Choice and the Un-opened Door

There are so many criticisms and counter-criticisms that swirl around the issue of choice and charters in the Great Unending Education Debate, but there are some criticisms of choice that have never been answered, because they can't be.

It's not all the surprising that Betsy DeVos came up stumped by IDEA at her hearing-- charter-choice systems don't spend a lot of energy, effort or (most importantly) money on students with special needs. This is not news-- we were talking about it back in, say, 2012, when Nina Rees president of the National Alliance for Public Charter Schools, "said she'd like to provide schools with more assistance on special education, but said she believed the lower rates were mostly the result of parental choice."

If they're not selecting charter schools it's a reflection of where parents decide to send their kids and not so much a reflection on charter schools, in my opinion.

Please. It is exactly a reflection on charter schools. Imagine making this same argument about segregated lunch counters. "Hey, if black folks don't choose to come in here just because we won't serve them, well, then, they're just exercising their freedom of choice!"

No business sets out to attract and serve all customers. The most fundamental part of a business plan is to know what your target audience is, and then aim at them while ignoring all others. You can't open the door to everyone, and you can't be welcoming to everyone. McDonalds is unwelcoming to fancy people in search of fine dining. Lexus dealerships do not open their doors wide to poor folks looking for a beater.

And charter schools are not open to all comers. Saying, "Well, that customer didn't choose" is a pile of baloney when you made no attempt to be chosen, or made efforts to make sure that customer did NOT choose you.

It doesn't change this to talk about "access" or "opportunity." Black folks had "access" to the doors to segregated businesses, and they had the "opportunity" to walk through those doors before they were shoved back out of them. Every customer has the opportunity to buy a Lexus-- but plenty don't have the money. Every passenger on the Titanic had access to a life boat, but only some could actually be saved.

Nor do charters have to worry about what becomes of the customers who choose not to enter a school where they're unwelcome. Did that student who walked away from us find a school that would serve their needs and make them feel welcome? Who knows? We are not responsible for other peoples' customers.

The promise of public education is that every child or every ability level and family background will be welcomed into a school where they will be given a great education. The door must be open to everyone, and once through that door, they should all be welcomed. The idea of a charter-choice system that does not keep the door open for everyone runs counter to the promise of public education.

PA: Another Attack on Unions

It's an idea that crops up from time to time, unique in that there isn't really any camouflage for it-- it just baldly attempts to make life more difficult for unions.

This time it's coming up in Pennsylvania under one of its common names-- "Paycheck Protection."

This bill pops up in Pennsylvania roughly as often as Punxsutawney Phil, and the rationale is as simple as it is transparent. Here's the bills favorite boosters, the free market think tank Commonwealth Foundation, being excited that the bill is up and rooting around again:

Since 2007, government union leaders in Pennsylvania have spent more than $95 million on politics—both from members’ mandatory union dues and voluntary campaign contributions—and taxpayers have been forced to help them do it.

That is mostly lies.

Union leaders have spent a bunch of money in Harrisburg, but it's illegal for them to spend member dues money on political stuff. That's why PSEA, for example, has a whole separate category for member giving for political action (PACE), and a teacher's money doesn't go to PACE unless they sign up to do so. The argument that unions spend dues money on political activity, from Friedrichs to this new bill, is that everything a union does is political. If they spend dues money on negotiating a contract-- well, negotiating the contract is political. Putting an ad in the school's yearbook is political. Virtually everything a union does outside of retirement teas and new teacher welcomes is branded political by folks who believe that teachers should most properly shut up and do as they're told and never, ever get involved in life outside their classrooms.

But even GOP pushers of these don't always have the cojones to just come out and say, "Lot's of teachers give money to the Democrats and we want to stop that. We want to starve the Democratic Party as just one more way to take total control of state government."

So we have to throw in that second point-- that taxpayers are somehow being charged tons of money for automatic deductions from paychecks. The clearest sign that this is simply baloney is that this complaint never comes up in regard to taxes or social security or the United Way or all the other things that are automatically deducted from paychecks.

But automatic deductions make paying your union dues easy, and opponents want to make paying dues hard (just like they try to make voting Democrat hard) so that some smaller number of people will do it.

One bill (SB 166) was sponsored by State Senator John Eichelberger, the same guy who also recently sponsored the bill to make it easier to strip teachers of sick days.

But also emerging from the Senate Government Committee this week was a bill from Senator Scott Wagner (SB 167) that simply seeks to make automatically deducting union dues illegal for public employees.

