Making Students Pledge Test Security

When it comes to the Big Standardized Tests, we know that one thing is important before all else-- not the soundness of the questions or the validity of the test or the value of the scoring or the careful construction of questions that truly measure what they're alleged to measure. No, only one thing matters most--

Protecting the proprietary materials that belong to the test manufacturer.

You may recall that last year there was a tremendous flap over PARCC questions and the leaking thereof. Or the continuing issues with the SAT security, or the complete absence thereof.

This may be in part because test manufacturers hate to be publicly outed for the ridiculously bad nature of their materials. There was the infamous talking pineapple debacle of 2012. Or this year when the actual author of some materials on the BS Test in Texas realized she couldn't answer questions about her own work.

But these incidents are merely embarrassing. The real problem with test security is that when a set of questions become compromised, the test manufacturing company has to make a bunch of new ones, and that costs money.

Bureaucrats and test companies have tried a number of approaches to deal with all this. Pearson got caught spying on student social media and demanding that local administrators punish the students involved in security breaches. And during the PARCC flap, all across the bloggoverse those of us who so much as linked to summaries of the questions were hunted down and slapped.

In Pennsylvania, as in many states, we get "training" for test proctoring that frames the whole gig as "ethical standards of test administration," so that I understand that my highest ethical duty is not to my students nor to the local taxpayers who hire me nor to the state that certifies me professionally-- no, my highest ethical duty is to the company that manufactures the test and demands that I keep their proprietary material secret and safe.

Florida (and Pennsylvania, and Georgia, and several others) also goes after the students themselves, requiring children to sign secrecy pledges. Parents are not always in the loop on this. One recent Florida news report shows the sort of outstanding family talks about school that this prompts--

“When I asked her about her test, she started crying and tells me that she can’t tell me or she’ll be arrested,” Rivera said. “I was shocked.”

That's a ten year old.

The instructions that are read to the student, and which the student must sign off on, include the usual list of non-cheaty things (don't help the student next to you) as well as:

Because all the content in statewide tests is secure, you may not discuss or reveal details about the writing prompt or passages after the test. This includes any kind of electronic communication such as texting, emailing, or posting online, for example, on sites like Facebook, Twitter or Instagram.

The actual document reportedly says only that the child "understands" the rules about security, but of course a ten year old thinks signing an official-looking document is a Big Deal. The document wouldn't stand up for five minutes in a court of law, but a ten year old doesn't know that. On the other hand, I couldn't tell you when exactly Pennsylvania started in with this because my students absolutely don't care. They pledge to maintain test security, and they start talking about the test questions roughly the instant they are able. The worst parts of the test still make it immediately onto social media. It's almost as if these students don't care about the negative financial impact of sharing the company's proprietary information.

Reformsters love to use the talking point of putting students' needs ahead of adult concerns, but this demand that students be subjected to an attempt to intimidate them into silence in order to protect the financial interests of test manufacturers is a prime example of putting adult concerns first. Nobody in state offices is asking, "Gee, is it a good idea to try to bully a ten year old into silence by hinting that she'll go to jail for talking to her mom about the test?"

It's abusive foolishness of the highest order. It's oppressive, Big Brothery, and makes a bizarre statement about what's most important in the whole BS Test universe. More than that, it underlines the uselessness of the BS Test itself-- The only kind of test that needs this super-high level of security is a bad one. Well, that, and a cash cow that folks intend to make a huge profit on. It's one more reminder that opting out is still a great idea. The fact that some folks think this is No Big Deal, that of course we would make children swear to uphold the secrets necessary for a corporation to profit-- that in itself is a sign how completely we've lost sight of what really matters here.

ICYMI: In Like a Lion Edition (3/5)

As always, I recommend that you pass on, tweet, share and otherwise amplify the pieces that speak to you. It matters which voices we amplify and which we do not.

Milwaukee's Voucher Verdict

Milwaukee has been doing vouchers for decades now, which means they're a great place to see exactly how vouchers play out. The answer, courtesy of this in-depth piece by Erin Richards, is not all that well.

School Vouchers-- Welfare for the Rich, Racist and Religious Right

Russ Walsh takes a look at what vouchers are really good for.

Common Core Conversation

If you are interested in the ebb and flow of the Common Core conversation on social media, this is a fascinating site that breaks down the connections and major players in the twitterverse of CCSS discussion.

