Betsy DeVos Is Rethinking

Education Secretary Betsy DeVos kicked off her Rethinking Schools tour with some talking at the Woods Learning Center in Casper, Wyoming. It was a lot of talking for DeVos, so we're fortunate that the department wrote it all down. But as far as rethinking goes, it appears that there's no "re" going on here unless it's rehearsing and rehashing.

Here are some of the Most Special Moments from her remarks:

Her Job

That's because my job is to work every day to help make all schools better for all students across the country.

Sigh. Then perhaps stop suggesting that public schools suck and should go curl up and die somewhere, dead ends that they are.

Her Exceptional Bad Analogy Skills

Arne Duncan could say the greatest things that sounded good if you ignored their complete disconnection from reality. He also occasionally said exactly what he meant, which created its own set of problems. DeVos's speaking arsenal seems to include bad analogies. She starts this speech off with a doozy.

The great West has always been a symbol of American courage, strength and potential. When settlers—perhaps some of your ancestors—dared to grow families and build communities here, abundant naysayers warned: The air is too dry. The land is too rocky. The resources are too scarce. It can't be done, they said.

How wrong were they, though?

Those early determined settlers of the west had something the cynics didn't: American grit.
They expanded America because they had the courage and audacity to rethink what America was and reimagine what it could be.

Where to begin? First, DeVos apparently never played that pioneering personalized education game, Oregon Trail, or she would know that what those brave pioneers often did was die (particularly from dysentery, apparently). So how wrong were the naysayers? Not entirely wrong-- and the pioneers who succeeded were the ones who listened to the warnings and planned accordingly. "Never mind the salt pork, Betsy! Just pack the grit!" said no wise pioneer ever. "We'll live on grit" sounds about as good as "We'll live on love."

Plus-- and I feel that this is kind of critical miss for someone whose record on People Who Aren't White is not great-- the West was not exactly empty when those determined settlers showed up. In addition to a lot of dying, westward expansion included a lot of killing. It involved a lot of folks (and their government) saying, "Well, you folks may already be here, and you may have forged a successful relationship with the land over the past 100 years, but we want the land you're using, so we're going to take it from you because we're better than you are and we deserve it."

Okay, so maybe this is a good analogy for charter development.

The Same Old Same Old

One of DeVos's major themes has certainly emerged-- school's haven't changed for a long time.

For far too many kids, this year's first day back to school looks and feels a lot like last year's first day back to school. And the year before that. And the generation before that. And the generation before that!

That means your parent's parent's parents!

Most students are starting a new school year that is all too familiar. Desks lined up in rows. Their teacher standing in front of the room, framed by a blackboard. They dive into a curriculum written for the "average" student. They follow the same schedule, the same routine—just waiting to be saved by the bell.

This is quite an insight for someone who has almost never set foot in a public school.

First of all, it's just dumb wrong. Come to my school. Try to find a chalkboard. They're still mostly there-- behind the Smartboards. To repeat the claim that schools have not changed in a century is just historically illiterate. 100 years ago, hardly anybody graduated, minorities (by which I mean groups like Italians) had to start their own separate schools. The sheer volume of things to be taught were vastly smaller. It is the kind of claim that I can't believe anyone actually believes even as it's coming out of their mouths.

Second of all, yes, there are some superficial, institutional features that have stayed fairly static through history, for the same reason that we still drive on the left and men wear pants with zippers in the front-- because time and wide-scale testing have shown that they work.

Someone Has Hired a Speechwriter

It's a mundane malaise that dampens dreams, dims horizons, and denies futures.

And that speechwriter has their eye on the Spiro Agnew prize.

Wait Just a Damn Second!

And like those western settlers, anyone who dares to suggest schools ought to do better by their students is warned off: It's too hard. It'll take too long. There's not enough money. It can't be done.

Oh, come on! Those are not the words of public education defenders-- that's reformster talk!! It's reformsters who have said we can't wait for public schools to improve, which is impossible anyway and besides, we can't spend any more money on it. Those four lines are classic reformster justification for charters and vouchers and anything except trying to improve public schools! It's like a Nazi rally where a speaker says, "And our opponents have the balls to claim there's some sort of Jewish conspiracy! What's wrong with those people!!"

