Time for another batch of reading. I know I sound like a broken record, but when you read something you like, share it, pass it along, help add to its reach.
How Google Took Over the Classroom
The New York Times takes a close look at how Google took over the classroom-- and what price we all may be paying.
Don't Put Efficiency in School Ahead of Other Goals
Andy Smarick in US News once again applying some thought to consideration of reformy policy ideas.
Attrition in Denver Charter Schools
Jersey Jazzman comes through once again with the data, researched and laid out in clear form. This time it's the Denver charter schools, recently held up as an example of charter "success." Let's see what the secret of their success is, shall we?
The War on Education as Public Good
Wendy Lecker with another great set of insights on the assault on Public Education
We Are Teaching Kids How To Write All Wrong and No Mr Miyagis Rote Lesson Won't Help a Bit
A great response to that piece from the previous week that made all of us who teach writing snap our pencils in half.
Remembering Benjamin Barber
I have a Barber quote sticky-noted to my monitor. Jan Ressenger with a look at why he's important to remember.
Explaining the Persistence of Inadequacy
Jack Schneider and Ethan Hutt take a look at the history of achievement testing, and why we keep doing it even though it doesn't work particularly well.
Eleven Ways Chicago Is the Beating Heart of the Disastrous Charter School Agenda
A good look at how Chicago is, well, the beating heart of the disastrous charter school agenda
99% of Students Handcuffed in School by NYPD Were Black or Hispanic
The headline tells you the bulk of the story, but there are more details in the reporting.
Dear Bethune-Cookman 2017 Grads, Thank You For Telling Betsy Devos “Nah”
There were many responses to Betsy DeVos's ill-considered commencement gig, but this was by far my favorite.
Rich, Clueless Reformsters Whine About Bloggers
All right, not the actual title of Sarah Lahm's piece, but it captures the gist. This is a well-documented look at what sorts of folks are determined to help themselves to money and power in Minnesota, and the masks they wear to do it.
Relay Graduate School, Librarians, and the Effort To Make Our Public Schools "Future Ready"
From Seattle, another look at how charterizing from within can work.
What School Policy Do Conservatives Really Want
Adam Laats runs the awesomely-named I Love You But You're Going To Hell, where he interprets conservatives for those who don't speak the language. But he's also a historian in his day job-- here he is at the History News Network considering if conservatives are really getting what they want under Trump.
Sunday, May 14, 2017
Saturday, May 13, 2017
Progressive: The Trouble with Ranking Schools
For a while now I've been a "Progressive Fellow in Education" (which is different from being, say, a charming fellow in the low brass section) and I write regularly for them as part of a group of twelve education writers. If you aren't reading the Fellows regularly, you should be.
Anyway, I'm going to try to entice you over there by offering the lead to my latest piece, because I think it's important that we all keep our heads on straight every time some new List of Schools comes out. So here we go--
The selection method is a curious one, based on a series of hurdles. First, the school must show that it performed “better than expected” on the Big Standardized Test for its state (e.g. PARCC or SBA). “Better than expected” is based on a statistical model developed to look at genetic trends in cattle. I kid you not. It compares actual test results with an ideal alternative universe. If the real universe student does better than what the model predicts, the model assumes that’s because the teacher and school did something right.The technique has been criticized by statisticians and educators alike, but it remains the first hurdle that a U.S. News Super School must jump. (There is one loophole—all schools that score in the top 10 percent for their state automatically qualify, whether they beat expectations or not.)
You can read the rest of the article here...
Anyway, I'm going to try to entice you over there by offering the lead to my latest piece, because I think it's important that we all keep our heads on straight every time some new List of Schools comes out. So here we go--
Every time U.S. News and World Report issues its Best High School Rankings Index, I think of basketball. Here’s why. If you look at the CBS Sports list of top-ranking high school basketball teams
in Pennsylvania, of the top twelve ranking programs only one is a
public school. The rest include charter schools, Catholic schools, one
private academy, and a Quaker boarding school.