Pennsylvania Is Wild West of Property Taxes

While I'm not sure that we're the wild west of anything, this is a good look at how Pennsylvania leads the nation in really screwing up the property tax piece of education financing.

Misconceptions about Charter Schools

A nice simple breakdown of some common ideas about charters and why those ideas are wrong.

Three Myths About Reading Levels

Psychology Today published this simple and brutal look at the widely misused and misunderstood business of reading levels.

Four Reasons the Arts Are the Most Important Academic Discipline

Nancy Flanagan makes the case of the arts in education.

Schools of Last Resort

Jennifer Berkshire talks to the only teacher in the LA school board race and how she was turned from a reformer into a public school advocate.

Obedience School

Blue Cereal Education on how we save the system and miss the point.

School Vouchers Are Not a Proven Strategy for Improving Student Achievement

When the economists turn on you, you know your reformy idea is in trouble. The Economic Policy Institute adds to the stack of articles showing that vouchers are a waste of time and money.

Finally, here are a couple of videos to watch.

You'll have to follow the link to watch Diane Ravitch on Tavis Smiley. Enjoy PBS while you still can.

Intelligence Squared sponsored a debate about then proposition that charter schools are overrated.

The Line: Yet Another Not New Voice

Apparently we are in the season of website launches. An outfit called FutureEd has entered the thinky tank and website world with a spirited return to the ed reform greatest hits of yesteryear. Refugees of the Obama education department have launched a website that is... I don't know. Cementing their legacy? Shaping the narrative? Keeping a bunch of out-of-work pols busy?

And then there's The Line.

The Line enters the interwebs with the umpty-gazillionth call for reasonable happy voices in the debate "written by education leaders for education leaders, that endeavors to encourage civil discourse and action around the most challenging issues facing K-12 education. Engagement and thoughtful debate isn’t a choice but an imperative to bettering pubic education. Leaders need a forum for the exchange of ideas and information – they’ll find that at TheLineK12.com. "

Who has gotten a big fat check to make this new, slickly produced call for civil discourse a reality?

John Deasy.

Yes, the John Deasy whose failure as the superintendent of Los Angeles schools was spectacular enough to merit national press attention. Not that his failure there ended his career-- his patron Eli Broad hired him for the Broad Faux Academy of You're A Superintendent Because I Say So. And now the folks at Frontline Education have hired him to editor-in-chief his way through this operation.

The Line promises "an editorial advisory board of diverse backgrounds, politics and opinions" and it is true that the board runs the entire reform gamut from A to B. The group includes Andres Antonio Alonso (Havard GSE), Tommy Chang (Supt. Boston Schools), Charlotte Danielson (yes, that one), William R. Hite (Supt. Philadelphia Schools), Vicki Phillips , (calling herself an "education strategist" these days), Andrew Rotherham (Bellwether Partners), Frederic Hess (American Enterprise Institute), Paul Toner (Exec Dir, Teach Plus MA), and Tom Boasberg (Supt. Denver Schools). There are several Chiefs for Change, several Broad graduates, several consultants, some Harvard GSE grads, and some charter folks.

So what does The Line actually have to say?

Well, Tim Clifford, Frontline's "Visionary Entrepreneur, Executive and Director in Cloud Computing and Big Data Analytics & Research" (according to his linkedIN profile) allows that "It may seem odd that a technology company that espouses efficiency and effectiveness has taken up the cause of civil discourse." But Frontline is more than just a tech company-- it is a "true partner to the education community." They're a little more than that, as I learned to some middling alarm as I researched this piece-- but that's a conversation for another day.

It's good that he sounds so excited because the site strikes a tone that one of my colleagues described as "funereal."  The header photos are dark and empty, and the site is oddly lacking in human faces. I never realized how much I appreciate stock photos of smiling scrubbed children-- this is like wandering through the empty halls of an abandoned building. The tyopic headers are "Charter Schools, Curriculum, ESSA, Federal Policy, Funding, Insights, Professional Development and Solutions." It has a log-in for folks who have registered, though it's not yet apparent what that gets you.

The first batch of articles, beyond the self-referential ones, include an interview with Kaya Henderson, and a letter to the new President, written before we knew who that would be, direct from Deborah Gist, another Chief for Change, prominently featuring the "every child, regardless of zip[ code" line. There are a couple of other pieces as well.