Institutions Are Bad

Today, there is a whole industry of naysayers who loudly defend something they like to call the education "system."

What's an education "system"?

There is no such thing! Are you a system? No, you're individual students, parents and teachers.

This is a standard DeVosianism-- institutions are terrible and individuals must be the focus. Depending on your level of cynicism, you can read this one of several ways:

1) DeVos has been rich and privileged her whole life and has no idea that some people in this world have neither the power, access or resources to get themselves what they deserve.

2) DeVos believes that government institutions interfere with God's righteous sorting of the deserving and the undeserving, so institutions should get out of the way and let people get what they deserve-- and no more.

3) Institutions generally thwart the will of the rich and powerful, like her, and those institutions must be swept away (particularly the ones that support giant unions that in turn support Democrats).

It also allows her to beat the drum for how no one school can meet the unique needs of all students, assuming as is her wont that schools are kind of like tofu, with no variety or variation within them. No, what they need is something more.... personalized.

Students, your parents know you best, and they are in the best position to select the best learning environment for you.

And if that means they are overmatched against corporate interests that serve investor needs first, well, at least there are no nasty institutions stepping in to say things like "You can't just refuse to meet special needs" or "You aren't allowed to push out all the non-white kids" or "It's not okay to require adherence to a particular religion."

I'm From the Government and I'm Here To Help

It's one of my favorite reform myths-- the myth of the downtrodden teacher. Not, mind you, that there aren't plenty of schools trying to strap teachers into straightjackets, but these days that's primarily because of the doctrine of Test-Centered Education. But reformsters are talking about those schools where the mean teachers union won't "let" teachers work an extra twenty hours a week for free or won't allow teachers the chance to enjoy all the benefits of union advocacy without paying for asnay of it.

But DeVos wants teachers to know that she gets them:

Too many feel like their hands are tied when the "system" tells them when to teach, how to teach and what to teach. I believe teachers should be respected as professionals and that they should have the freedom to innovate and the flexibility to meet their students' needs.

Of course, under ESSA "student needs" are still defined as "whatever the student needs to get a decent score on the Big Standardized Test." I truly don't know how the "respected ad professionals" part got in there.

So Wait-- Who Is Being Discussed

Also confusing:

Your teachers and parents certainly know better than so-called "education professionals," who are often staunch defenders of the status quo.

If teachers aren't educational professionals, then who, exactly, are we talking about? I mean, seriously-- I'm confused.

Reagan Because

Ronald Reagan was President in the 80's, when DeVos and I were fresh out of college and starting our grown up lives. Why anyone would bring him up to these kids is beyond me-- not even their parents remember Reagan. Going for the Grampaw support here?

Channeling Trump

But when I thought more about that, it hit me that you live with an unfortunate and unfair reality. Communities like Casper are often overlooked and dismissed.

But you certainly shouldn't be. Your needs are no different than the needs of kids, parents and teachers anywhere else in America. You need access to the best education possible to open as many doors as possible.

You have been unfairly neglected and mistreated by those fancy-pants big city elites. Says a regular old salt-of-the-earth millionaire heiress.

For the Children

Why are we rethinking schools? We're doing it not because DeVos or anyone said to and we're certainly not, you know, doing it as a way to open a lucrative billion-dollar market while privatizing one more vital part of the public sphere. No, we're "doing it for you."

The Purpose of Education (Apparently Many of Us Have Been Wrong on This)

Education should be a journey, a life-long one that encourages you to harness your curiosity into contributions to your family, our country and the world.

See? It's your way to become a useful tool. It's not for you to become your best self, or learn how to be fully human in the world, or to fulfill your on hopes and dreams. It's to contribute to your fanmily, country, world, and corporate overlords. Get an education and make yourself useful.

Some Swell Examples and, Of Course, Prussia, Plus International Comparisons

DeVos cites Henry Ford, Steve Jobs, and John Deere as folks who didn't give up and always made stuff better, though they were also, in at least two of the three cases, incredible jerks who were awful to other people.

Also, no reformster rant is complete without a reference to Prussia, because Prussia is no longer a country but we are still following their exact model for education. That exact model. No changes at all. And those international tests-- we never win at those and how would we feel if we never got an Olympic gold medal, because the point of education is to win gold medals in international testing competitions.

