Yes, this is up late. That extra hour screwed me all up. But I would still make it a point to read these offerings and pass along the ones you're most inspired by.
Betsy DeVos doesn't understand how markets really work
There are many things wrong with the DeVosian ideal or free market driven education, but one of the problems is that she doesn't have the "how markets work" piece correct. Here's a good explainer of hat she doesn't understand about the invisible hand.
School Choice in Rural America
Jenny Robinson looks at the particular style of destruction the school choice programs wreak on rural communities
Dark Money pours into school board races
A look at just how bad the movement to buy local school boards has become, at The Answer Sheet
Protecting children's right to childhood
Nobody speaks up for the rights of littles like Teacher Tom.
A brilliant way to teach children
An early childhood expert finds a great model-- just not in the US
I'm 10 and I want girls to raise their hands
A young girl and the Girl Scouts take steps to empower young women
The Mis-education of Eva Moskowitz
Great profile of NYC's top charter queen
What happened to big data?
Slate looks at the decline of big data, including its failure in education.
Siezing the civic education moment
Civics education is needed now more than ever. How do we make it happen?
Aint That a Shame
Russ Walsh and the problem of shame as pedagogy
Sunday, November 5, 2017
Saturday, November 4, 2017
NY Times Offers Dumb Endorsement
The New York Times took a swipe at the teaching profession today by endorsing one of the Empire State's dumbest ideas.
Last month SUNY gave its pet charter schools the freedom to hire whatever warm bodies they could get their hands on, based on the theory that-- well, I'm not sure. That hiring real teachers is hard, and expensive? That getting trained educational professionals to take bad direction from well-connected amateurs (lookin' at you, Eva Moskowitz)? That the leaders of charters are just so awesome that their awesomeness will elevate the warm bodies they hire? That teaching isn't a real job and any schlubb off the street can do it? Pick your favorite theory.
In any case, the NYT thinks the warm body idea is awesome sauce.
The NYT fact-checking machinery is legendary. When my old friend got married years ago in NYC and his announcement was going to take up four whole lines of NYT space, the Grey Lady called my friend's mom back in our small town to confirm that she did in fact run the business that the announcement said she ran. So I believe that America's newspaper of record knows how to check it some facts.
And yet this editorial was written when the fact checkers were out to lunch.
The editorial notes that charter schools "made good on their promise to outperform conventional public schools," which is a fact-check fail two-fer. First, it slides in the assertion that charters are public schools, even though NYC's own Ms. Moskowitz went to court to protect her charter's right to function as a private business, freed from state oversight. I NYC charters are public schools, then McDonald's is a public cafeteria. Second, it accepts uncritically the notion that charters have "outperformed" anybody, without asking if such superior performance is real, or simply an illusion created by creaming and skimming students so that charters only keep those students who make them look good.
The Times thinks the warm body rule is "a reasonable attempt to let these schools avoid the weak state teacher education system that has long been criticized for churning out graduates who are unprepared to manage the classroom." Their support for this is a decade-old "report" by Arthur Levine, and even if that report were the gospel truth, that does not shore up the logic of saying, "I'm pretty sure the surgeons at this hospital aren't very good, so the obvious solution is for me to grab some guy off the street to take out my spleen instead."
The Times also commiserates with charter hiring problems.
New York’s high-performing charter schools have long complained that rules requiring them to hire state-certified teachers make it difficult to find high-quality applicants in high-demand specialties like math, science and special education. They tell of sorting through hundreds of candidates to fill a few positions, only to find that the strongest candidates have no interest in working in the low-income communities where charters are typically located.
Oops. There's a typo in that last part-- let me fix it for you: "only to find the strongest candidates have no interest in working for bottom-dollar wages under amateur-hour conditions that demand their obedience and donation of tens of hours of their own time each week." There.
But if you want absolute proof that the Times had no access to fact-checking for this piece, here comes multiple citations of the National Council on Teacher Quality.
If there is a less serious, less believable, less intellectually rigorous in all of the education world that the NCTQ, I do not know who it is. Kate Walsh may be a lovely human being who is nice to her mother and sings in her church choir, but her organization is-- well, I few things astonish me as much as the fact that NCTQ is still taken seriously by anybody at all, ever.
NCTQ has evaluated teacher ed programs that don't exist. Their evaluation technique involves looking at course catelogs. Their study of ed program rigor was just looking through a bunch of commencement programs. When they want to claim their research looks at something that would be rally hard to look at, they just make up proxies that don't stand up to the slightest bit of scrutiny. Their presence in any article or report is a sure sign that somebody is far more focused on reaching a preferred conclusion than in seriously studying the situation.
There's more in the NYT editorial. Teachers unions want to stop charters "any way they can." State education authorities are hypocritical because they lowered the bar on the state teacher exam, which, you know, is pretty much exactly the same as doing away with real certification requirements. Like, if you support lower fines for jaywalking, you might as well make murder legal.