What Does the Shift To a More State Dominant Ed System Loo Like? A three-pronged winner featuring Arne Duncan, Hanna Skandera and Mike Magee CEO of Chiefs for Change-- the chiefs are all over this site). Skandera wants to offer her state of New Mexico as an example of reform success. Magee wants you to know the Chiefs are doing great things. Duncan thinks democracy is fraying because we aren't educating folks well enough.

"Common Ground on School Funding" is a look at different sort of funding issues by way of two Pennsylvania school district superintendents-- Philadelphia and Titusville. Titusville is just up the road from my district, and their superintendent started out as a teacher here, so that was an interesting and surprising read. There's a look at professional development under ESSA focusing on "blended learning."

And the site offers a model of civil discourse by running some notes between John Deasy and Checker Finn (honcho emeritus of Fordham).

The "issue" wraps up with Deasy waxing rhapsodic further on civil discourse in language that, like much of the site, seems as if it's been tied to the rack and interrogated with extreme prejudice. Here's a pull quote, presumably what they consider an exemplar of the site's style:

To bridge divide, I believe we must become more proximate to those we differ with cloaked in the very act of civil discourse.

Sure.

We've wondered for a few years what would happen to reformsters when they approached the autumn of their careers. Apparently at l;east part of the answer is that they get together on websites where they play their greatest hits, like over-aged rock bands traveling the county fair circuit.

Finding the Good Teachers

Modern ed reform has always embraced a binary view of teachers-- there are good ones and bad ones. We should sort them out. Maybe find the good ones so we can give them a nice reward. Find that bad ones so that we can fire them.

The problems with this view are (or at least should be) obvious.

Teaching is a complex multi-faceted web of human relationships. And teachers are human beings, and therefor most of our skill sets are not static state, but plastic and variable under the influence of many variables.

I may be a bad fit for a particular group of students, or the dynamic in the room might be powerfully good. I might have a day, a week, even a year in which I am smoothly, powerfully firing on all cylinders or one in which I am lurching, barely fumbling along on a single stuttering piston. I may be working in a school where everything I could possibly need is at my fingertips, or one where I am thwarted at every turn. Every year, my students emerge from a different moment in history. Every year, I am a few steps further down the path of my own journey.

You know quote from Heraclitus-- "No man ever steps in the same river twice, for it's not the same river and he's not the same man.” That river is a classroom (also, in a classroom, that man is probably a woman, but Heraclitus is a pre-Socratic Greek and as such is not very progressive).

So in a very real sense, trying to separate good teachers from bad is a fool's errand, like taking a 0.5 second sound clip from a recording of an orchestra and using it to evaluate the strength and depth of their entire repertoire.

Every person who ever set foot in a school can talk about the good teachers and the bad teachers that they had for class. The distinction can obviously be made. But that distinction is often made subjectively-- "Mrs. McTeachipants was a great teacher" is usually leaving out the phrase "for me." Could we all agree on what makes, say, an excellent spouse? I doubt it.

I've made all of this argument before, and as far as it goes I stand by it. However, I do not mean to suggest that good and bad teaching is so hopelessly hard to distinguish that we must give up and pretend that all teachers are interchangeable, that we can't distinguish between them in any meaningful way. We know that's not entirely true-- there are teachers out there who are mostly beloved, and others who are mostly not. While we can't reduce good teaching to a simple checklist, there are some broad characteristics that make it more likely that the teacher in question does teaching well.

Know the Material

Better teachers know what the hell they're talking about. This may seem obvious, but it's not. For instance, how many teachers are out there teaching writing even though the last time they did any kind of writing was in a college class. Teachers do a better job when they know their stuff, when they've been studying up constantly throughout their entire adult lives. Teachers do a better job when they are constantly maintaining themselves as experts in their field.

Care about the Students

All teachers can connect with some students, but teachers do their best work when they are able to connect with the broadest possible range of students. Hear them, listen to them, understand them, speak to them in terms that are meaningful for them. View all students, even the obnoxious ones, as valuable, interesting individuals. See them. Hear them. Know enough to see all varied and diverse backgrounds as human and normal. Love your students as they are, and as they best could be. And respect them-- respect them and treat them with all the respect you can.