I see two possible explanations for the lack of public schools:
either those private schools know some important secrets about coaching
basketball, or they benefit from being able to recruit and select the
best players for their teams. I’m betting it’s the latter.So when U.S. News announces that charters are marching up the rankings list, it’s pretty important to take a peek at just how those schools are assessed.
The selection method is a curious one, based on a series of hurdles. First, the school must show that it performed “better than expected” on the Big Standardized Test for its state (e.g. PARCC or SBA). “Better than expected” is based on a statistical model developed to look at genetic trends in cattle. I kid you not. It compares actual test results with an ideal alternative universe. If the real universe student does better than what the model predicts, the model assumes that’s because the teacher and school did something right.The technique has been criticized by statisticians and educators alike, but it remains the first hurdle that a U.S. News Super School must jump. (There is one loophole—all schools that score in the top 10 percent for their state automatically qualify, whether they beat expectations or not.)
You can read the rest of the article here...
(Not) A New Conversation
Phyllis Lockett took to Huffington Post last week to call for a New Conversation, which-- okay, can we stop calling for new conversations? Because they're hardly ever new and often they are barely conversations, and we have had many of these calls and maybe we should just finish one of our old conversations instead of dropping them to start new ones like an easily-distracted party guest.
Lockett is listed as a CEO without indicating "of what," a piece of fairly critical information in this context. Lockett used to be CEO of New Schools for Chicago, which used to be Renaissance, a private turnaround charter school investment launch group. As NSFC chief, Lockett was pretty vocal about the awfulness of failing public schools. After NSFC, Lockett has moved on to be CEO of LEAP Innovations. LEAP's mission is to "discover, pilot and scale personalized learning technologies and innovation practices in the classroom." They claim to be a "national hub" for an "ecosystem" of "education innovators, digital entrepreneurs, and thought leaders."
So given that, can we guess what Lockett's "new conversation" is going to look like?
She opens by noting that reform is kind of stale, what with the standards movement and charters being old, and so we need something fresh, because, I guess, we're not so much interested in effectiveness as we are in freshness?
What we really need is a new conversation that begins with what our children want and need and empowers them to pursue their interests. There’s a name for it—personalized learning–and it’s based on the common sense idea that our schools should meet every child where they are and help them get where they want to go.
So, another pitch for personalized learning. Who would have expected that, from a woman who currently earns her living promoting personalized learning. But I support public education and that's where I make my (considerably more modest) living. Maybe she 's just in the field because she really believes it, and she's not just pushing a product. Maybe her argument really is new and not just the same old PL boilerplate. Or maybe by reading her new boilerplate, we can get a sense of what the new sales pitch is going to be. Let's see. Let's move down through her pitch and see if it's made out of valid points.
First, she notes that no two children enter a classroom at the same point, and that teachers have to teach to the middle in their classroom. Half-true-- students do enter at different points, but teachers with a good handle on instructional design can still meet students where those students are.
Next, this:
The personalization of learning allows students to demonstrate competency as soon as they’re ready – and once they do so, let them go on to achieve higher.
Bzzzt. Wrong. The notion that education is simply demonstrating a series of competencies is fundamental to Personalized Learning (I will use capital to distinguish between personalized learning the education idea and Personalized Learning the product for sale), and it is one of PL's fundamental flaws. Demonstrating a series of competencies is not education-- it's training. And it's not even good training, because it breaks down tasks into simple bits and then assumes that a quick assessment task (which may or may not actually reflect the competence it claims to measure) means that competency is now mastered. I earned my "multiply by six" badge last year, so clearly I never need to do any more work on multiplying by six ever again.
Gone are the days when it was enough for students to download information from a textbook into their brains.
Well, those days have been mostly gone for decades, if I understand what she means by "downloading" from a textbook into a brain. Of, course, maybe she just means "reading," in which case, yeah, we still do that. We think there's some utility to it. And all of this begs the question of what, exactly, is different about asking students to download information from a computer screen.
