched as an alternative to No Child Left Behind (in fact, it stands for Academic Partnerships Lead Us to Success Act, not to be confused with other A-Plus acts, because naming legislation is hard). But there are reasons it remains appealing to folks like the Heritage crowd.

That lamprey is mighty uncomfortable

It has been a Heritage Foundation favorite, and they have an expansive history of the act and how it fits in the long storied history of federal government Power Grabbing. The big selling point of the A-Plus Act was the freedom to opt out of No Child Left Behind (at the time, nobody realized that the term "opt out" would be policy garlic to some undead policies). But while "opt out of NCLB" was on the marquee, inside the lobby, more wonky and powerful features were being pitched.

A-Plus was supposed to make decision-making more local, by letting state government decide how to use federal funds and which programs to continue and which to ax. Basically, the act was meant to turn all federal ed support funds into a big stringless bale of money that states could dispose of in whatever manner suited them. This was a gift of money so loose, opaque, and accountability-free that even some reformsters thought it was a bridge too far. Fans pushed back, but the act still languished.

Still, the act shambles on. It was pitched in 2007 at the very moment that Congress was beginning the long re-authorization slog. Then again in 2011. And last year some Congressmen were still trying to attach A-Plus to the ESSA, like a lamprey latched onto the butt of a giant elephant seal.

The purpose of the A-Plus Act has always been pretty clear. It is hard to hoover up all those federal public tax dollars for education when they come attached with all these rules and regulations like "you have to spend this money on helping poor kids read" or "you have to show that you spent that money on actual education stuff." This goes well beyond even the accountability mavens of ed reform-- when your big criticism of public ed is that it's neither transparent nor accountable enough, a program that says "Just throw money at the states and trust that it will land somewhere useful" can't seem like much of an improvement.

The Heritage Foundation smells opportunity. They were excited about welcoming DeVos to USED, and they released a similar action list for her (so she could become a "transformative leader") a few weeks ago. That time they skipped A-Plus and instead proposed the old backpacks full of cash that follow the kids around.

The principle remains the same. Banks are really infringing on our freedom by putting their money in vaults and guarding it; to really let freedom ring, the money should just be set out on the sidewalk. Restaurants limit our freedom by not letting us walk into the kitchen and take whatever food we're hungry for. And governments hogtie our freedom by insisting on all sorts of rules and regulations and proof that the money taxpayers handed over is being used for the purpose for which it was taken. Now is the time to bring back true freedom, because after all, America is only great when a man can reach out and grab whatever he wants without anyone telling him no. That kind of country is not just great-- it is A-Plus!!