Ed Week is addressing the question of teacher recertification in a big slab of articles this week (produced with "support from" the Joyce Foundation), each of which addresses a piece of the bigger picture. If you're intrigued, here's the thumbnail sketch of each, with an eyeball rating between one and four. Four eyeballs means you should check this one out, and one eyeball means never mind. Let's go:
Is Teacher Recertification Broken?
Setphen Sawchuk leads off with the second-to-biggest question. The biggest question is "Was teacher recertification ever not broken?" Sawchuck starts off with one incisively exact statement:
Every five years, teachers across the United States engage in a ritual of sorts, submitting paperwork to prove they’ve sat through a specified number of hours of coursework and paying a fee to renew their licenses.
Then he follows it with a less incisive statement:
It’s hard to think of something that has more influence over teachers:
Well.... I get his point. Recertification provides a great deal of leverage. But the fact that the content of the recertification process doesn't really influence teachers at all is part and parcel of the whole "broken" thing. And he goes on to lay that out as an intro to the series-- nobody really knows what is going on in the world of recertification, but everyone's pretty sure that whatever it is, it's not helping much at all.
Four eyeballs.
Teacher Professional Development: Many Choices, Few Quality Checks
Sawchuk takes a look at the mini-industry that has popped up to help teachers get their hours in. In the process, he drops a factoid that helps explain why recertification remains so mysterious-- the most recent USED data is from 2011-2012.
He gets that choices are usually made based on convenience and time constraints. Which means lots of teachers get as many hours as possible from their own district's professional development (in states like PA, most PD must by law be applicable to recert purposes). But there are also a variety of vendors out there, and nobody is really checking to see whether they're any good or not. And many of those vendors offer courses based on what they want to offer, not what teachers want to take.
All of which seems about right. We make a decision on a matrix of time, convenience, and "most likely to not be a total waste of my time."
Three eyeballs.
Even National Board Teachers Don't Get a Pass on License Renewal
Madeline Will lays out what most of us know-- getting national board certified is a hell of a lot more work than sitting through the average PD or recert course, and yet somehow, it doesn't count toward the recert process. This is dumb. Will just puts some specifics behind it that help underline how dumb it is.
Three eyeballs.
Wisconsin Killed License Renewal. So Why Are Teachers Upset.
Wisconsin's recert process was clunky and dumb, so they killed it. And teachers were upset, because they were afraid the lack of such a process makes teaching look less professional. That's it. unless you want names and specifics, you don't have to read the article now.
Two eyeballs.
It's Not How Long You Spend in PD, It's How Much You Grow
Liana Loewus takes us to Georgia, where a new approach to recert is ditching "sit'n'git" PD with a different system based on setting a goal for personal growth and meeting it.
In Georgia, this involves Professional Learning Communities, the DuFour pioneered model that all the cool kids are using these days. It's an interesting approach, particularly notable because the state appears to be taking a "hands-off approach" and trusting principals to tend to their own house. "We can’t ask educators within your school to trust each other if we’re not also going to trust you,” said David Hill, head of special projects for the state standards board.
What an extraordinary approach! Teachers work together to help each other get better, and the state takes their principal's word for it that Good Things are happening. While the system would seem to depend upon having a principal who's not a jackass, and it gets into all the problems of peer reviews, it's still an intriguing approach.
Four eyeballs.
Inching Toward Relicensure, One "Microcredential" at a Time
Sawchuk interviews Paul Fleming from Tennessee, who explains how their micro-credential system works. I'll admit-- when I saw "micro-credential" I envisioned a bunch of teachers strapped to computers taking stupid tests at the end of slide-show presentations about the kind of "competencies" that can be crammed into power-point slides. Yuck.
Tennessee seems to be up to something different, with elements of peer review and using actual evidence from the classroom instead of clicking a mouse at a screen. The system is new and there seem to be some questions yet to be answered, and the interview is brief.
Three eyeballs.
Making a Case for "Timely, Purposeful, Progressive" PD
Brian Curtin wants us to think about how much the world has changed since we started teaching, so that the tide of change will help us feel that it's "imperative" that PD be newer and better. And he's going to tell us that teacher quality is the single biggest factor in student achievement (and he's not going to bother to include the qualifier that this is the biggest "in school" factor). Also, Google tools. And timeliness. And so much corporate style jargon that it's hard to believe that this guy is an actual English teacher (but he is). But continuous education should be continuous, and happen when we can immediately apply what we learn, because we forget things that happen in the summer. And student outcomes.