Be a good colleague

Partner with your fellow teachers in the search for solutions, whether we're talking about solutions for staff management or maintenance of the physical plant. Partner to find solutions to problems that you share. Partner to find ways to approach students and content. Be professional; don't manage the building relationships and conflicts the same way seventh graders manage their lives.

Grow.

I have never known a teacher I really respected who said anything like, "Well, I have this totally locked up and I never need to revisit it again."  Teachers do a better job when all curriculum, all lesson plans, all teaching materials are written in pencil. Every year go back to that same question-- What's the best way I can teach this material to these students?

Follow your passion.

Passion and commitment don't always (or even ever) latch onto the same things for different people. Nor does the expression of passion and commitment look the same for all humans. You do you. But be passionate about something. If you are just going trough the motions, you can expect your students to do the same, and they deserve so much more. When you show them your passionate interest in bonsai trees, you aren't modeling bonsai trees for them-- you're modeling how to be passionate about something.

Be honestly and authentically present, but be a rock, too.

Be honest. Be there. Don't put on a big plastic teacher costume every day. That said, do not bring your personal messes to school and spew them all over the classroom. Honesty and authenticity are hugely important, but changing today's plans because you had a fight with your significant other this morning-- well, one of your jobs is to be the grownup in the room. Do that. You may be the one stable rock, the one dependable anchor in a churning ocean. Be that rock.

Believe that your students are strong, capable, and important.

Then act like you believe it. Give them mountains to climb, then backstop them all the way up the mountainside. Team this up with a generous spirit and you can accomplish a great deal.

Value education and small humans. 

Yeah, this should be obvious, but I'm trying to be thorough. 

About this list

This list is no guarantee. For one thing, all of these look a lot different to different people. For another, as previously mentioned, these are all easier some days than others (and easier with some people than with others). Still, holding onto these values increases the likelihood that you're going to do good work.

From a policy standpoint, however, this list is problematic because pretty much nothing on it is measurable in a standardized data-point method. I'd argue that it's better to have teachers who can do their jobs well than a teacher evaluation system based on qualities chosen primarily because they are measurable.

I'm okay with that. You can bust a gut tying to measure the river and keep generating a batch of meaningless numbers, or you can just put your feet in the river, the new river that reveals itself every day and grow and strengthen in response. That's the relationship with the river that I want.

FutureEd Launches New Website, Old Voice

There's a new education reform website on the scene, another "new voice" representing a new thinky tank, slick and pretty and well-endowed and charter-friendly and made out of smooshed-together words. Welcome FutureEd

Much of the pitch is familiar. FutureEd is "grounded on the belief that every student should be effectively prepared for postsecondary learning and that performance-driven education systems have the potential to greatly improve student achievement." And like all such undertakings, the site is intent on letting us know that they are totally independent and fair and balanced and in no way going to pursue a particular agenda.

A new voice? Sounds mighty familiar to me.

We won't follow a script. Sometimes we'll tak about what everyone else is talking about, and other times we'll address a topic that we feel deserves more attention. Our goal is to give policymakers, practitioners and other change agents research and analysis that helps them navigate a complicated, fast-changing educational landscape. In every case, our work will reflect what research says is best for students, rather than the pursuit of ideological agendas or adult self-interests.

Annnnd of course the use of terms like "change agents" and the nod to the pursuit of adult self-interests mean that FutureEd does, in fact, have a reformy ideological agenda to pursue. But as we've seen before (e.g. Education Post and the74), Rule #1 of pitching your ideological agenda is declaring that you have no ideological agenda. "This is not PR! I'm just laying some unvarnished objective Truth on you!" I have nothing against Believing Stuff-- everyone has to believe something. But when you try to package your point of view as Higher Objective Truth, my BS detector starts to beep. Thinky tanks tend to lean one way or another; just own your tilt.

The director is Thomas Toch, an education policy expert at Georgetown University's McCourt School of Public Policy and contributor to US News, Education Post, and Education Next. He's worked for the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching, the Harvard Graduate School of Education, and Brookings. Editorial Director is Phyllis W. Jordan, a former editor at the LA Times and Washington Post. The advisory board includes folks from Georgetown. NYU, Tulane, Stanford, Harvard GSE and RAND. It seems unlikely that this group is infected with the rampant liberalism rampant on Certain Campuses.