And then there's the intellectually sloppy assertion that it is "beyond doubt ... that the state certification process is failing to provide strong teachers in sufficient numbers to fill the demand." No, no it's not. If I can't buy a Porsche for $1.98, it is not beyond doubt that automobiles are being manufactured in insufficient numbers." What's beyond doubt is that charters (like a few gazillion schools in the US) are having trouble finding people who want to work for them under the conditions they're offering. If the New York Times can't find enough good reporters to work for them for $2.50 an hour, the solution is not to just drag anyone off the street who can peck at a keyboard, and the New York Times editorial board damn well knows it.
Today's editorial is sloppy, lazy and just plain wrong. Shame on you, Times editorial board.
In any case, the NYT thinks the warm body idea is awesome sauce.
The NYT fact-checking machinery is legendary. When my old friend got married years ago in NYC and his announcement was going to take up four whole lines of NYT space, the Grey Lady called my friend's mom back in our small town to confirm that she did in fact run the business that the announcement said she ran. So I believe that America's newspaper of record knows how to check it some facts.
And yet this editorial was written when the fact checkers were out to lunch.
The editorial notes that charter schools "made good on their promise to outperform conventional public schools," which is a fact-check fail two-fer. First, it slides in the assertion that charters are public schools, even though NYC's own Ms. Moskowitz went to court to protect her charter's right to function as a private business, freed from state oversight. I NYC charters are public schools, then McDonald's is a public cafeteria. Second, it accepts uncritically the notion that charters have "outperformed" anybody, without asking if such superior performance is real, or simply an illusion created by creaming and skimming students so that charters only keep those students who make them look good.
The Times thinks the warm body rule is "a reasonable attempt to let these schools avoid the weak state teacher education system that has long been criticized for churning out graduates who are unprepared to manage the classroom." Their support for this is a decade-old "report" by Arthur Levine, and even if that report were the gospel truth, that does not shore up the logic of saying, "I'm pretty sure the surgeons at this hospital aren't very good, so the obvious solution is for me to grab some guy off the street to take out my spleen instead."
The Times also commiserates with charter hiring problems.
New York’s high-performing charter schools have long complained that rules requiring them to hire state-certified teachers make it difficult to find high-quality applicants in high-demand specialties like math, science and special education. They tell of sorting through hundreds of candidates to fill a few positions, only to find that the strongest candidates have no interest in working in the low-income communities where charters are typically located.
Oops. There's a typo in that last part-- let me fix it for you: "only to find the strongest candidates have no interest in working for bottom-dollar wages under amateur-hour conditions that demand their obedience and donation of tens of hours of their own time each week." There.
But if you want absolute proof that the Times had no access to fact-checking for this piece, here comes multiple citations of the National Council on Teacher Quality.
If there is a less serious, less believable, less intellectually rigorous in all of the education world that the NCTQ, I do not know who it is. Kate Walsh may be a lovely human being who is nice to her mother and sings in her church choir, but her organization is-- well, I few things astonish me as much as the fact that NCTQ is still taken seriously by anybody at all, ever.
NCTQ has evaluated teacher ed programs that don't exist. Their evaluation technique involves looking at course catelogs. Their study of ed program rigor was just looking through a bunch of commencement programs. When they want to claim their research looks at something that would be rally hard to look at, they just make up proxies that don't stand up to the slightest bit of scrutiny. Their presence in any article or report is a sure sign that somebody is far more focused on reaching a preferred conclusion than in seriously studying the situation.
There's more in the NYT editorial. Teachers unions want to stop charters "any way they can." State education authorities are hypocritical because they lowered the bar on the state teacher exam, which, you know, is pretty much exactly the same as doing away with real certification requirements. Like, if you support lower fines for jaywalking, you might as well make murder legal.
And then there's the intellectually sloppy assertion that it is "beyond doubt ... that the state certification process is failing to provide strong teachers in sufficient numbers to fill the demand." No, no it's not. If I can't buy a Porsche for $1.98, it is not beyond doubt that automobiles are being manufactured in insufficient numbers." What's beyond doubt is that charters (like a few gazillion schools in the US) are having trouble finding people who want to work for them under the conditions they're offering. If the New York Times can't find enough good reporters to work for them for $2.50 an hour, the solution is not to just drag anyone off the street who can peck at a keyboard, and the New York Times editorial board damn well knows it.
Today's editorial is sloppy, lazy and just plain wrong. Shame on you, Times editorial board.
Friday, November 3, 2017
The 529 Plan
A 529 plan is a special type of savings plan that lets you set money aside for your child's college education while providing some tax advantages.
The plans come in two main types-- pre-paid tuition and college credits. The plans can come with a variety of fees and costs, as well as the risks that come with enrolling your child in a university eighteen years before she graduates from high school. But the money earned in a 529 account is free of state and federal taxes in most cases, as long as you spend it on college stuff.
529 plans are going to enjoy some news coverage because they are a part of the GOP tax proposal. Some of the changes are practical, some are intended to make a point, and some are probably part of a longer game being played here.
The basic proposal is this-- let parents use 529 plans to save for private school tuition for K-12.