Wagner is not particularly shy about his hatred for unions of any sort-- this will be good to remember as he launches his bid for governor on a platform of "liberals suck and government should be shrunk to the size of a pea." Here's what he had to say about his bill

“Paycheck protection has been a top priority for me since coming to the Senate in 2014,” said Wagner. “Taxpayer money is being used to collect dues and PAC contributions for public sector unions. The unions then use that money to lobby against major issues like pension reform and the elimination of property taxes, both of which are taking a toll on the Commonwealth and its taxpayers.”

“Opponents argue the cost to taxpayers is minimal,” continued Wagner. “But cost has never been my focus. These unions are getting away with an activity that would send anyone else to jail – using taxpayer resources for political purposes.”

Got that? He doesn't care about the cost, except that it gives him an angle by which to attack the unions. By this argument, of course, teachers should only be able to get involved in political activities if they work for free and are never paid with tax dollars.

SB 167 is extra special because it actually proposes a constitutional amendment, so that we can really establish Pennsylvania as a union-hostile state.That also means that it would have to be approved in two consecutive sessions.

So if you're a teacher in Pennsylvania who has been getting lots of exercise trying to contact Pat Toomey about Betsy DeVos, you'll  want to keep those dialing and writing muscles warmed up, because our elected officials are going to need to hear from us again.

Chiefs' New Hilarious Practical Joke

I am about 72% certain that this is a practical joke, right down to this stock photo:

"Seriously, dude?"

That photo is on the top of a Chiefs for Change news item for the new Student Growth Simulator. 

A new web-based tool will offer far greater ease and clarity for state and district leaders seeking to set learning goals and measure progress under the sweeping Every Student Succeeds Act.

The Chiefs for Change, you may recall, was part of the Jeb Bush Edu-reform Complex, and was going to be a group of the very reformiest education chiefs in the country, helping to sweep Jeb to power. Things haven't quite worked out (though Chief Hanna Skandera does seem poised to sweep into DC as part of an ed department that doesn't look too much different from the one that President Bush III would have installed), and it turns out that Hot Ed Reformster Celebrities don't have a very long shelf life (how's Chris Barbic doing these days, anyway?) and the whole Chiefs thing has been losing steam, even going so far as to let people into the club who aren't even actual chiefs!

So, anyway-- since the Simulatoir is web-based, I thought I'd see if i could use it-- and it turns out that anyone can. Which is cool, because this thing was developed by Chiefs for Change, researchers at the Johns Hopkins School of Education, and Tembo, an education technology firm.

I'll put some screen shots further down the page so you know i'm not making this up, but let me describe how it works. First, you enter the name of your indicator (I went with "BS Test") and your target year. then you tell it what percentage of students fall into which ethnic groups, and how those groups previously scored on your indicator. Then you do the same for subgroups like low-income and ELL students.

Once you have done this, the simulator tells you what your gaps are between the lower scores and teh highest score. So if you plug in a score of 95 for one group, and that's your highest score, and another group gets a score of 75, the Simulator will tell you that there's a difference of 20 between them. Is that amazing or what?!!

Then you can pick two subgroups and enter target scores for them-- and the simulator will tell yo the difference between the current score and the target score! It will also tell you the gap between the two groups now and the gap that will be between them if they hit their targets. But it's not all subtraction-- once it has your total school score, it can take the number you give for, say, low-income students and tell you what the average score for non-low-income students must have been. So, division, too (in case you can't, you know, just read the numbers off your test results printout).

Thank God they brought Johns Hopkins in on this, because otherwise school districts would have been forced to struggle with How To Perform Math.

Then the simulator fills in a bunch of growth targets for the rest of your subgroups, based on, I guess, the assumption that if you want your white students to grow by 15, you must want your Asian students to grow by 11.5, because reasons.

Who the heck is the target for this? School district administrators who can't do basic math? People who like charts and graphs (it has both)?

“Education leaders agree on the vital importance of setting clear goals for student learning, and paying close attention to progress, but tools haven’t kept up with the task,” said Mike Magee, CEO of Chiefs for Change. “Our Chiefs have found that the Student Growth Simulator really helps in the effort to set goals that will improve outcomes and close gaps. We are glad to make it publicly available for the benefit of all education leaders planning for implementation of the new education law.”