One eyeball. Maybe even half an eyeball, but that would be gross.
Cutting a New Path on License Renewal for Teachers
Kim Walters-Parker, like Curtin, seems to have many, many things to say, and in trying to say all of them, ends up not saying much. It should be harder to become a teacher. Maintaining a law license is very hard; maintaining a teacher's certificate is not. Change should be approached with a long view. And when she gets to the "what should recert look like question," she answers "Frankly, I don't know."
One eyeball.
How Licensing Rules Kept One Teacher of the Year Out of Public Schools
Megan Allen is that teacher, and her Florida certificate did not transfer easily to Massachusetts.
It's a real problem, though I'm not sure the problem is so much reciprocity as it is that some states would give a teaching certificate to an upright badger with a piece of chalk strapped to its paw. And as states move to issue teaching certificates to anyone with any degree, or allow charters to "certify" their own "teachers," reciprocity becomes a bigger challenge. How do you maintain high standards in your own state when North Pennsyltucky has lowered standards to the basement?
Improving reciprocity would, as Allen hints, be a natural solution to recruiting issues. Allen herself ended up pushed out of the classroom by her intra-state move, and that is no small matter. But at the same time, as I consider the state of education in Massachusetts and Florida, I have to conclude that Massachusetts understands some things about teachers and public schools that Florida does not, which in turn would lead me to doubt whether a Florida certificate was good enough to gain automatic entrance to classrooms in other states.
Four eyeballs.
That's the package. An interesting collection about an under-discussed topic for which there are few simple answers. Teachers who are any good in the classroom grow constantly; it would be better, perhaps, for states to ask how they could find out about that growth rather than demanding that teachers be locked into some easy-to-report-by-paperwork method of making the state happy.
Thursday, December 7, 2017
Wednesday, December 6, 2017
Selling the School
If you live outside a certain part of the US, the brand BBVA Compass may be unfamiliar to you, and if you are from an area served by BBVA Compass, you may think of them as just one more large, grim banking institution.
Thanks to KIPP, that may be changing.
KIPP has sold the naming rights to its Houston campus for $1.8 million dollars to the Atlanta-based financial goliath.
The school itself will still be called KIPP Nexus, but the campus will be the BBVA Compass Opportunity Campus. This is a new school in the KIPP Houston chain opened this year with 90 kindergartners and 110 fifth graders. It joins the 28 Houston-area campuses and the 209 schools in the KIPP national chain.
The $1.8 million breaks down into a million and a half for capital projects and another $300K for operating expenses. This is reportedly BBVA Compass's largest adventure in education financing, with their "director of corporate responsibility and reputation" (yes, that's a thing) praising KIPP's "bar-none" and "spectacular" record of success.
This is not the first such venture in the Houston area. The Kinder Foundation (founded by former Enron executive Richard Kinder) sunk $7.5 million in the Houston ISD High School for the Performing and Visual Arts with the expectation that Kinder's name would be added to the title of the magnet school, but after a pushback from board and public members, the foundation released Houston ISD from the naming obligation.
Schools and school districts havesold out entered mutually beneficial partnerships with private interests before. There are plenty of school sports stadiums with sponsor names attached, and I suspect it would be impossible to count up the number of schools that use scoreboards which were "contributed" for "free"-- but with the company logo prominently displayed.
Charter schools have always depended upon the kindness of well-heeled strangers, though not often at the cost of naming rights. Is sponsorship of education a bad thing? We know that when the Koch brothers endow a college teaching position, they expect that school to teach the "correct" economic world view.
But what about K-12? Do we want our kids' school day to feature "Wal-Mart Presents the Spudville Junior High School"? If my child attends Exxon Senior High School, will she be allowed to learn about global warming? If my child's school is sponsored by Hobby Lobby, will she be required to learn that all non-heterosexuals are wrong and evil? IF we're a Disney school, am I forbidden to roll my eyes as I open class with the newest Disney trailer? Sponsorship is a tricky thing-- sponsors might not have to say a word if cash-strapped administrations decide on their own that nobody will be allowed to do anything that might spook the sponsors.
And how do these sponsorships do anything except widen the gap between haves and have-nots? In poor rural or urban communities where there are no deep-pocketed sponsors waiting topurchase show their support for schools, will the schools just fall further and further behind?