DeVos now seems to be fighting the clock to squeeze in every remaining refomster cliché. Let's cite some cool schools that are well-funded and control their admissions and talk about them as if they know something new or are replicable models.

Big Finish

Let's empower lots of people, but mostly parents, but let's not talk about what truly empowering a non-wealthy, non-white parent at a rough place in life-- let's not talk about what true empowerment would look like there, because it would probably look a lot harder than declaring, "Here's your school voucher good luck see ya kay!" Children are the future. Schols must change. Rethink education. Don't get dysentery! Yay!

MA: The Charteristas Behind the Curtain Get Spanked

There is so much to unpack from the most recent news in Massachusetts.

First, to recap. Last year, charter boosters took a hard run and cracking open the Massachusetts market with Question 2, which called for opening up the charter cap currently in place. All sorts of dark, rich creatures came crawling out of the woodwork, throwing about large piles of money under the names of various astroturf groups, even going so far as to hire the same ad agency that swift-boated John Kerry (allegiance to paycheck over truth is important in the biz). In the end, they lost hard. But it turns out they weren't done with all the losing.

One of the fake groups, the single largest funder of the Question 2 campaign, was Families for Excellent Schools-Advocacy. This New York based outfit was just spanked hard by Massachusetts courts, and there were several takeaways from the resulting ruling.



Now That's a Fine

FESA paid the Massachusetts general fund $426,466. That is the largest "civil forfeiture" in state history, totally blowing away the previous record-holder was $185,000 in 2016.

These Guys Were Really Loaded

That total actually represents the cash on hand for FESA and their parent fake group, Families for Excellent Schools, as of August 21, 2017. In other words, the commonwealth settled on a fine of "whatever you've got in your pockets right now-- just empty them out."

These Guys Are a Different Kind of Family

Nobody has ever believed that Families for Excellent Schools was an actual group of regular families gathered together to make a difference. But the settlement required FESA to open up its donor list, and, well... the phrase "capital management" crops up a lot.

Bob Atchison of Adage Capital Management kicked in $200K. Andrew Balson is coyly listed as "unemployed," but theformer capital manager at Bain has since landed on his feet by founding a new partnership; in the meantime, he coughed up $300K. Josh Berkenstein from Bain Capital only managed $1.25 million, but luckily his wife Anita, former occupational therapist, now is a "private philanthropist" came up with another $1.25 mill. Joseph Flaniagan, managing director at Highfields Capital Managment came up with half a million, which was peanuts next to fellow MD Jonathan Jacobson, who was in for over two million. Amos Hostetter, investor and cablevision billionaire, ponied up over two million. Howland Capital Management gave over a million. Seth Klauman, investment manager at the Baupost Group, went for over three and a third million dollars. You begin to see why the "civil forfeiture" of half a million will not exactly register as a serious setback for these guys.

Of course, not everyone was an investor or other sort of capital management guy. There's Johnathan Sackler of Purdue Pharma (the guys who brought us the oxycontin problem) as well as New School Ventures and ConnCAN. And there's Paul Sagan and Mark Nunnelly, both part of Massachusetts state government, each kicking in a half mill (Nunnelly teamed up with his wife, while Saga bizarrely broke his into two donations-- one of $495,500 and another of $500). Sagan is particularly galling, as he's the chairman of the state Board of Elementary and Secondary Education. Oh, and Alice Walton, because of course she did.

Fun side note-- FESA also got a $7,432.80 tax refund.

Look at That List Again

These are not people who have worked in education. These are not people who have worked hard to improve the situation of the poor in this country. And yet the argument for charters in Massachusetts has been that 1) they are awesome and 2) how dare you deny the poor this opportunity. These are almost legit arguments sort of if you squint and if all you care about are test scores, and you're cool with charters that keep their test scores high by suspending huge numbers of students, carefully avoiding any challenging students (like the non-English speaking ones),  and chasing out those who don't get great scores.

But look at that list. These are investors. These are part of the same swarm that have been hovering around charters since the day that Rupert Murdoch declared that education was a "$500 billion dollar opportunity" just waiting to be harvested.