There's a Montessori quote. PL folks like Montessori even though their entire philosophy is anti-Montessori. The quote Pickett uses here is the one about "follow the child, they will show you what they need to do..." but PL's philosophy is "use computer software to tell the child what to do next." It is not child-centered; it is software centered. Do you want to argue that the software is child centered? How can that be-- the software was written by humans, and those humans have never even met the children who are now subject to the software's plans and limitations. There can be no child-centered system that does not take the time to meet the child.
But Pickett will continue on this idea of "let the child lead" which is manifestly not what a PL program does. It lets the software lead.
Of course, students can’t do it alone. They need teachers and mentors to co-design their learning experience so that it covers a range of topics and subject matter. Done well, personalized learning empowers great teachers to make dynamic adjustments based on each student’s skills, curiosity, and goals.
Nope. If the classroom is truly teacher-directed and child-centered, then your PL software is really just a computer bank of resources, which is fine, but don't hand me a hammer and tell me you have now taken a bold new step in architectural design. Pickett is of course being generous here-- many PL advocates believe the teacher's role is basic monitoring, and not anything resembling teaching at all.
Pickett nods to Individualized Education Programs (IEPs) which are a great example of how we can provide everything from a personalized learning experience for students all the way to a series of go-through-motions paperwork for teachers and parents.
Pickett winds up with a one-two punch of "Hey, the world is changing and we must adapt and change, too" leading right into "Shiny pretty future but sometimes the education system doesn't like tobuy my product try new things and I hope this will be different."
Bottom line: Pickett is not offering a conversation. There's no "Let's hear from teachers what they think would be a good idea to pursue or not." And there is nothing new. This is just plain old "We have a new product that we would like you to believe will help educate students, so would you give us some money for it, please."
This is what to watch for when a Personalized Learning advocate comes your way-- not a new conversation about education, but an old sales pitch.
Lockett is listed as a CEO without indicating "of what," a piece of fairly critical information in this context. Lockett used to be CEO of New Schools for Chicago, which used to be Renaissance, a private turnaround charter school investment launch group. As NSFC chief, Lockett was pretty vocal about the awfulness of failing public schools. After NSFC, Lockett has moved on to be CEO of LEAP Innovations. LEAP's mission is to "discover, pilot and scale personalized learning technologies and innovation practices in the classroom." They claim to be a "national hub" for an "ecosystem" of "education innovators, digital entrepreneurs, and thought leaders."
So given that, can we guess what Lockett's "new conversation" is going to look like?
She opens by noting that reform is kind of stale, what with the standards movement and charters being old, and so we need something fresh, because, I guess, we're not so much interested in effectiveness as we are in freshness?
What we really need is a new conversation that begins with what our children want and need and empowers them to pursue their interests. There’s a name for it—personalized learning–and it’s based on the common sense idea that our schools should meet every child where they are and help them get where they want to go.
So, another pitch for personalized learning. Who would have expected that, from a woman who currently earns her living promoting personalized learning. But I support public education and that's where I make my (considerably more modest) living. Maybe she 's just in the field because she really believes it, and she's not just pushing a product. Maybe her argument really is new and not just the same old PL boilerplate. Or maybe by reading her new boilerplate, we can get a sense of what the new sales pitch is going to be. Let's see. Let's move down through her pitch and see if it's made out of valid points.
First, she notes that no two children enter a classroom at the same point, and that teachers have to teach to the middle in their classroom. Half-true-- students do enter at different points, but teachers with a good handle on instructional design can still meet students where those students are.
Next, this:
The personalization of learning allows students to demonstrate competency as soon as they’re ready – and once they do so, let them go on to achieve higher.