Just to be clear-- the "setting goals" part is done arbitrarily by the person filling in the chart for some groups, and then computed based on unstated and unsupported for the rest of the groups. Fill in your numbers, make up some numbers, the simulator performs some subtraction, makes up some other numbers, runs a little division too, and you get a chart that is supposed to-- seriously, I'm stumped. You use this if you are a superintendent serving a school board composed of dopes?

Let me show you some screen shots, just so you don't think I'm making this up:

The highlighted numbers are the ones that the simulator fills in

 

The simulator provided the Target Results

And now we'll fill in the targets for everyone else

And if you would rather have the information as a charter-- I can't fit the color code in this shot, but you get the idea of how the simulator cleverly figures your gap-reduction goals

Now it's possible that there are layers of deep complexity here that I'm just too dopey to get, but I'm pretty sure that nothing's being done here that couldn't be handled by a couple of seventh graders with a $5.00 calculator and a ruler. If I'm wrong, feel free to enlighten me in the comments.

Nevada's Voucher Fail

Back in 2015, Nevada decided to go all-in on vouchers, establishing the voucheriest of voucher programs-- the education savings account. With ESA's the state just hands every parent a check or a debit card (in Nevada's case, $5,700 for poor families and $5,100 for not-so-poor families) and families can spend that money on private school tuition, tutors, homeschool supplies, a case of Lisa Frank trapper-keepers-- whatever trips their educational triggers.

An ESA system is supposed to unleash the magical power of the free market and therefor cause All The Excellence to come busting out of a robusting out charter school sector. The sponsor of the bill, Senator Scott Hammond, was quoted in the Washington Post laying out his simple theory of action:

Nothing works better than competition. 

Let me quote from my own response at the time.

There are so many ways in which competition does not belong in public education. Building is a better metaphor than racing. Competition doesn't even foster traditional conservative values. The free market often resists quality rather than fostering it. The market doesn't know what to do with "losers." Charter school competition does not create pressure for excellence. Market competition creates perverse incentives to game the system, and tends to put the wrong people in charge. Choice twists the product in an involuntary market. Voucher system disenfranchise the taxpayers, literally creating taxation without representation and pitting taxpayers against parents. The whole inefficient system depends on lies and fantasies for financing. And if you think competition fosters excellence, just go take a look at your cable tv. Or take a look at how it has worked out in the college market. Finally, don't forget that time that Dr. Raymond of CREDO (charter and choice fans par excellence) declared that the free market doesn't work in education.


I suggested there were at least five reasons that the program was doomed. But the Las Vegas Sun has been taking a look at how things have been working out. So maybe it turns out I was wrong, and the Nevada ESA program has actually been working awesomely.


The program has proven to be hugely popular with wealthy and upper-middle-class families. Poor families-- not so much. In the suburbs, the Sun reports, applications for the program are running one out of every 100 students; in the inner city, it's one out of every 1000.


There are many possible explanations. The Sun notes there are few-to-none high-rated schools in poor areas, meaning those students would face a transportation issue. But of course there would also be a Getting The School To Accept Your Child issue as well-- particularly since private and charter school tuition generally runs well above that $5,7000 voucher. The Sun also notes that "it could be true that there simply hasn’t been enough outreach by the state in low-income neighborhoods." Almost as if getting poor kids into upscale schools is not the real objective of the program.

Treasurer Dan Schwartz, a conservative acolyte in the cult of the free market, says that we should all ignore the business about class in the use of the ESAa:

“This is not an issue of rich or poor,” he said in a statement. “This is about empowering thousands of Nevada families who are trapped in mediocrity as Nevada struggles with a K-12 education system that is ranked 51st in the nation.”

Which would make a lot more sense if Nevada hadn't gone with a system that empowers ALL parents to bank some tax dollars whether they are "trapped" in a bad school or not. And, as the Sun reports, the majority of ESA applicants live within walking distance of the highest-ranked schools in the state.

The program has hit some snags here and there. Most notably, the courts told the state that it couldn't finance the program with tax dollars meant to finance public education. This cuts to the heart of an ESA program-- the way these are supposed to work is the state hands you your 'cut" of the education tax dollars and says, "Go get yourself an education somehow and don't ever bother us about education stuff ever again." Nevada is still working on it.

In the meantime, if Nevada really wants to get out of 51st place, their leaders might consider focusing on how to actually help schools be better instead of trying to figure out ways that education tax dollars can be used to enrich businesses and absolve the state of any responsibility for its school system.