The extra ideological wrinkle is this-- let parents start putting money in the account at conception, a slickly subtle way to drive home the point that the fetus is a person (after all, the fetus has a bank account) which can just be added to the steady drip, drip, drip of the anti-abortion crowd. It's rhetorically twisty because it brings the issues of choice and choice face to face. Folks are going to have to be clear about discussing school choice or abortion choice, because folks mostly don't oppose or support both, leaving us to discuss Choice (pick one).
Public education advocates are unhappy with the idea because they see it as promoting private school over public school. But as proposed, it's not going to make private school any more accessible than it ever was. If you can afford to send your kid to private school, this will give you a nice tax break, and if you couldn't afford to send your kid to private school before, well, you still can't.
But that's where the long game comes in.
One of the preferred pitches for school vouchers these days is the Education Savings Account. With ESAs. instead of handing parents an actual voucher, the state would place the money in a special education lockbox. From there, many things can happen depending on the state, but Texas, Pennsylvania, and New Hampshire have all toyed with this approach.
What the new K-12 529 plans would do is create everything needed for an ESA/voucher approach except the funding stream from the state. And you can already see choice fans warming up their, "These accounts do not help the non-wealthy families of our state. To make this fair, the state should deposit some money in those 529s, or even allow corporations a deduction if they put money in the 529s of needy-yet-worthy students."
So the GOP proposal, in the short run, doesn't change much. In the long run, it sets the stage for another run at voucher/ESA systems in the states. Keep your eyes peeled.
The plans come in two main types-- pre-paid tuition and college credits. The plans can come with a variety of fees and costs, as well as the risks that come with enrolling your child in a university eighteen years before she graduates from high school. But the money earned in a 529 account is free of state and federal taxes in most cases, as long as you spend it on college stuff.
529 plans are going to enjoy some news coverage because they are a part of the GOP tax proposal. Some of the changes are practical, some are intended to make a point, and some are probably part of a longer game being played here.
The basic proposal is this-- let parents use 529 plans to save for private school tuition for K-12.
The extra ideological wrinkle is this-- let parents start putting money in the account at conception, a slickly subtle way to drive home the point that the fetus is a person (after all, the fetus has a bank account) which can just be added to the steady drip, drip, drip of the anti-abortion crowd. It's rhetorically twisty because it brings the issues of choice and choice face to face. Folks are going to have to be clear about discussing school choice or abortion choice, because folks mostly don't oppose or support both, leaving us to discuss Choice (pick one).
Public education advocates are unhappy with the idea because they see it as promoting private school over public school. But as proposed, it's not going to make private school any more accessible than it ever was. If you can afford to send your kid to private school, this will give you a nice tax break, and if you couldn't afford to send your kid to private school before, well, you still can't.
But that's where the long game comes in.
One of the preferred pitches for school vouchers these days is the Education Savings Account. With ESAs. instead of handing parents an actual voucher, the state would place the money in a special education lockbox. From there, many things can happen depending on the state, but Texas, Pennsylvania, and New Hampshire have all toyed with this approach.
What the new K-12 529 plans would do is create everything needed for an ESA/voucher approach except the funding stream from the state. And you can already see choice fans warming up their, "These accounts do not help the non-wealthy families of our state. To make this fair, the state should deposit some money in those 529s, or even allow corporations a deduction if they put money in the 529s of needy-yet-worthy students."
So the GOP proposal, in the short run, doesn't change much. In the long run, it sets the stage for another run at voucher/ESA systems in the states. Keep your eyes peeled.
Thursday, November 2, 2017
My Ex-Wife's Mail (or "One More Reason Not To Trust Our Data Overlords")
Look at this cool piece of junk mail I got today!
This came to my address, and offers a lovely necklace that does use the correct birthstones for Peter and Janet, but I probably won't order one, because Janet is my ex-wife.
Getting my previous wife's mail at my current address is not at all unusual. I used to get even alumni fundraising calls from her alma mater (I think we got that stopped after about the third time I left some poor work study undergrad tongue-tied).
I want you to appreciate what an achievement that is. My ex and I divorced over twenty years ago. Since then I have changed address twice, and she has changed address five times-- most recently to Hawaii. She has remarried twice; I have remarried once. Somehow some of her mail arrives at my current home with her current married name. And I know that at least one of her old addresses appears on my credit history report.
I'm not mad about any of this. My ex is a lovely person, a great mother to our children, and someone who deserved a better husband than I was back then. But for her mail to occasionally be sent here, especially as if she were still my wife, is an impressively epic piece of bad record-keeping. It is the kind of thing that an actual human could probably sort out, but the vast network of computers that store and share and track these kinds of data just keep perpetuating. And please note-- as m history suggests, this isn't just a matter of failing to clear out old records (like the mail that comes for my wife under her previous married name), but a cyber-creation of all new, all wrong records in the system.
So when we talk about Big Data and its desire to gobble up and store and use and sell every nit of data generated about our students, I'm appalled at the Big Brothery intrusiveness of it, the omnipresent creepiness of it, the horrifying way that such data records could be used to tack and tail and guide and shove students into a corporate pigeonhole pre-prepared for their adult lives. I'm alarmed at how students are steadily becoming "resources," little meat widgets whose use is to generate data points for the Data Overlords to gobble up, poop out, and sell off.