What if we break it down to the classroom level? Does Future Me end up starting the period by saying, "This Tuesday's lesson about participial phrases is brought to you by the folks at Tyson chicken-- nutritional swellness for your every meal." Or will I just play an ad? Must my students all write assignments with a Bic pen (the official pen of Franklin High School)? Do I get to wear a special teacher suit that's covered with logos, all NASCAR style? Do I get to negotiate my endorsement deals as a free agent, so that popular teachers get the best extra income byselling out like a soulless bandit entering productive partnerships with private business, or will the district negotiate all such deals so that I can look forward to a principal shoving a Pepsi logo hat in my face and saying, "You will wear this, or I'll put a letter in your file."
Mike Fe9niberg, co-founder of the KIPP conglomerate, says that the alternative id for corporate America to ignore K-12. I disagree. The alternative is for corporate America, along with the citizens of America, to pay a fair share of taxes to properly finance public education. Crazy talk, I know, but at least you can believe I mean it, because I have no sponsors paying me to say it.
Thanks to KIPP, that may be changing.
KIPP has sold the naming rights to its Houston campus for $1.8 million dollars to the Atlanta-based financial goliath.
The school itself will still be called KIPP Nexus, but the campus will be the BBVA Compass Opportunity Campus. This is a new school in the KIPP Houston chain opened this year with 90 kindergartners and 110 fifth graders. It joins the 28 Houston-area campuses and the 209 schools in the KIPP national chain.
The $1.8 million breaks down into a million and a half for capital projects and another $300K for operating expenses. This is reportedly BBVA Compass's largest adventure in education financing, with their "director of corporate responsibility and reputation" (yes, that's a thing) praising KIPP's "bar-none" and "spectacular" record of success.
This is not the first such venture in the Houston area. The Kinder Foundation (founded by former Enron executive Richard Kinder) sunk $7.5 million in the Houston ISD High School for the Performing and Visual Arts with the expectation that Kinder's name would be added to the title of the magnet school, but after a pushback from board and public members, the foundation released Houston ISD from the naming obligation.
Schools and school districts have
Charter schools have always depended upon the kindness of well-heeled strangers, though not often at the cost of naming rights. Is sponsorship of education a bad thing? We know that when the Koch brothers endow a college teaching position, they expect that school to teach the "correct" economic world view.
But what about K-12? Do we want our kids' school day to feature "Wal-Mart Presents the Spudville Junior High School"? If my child attends Exxon Senior High School, will she be allowed to learn about global warming? If my child's school is sponsored by Hobby Lobby, will she be required to learn that all non-heterosexuals are wrong and evil? IF we're a Disney school, am I forbidden to roll my eyes as I open class with the newest Disney trailer? Sponsorship is a tricky thing-- sponsors might not have to say a word if cash-strapped administrations decide on their own that nobody will be allowed to do anything that might spook the sponsors.
And how do these sponsorships do anything except widen the gap between haves and have-nots? In poor rural or urban communities where there are no deep-pocketed sponsors waiting to
What if we break it down to the classroom level? Does Future Me end up starting the period by saying, "This Tuesday's lesson about participial phrases is brought to you by the folks at Tyson chicken-- nutritional swellness for your every meal." Or will I just play an ad? Must my students all write assignments with a Bic pen (the official pen of Franklin High School)? Do I get to wear a special teacher suit that's covered with logos, all NASCAR style? Do I get to negotiate my endorsement deals as a free agent, so that popular teachers get the best extra income by
Mike Fe9niberg, co-founder of the KIPP conglomerate, says that the alternative id for corporate America to ignore K-12. I disagree. The alternative is for corporate America, along with the citizens of America, to pay a fair share of taxes to properly finance public education. Crazy talk, I know, but at least you can believe I mean it, because I have no sponsors paying me to say it.
Better Teacher Preparation
There are folks who believe that the problems with the teacher pipeline begin with college and university programs for preparing teachers in the first place. Are there ways that we could improve that part of the pipeline?
First of all, I'm not someone inclined to fight unconditionally for the traditional system, in part because I am not a product of it. My college experience was different in several key specifics:
1) My BA is in English, the subject I teach, on the theory that I should be as knowledgeable as can be about the subject I'm teaching. Because I was headed for teaching, there were a couple of English courses I was required to take. Beyond that, I emerged from college just as well-educated as any other English major.
2) I took only a couple of methods courses before student teaching-- however...