Free market fans were excited about this system. Nevada was going to be a proof-of-concept case, and folks like the Fordham Foundation and Jeb Bush's FEE were positively giddy with the prospects. But so far all Nevada has to show is a system that takes from the taxpayer, gives to the rich, and leaves the poor stuck right where they've always been, all while making no attempt to actually improve their education system at all. Call this voucher program a big fat fail.

ICYMI: Some Game Today Edition (2/5)

Is there some sort of sporting event going on today? I've heard rumors, and I may find it in me later to care. But in the meantime, here's some readings for the day. And remember-- there's still time to bother your senator about the upcoming DeVos vote.

American Schools are Still Segregated. These Parents Are Making It Worse.

There are some complicated issues here. This piece takes a fairly balanced look at the challenges.

Past, Future and Present

A raw and honest look at some of the personal challenges of being a teacher.


Bigger Than Sputnik

The first of two pieces proposing that the DeVos nomination is sort of good news.

I Love Betsy DeVos 

This would be the second one. I don't think this argument is wrong.

It's Not All About the Kids

It's okay to stand up for the institution and the people who work there.

Ten Reasons to Confirm Betsy DeVos

Rob Miller keeps writing pieces that I wish I'd written myself.

Pennsylvania: No Property Tax for the Rich, the Poor Still pay

In Pennsylvania we're looking at a way to get rid of property taxes for funding schools. It is not good news unless you are rich or a corporation.
 
Beyond Grades How Are We Doing

Russ Walsh continues his series about moving beyond traditional grades.

Masquerading as Recess

Nancy Bailey looks at the many activities proposed as ways to hide the denial of recess to children

DeVos on SNL

So Melissa McCarthy did a Spicer press briefing last night, and it included an appearance by Betsy DeVos. It was pretty hilarious, and I present it to you here (just in case you've missed it) but I have mixed feelings.

On the one hand, when was the last time that an education issue garnered enough widespread mainstream attention to rate some jokes on a comedy show like SNL? It's heartening to know that the American public is sort of paying attention to education for at least fifteen minutes.

On the other hand, SNL-- as they did with KellyAnne Conway and, for that matter, Trump himself when they let him host-- makes DeVos look soft and harmless, just a vulnerable out-of-her-depths boob, which seriously underplays both her shark-like tendencies and the real, deliberate danger she poses to public education.

At any rate, here we go:

NOLA Charters and Bloated Bureaucracy

Remember how the charter school industry was going to be a lean, mean, educatin' machine. That is repeatedly turning out to be not particularly true.

Take this recent study from New Orleans, home of the charter industry's greatest opportunity, the hurricane-fueled chance to set up a chartertastic free-for-all. The ways in which this is failing are legion and oft-reported. For the moment we're just going to focus on this singular failure.

From a report on the study published by The Lens, a NOLA news site:

Overall, New Orleans schools — the vast majority of which are charters — spent $1,358 more per pupil on operating expenses, or 13 percent, than a control group in the 2013-14 school year.

Administrative spending increased $699 per student, or 66 percent, compared to the control group. Meanwhile, instructional spending dropped by $706 per student, or about 10 percent.

In other words, taxpayers are paying for far more administration in their schools than they would have been had the district stayed on centralized, single district.

This is not a shock. If you are having trouble making ends meet with one home, you don't fix the problem by buying a second one. And you can't operate several schools with hte money you previously used to operate just one. And if you like this idea couched in proper econo-talk, try this quote from Christian Buerger of the Education Research Alliance

If you decentralize an entire district, there’s a loss in economies of scale. And the study found that despite claims that charters would cut through all the red tape, they spent far more on red tapery. Charters are also fond of hiring contractors for various tasks, another not-very-cost-effective method of operating.

And that's before we even get to the specific issue of what these new layers of fat, happy administrators are being paid. The examples in charterdom are legion. Eva Moskowitz is paid more to run her NYC charter chain than the head of the entire NYC public school system is paid. Just today this week, we get this story from Los Angeles wherein the head of a small charter chain is paid more than the chief of the entire Los Angeles public school system. In a charter choice system, we routinely take one well-paid school superintendent and add several more even-better-paid school chiefs. With a charter choice system, you get more administrators, and they are often paid more. It's like replacing your Yugo with a fleet of Lexus.

This is neither lean nor mean, but it's attractively profitable if you're thinking of starting your own charter school.