But I am also mindful of how wantonly sloppy and confidently inaccurate our Data Overlords can be. It's scary to imagine an Orwellian future in which a deathless data file determines a human being's entire life. But it's even scarier to imagine a Kafkaesque future in which that data file includes all sorts of shit the software simply made up. It's bad enough to imagine a high school grad who can't get a job because the computer record shows a streak of anti-authoritarian rebelliousness based on her behavior in fifth grade or because the scores from terrible tests indicate a lack of verbal skills. But it's even worse to imagine a future in which a high school grad can't get a job because of what the digital record says she did on a trip to Paraguay (a place she's never actually been) or the data from a standardized test that she never actually took. Will live humans monitor and check this stuff? Of course not-- the whole point is that it would take too many humans too long to sort and check this much data. And the software will not have the sense to question data that makes no sense.
We already know that we can't trust our Data Overlords to keep our data safe. But can we even trust them to get it right on the first place. "Trust us," they say. "We'll take all the best care of all the personal data." To which I say, dude, you can't even keep track of who I'm married to, a matter of public record that you've had two decades to sort out. Not only can we not trust their motives in storing and crunching all the personal data in the world, but they're not even very good at it.
This came to my address, and offers a lovely necklace that does use the correct birthstones for Peter and Janet, but I probably won't order one, because Janet is my ex-wife.
Getting my previous wife's mail at my current address is not at all unusual. I used to get even alumni fundraising calls from her alma mater (I think we got that stopped after about the third time I left some poor work study undergrad tongue-tied).
I want you to appreciate what an achievement that is. My ex and I divorced over twenty years ago. Since then I have changed address twice, and she has changed address five times-- most recently to Hawaii. She has remarried twice; I have remarried once. Somehow some of her mail arrives at my current home with her current married name. And I know that at least one of her old addresses appears on my credit history report.
I'm not mad about any of this. My ex is a lovely person, a great mother to our children, and someone who deserved a better husband than I was back then. But for her mail to occasionally be sent here, especially as if she were still my wife, is an impressively epic piece of bad record-keeping. It is the kind of thing that an actual human could probably sort out, but the vast network of computers that store and share and track these kinds of data just keep perpetuating. And please note-- as m history suggests, this isn't just a matter of failing to clear out old records (like the mail that comes for my wife under her previous married name), but a cyber-creation of all new, all wrong records in the system.
So when we talk about Big Data and its desire to gobble up and store and use and sell every nit of data generated about our students, I'm appalled at the Big Brothery intrusiveness of it, the omnipresent creepiness of it, the horrifying way that such data records could be used to tack and tail and guide and shove students into a corporate pigeonhole pre-prepared for their adult lives. I'm alarmed at how students are steadily becoming "resources," little meat widgets whose use is to generate data points for the Data Overlords to gobble up, poop out, and sell off.
But I am also mindful of how wantonly sloppy and confidently inaccurate our Data Overlords can be. It's scary to imagine an Orwellian future in which a deathless data file determines a human being's entire life. But it's even scarier to imagine a Kafkaesque future in which that data file includes all sorts of shit the software simply made up. It's bad enough to imagine a high school grad who can't get a job because the computer record shows a streak of anti-authoritarian rebelliousness based on her behavior in fifth grade or because the scores from terrible tests indicate a lack of verbal skills. But it's even worse to imagine a future in which a high school grad can't get a job because of what the digital record says she did on a trip to Paraguay (a place she's never actually been) or the data from a standardized test that she never actually took. Will live humans monitor and check this stuff? Of course not-- the whole point is that it would take too many humans too long to sort and check this much data. And the software will not have the sense to question data that makes no sense.
We already know that we can't trust our Data Overlords to keep our data safe. But can we even trust them to get it right on the first place. "Trust us," they say. "We'll take all the best care of all the personal data." To which I say, dude, you can't even keep track of who I'm married to, a matter of public record that you've had two decades to sort out. Not only can we not trust their motives in storing and crunching all the personal data in the world, but they're not even very good at it.
Wednesday, November 1, 2017
The Mis-Education of Betsy DeVos
Tim Alberta has published a firm-but-gentle profile of Betsy DeVos. It is perhaps not as brutal as some of her opponents would like it to be, but I've argued since Day One that some folks are opposing a cartoon version of DeVos which is not the real thing-- and it's dangerous not to understand the real thing.
But on to Alberta's profile.
I'm not going to go line by line or graph by graph-- you really should read the whole thing yourself. But there are some things that really jump out. Here are some of the DeVosian faces that Alberta shows us.
The Bad Manager DeVos
Who could have guessed, the article seems to ask, that DeVos would be so ill-equipped to run a large government department.
Well, me. I would have guessed that. And a few hundred of my colleagues. DeVos never ran a large government organization, never had to deal with people or politicians who were not being "convinced" by the power of her checkbook. It was absolutely predictable (and in fact predicted) that she would not be able to manage the bureaucratic organization of her department or forge support for her programs in Congress.