If this all feel a little reformy, take a gander at the list of Senior Fellows, which includes Norman Atkins (Relay GSE), Steve Cantrell (formerly Gates Foundation), Marshall S. Smith (Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching), and Joanne Weiss (formerly New Schools Ventures Fund and Race to the Top apologist).

And then there's the list of funders, which includes the Bezos Family Foundation, the Joyce Foundation, and the Walton Family Foundation. 

So if you think this thinky tank does not have a love of charter schools and other reformy features built into its dna, I would ove to sell you a bridge. 

But hey-- maybe despite all this, FutureEd is not here to beat the charter drum. Let's take a look at some of the articles in its first week's worth of thinkiness. 

Proficiency vs. Growth: Toward a Better Measure

Reformy data wonk Morgan Polkoff makes a wonky case for tweaking the balance betweenperformance (and turning it into a performance index with many score categories) and weighing growth more heavily. This, of course, steps right over the critical question-- if your raw data is coming from a narrow junk test, does it really matter how you massage the numbers? Test-centric accountability is bunk, but we're not going to have that conversation-- just discuss how to rearrange the data deck chairs on the testing Titanic.

In Defense of Common Core and Its Tests

Scott Marion is the president of the National Center for the Improvement of Educational Assessment, a company in the business of doing standards-and-testing consulting for states, and he actually wants to characterize opposition to CCSS and its Big Standardized Test as "letting the perfect be the enemy of the good." Who knows-- maybe FutureEd wants to set a jaunty Slate-style contrarian attitude, but calling Common Core and the BS Tests "the good" requires a deeply committed level of denial. But he promises it will take a series of three posts to lay out his detailed denial.

He thinks the Core have made states more rigorous, and paints it as a necessary outgrowth of NCLB because states set different standards and couldn't be compared. "Once we had a set of common standards, we needed common tests and cut scores," he observes, taking a swift blind leap over a chasm of unexamined assumptions. Were the standards a good idea, and were these particular standards any good? And why do we need common tests and cut scores-- to what purpose? 

Critics (like Betsy DeVos) are "simply wrong" when they claim that CCSS "impinges on local control of public education." The states adopted the standards voluntarily! Also-- "in practice, local control is an illusion," on the theory, apparently, that there aren't that many different textbooks, and teachers mostly just teach out of the book as their curriculum. 

But the Core unleashed textbook creativity (really-- you mean, like slapping "common core ready" on the same old crap?) and unleashed the "collective creativity of educators" to produce great edu-works like EngageNY. Oh-- and the Common Core was "painstakingly developed with input from educators and researchers." 

So Marion is unleashing a bunch of three-year-old half-warmed baloney that has all been debunked repeatedly. I am trying to imagine exactly which audience he can imagine is buying any of this.

Vouchers in Indiana: What the Trump Administration Can Learn

A thinky tank worth its salt must produce Papers and Reports, and FutureEd has them, including this report on the voucher program of Indiana, showing how the whole thing is pretty much a money-wasting bust. Mostly, as other researchers have shown, the vouchers of Indiana have been a windfall for private religious schools and have had almost no effect on moving students out of pubic schools and into private ones. 

Grading the Graders: A Report on Teacher Evaluation Reform in Public Education

Here's another Report, providing an evaluation masquerading as a summation of what's happening in teacher evaluation. This really deserves its own full response, but so you can get a sense of how FutureEd thinks (Toch wrote this report), let me just hit the high-ish points.

Teacher evaluation is going great. Instead of just test numbers, we now throw in some other numbers. And by "going great," we mean that bad teachers are being chased out and focus is on classrooms (where the testing is, anyway) and districts are making "smarter" (aka lowered job security) employment decisions. Toch acknowledges some "challenges" like VAM being junk and 70% of teachers not teaching tested subjects, but these are characterized as "challenges" and not "reasons that a reasonable person would throw the whole thing out." Also, those darn teachers' unions often resist them, even though they can save lots of money. 

Short form: this report packages all the same thing we've been hearing for years, but Toch is far more gifted at writing it up in a way that sounds like he's taking a reasonable middle-way approach. But I don't think he is-- he just talks a better game than many of his predecssors. His conclusions are still the same, and his assumptions are still unquestioned.