Sometimes, Laws Are Cool 

The Commonwealth of Massachusetts could only pursue all of this because they have laws about dark money organizations set up strictly to influence an election. The Office of Campaign and Political Finance (the government body that tackled this mess) offered three findings:

FESA was actually a ballot question committee and was required to organize and disclose its donors.

FESA did not disclose its campaign finance activity in a timely or accurate manner.

FESA provided funds to the Great Schools Massachusetts Ballot Question Committee in a manner intended to disguise the true source of contributions. 

These findings only matter if those actions are against the law. In Massachusetts they are; in other states, not so much.

FESA's "Aw Shucks."

Jeremiah Kittredge, chief executive of Families for Excellent Schools, said: “Though we believe we complied with all laws and regulations during the campaign, we worked closely with OCPF to resolve this matter so we could move forward with our mission of working alongside families desperate for better schools.”

This statement is one part baloney ("Gosh, Mister, we had no idea we were breaking the rules. Gee whiz!") and one part admission of their bogus nature ("We're going to try to work alongside families who want better schools, because as you can plainly see, none of those families are actually inside our group.")

The Rest of the Good News

FESA has now officially ceased to exist. Which is probably no skin off of FESA's nose, since they only existed to push Question 2 in the first place and that swift boat has now sailed. Slightly better-- FES has been banned from playing in the Massachusetts political sandbox for four years. So that's good news.

However

Let's just remember that the entire purpose of this group is to allow Very Rich People to play in other peoples' sandboxes without getting their own feet dirty. If you think these folks can look at that big, delicious pile of Massachusetts money and NOT start thinking about new and creative ways to get at it-- particularly when officials in the state capitol are totally on the profiteers' side-- then I have a bridge to sell, you, and that bridge has a charter school just on the other side.

Schools Are Not Charities

The U.S. public education system is not a charity. It is a civic institution, the most important, many argue, in the country, and it educates the vast majority of America’s children — the well-off ones and middle-class ones and those who are so poor that they turn up in class with flea collars around their ankles (as one superintendent told me).
                                                                 -- Valerie Strauss, The Answer Sheetr

Strauss was writing about the Laurene Jobs infomercial for her education reform initiative, and in truth, Strauss caught a note that I missed-- the the XQstravaganza was not so much a Bass-o-matic pitch as it was a compressed Jerry Lewis Labor Day telethon. It did portray public education (well, at least education for the poor) as a charity. It smacked a little bit of revival temprance meeting ("Look at this fallen, run-soaked, debased creature! Can no one spare a dollar to save this wretch?" (And, by the way, what in the ever-loving hell was Randi Weingarten doing sitting there giving tacit approval to the portrayal of public school and public school teachers as miserable wretches?)

Strauss is exactly right-- public education is a civic institution, a civic duty, a civic obligation.

Why do some folks so badly want to portray it as a charity?

It's a bit reminiscent of the Tale of the Hero Teacher-- "Look at her folks, slaving away for the love of these children, sacrificing all her own time and money, and with no thought of reward for herself, because Real Hero Teachers don't care how much they get paid or even if they're paid at all! They're totally cheap! No salary too small. Let's have a round of applause (and nothing else) for that hero teacher!"

So why do some like painting education as charity?

Charity is optional for the giver. Only give what you feel you can afford when you feel you can afford it. Charitable giving makes you feel good precisely because you didn't have to do it. And you can give what you feel like giving (pro tip-- for disasters like Harvey and Irma, send money, not shit that volunteers have to that may or may not be any use). You could send money, but you could also volunteer to put on a show or, you know, send thoughts and prayers. If you have better things to spend your money on, well then, the charity will just have to wait. Shouldn't be a problem because...

Charity is optional for the receiver. Sure, the thinking goes, it would be nice if they had a little more money to work with, but if that money doesn't come in, they'll scrape by somehow. You know how resourceful those poor folks are.

Too much charity is bad. Wouldn't want to make people dependent. Besides, this kind of support isn't really sustainable, so we'd better not overdo it.

Charity has to be earned. Of course, we only give charity to people who show they deserve it by displaying proper character or proper goals or proper deference with their betters who have the money. Or they can deserve it by having a really sad story. Undercover Boss is infuriating because in every episode we hear a sad story about someone who can barely support their struggling family/sick child/aging parent on the shitty wages and benefits that the company pays, so in almost every episode, the boss makes things better for that one employee, not asking if perhaps his company's shitty wages and benefits might be hard on Every Other Employee!