3) I took several methods courses while student teaching. Though my school was a small ruralish college, student teaching was in an urban setting (in my case, Cleveland Heights). We lived in a hotel in downtown Cleveland (corner of E9 and Superior) and took evening classes at a field office maintained by the school in that same hotel. My methods courses were taught by working classroom teachers, except for the one taught by the same professor who observed me while I was student teaching. This made the courses enormously practical ("So, this happened today. How could I have handled it. And this is what I'm planning in two days-- is this a good way to approach it?")
4) I was observed at least once a week, sometimes for several class periods. Seriously. My professor knew some of my students by name.
5) My first year of teaching. I was a regular first year teacher to my district, but an intern to my college's graduate program. I still took classes at that same field office, and the same guy who watched me through student teaching checked in on me in my new classroom (just not so often).
That's the system that produced me, and every time I'm host to a student teacher, I'm again aware of how different many other teacher programs are. That said, there are many things that the current system does well, many things that are necessary for preparing the teachers of tomorrow, like the study of pedagogical methods, child development, and classroom management. I would still trust a person with a teaching degree and traditional certificate before I turned to someone who has nothing to offer except a pulse and a college degree in whatever.
So what would I change in order to make college programs more effective and useful?
1) Put working teachers in the driver's seat.
Education is the only professional field in which working, experienced professionals have no say in how people are trained for or admitted to the profession. Too many (not all, but too many) education courses are taught by people with no actual classroom experience. I don't care if you're a super-duper education researcher-- a whole lot of education research on "effective" methods and "proven" approaches is bunk, and the people who know the difference between the bunk and the non-bunk are working in classrooms.
I've known of education professors who worked as substitute teachers in their local districts. That's awesome. And as I, and people like me, approach the end of a teaching career, local college education programs ought to be calling us up and trying to recruit us for their program.
And no college education department anywhere should settle on a list of course requirements until a bunch of experienced working teachers have signed off on it.
2) Provide actual supervision and support for student teachers.
For a program to visit a student a mere three times for a brief drive-by is criminal-- particularly when the person doing the "observation" has never met the student teacher before that first visit. Visits should be extensive and often. Student teachers should be in some sort of setting (classroom, meetings, whatever) that allows them to seek and receive guidance as the student teaching is going on.
3) Address the underlying philosophies
Here's a major irony of the standards movement-- while we are supposedly shifting students to Really Understanding The Concepts behind what they're doing and not just performing tricks, we have shifted teacher education toward producing technicians, mechanics who just unpack a standard here, align a lesson there, and tighten some bolts on the meat widgets in the classroom.
Why are you teaching? What are your goals? What are your underlying assumptions about education, knowledge, human nature, human growth, and the values behind all of this? If you don't know the answer, you're just a worksheet deliver service utilized by a content delivery system.
4) Broadening the Pool
This is probably the hardest part, but it's important because so many states are trending in the wrong direction. Too many places are responding to the teacher "shortage" by opening the door to any warm body that's willing to take the job. This will not work. They will continue to recruit people who have neither the training nor the ability for teaching, and the warm bodies will either leave quickly or stay and do a lousy job.
Meanwhile, by opening the door to any warm body, they devalue the profession and make it less appealing. The creation of fast food anybody-can-do-them jobs did not spark interest in culinary schools.
The "shortage" is simply a failure of states to make teaching attractive. Instead, they've transformed it into a job that offers little autonomy, little job security, lousy pay, general disrespect, and the chance, not to improve children's lives, but to read a script and prep the kids for a bad standardized test. This is not how you attract and retain the best and the brightest, or even people who would otherwise be drawn to teaching.
There's a big conversation to be had about teacher training programs, and we aren't having it, though I keep waiting. In the meantime, colleges looking to recruit for their teacher program staff know where to find me.
First of all, I'm not someone inclined to fight unconditionally for the traditional system, in part because I am not a product of it. My college experience was different in several key specifics:
1) My BA is in English, the subject I teach, on the theory that I should be as knowledgeable as can be about the subject I'm teaching. Because I was headed for teaching, there were a couple of English courses I was required to take. Beyond that, I emerged from college just as well-educated as any other English major.
2) I took only a couple of methods courses before student teaching-- however...