Diane Ravitch's Problematic Polemics

The site also features "annotations," a thing that Education Post used to do where we print somebody else's piece and then intersperse responses. As a regular mocker of other people's work, I recognize this as a rather lazy approach. 

But I guess Toch wants to make a point straight out of the gate by taking on Diane Ravitch. Sure, why not. People all over the ed conversation take their shots at Ravitch and sometimes they have a point and sometimes they don't. Me, I don't expect any two humans to agree 100% of the time or be right 100% of the time, and disagreement is good and healthy for everyone. So if you're expecting me to climb up on my high dudgeon because anyone dares to disagree with Ravitch, you'll have to wait for another century.

However, what Toch offers as counter argument tells us plenty about what we're dealing with here.

Toch incorrectly characterizes Ravitch's opposition to "privatization" as an opposition to profit, which in turn allows him to offer the defense that only a few states allow for-profit charters. This is an old word game and extra-disingenuous when it comes a few paragraphs after he characterizes the movement this way:

Reformers have pointed to a lack of incentives to improve in traditional government-run public school systems as a core problem, and they have sought in a variety of ways to create more competitive, performance-driven systems. 

The "incentive" that they feel is lacking is, of course, the chance to put public tax dollars in private pockets. It may not be strictly defined as "profit," but it doesn't change the idea that these modern reformsters believe that education should be a field in which private businesses compete to collect public moneys. That's privatization, and that's what lots of folks oppose.

Toch is also going to trot out the old "charter schools are also public schools-- funded by and accountable to taxpayers." This is only half true. Modern charters are funded with public money, and in some cases have gone to court to avoid having to account to anyone how that money is spent. Nor are they run by an elected board of community members. Charter schools are not accountable to the taxpayers.

When Ravitch points out that no high-performing nation has privatized its schools, Toch replies that the US has not done so (and he suggests that Ravitch implies it has, which she clearly has not). He refers to public schools as government schools. He asserts that opening charters is good for students. He suggests that Ravitch is allied with the teachers unions. He acknowledges that a DeVos/Trump administration may well make accountability even looser. He declares that charters totally don't skim or cream or make themselves marketable only to the right students and certainly don't have things like a got-to-go list. He suggests that since Ravitch disapproves of high turnover in schools that work young teachers 50, 60, 70 hours a week, she must prefer "disengaged teachers working to the clock under collective bargaining contracts."

In short, given a chance to "debate" a leading reform critic on matters of substance and detail, Toch instead chooses to misrepresent her point of view and take shots at the straw men he creates. I am not for a moment suggesting it's not possible to disagree with Ravitch; I've read many folks on many sides of the ed issues do it. But that's not what Toch did. Maybe he's trying to make a point, or maybe he's just trying to create some clickbait by taking a shot at one of the more recognizable names in the field. Maybe he's just trying to punch "up" for the attention. When you're the new gunslinger in town, it's good publicity to go after one of the Big Guns to make a name for yourself.

Bottom line?

Also, there's an infographic that shows that Betsy DeVos is a Republican who gave money to some candidates. Just in case you needed a visual to grok that. 

It feels like we've been here before. Pro-Common Core, pro-testing, gently anti-union, trying to steer a course between the most obvious excesses of hard right ed reform without actually disavowing the many, many education policies with which they actually agree. This is a worthy destination for Walton money and an appropriate employer for some reform-loving academics.

This is definitely not a new voice, or maybe it's just a new-ish voice singing from the same old hymnal. Others have tried to stir up some clicks and attention by being cantankerous, but speaking as someone whose brand is cantankerosity, at the end of the day, if you have nothing of substance to say, the crowd gets bored and moves on. FutureEd will be a fine addition to the same old constellation of well-funded reform-pushing advocacy groups, but other than a fresh logo, it seems unlikely to bring anything new to the education debates. Easily duplicated, easily ignored.

NPR Explains Charter Schools

Claudio Sanchez at NPR decided to kick off March with a charter school explainer, and boy did March come in like a big, fuzzy, lamb. Sanchez decided that the best way to get a fully rounded explanation of charters was to talk to three charter advocates, a journalistic technique akin to interviewing the NRA about guns or the RJ Reynolds company about cigarettes. The resulting piece assures us all that charter schools are pretty awesome with no real down sides at all. Also, guns are basically freedom sticks and cigarettes can help you stay healthy.