Bzzzt. Wrong. The notion that education is simply demonstrating a series of competencies is fundamental to Personalized Learning (I will use capital to distinguish between personalized learning the education idea and Personalized Learning the product for sale), and it is one of PL's fundamental flaws. Demonstrating a series of competencies is not education-- it's training. And it's not even good training, because it breaks down tasks into simple bits and then assumes that a quick assessment task (which may or may not actually reflect the competence it claims to measure) means that competency is now mastered. I earned my "multiply by six" badge last year, so clearly I never need to do any more work on multiplying by six ever again.
Gone are the days when it was enough for students to download information from a textbook into their brains.
Well, those days have been mostly gone for decades, if I understand what she means by "downloading" from a textbook into a brain. Of, course, maybe she just means "reading," in which case, yeah, we still do that. We think there's some utility to it. And all of this begs the question of what, exactly, is different about asking students to download information from a computer screen.
There's a Montessori quote. PL folks like Montessori even though their entire philosophy is anti-Montessori. The quote Pickett uses here is the one about "follow the child, they will show you what they need to do..." but PL's philosophy is "use computer software to tell the child what to do next." It is not child-centered; it is software centered. Do you want to argue that the software is child centered? How can that be-- the software was written by humans, and those humans have never even met the children who are now subject to the software's plans and limitations. There can be no child-centered system that does not take the time to meet the child.
But Pickett will continue on this idea of "let the child lead" which is manifestly not what a PL program does. It lets the software lead.
Of course, students can’t do it alone. They need teachers and mentors to co-design their learning experience so that it covers a range of topics and subject matter. Done well, personalized learning empowers great teachers to make dynamic adjustments based on each student’s skills, curiosity, and goals.
Nope. If the classroom is truly teacher-directed and child-centered, then your PL software is really just a computer bank of resources, which is fine, but don't hand me a hammer and tell me you have now taken a bold new step in architectural design. Pickett is of course being generous here-- many PL advocates believe the teacher's role is basic monitoring, and not anything resembling teaching at all.
Pickett nods to Individualized Education Programs (IEPs) which are a great example of how we can provide everything from a personalized learning experience for students all the way to a series of go-through-motions paperwork for teachers and parents.
Pickett winds up with a one-two punch of "Hey, the world is changing and we must adapt and change, too" leading right into "Shiny pretty future but sometimes the education system doesn't like to
Bottom line: Pickett is not offering a conversation. There's no "Let's hear from teachers what they think would be a good idea to pursue or not." And there is nothing new. This is just plain old "We have a new product that we would like you to believe will help educate students, so would you give us some money for it, please."
This is what to watch for when a Personalized Learning advocate comes your way-- not a new conversation about education, but an old sales pitch.
Friday, May 12, 2017
NC: Millions More for Vouchers
Just found this in the budget. Looks like the plan is to dramatically increase vouchers for private school over the next decade. pic.twitter.com/mTFUITob0u— Sen. Jeff Jackson (@JeffJacksonNC) May 11, 2017
Jeff Jackson is a Democratic senator in North Carolina whose fifteen minutes came in 2015 when he was the only legislator to show up for work on a snow day.
What he "just found" was not really a secret. Back in February, reporters were noting that the GOP legislature was planning to triple voucher money (NC calls them "opportunity scholarships" as in "the opportunity for people to make a ton of money pretending to educate students") from $45 million to $145 million.
The proposed increase is just one more point of contention between the new Democratic governor and the GOP's straight-out-of-the-19th-century legislature. Debate has highlighted some of the standard pro-voucher arguments that we can all expect to be hearing.
Expect, for instance, to hear about the 2002 Supreme Court ruling on Zelman v. Simmons-Harris, the case that found that voucher money going to private religious schools could be okee-dokee. That's good news in North Carolina, where over 90% of voucher money goes to private religious schools.
Expect, also, to hear voucher fans find new and fun ways to wiggle around the accountability issue. North Carolina charters are completely unaccountable to anyone. You'll be glad to now their students do have to take standardized tests kind of like the ones that public school students take-- they just don't have to report the results publicly. Here's an explanation from UNC-Chapel Hill professor Eric Houck on the governor's claim that voucher schools have no accountability:
"Accountability is a big word," Houck said. "If the governor is talking about accountability in the way that the General Assembly has been talking about accountability since the 1980s, he's right. But there are other ways of defining accountability."