Charter schools are frequently pitched as charities, and charteristas like that favorite reformster chorus "Well, we saved that one kid from terrible public schools" while steadfastly refusing to talk about the 600 students still in that "terrible public school" or the obligation, as members of the civic body, to help that public school. Because...

I gave at the office. Charity allows you to pretend that you've fulfilled any obligation you had to deal with the issue. Send the check in, then check out. Cash and dash. Drive-by do-gooding.

Charity is not for rich people. Rich folks don't run their fire departments or local government or police departments on charity because they expect those civic services to be by-god there when they want them. Charities at there worst (and there are some mighty fine charities out there) help reinforce the social order-- "You People will get nice things when we say you can get them."

In fact, charitable giving is hardly for rich people any more. They're doing Philanthropy, which these days looks an awful lot like Pay A Group To Push/Adopt Your Policy Ideas, which is not so much Charitable Giving as it is just plain Hiring People To Work For You.

Treating schools for poor kids (because, really, are we talking about any others) as charities let's people glide by the whole idea that they have any kind of obligation to educate all children, including Those Peoples' Children in That Part of Town. It allows a bunch of people to say, "Well, since I've given some support to a miracle school filled with hero teachers, my work is done. And I feel great about it."

When the critical mass of Americans (or at least a critical mass of people in power) decide to commit to doing something, they do it. There were no bake sales for the Apollo program or car washes to support the war in Afghanistan. We just did it, price tag be damned. When I contemplate the XQ telethon, I come back to the same old depressing conclusion-- one of the fundamental reasons we don't solve the problems of public education is that we don't really want to. We just want to pretend we're kind of trying while making sure the business is not too expensive. Please don't tax me for the real amount of equitable public education for all-- but I will drop a couple of dollars in the collection plate, and my friend here will do a nice song and dance. Now we've done our part-- please go away and don't bother us about this for a year or so.

ICYMI: Post-Labor Day Edition (9/10)

Holy smokes, but I have a lot for you this week. Good Stuff just kept rolling across my screen, and here's some of the best of it. Remember, sharing is empowering.

Michigan Gambled on Charter Schools and Its Children Lost

The New York Times offers a detailed and depressingly thorough picture of how badly Betsy DeVos's home state, often under her direction, has ed reformed itself into a deep hole.

The War on Public Schools

A rundown on how public education has been run down, form the Atlantic.

The Decline of Play in Preschoolers and the Rise in Sensory Issues.

This point keeps getting made, and I'll keep amplifying anyone who makes it until it sinks into school districts' collective heads. Replacing play with academics is damaging to small children.

The Department of Justice Is Overseeing the Resegregation of American Schools

From The Nation-- how the DOJ is involved in allowing white parents to secede from largely black school districts.

The Sad Story of Public Education in St. Louis

St. Louis is one more urban district that has been taken over by privatizers and gutted. It's been going on for a while-- and things aren't getting any better.

Those Who Can't

Spoon Vision with a new take on an old cliche

A Scrappy Parent Takes on Bow Tie Man

Philadelphia public school activist tries to attend a "public" meeting/about further privatizing in Philly. Turns out that "public" is only a figurative term. But boy is this woman feisty.

Fueling the Teacher Shortage

Wendy Lecker looks at how states in general and Connecticut in particular are accelerating the teachers "shortage."

Parents Cite Student Privacy Concerns

Turns out that Mark Zuckerberg's Summit Schools education-in-a-software-box program has some truly nightmarish problems with student privacy

Underachievement School District Superintendent Resigns in Disgrace

Remember the Tennessee Achievement School District, the model for state takeover districts. Remember how it was going to take bottom schools and move them to the top. Remember how its first super, Chris Barbic, left, having realized it couldn't be done? So how have things been going since then? Gary Rubinstein reports on that (spoiler alert: terribly, and yet it's still touted as a model).

Reality Check: Trends in School Finance

This might be the most important post on the list today. Bruce Baker looks at that old reformy refrain "We've spent double the money and test results have stayed flat." Is that actually true. (Spoiler alert: no). With charts and explanations that civilians can understand.