Sanchez talked to Ted Kolderie (Education Evolving, and longtime charter law developer), Greg Richmond (National Association of Charter School Authorizers), and Nina Rees (National Alliance form Public [sic] Charter Schools). And together, they hit all the PR points one would expect in a charter puff piece.

Let's follow along with Sanchez'a Q&A format.

What is a charter school?

Kolderie notes that charters create a "two-sector system." One is a traditional centrally managed district, while the charters "are independent, not owned by a central school board." Which is to say, not owned by the taxpayers-- even though taxpayers foot the bill. Charter schools are, among other things, a system by which taxpayers buy a school system, but don't end up owning anything.

He also notes that charters are subject to performance, which is only kind of true in some states that have some accountability rules on paper. But some states have weak rules, and some states, like Betsy DeVos's home state of Michigan, have no real accountability rules at all. In Michigan, for instance, a charter can fail miserably and still expand into new markets.

Rees lists off her favorite features. "A local school district does not tell charters when to open or close their doors, what kind of curriculum to use, what company to contract for food or paper. Charters have the freedom to hire teachers without a union contract."

What are authorizers?

Richmond handles this one. They give the official okee dokee for a school to open and every so often review to see if they're doing their job. They aren't allowed to be for-profit, which doesn't mean they can't be using authorizing as a means of generating a solid revenue stream (like this example from Michigan).

Can teachers start a charter?

Actually, only in one state. Which seems.... wrong.

Charters can be for-profit, right? Because 15% of them are.

Barely a question, but Richmond dances around it by saying that in some places it's legal to hire a for-profit management company to run the school. This is where someone who wasn't there to push charter PR might have mentioned the many ways that non-profit charters can still be highly profitable, like renting the building to yourself or hiring your entire family in various positions or just plain skimming which is easier in the many states where charters are allowed to keep their financial dealings secret. And this would have been a great place to bring up an operation like the Gulen charter chain, which gives every appearance of a giant scam for funneling US tax dollars into a Turkish political movement.

Are charters funded the same way as public schools, with mix of state, local and federal money?

Actually a good question, which Richmond answers "maybe sort of depends." Also, private money figures in as well. In fact, for some charters, like Success Academy, depend on donors a great deal. And that's before we even talk about the hedge fund managers and real estate tycoons who invest in charters in order to get a great return on that investment.

The National Alliance for Public Charter Schools says charters get less money. Is that true?

Yes, an award-winning journalist just asked the head of the National Alliance for Public [sic] Charter Schools if what her organization said is true. I wonder what she's going to say? Will she break down and confess that charters spend way more on administrative costs, or that it depend on who is doing the figuring, or that they pitched themselves in many states by promising that they wouldn't need as much money to do the job? Will she suddenly just say, "No, no-- we were totally lying about that."

Ha. No, she says that it's totally true.

Is she kidding?

Sanchez asks Koldorie is Rees is telling the truth, and Koldorie offers, "Well, I've heard charter advocates say it before." So he's got his doubts, too.

Do charters gets the same amount of federal IDEA money?

Rees goes with "it's complicated because funding is so opaque" which is true, not because, as she suggests, of something about how the district handles money, but because of how charters like to keep their books closed. Not that it would be that hard to figure out, but charters are in no rush to talk about how many poor and special needs students they are including because that information might make some of their less admirable behavior transparently obvious.

Richmond allows as how no federal money flows directly to charters except Bill Clinton Charter Start-up money.

What kind of kids enroll in charter schools and do charters take all comers like traditional public schools?

Cue the song and dance. Rees says that charters have to take all comers, which is in many ways beside the point, because what charters do not have to do is make themselves attractive to all comers. In other words, a wheelchair bound student is totally free to choose this three story charter school that has no ramp or elevator, and they are totally free not to help her get up the front steps.

Koldorie offers an even more audacious answer by redefining "everybody."

Traditional district schools don't take everybody. Superintendents talk as if they do, but they only have to take the children of families who can afford to live in their district. 

Yes-- community schools only take students in their community. 

But can't charters cream and skim?

Rees says that A) charters must accept all comers (but not that they must accommodate them with appropriate programs) and B)50% of charter students are Black and Latino which... well, what's the point there? If there were a non-charter non-PR person in the room, this might be a good place to discuss charters as engines of segregation, but we're not going there today.