So, big words can mean many different things. Right.
While all of that may seem a little fuzzy, one thing is clear-- unless someone derails the GOP budget, voucher schools in North Carolina are about to enter a decades's long Christmas, with an ever-growing gift of taxpayer money coming their way. Public schools? As always, North Carolina's GOP remains committed to making public schools go away as anything but a holding pen for Those People's Children.
Thursday, May 11, 2017
OK: "Let's Deport Students"
There's a lot to unpack in the news from Oklahoma's GOP legislators, but let's just skip straight to the most awful. From this special caucus of conservatives, looking for ways to close a budget hole:
The caucus said there are 82,000 non-English speaking students in the state.
“Identify them and then turn them over to ICE to see if they truly are citizens, and do we really have to educate non-citizens?” [Rep. Mike] Ritze asked.
The caucus thinks that could save $60 million.
What the hell? I mean, what the absolute you-have-got-to-be-freaking-kidding-me hell??!! Let's profile possible undocumented immigrants based strictly on what their primary language is??!!
The rest of their proposal only seems less stupid because the target-non-English-speakers sets the stupid bar so very high. But there's still a lot of stupid here.
The 22-member platform caucus has also decided they can save $328 million by eliminating "all non-essential, non-instructional employees in higher education." So... what? All administration? Can the janitors. Make the students cook and serve their own meals? What exactly do they think this third-of-a-billion dollar unnecessary payroll consists of?
They also want to cut the film tax credit, because encouraging the film industry to take its jobs and money elsewhere is smart financing.
Oh, and swag! No more slapping a government logo on pens to hand out to folks who could, you know, provide their own damn logo-less pens. $39 million savings right there.
The caucus asked the new station not to reveal every detail of their plan because they're still negotiating with legislative leadership. If legislative leadership has any molecule of sense at all, they are negotiating by saying things like "Wouldn't you guys like to go sit in the cornet with these little balls? See how shiny they are?"
If Oklahoma keeps their swag, I might suggest some new slogans like "Oklahoma-- striving to be as ignorant and hateful as North Carolina" or just "Oklahoma-- speak English or get the hell out."
The caucus said there are 82,000 non-English speaking students in the state.
“Identify them and then turn them over to ICE to see if they truly are citizens, and do we really have to educate non-citizens?” [Rep. Mike] Ritze asked.
The caucus thinks that could save $60 million.
 |
| OK: Have you ever noticed that our state looks like a clumsy hatchet? |
What the hell? I mean, what the absolute you-have-got-to-be-freaking-kidding-me hell??!! Let's profile possible undocumented immigrants based strictly on what their primary language is??!!
The rest of their proposal only seems less stupid because the target-non-English-speakers sets the stupid bar so very high. But there's still a lot of stupid here.
The 22-member platform caucus has also decided they can save $328 million by eliminating "all non-essential, non-instructional employees in higher education." So... what? All administration? Can the janitors. Make the students cook and serve their own meals? What exactly do they think this third-of-a-billion dollar unnecessary payroll consists of?
They also want to cut the film tax credit, because encouraging the film industry to take its jobs and money elsewhere is smart financing.
Oh, and swag! No more slapping a government logo on pens to hand out to folks who could, you know, provide their own damn logo-less pens. $39 million savings right there.
The caucus asked the new station not to reveal every detail of their plan because they're still negotiating with legislative leadership. If legislative leadership has any molecule of sense at all, they are negotiating by saying things like "Wouldn't you guys like to go sit in the cornet with these little balls? See how shiny they are?"
If Oklahoma keeps their swag, I might suggest some new slogans like "Oklahoma-- striving to be as ignorant and hateful as North Carolina" or just "Oklahoma-- speak English or get the hell out."