The Real Reason We Can't Fix Our Schools

Short, sweet, and to the point./

Dear Teachers: Don't Be Good Soldiers for the Edtech Industry

Steven Singer with a reminder that sometimes the best soldiers are the ones that defy bad orders.

Seven Times “XQ Super School Live” Denigrated America’s Teachers (And One Time It Praised Them)

And finally, though this makes two appearances in one week for Spoon Vision, this is my favorite of the many excellent pieces written in response to Laurene Jobs' XQ infomercial. I like this because you can use this to explain to your co-worker, family member, or neighbor (or the celebrities who were in the thing-- meet me over on twitter in a few minutes) why, "no, I, was not really excited about that special on Friday night."

More Creepy Tech

So, there's a new piece of software that lets you do a video job interview on your own. Load the app, answer the questions as your own phone records video of your answer. You can even do multiple takes of your answers until you have one you like. And then HireVue's version of anArtifial Intelligence takes over:

Using voice and face recognition software, HireVue lets employers compare a candidate’s word choice, tone, and facial movements with the body language and vocabularies of their best hires. The algorithm can analyze all of these candidates’ responses and rank them, so that recruiters can spend more time looking at the top performing answers.

 Each candidate answers the same questions, so it's a standardized interview, which is supposed to make things better because human beings have biases and make judgments and stuff.

We're only hiring guys named Dave

The app is discussed briefly in this piece entitled "New App Scans Your Face and Tells Companies Whether You're Worth Hiring."

HireVue claims to have completed four million interviews already while working with over 600 companies (including Nike, Tiffany, and Honeywell). They also offer an assessments service ( "to identify best-fit talent without the painful experience of traditional assessment.") And they can do "structured video coaching that reveals team readiness in real time." Just the thing for the harried "Talent Acquisition Leader" who just finds it too stressful to exercise some professional judgment. And for applicants. HireVue even offers some youtube interview tips.

This is several types of creepy, though it could certainly cut down on the wear and tear and travel of interviewing. But Monica Torres at Ladders cuts pretty quickly to the problem-- the notion that computer software is somehow free of human biases. Software is written by human beings-- and this software uses the hiring your institution has already done as its baseline. And once again-- this is not artificial intelligence-- it's just a complex algorithm.

In other words, the algorithm is only as objective as the human minds that guide it. So if the employer’s ideal candidate is already biased against certain characteristics, HireVue’s platform would only embed these biases further, potentially making discriminatory practices a part of the process. Human recruiters would need to recognize their own personal biases before they could stop feeding them into HireVue. It’s one more reminder that behind each robot lies a human who engineered it.

None of this is directly linked to education-- yet. But in a world where test manufacturing companies are already promising they can kind of read test-takers' minds and other companies are promising that they can have your on-line course watch your every move and response, this is just one more indication of how far this trend of algorithmic displacement of human judgment can go. And never forget-- whenever the computer is watching it and measuring it, the computer is also storing it. 

Could HireVue be tweaked so that it can match facial movement and body language of students with students that were deemed "successful"? Sure. In fact, it seems entirely possible that HireVue's algorithm about body language and facial expression could also easily track and quietly count skin color or gender characteristics. But it's a computer, so of course it's all facts and data and science-- not just a quick and efficient way to legitimize the bad and biased judgment of the individuals behind the screen. Remember to keep your eyes peeled for this kind of tech, because it already has its eyes peeled for you.

Data Driven Into the Weeds

Having a data-driven school has been all the rage for a while now, because when you express your ideas, thoughts, and biases in numbers, they qualify as "facts," whereas judgment expressed in words obviously lacks data-rich factiness, and so should be ignored. Yes, the fact that I am 100% an English teacher may make me about 62% bitter about the implied valuing of numbers over words; I'd say I'm at about 7 on the 11-point Bitterness Scale, and that's a fact.

Pretty sure the rest of the vehicle is around here somewhere.

Being data-driven (which usually means test-result-driven) is a bad idea for several reason.

Data vs. Standards

Mind you, I am not and never was a fan of nationalized standards like the Common Core [Insert New Name Here] Standards. But at some point lots of folks quietly switched standards-aligned to data-driven curriculum management, and that matters a great deal. Almost an 8 on the 10-point Great Deal scale.