The Under-coached DeVos
In retrospect, DeVos tells me, she blames the transition team for its handling of her confirmation. “I think I was undercoached,” she says. “The transition group was very circumspect about how much information they gave me about then-current policy and … it was in their view a balance between being prepared for a confirmation hearing and not having well-formed opinions on what should or shouldn’t change, so as not to get caught in a confirmation hearing making commitments that then I wouldn’t want to or be able to keep. And in hindsight, I wish I had a whole lot more information.”
Sure, maybe. And I've never been nominated for a cabinet position. But if I were up for some huge job, I'm pretty sure I would crack open the internet and educate myself. Is she really suggesting that because Trump's team didn't prep her, she was helpless to study up for the job? In a field where she'd been working as a philanthro-lobbyist for three decades? Hell, to get a sense of what would come up in her hearings, all she would need to do was have a secretary round up all the pieces written by people who had been opposing her all this time.
No. While I can believe that the Trump team fumbled this, I can't believe that a grown-ass woman facing a huge job interview-- hell, a huge job-- wouldn't take the initiative to educate herself. Only spectacular ignorance ("How hard could it be?") or arrogance ("I already know everything I need to know") or deference ("I'll just do what the man in charge tells me to") or laziness ("I'll get ready for the hearings after I stream all the seasons of Friends") would explain it.
And she laments that she couldn't go do interviews on friendly morning shows-- but what would a woman, who by her own account was grievously underprepared-- what would that woman have to say?
The Mystified DeVos
DeVos is clearly bothered by the perception that she’s out to abolish public education in America, mentioning multiple times that it’s the biggest misconception about her. “I mean, nothing could be further from the truth,” she says. “Public schools are great. "
She can't be serious. Does she not remember when she declared that public schools are a "dead end." Does she really not see how easy it might be to interpret her actions in Michigan as a full frontal assault on public education? Unless she acknowledges those things, it's impossible to take her new-found love and respect for (at least a few) public schools seriously. It is one thing when your abusive spouse says, "I'm sorry for all the times I hit you and I'll never do it again." It's another thing entirely when they say, "But I would never hit you. I never did. You can totally trust me."
DeVos has spent thirty-some years making her antipathy form the public school system exceedingly clear. She has been hanging out with folks like Jeb Bush who have been clear about their desire to replace public schools with charters. She cannot be surprised that more than a few people noticed.
The Kingdom Gains DeVos
I have a test for Betsy DeVos profiles-- if there is no mention of Jesus or the Church or Christian faith in it, I know it's incomplete. Check just this partial list of articles-- I don't believe it's possible to really understand what DeVos has in mind without considering her faith . Alberta fails to include this aspect.
The Impatient DeVos
Alberta nicely dovetails the story of DeVos's mugging with the story of advocates trying to bar her from a school with the observation that patience is a thing she does not have. It's an aspect that isn't always highlighted, but always seems part of the picture-- DeVos expects to get her way, and being thwarted makes her angry and even less inclined to find middle ground than she already is.
This is a woman who's not troubled by doubt. Note that none of her poor performance at her hearing was her fault. And that performance included the revelation that she could not think of a single lesson that she had learned from her work in Michigan or the trajectory of Detroit schools. Even my students know that at a job interview, you confess to some mistake or shortcoming-- I don't think DeVos ever has. It's a trait she shares with her boss-- she's certain she's right, and she has little patience for people who won't bend to her rightness.
The Disempowered DeVos
Alberta drives home the point that the USED secretary wields little power and controls a tiny part of school funding, so, really, between that and her inability to manage her department or forge alliances in Congress, there really isn't much she can get done. Fair enough. I hope he's right.
Bonus: Thanks a lot, Jeb
Alberta confirms that it's Jeb Bush who picked up the phone and started this ugly boulder rolling down the hill. It's worth remembering that there are many ways we could have ended up with this woman as USED secretary, and a Trump Presidency is only one of them.
The whole thing leaves her looking at least a little sympathetic, but there are real things to be learned, and it would be better if supporters of public education could focus on who she really is and not the crazy cartoon version. Let's save the outrage for something a little more important than her bad Halloween costume ideas, because the many faces of DeVos may not include super-powers, but they are still a threat to public education in this country, and it wouold be a mistake to dismiss her as just an incompetent, unqualified rube. She may not know much about education, and she may not have any idea what she doesn't know, but she's in a position to do some real harm, so the rst of us had better pay attention to all of the faces that are really her.
 |
| Dammit- you again?! |
But on to Alberta's profile.
I'm not going to go line by line or graph by graph-- you really should read the whole thing yourself. But there are some things that really jump out. Here are some of the DeVosian faces that Alberta shows us.
The Bad Manager DeVos
Who could have guessed, the article seems to ask, that DeVos would be so ill-equipped to run a large government department.
Well, me. I would have guessed that. And a few hundred of my colleagues. DeVos never ran a large government organization, never had to deal with people or politicians who were not being "convinced" by the power of her checkbook. It was absolutely predictable (and in fact predicted) that she would not be able to manage the bureaucratic organization of her department or forge support for her programs in Congress.