Wednesday, May 10, 2017
SAT Test Preppery
You may recall that one of the awesome parts of David Coleman's shiny new SAT test was going to be how impervious it was to any kind of test prep. Coleman's singular vision (because in Coleman's world, he's the only one with a vision) was a new SAT that would fix inequality in America. Because being able to afford expensive test prep would no longer matter.
Well, okay. Maybe it will matter a little.
After a few years of declaring that your Jedi test prep mind powers won't work on the SAT, the College Board (which is totally a for-profit business and not some sort of service-oriented board of college representatives) has announced that test prep from their business partners at Khan Academy totally works! Totally! As proven by their own in-house self-produced research.
Just a couple of thoughts.
1) In house self-produced research conducted by a business to show how well its product works is... dubious? How about some tobacco institute research showing that smoking is healthy. Also, why did the College Board only "study" the results of their own business partner without looking at any other test prep vendors.
2) Correlation and causation, for the love of God! College Board's research shows a correlation between high scores and using Khan. That's it. Was Khan just part of other strategies employed by the kinds of students who are so desperate to shine on the SAT that they do all the things, and are likely to score well anyway because they are smart, committed, and from the right background.
Here-- look at some of these charts of spurious correlations while I calm down. Meet you in the next paragraph.
Bob Schaeffer (Fairtest) in an email to Valerie Strauss at the Washington Post pretty well captures the dissonance of this moment in SAT history:
The College Board’s admission that SAT coaching can boost scores significantly once again demonstrates the hypocrisy of the testing industry. After six decades of aggressively claiming that SAT prep courses do not have a major impact, the College Board has suddenly reversed its position. Of course, the program they now assert can make a big difference is the only one the College Board partners with. Not surprisingly, they did not study the offerings from any test-prep firm, many of which advertise even larger score gains.
But the College Board has apparently pushed back by reaching out to other media outlets. Today, Famous Pretend Smart Guy Thomas Friedman let fly an eruption of smartitude in the New York Times ostensibly about owning your own future, talking about how we must all be limber and adaptable and flexible in the future, because it's nobody's fault but ours if we're not ready for the future, which somehow led him to this non-sequitor:
Some are up for that: some not; and many want to but don't know how, which is why the College Board has reshaped the PSAT and SAT exams to encourage lifelong learning.
1) You might think that Friedman goobered up by adding "exam" when the T in SAT already means test, but as it turns out, as of 1997, SAT doesn't stand for anything. Make of that whatever you metaphorically wish.
2) How in the name of anything does the SAT encourage lifelong learning?
Here's how Coleman explained the officially sanctioned test preppery to Friedman:
Students who took advantage of their PSAT results to launch their own free personalized improvement practice through Khan Academy advanced dramatically: 20 hours of practice was associated with an average 115-point increase from the PSAT to the SAT-- double the average gain among students who did not... Our aim is to transform the SAT into an invitation for students to own their future."
The language suggests that Friedman concocted the whole piece just so he could plug Coleman's Cash Cow. Because you may own your own future, but the College Board would like you to pay them for a chunk of it. And "own your own future" sounds uncomfortably like the current rhetoric that says, "Your health care, education, safety, housing and general well being are your own problem, so don't come crying to anyone else when they take a bad turn."
Understand-- I am a huge fan of internet-enhanced intelligence. The moment a question pops into my brain, I have pulled up a search and tracked down the answer. But I cannot imagine that living my whole professional or personal life on a foundation of reactive intelligence, of "flexibility" that is really just a tech-enhanced response specific to whatever problem I have been posed-- that can't be good. Particularly when the problem is a standardized test with a shallow measure of isolated tasks. "Own your own future" makes a nice piece of PR fluffery, but it hardly seems like a real description of what the SAT can do. Particularly not if just twenty minutes with a canned prep program, a piece of software that literally teaches to the test, is the secret to doing well.
 |
| Flexibility in viewing tomorrow's self-owned widgets |
After a few years of declaring that your Jedi test prep mind powers won't work on the SAT, the College Board (which is totally a for-profit business and not some sort of service-oriented board of college representatives) has announced that test prep from their business partners at Khan Academy totally works! Totally! As proven by their own in-house self-produced research.