It matters because tests ignore many of the standards, starting with non-starters like the speaking and listening standards. No standardized test will address the cooperative standards, nor can writing or research be measured in any meaningful way on a standardized multiple-choice test. And no-- critical thinking can not be measured on a standardized test any more than creativity can be measured by a multiple choice question.

In other words, the moment we switch from standards-aligned to data-driven, we significantly and dramatically narrow the curriculum to a handful of math and reading standards that can be most easily addressed with a narrow standardized test. The Curriculum Breadth Index moves from a 20 down to a 3.

Remember GIGO

Because the instrument we use for gathering our data is a single standardized test that, in many states, carries no significant stakes for the students, we are essentially trying to gather jello with a pitchfork.

The very first hurdle we have to clear is that students mostly don't care how they do on the test. In some cases, states have tried to clear the first hurdle by installing moronically disproportionate stakes, such as the states where third graders who are A students can still find themselves failing for the year because of a single test. But if you imagine my juniors approach the Big Standardized Test thinking, "Golly, I must try to do my very best because researchers and policy makers are really depending on this data to make informed decisions, and my own school district really needs to do my very, very bestest work so that the data will help the school leaders,"-- well, if that's what you imagine, then you must rank around 98% on the Never Met An Actual Human Teenager scale.

That's before we even address the question of whether the test does a good job of measuring what it claims to measure-- and there is no reason to believe that it does. Of course, it's "unethical" for teachers to actually look at the test, but apparently I and many of my colleagues are ethically impaired, so we've peeked. As it turns out, many of the questions are junk. I would talk about some specific examples, but the last time I and other bloggers tried that, we got cranky letters and our hosting platforms put our posts in Time Out. Seriously. I have a post that discusses specific PARCC questions in fairly general ways, but Blogger took it down. So you will have to simply accept my word when I say that in my professional opinion, BS Test questions are about 65% bunk.

For a testing instrument to gather good data, the testing questions have to be good, valid, reliable questions that accurately measure the skill or knowledge area they purport to measure. Then the students have to make a sincere, full-effort honest attempt to do their best.

The tests being used to generate data fail both measures. Letting this data drive your school is like letting your very drunk uncle drive your car.

Inside the Black Box

When I collect my own data for driving my own instruction, I create an instrument based on what I've been teaching, I give it to students, and I look at the results. I look for patterns, like finding many students flubbing the same task, and then I look at the question or task, so that I can figure out exactly what they don't get.

The BS Test is backwards. First, it was designed with no knowledge of or attention to what I taught. So what is required here is not testing what we teach, but teaching to the test.

Except that we all know that teaching to the standardized test is Bad and Wrong, so we have to pretend not to do that. On top of that, we have installed a system that puts the proprietary rights and fiscal interests of test manufacturers ahead of the educational needs of our students, with the end result that teachers are not allowed to look at the test.

So to be data-driven, we must first be data-inventors, trying to figure out what exactly our students did poorly on on the BS Test. We may eventually be given result breakdowns that tell us the student got Score X on Some Number of Questions that were collectively meant to assess This Batch of standards. But as far as a neat, simple "here's the list and text of questions that this student answered incorrectly," no such animal is occurring. This is particularly frustrating in the case of a multiple choice test, since to really track where our students are going wrong, we need to see the wrong answers they selected, which are our only clues to the hitch in their thinking about the standard. In short, we have 32% of the actual information needed to inform instruction.

We are supposed to do teach to the test with our eyes blindfolded and our fingers duct-taped together.

Put Them All Together

Consider all of these factors, and I have to conclude that data-driven instruction is a snare and a delusion. Or, rather, 87% snare and 92% delusion, with a score of 8 on the ten-point Not Really Helping. And I think the weeds measure about 6'7".

 

More DeVosian Democrats

You may not have heard of the Progressive Policy Institute lately, but they'll be coming up more often as their Education Honcho releases his new book. PPI is worth paying attention to, if for no other reason than the organization provides Exhibit #1,635 of Why Teachers Can't Trust Alleged Democrats.

What is PPI? From their own website:

The Progressive Policy Institute is a catalyst for policy innovation and political reform based in Washington, D.C. Its mission is to create radically pragmatic ideas for moving America beyond ideological and partisan deadlock.
 