The Under-coached DeVos
In retrospect, DeVos tells me, she blames the transition team for its handling of her confirmation. “I think I was undercoached,” she says. “The transition group was very circumspect about how much information they gave me about then-current policy and … it was in their view a balance between being prepared for a confirmation hearing and not having well-formed opinions on what should or shouldn’t change, so as not to get caught in a confirmation hearing making commitments that then I wouldn’t want to or be able to keep. And in hindsight, I wish I had a whole lot more information.”
Sure, maybe. And I've never been nominated for a cabinet position. But if I were up for some huge job, I'm pretty sure I would crack open the internet and educate myself. Is she really suggesting that because Trump's team didn't prep her, she was helpless to study up for the job? In a field where she'd been working as a philanthro-lobbyist for three decades? Hell, to get a sense of what would come up in her hearings, all she would need to do was have a secretary round up all the pieces written by people who had been opposing her all this time.
No. While I can believe that the Trump team fumbled this, I can't believe that a grown-ass woman facing a huge job interview-- hell, a huge job-- wouldn't take the initiative to educate herself. Only spectacular ignorance ("How hard could it be?") or arrogance ("I already know everything I need to know") or deference ("I'll just do what the man in charge tells me to") or laziness ("I'll get ready for the hearings after I stream all the seasons of Friends") would explain it.
And she laments that she couldn't go do interviews on friendly morning shows-- but what would a woman, who by her own account was grievously underprepared-- what would that woman have to say?
The Mystified DeVos
DeVos is clearly bothered by the perception that she’s out to abolish public education in America, mentioning multiple times that it’s the biggest misconception about her. “I mean, nothing could be further from the truth,” she says. “Public schools are great. "
She can't be serious. Does she not remember when she declared that public schools are a "dead end." Does she really not see how easy it might be to interpret her actions in Michigan as a full frontal assault on public education? Unless she acknowledges those things, it's impossible to take her new-found love and respect for (at least a few) public schools seriously. It is one thing when your abusive spouse says, "I'm sorry for all the times I hit you and I'll never do it again." It's another thing entirely when they say, "But I would never hit you. I never did. You can totally trust me."
DeVos has spent thirty-some years making her antipathy form the public school system exceedingly clear. She has been hanging out with folks like Jeb Bush who have been clear about their desire to replace public schools with charters. She cannot be surprised that more than a few people noticed.
The Kingdom Gains DeVos
I have a test for Betsy DeVos profiles-- if there is no mention of Jesus or the Church or Christian faith in it, I know it's incomplete. Check just this partial list of articles-- I don't believe it's possible to really understand what DeVos has in mind without considering her faith . Alberta fails to include this aspect.
The Impatient DeVos
Alberta nicely dovetails the story of DeVos's mugging with the story of advocates trying to bar her from a school with the observation that patience is a thing she does not have. It's an aspect that isn't always highlighted, but always seems part of the picture-- DeVos expects to get her way, and being thwarted makes her angry and even less inclined to find middle ground than she already is.
This is a woman who's not troubled by doubt. Note that none of her poor performance at her hearing was her fault. And that performance included the revelation that she could not think of a single lesson that she had learned from her work in Michigan or the trajectory of Detroit schools. Even my students know that at a job interview, you confess to some mistake or shortcoming-- I don't think DeVos ever has. It's a trait she shares with her boss-- she's certain she's right, and she has little patience for people who won't bend to her rightness.
The Disempowered DeVos
Alberta drives home the point that the USED secretary wields little power and controls a tiny part of school funding, so, really, between that and her inability to manage her department or forge alliances in Congress, there really isn't much she can get done. Fair enough. I hope he's right.
Bonus: Thanks a lot, Jeb
Alberta confirms that it's Jeb Bush who picked up the phone and started this ugly boulder rolling down the hill. It's worth remembering that there are many ways we could have ended up with this woman as USED secretary, and a Trump Presidency is only one of them.
The whole thing leaves her looking at least a little sympathetic, but there are real things to be learned, and it would be better if supporters of public education could focus on who she really is and not the crazy cartoon version. Let's save the outrage for something a little more important than her bad Halloween costume ideas, because the many faces of DeVos may not include super-powers, but they are still a threat to public education in this country, and it wouold be a mistake to dismiss her as just an incompetent, unqualified rube. She may not know much about education, and she may not have any idea what she doesn't know, but she's in a position to do some real harm, so the rst of us had better pay attention to all of the faces that are really her.
OH: Another Charter Closes Midyear
One of the things that you get with a pubic school that you do not get with a charter schools is a promise, a long term commitment to stay in place and keep your doors open. Folks in the Mahoning Valley (near Youngstown, Ohio and Sharon, Pennsylvania) were reminded of that as yet another charter school closed its doors with the year well under way.
Mahoning Valley Opportunity Center always faced a challenge. It was started as a school for students who were in academic distress, and just a year ago it was in the news because of a student assault on a teacher. The school is sponsored by the Youngstown School District, a sponsor which earned a "poor" rating and became part of the list of Ohio naughty sponsors that faced a possible closing this fall.