Just a couple of thoughts.
1) In house self-produced research conducted by a business to show how well its product works is... dubious? How about some tobacco institute research showing that smoking is healthy. Also, why did the College Board only "study" the results of their own business partner without looking at any other test prep vendors.
2) Correlation and causation, for the love of God! College Board's research shows a correlation between high scores and using Khan. That's it. Was Khan just part of other strategies employed by the kinds of students who are so desperate to shine on the SAT that they do all the things, and are likely to score well anyway because they are smart, committed, and from the right background.
Here-- look at some of these charts of spurious correlations while I calm down. Meet you in the next paragraph.
Bob Schaeffer (Fairtest) in an email to Valerie Strauss at the Washington Post pretty well captures the dissonance of this moment in SAT history:
The College Board’s admission that SAT coaching can boost scores significantly once again demonstrates the hypocrisy of the testing industry. After six decades of aggressively claiming that SAT prep courses do not have a major impact, the College Board has suddenly reversed its position. Of course, the program they now assert can make a big difference is the only one the College Board partners with. Not surprisingly, they did not study the offerings from any test-prep firm, many of which advertise even larger score gains.
But the College Board has apparently pushed back by reaching out to other media outlets. Today, Famous Pretend Smart Guy Thomas Friedman let fly an eruption of smartitude in the New York Times ostensibly about owning your own future, talking about how we must all be limber and adaptable and flexible in the future, because it's nobody's fault but ours if we're not ready for the future, which somehow led him to this non-sequitor:
Some are up for that: some not; and many want to but don't know how, which is why the College Board has reshaped the PSAT and SAT exams to encourage lifelong learning.
1) You might think that Friedman goobered up by adding "exam" when the T in SAT already means test, but as it turns out, as of 1997, SAT doesn't stand for anything. Make of that whatever you metaphorically wish.
2) How in the name of anything does the SAT encourage lifelong learning?
Here's how Coleman explained the officially sanctioned test preppery to Friedman:
Students who took advantage of their PSAT results to launch their own free personalized improvement practice through Khan Academy advanced dramatically: 20 hours of practice was associated with an average 115-point increase from the PSAT to the SAT-- double the average gain among students who did not... Our aim is to transform the SAT into an invitation for students to own their future."
The language suggests that Friedman concocted the whole piece just so he could plug Coleman's Cash Cow. Because you may own your own future, but the College Board would like you to pay them for a chunk of it. And "own your own future" sounds uncomfortably like the current rhetoric that says, "Your health care, education, safety, housing and general well being are your own problem, so don't come crying to anyone else when they take a bad turn."
Understand-- I am a huge fan of internet-enhanced intelligence. The moment a question pops into my brain, I have pulled up a search and tracked down the answer. But I cannot imagine that living my whole professional or personal life on a foundation of reactive intelligence, of "flexibility" that is really just a tech-enhanced response specific to whatever problem I have been posed-- that can't be good. Particularly when the problem is a standardized test with a shallow measure of isolated tasks. "Own your own future" makes a nice piece of PR fluffery, but it hardly seems like a real description of what the SAT can do. Particularly not if just twenty minutes with a canned prep program, a piece of software that literally teaches to the test, is the secret to doing well.
HUD, Carson and Choice
Slate's Henry Grabar has a great piece today about Ben Carson and his clueless already-disproven theories about low-income housing. The piece is worth a full read on its own, and it has nothing to do with education-- except that it is yet another lesson in how a market actually works, with huge implications for the kind of choice system that Betsy DeVos and Beloved Leader have in mind. So I'm going to give you the quick-and-dirty synopsis of the article, and then I'll make the education connection.