Founded in 1989, PPI started as the intellectual home of the New Democrats and earned a reputation as President Bill Clinton’s “idea mill.” Many of its mold-breaking ideas have been translated into public policy and law and have influenced international efforts to modernize progressive politics.

Today, PPI is developing fresh proposals for stimulating U.S. economic innovation and growth; equipping all Americans with the skills and assets that social mobility in the knowledge economy requires; modernizing an overly bureaucratic and centralized public sector; and, defending liberal democracy in a dangerous world.

In short, a neo-liberal Thinky Tank and advocacy group, masquerading as a bunch of progressives. They claim close ties to the New Democrats in Congress, as well as an assortment of governors and mayors. They like to call themselves centrists. They have staked out positions on a variety of issues, including education.

You can get a sense of where they stand from one of their most recent pieces, an attempted rebuttal of the NEA statement on charter schools. They lead with plenty of inflammatory language-- NEA's research is "shoddy," the "retrograde" report is "fear mongering worthy of a prize." They also repeat time-worn charteristas talking points-- charter schools are really public schools, no students are ever counseled out (which is true-- many are just pushed out), and nobody can prove that charters are adding to segregation. And they make a point by point rebuttal.

1) NEA says only elected school boards should authorize charters. PPI says that elected school boards are "problematic" because they are "captive" to their employees. In other words, the teachers union controls school board elections and the elected board members are just teacher shills. Also, charters are separate but unequal because charters are better.

2) NEA says charters should operate under same labor laws. PPI says that the ability to do whatever the hell you want with staffing-- hire, fire, pay levels all at the will of the operator-- is critical for charters.

3) NEA says that charters on average do no better than public schools. PPI holds its breath and declares that this is just not true, which I suppose is how we argue these things in Trump's America.

4) NEA says competition does not improve public schools. PPI says that the monopolies of public education is bad and competition will make everything great, just you wait and see.

5) NEA says charters are not held accountable  like public schools are. PPI says tat charters are held accountable for their performance, though they don't actually say by whom.Maybe authorizers, whose agenda is straightforward-- if the charter stays open they get a cut if students aren't learning the charter closes.

I'll remind you that all of this is coming from nominal Democrats. Even the Faux Democratic group DFER has tried to distance itself from the DeVos/Trump administration, but there isn't a thing here that Betsy DeVos wouldn't heartily agree with. And you can find PPI hanging out with the Fordham Institue, the National Alliance for Public [sic] Charter Schools, Bellwether Education Partners, and Friends of Choice in Urban Schools. The list of PPI fellows includes familiar names from many of these groups.

Can't lie-- that is a snappy hat

The voice of PPI on education is David Osborne. Osborne ran the "reinventing government task force" for VP Al Gore back in 1993, then spent a decade at the Public Strategies Group, "a consulting firm that helped public organizations improve their performance." He pops up in newspaper op-ed pages to tout the wonders of charter conversion. Here he is in the Philadelphia Inquirer explaining that Philly ought to imitate New Orleans or DC. Or in the Boston Globe (Massachusetts is his home base) touting a "new paradigm" for public schools which is, essentially, to replace public schools with charter schools.

And he has a new book out this week-- Reinventing Education-- that looks like it's going to be well-promoted.

In this book, Osborne uses compelling stories from cities like New Orleans and lays out the history and possible future of public education. Ultimately, he uses his extensive research to argue that in today's world, we should treat every public school like a charter school and grant them autonomy, accountability, diversity of school designs, and parental choice.

 I have not read the book (and it's not high on my list), but I am curious where he stands on the charter characteristics of non-transparency, non-accountability, and generating profits for private corporations and individuals. Nor do I see any signs of Osborne grappling of what happens to "undesireable" students in a charter world in which no charter has to take a student they don't want (a serious issue in New Orleans).

There's a whole world of charter mis-information here, coupled with the tone of someone who has no interest in a serious conversation about any of the issues that charters raise. That's all just another day at the education debates.

No, what I want you to notice, and remember as this group pops up, is that these are self-labeled progressives, folks with long and strong Democratic ties. The GOP is no friend of public education, but at least they never pretend otherwise. But here's evidence once again that when it comes to education, some Democrats are completely indistinguishable from the GOP.