The high school handled just 84 students. 71 of those students were non-white and reportedly 0% were free or reduced lunch students. And while these students were at risk, boy, was MVOC unsuccessful with them. The school was academically ranked 694th in the state; its graduation rate ranked 702nd.So, not doing great.
Staff and faculty, speaking without disclosing identities, told local news that they had felt something was up since the beginning of the year, that the school had been long mismanaged, and that Superintendent David Macali had other plans for the school.
So two nights ago, the operators of the school voted to shut it down, and yesterday morning, at least one student was at the front door, wondering what she was supposed to do now. Of course, part of "empowering" families is that the state and the charter school get to wash their hands of any responsibilities for these students. Did your charter school close? Well, the state of Ohio has empowered you to go solve the problem yourself. Congratulations.
The stated reason was money. It no longer made business sense to keep MVOC open, and since charter schools are ultimately businesses, it is business-based decisions that rule the day. Not student based, not community based, and not education based. Charter schools are businesses, and businesses close when it suits them. Food trucks do not factor in how badly the community needs a place to eat-- only whether they can profit by serving that community. One more reason that modern charters are a bad fit for education.
Mahoning Valley Opportunity Center always faced a challenge. It was started as a school for students who were in academic distress, and just a year ago it was in the news because of a student assault on a teacher. The school is sponsored by the Youngstown School District, a sponsor which earned a "poor" rating and became part of the list of Ohio naughty sponsors that faced a possible closing this fall.
The high school handled just 84 students. 71 of those students were non-white and reportedly 0% were free or reduced lunch students. And while these students were at risk, boy, was MVOC unsuccessful with them. The school was academically ranked 694th in the state; its graduation rate ranked 702nd.So, not doing great.
Staff and faculty, speaking without disclosing identities, told local news that they had felt something was up since the beginning of the year, that the school had been long mismanaged, and that Superintendent David Macali had other plans for the school.
So two nights ago, the operators of the school voted to shut it down, and yesterday morning, at least one student was at the front door, wondering what she was supposed to do now. Of course, part of "empowering" families is that the state and the charter school get to wash their hands of any responsibilities for these students. Did your charter school close? Well, the state of Ohio has empowered you to go solve the problem yourself. Congratulations.
The stated reason was money. It no longer made business sense to keep MVOC open, and since charter schools are ultimately businesses, it is business-based decisions that rule the day. Not student based, not community based, and not education based. Charter schools are businesses, and businesses close when it suits them. Food trucks do not factor in how badly the community needs a place to eat-- only whether they can profit by serving that community. One more reason that modern charters are a bad fit for education.
Tuesday, October 31, 2017
PA: Teacher Tenure, Seniority on Chopping Block
Here we go again.
Reformsters and their PA GOP friends have been trying to do away with teacher job protections in Pennsylvania for years now, but this year, they took a new approach-- burying the attacks on teacher seniority and tenure in a big bill strapped onto PA's ever-disastrous budget shenanigans.
The budget appears to be just about settled, albeit quietly, so as not to draw attention to how long it had been unsettled (long story short-- this year, for variety's sake, instead of failing to pass a budget, the legislature passed a budget and then a group of House GOP representatives blocked any attempts to fund it). The omnibus education bill has been detached from the budget, but it is still sitting on Governor Wolf's desk, a Frankensteinian heap, a clinking clanking clattering collection of caliginous junk.
House Bill 178 featuress a whole bunch o'stuff, including but not limited to:
* A bunch of procedural rules for how ESSA plan review shall be handled, mostly aimed at making sure that the legislature has ample opportunity to get their grubby amateur hands on the plan. So that'll be a big help.
* A requirement for all new school board members to get a training from the Ed department
* Training programs for charter school trustees, too
* Districts under financial watch will have a state overseer to serve as their czar
* Districts may now claim "economic reasons" as a cause for cutting staff (this is added to a list of causes that includes cutting programs, reduced enrollment, or school consolidation). Such cuts may NOT be based on how much a particular teacher is paid, and if a superintendent gets caught violating that rule, he'll get a letter in his permanent file. So, you know, really heavy consequences for that one.
* Districts must suspend an equal percentage of administrators. This seems... tricky. If a district has 100 teachers and 5 administrators and they cut 5 teachers, does that mean they must chop off one principal's arms? Fortunately, the Secretary of Education can waive this requirement if the district's operations are "already sufficiently streamlined" aka "any time he feels like it."
* Some noise about reporting the economic factors and also making sure that staff cuts won't hurt academics, mostly providing the legislature plausible deniability ("We told them not to cut important stuff! Just, you know, teachers.")
* Staff cut for financial reasons MUST BE cut in descending order of recent evaluations. So anyone with two consecutive "unsatisfactory" ratings goes first. This will not help much, as the number of unsatisfactory teachers in PA tends to hover around 200. After that, the district works its way up the evaluation scale. For the time being, teachers are clumped by rating and not precisely ranked by their actual rating. I presume that will come later.
* Presuming they won't get jobs elsewhere, they will be called back in reverse of the order they were laid off.