Carson has taken to saying that public housing should not be comfortable. Literally. As was reported in the New York Times:
Compassion, Mr. Carson explained in an interview, means not giving people “a comfortable setting that would make somebody want to say: ‘I’ll just stay here. They will take care of me.’ ”
This, Grabar points out, is ironic because it was the philosophy behind "the nation’s mid-century public housing debacle." Poorly constructed, often segregated, badly managed, and rapidly deteriorating was made unappealing enough that only people who had no other conceivable choice would pick them.
But folks working in the government housing biz realized almost immediately that holding onto higher-income tenants added "to fiscal and social stability." Modern government housing is supposed to be comfortable, because that's how you get a mix of incomes and "socioeconomic integration." Planners now value stability, so getting the tenants to move out is not the goal, Steady churn, it turns out, is not very helpful. Not housing that chases people away, but housing that builds a stable community. And this evolution has involved not just government policy, but the subsidies and investments from non-government actors.
Meanwhile, the costs of living in private housing have climbed steadily for years. The idea of chasing government housing tenants out into public housing doesn't work because in some cities, there is no readily available affordable housing.
Government housing, in short, runs up against the same problem as health care and education-- you can open it to the market, but the market hates losers. The market does not want to provide choices to poor people because it's really hard to make money from poor people. To make money from poor people, you have to provide minimal services-- the bare uncomfortable minimum. The result is not satisfactory for anybody. So when we apply these ideas to health care or education, what we get are a bunch of non-wealthy folks who are blocked out of the market because they have access, but not the financial resources to exercise that access.
If only there were a way to have someone like, say, the government, provide the service to all citizens at a level of quality beyond what the poor could finance for themselves, in part by creating a system that didn't have to make sure that there was enough money left over to create profit. If only there were system that provided education, housing and health care by some principal other than, "If you're poor, you deserve bupkus. If you don't like it, then stop being poor."
If only.
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| The compassionate thing would be NOT to feed the 5000. Go forth and let my people know they're on their own. |
Carson has taken to saying that public housing should not be comfortable. Literally. As was reported in the New York Times:
Compassion, Mr. Carson explained in an interview, means not giving people “a comfortable setting that would make somebody want to say: ‘I’ll just stay here. They will take care of me.’ ”
This, Grabar points out, is ironic because it was the philosophy behind "the nation’s mid-century public housing debacle." Poorly constructed, often segregated, badly managed, and rapidly deteriorating was made unappealing enough that only people who had no other conceivable choice would pick them.
But folks working in the government housing biz realized almost immediately that holding onto higher-income tenants added "to fiscal and social stability." Modern government housing is supposed to be comfortable, because that's how you get a mix of incomes and "socioeconomic integration." Planners now value stability, so getting the tenants to move out is not the goal, Steady churn, it turns out, is not very helpful. Not housing that chases people away, but housing that builds a stable community. And this evolution has involved not just government policy, but the subsidies and investments from non-government actors.
Meanwhile, the costs of living in private housing have climbed steadily for years. The idea of chasing government housing tenants out into public housing doesn't work because in some cities, there is no readily available affordable housing.
Government housing, in short, runs up against the same problem as health care and education-- you can open it to the market, but the market hates losers. The market does not want to provide choices to poor people because it's really hard to make money from poor people. To make money from poor people, you have to provide minimal services-- the bare uncomfortable minimum. The result is not satisfactory for anybody. So when we apply these ideas to health care or education, what we get are a bunch of non-wealthy folks who are blocked out of the market because they have access, but not the financial resources to exercise that access.
If only there were a way to have someone like, say, the government, provide the service to all citizens at a level of quality beyond what the poor could finance for themselves, in part by creating a system that didn't have to make sure that there was enough money left over to create profit. If only there were system that provided education, housing and health care by some principal other than, "If you're poor, you deserve bupkus. If you don't like it, then stop being poor."
If only.
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