Koldorie calls the charter system public and lists all the things they can't do like charge tuition or teach religion. And non-charter non-PR person might have pointed out the charters that are busy doing both.

Are charters held to the same standards as public schools?

Richmond says that there's "great inconsistency" and that we need more oversight and that charter operators don't want it. So there's an honest statement. He also says we know what a good balance of autonomy and accountability looks like, which is not a true statement.

Who's responsible for making sure that "bad" charters are shut down?

Rees says that after three to five years, a charter should show what it's worth and we should totally shut down bad ones. She does not discuss how often that actually happens (spoiler alert: almost never).

Koldorie says that when authorizers blow it, the state has to step in, but charters mostly tank because of mismanagement and financial problems. You know-- the kinds of things you get when you let unqualified amateurs set up schools.

What about cybers?

Richmond gets the final honest word-- they have not done the job and a lot of money is being wasted on not-educating students.

So there you have it.

Nothing about how unregulated charter sectors are leading to fraud and waste. Nothing about how badly designed charter funding drains resources from already-underfunded public schools. Nothing about how a complete lack of transparency leaves taxpayers in the dark about how their money has been spent. Nothing about how outsider-run charters end up leaving the members of a community stripped of all voice or participation, with no recourse for making their voices heard. Nothing about how charters can close up shop in the middle of a school year, leaving students abandoned. And nothing at all about the kind of results charters get for students (and what those results cost the students themselves).

In short, nothing about why any reasonable person would ever be opposed to charter school proliferation. Just the standard claims of charter advocates presented without counterpoint, balance, or fact checking.

Mr. Sanchez, if you ever decide you want to do a companion piece, explaining why some folks believe that charters as currently practiced are a bad idea, contact me-- I know some people I can hook you up with. In the meantime, a little more balance would be nice, and more welcome than just a big fluffy puff piece.

DeVos, HBCU, and Justice

There is just so much to unpack about Betsy DeVos's bonkers attempt to rewrite the story of Historically Black Colleges and Universities into an advertisement for school choice.

They started from the fact that there were too many students in America who did not have equal access to education.

HBCUs are real pioneers when it comes to school choice. They are living proof that when more options are provided to students, they are afforded greater access and greater quality.
 
DeVos has been justly and repeatedly slammed for this. See also here. Or especially this Slate piece.

The statement is wrong on so many levels. She tried some damage control later, but that was not much of an improvement:

“Bucking that status quo, and providing an alternative option to students denied the right to attend a quality school is the legacy of HBCUs,” she said, according to prepared remarks released by her office. “But your history was born, not out of mere choice, but out of necessity, in the face of racism, and in the aftermath of the Civil War.”

She chalked the HBCU story up to structural changes, but since she is personally as rich as all HBCUs put together, that rings a little hollow. And there's a huge irony in that vouchers and charters became popular in the South as a means of escaping the collapse of Jim Crow laws.

But I want to focus on one other aspect of this revelatory mess-- what it says about DeVos's "solution" for a twisted system, a system that is formally and deliberately unjust.

What DeVos could have said was something along the lines of, "HBCUs never should have had to happen. Those of us who had the power should never have made them necessary, and we should have torn down Jim Crow laws and the other barriers that prevented Black Americans from claiming the educations and lives to which they were entitled. HBCUs made the best of an unjust situation that should never have been allowed to stand."

Instead, she came up with something along the lines of, "Well, see? Y'all just solved the problem on your own, just like we've been telling you you could, and we didn't need to lift a finger."

Who needs to pursue justice when you can market choice instead?

Who needs to address the systemic and deliberately underfunding of schools that serve non-white non-wealthy communities, when you can just market choice instead?

If black folks show a little grit and get a charter or two, we don't have to even talk about the real problem at all.

DeVos has accidentally underlined the other problem with choice. Problem number one, discussed at length both here and elsewhere, is that choice doesn't solve any of the problems that its fans claim it solves. But problem number two, in many ways more stealthy and more destructive, is that implementing choice lets some folks pretend that they no longer have to address any of the systemic issues in public systems.

Is a major urban system screwing over its poor communities (say, perhaps, Chicago)? That's okay-- there are a couple of charter schools in place which students have "access" to (and which a handful of students will actually get to attend), so we don't have to talk about the larger problems any more! Hooray!