* No contract can negotiate anything that contradicts these rules.
* I'm not positive, but I think section 1216 would now say that a teacher candidate can't be denied a diploma if they flunk the PRAXIS or similar test.
* No lunch shaming.
* Opioid abuse instruction.
* A bunch of measures to beef up agricultural education.
* The ability for charter schools to manage themselves as chains rather than a series of independent schools owned and operated by the same company.
* And once again kicks the can down the road on using the Keystone exam as a graduation requirement. This keeps happening (the requirement was supposed to kick in last year) because legislators keep being alarmed by how many students would be denied diplomas they have otherwise earned because of this Big Standardized Test. They don't seem to understand that this will never change; somebody needs to go to Harrisburg and explain norm-based assessment to them.
Somebody also needs to read the legislature in on the recent Houston court decision about EVAAS, the OG of VAM systems and the identical twin to the VAM system used in PA (PVAAS). In that decision, the court ruled that using the VAM system as a means of terminating teachers was nuts and indefensible. The system for suspending teachers in this bill are not quite as severe as Houston's, but if this bill becomes law, I expect we'll be in court soon enough.
If you are in Pennsylvania, please join me in tweeting, emailing and calling the governor to encourage him not to sign this thick slice of baloney. This is not what education in Pennsylvania needs. It remains to be seen exactly which internal organs the legislature lacks.
Reformsters and their PA GOP friends have been trying to do away with teacher job protections in Pennsylvania for years now, but this year, they took a new approach-- burying the attacks on teacher seniority and tenure in a big bill strapped onto PA's ever-disastrous budget shenanigans.
The budget appears to be just about settled, albeit quietly, so as not to draw attention to how long it had been unsettled (long story short-- this year, for variety's sake, instead of failing to pass a budget, the legislature passed a budget and then a group of House GOP representatives blocked any attempts to fund it). The omnibus education bill has been detached from the budget, but it is still sitting on Governor Wolf's desk, a Frankensteinian heap, a clinking clanking clattering collection of caliginous junk.
 |
| I thought that sounded familiar |
House Bill 178 featuress a whole bunch o'stuff, including but not limited to:
* A bunch of procedural rules for how ESSA plan review shall be handled, mostly aimed at making sure that the legislature has ample opportunity to get their grubby amateur hands on the plan. So that'll be a big help.
* A requirement for all new school board members to get a training from the Ed department
* Training programs for charter school trustees, too
* Districts under financial watch will have a state overseer to serve as their czar
* Districts may now claim "economic reasons" as a cause for cutting staff (this is added to a list of causes that includes cutting programs, reduced enrollment, or school consolidation). Such cuts may NOT be based on how much a particular teacher is paid, and if a superintendent gets caught violating that rule, he'll get a letter in his permanent file. So, you know, really heavy consequences for that one.
* Districts must suspend an equal percentage of administrators. This seems... tricky. If a district has 100 teachers and 5 administrators and they cut 5 teachers, does that mean they must chop off one principal's arms? Fortunately, the Secretary of Education can waive this requirement if the district's operations are "already sufficiently streamlined" aka "any time he feels like it."
* Some noise about reporting the economic factors and also making sure that staff cuts won't hurt academics, mostly providing the legislature plausible deniability ("We told them not to cut important stuff! Just, you know, teachers.")
* Staff cut for financial reasons MUST BE cut in descending order of recent evaluations. So anyone with two consecutive "unsatisfactory" ratings goes first. This will not help much, as the number of unsatisfactory teachers in PA tends to hover around 200. After that, the district works its way up the evaluation scale. For the time being, teachers are clumped by rating and not precisely ranked by their actual rating. I presume that will come later.
* Presuming they won't get jobs elsewhere, they will be called back in reverse of the order they were laid off.
* No contract can negotiate anything that contradicts these rules.
* I'm not positive, but I think section 1216 would now say that a teacher candidate can't be denied a diploma if they flunk the PRAXIS or similar test.
* No lunch shaming.
* Opioid abuse instruction.
* A bunch of measures to beef up agricultural education.
* The ability for charter schools to manage themselves as chains rather than a series of independent schools owned and operated by the same company.
* And once again kicks the can down the road on using the Keystone exam as a graduation requirement. This keeps happening (the requirement was supposed to kick in last year) because legislators keep being alarmed by how many students would be denied diplomas they have otherwise earned because of this Big Standardized Test. They don't seem to understand that this will never change; somebody needs to go to Harrisburg and explain norm-based assessment to them.
Somebody also needs to read the legislature in on the recent Houston court decision about EVAAS, the OG of VAM systems and the identical twin to the VAM system used in PA (PVAAS). In that decision, the court ruled that using the VAM system as a means of terminating teachers was nuts and indefensible. The system for suspending teachers in this bill are not quite as severe as Houston's, but if this bill becomes law, I expect we'll be in court soon enough.
If you are in Pennsylvania, please join me in tweeting, emailing and calling the governor to encourage him not to sign this thick slice of baloney. This is not what education in Pennsylvania needs. It remains to be seen exactly which internal organs the legislature lacks.
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