3) I took several methods courses while student teaching. Though my school was a small ruralish college, student teaching was in an urban setting (in my case, Cleveland Heights). We lived in a hotel in downtown Cleveland (corner of E9 and Superior) and took evening classes at a field office maintained by the school in that same hotel. My methods courses were taught by working classroom teachers, except for the one taught by the same professor who observed me while I was student teaching. This made the courses enormously practical ("So, this happened today. How could I have handled it. And this is what I'm planning in two days-- is this a good way to approach it?")
 |
| My home away from home back in the day |
5) My first year of teaching. I was a regular first year teacher to my district, but an intern to my college's graduate program. I still took classes at that same field office, and the same guy who watched me through student teaching checked in on me in my new classroom (just not so often).
That's the system that produced me, and every time I'm host to a student teacher, I'm again aware of how different many other teacher programs are. That said, there are many things that the current system does well, many things that are necessary for preparing the teachers of tomorrow, like the study of pedagogical methods, child development, and classroom management. I would still trust a person with a teaching degree and traditional certificate before I turned to someone who has nothing to offer except a pulse and a college degree in whatever.
So what would I change in order to make college programs more effective and useful?
1) Put working teachers in the driver's seat.
Education is the only professional field in which working, experienced professionals have no say in how people are trained for or admitted to the profession. Too many (not all, but too many) education courses are taught by people with no actual classroom experience. I don't care if you're a super-duper education researcher-- a whole lot of education research on "effective" methods and "proven" approaches is bunk, and the people who know the difference between the bunk and the non-bunk are working in classrooms.
I've known of education professors who worked as substitute teachers in their local districts. That's awesome. And as I, and people like me, approach the end of a teaching career, local college education programs ought to be calling us up and trying to recruit us for their program.
And no college education department anywhere should settle on a list of course requirements until a bunch of experienced working teachers have signed off on it.
2) Provide actual supervision and support for student teachers.
For a program to visit a student a mere three times for a brief drive-by is criminal-- particularly when the person doing the "observation" has never met the student teacher before that first visit. Visits should be extensive and often. Student teachers should be in some sort of setting (classroom, meetings, whatever) that allows them to seek and receive guidance as the student teaching is going on.
3) Address the underlying philosophies
Here's a major irony of the standards movement-- while we are supposedly shifting students to Really Understanding The Concepts behind what they're doing and not just performing tricks, we have shifted teacher education toward producing technicians, mechanics who just unpack a standard here, align a lesson there, and tighten some bolts on the meat widgets in the classroom.
Why are you teaching? What are your goals? What are your underlying assumptions about education, knowledge, human nature, human growth, and the values behind all of this? If you don't know the answer, you're just a worksheet deliver service utilized by a content delivery system.
4) Broadening the Pool
This is probably the hardest part, but it's important because so many states are trending in the wrong direction. Too many places are responding to the teacher "shortage" by opening the door to any warm body that's willing to take the job. This will not work. They will continue to recruit people who have neither the training nor the ability for teaching, and the warm bodies will either leave quickly or stay and do a lousy job.
Meanwhile, by opening the door to any warm body, they devalue the profession and make it less appealing. The creation of fast food anybody-can-do-them jobs did not spark interest in culinary schools.
The "shortage" is simply a failure of states to make teaching attractive. Instead, they've transformed it into a job that offers little autonomy, little job security, lousy pay, general disrespect, and the chance, not to improve children's lives, but to read a script and prep the kids for a bad standardized test. This is not how you attract and retain the best and the brightest, or even people who would otherwise be drawn to teaching.
There's a big conversation to be had about teacher training programs, and we aren't having it, though I keep waiting. In the meantime, colleges looking to recruit for their teacher program staff know where to find me.
Monday, December 4, 2017
FL: DeVos-Financed Board Member Wants FBOE Seat
If you live outside of Florida, you may not know about Shawn Frost. But like much going on in the educational swamplands of Florida, this is a story worth paying attention to, because some version of it may be coming to an election near you.
So who is Shawn Frost, and how did he get to be a big name in Florida education?
Well, Shawn Frost is this guy:
This particular Facebook post has since been removed, but it seems to capture Frost's special je ne sais quoi.
Frost is currently a member of the Indian River County School Board. He wanted this seat, badly enough to leave his wife and children back in their home at Vero Beach, FL (still listed as his "where I live" on Facebook), and move into a room above his parents' garage to meet the residency requirements (all of this was hashed out in court, ultimately in Frost's favor).
The seat that Frost ran for in 2014 was the seat held by the president of the Florida School Boards Association, a group that Frost and like-minded folks consider a bit too chummy with the public education system. Frost has been (according to Facebook) a marine, a science teacher, and a senior project manager at EFront, a software learning management system. And according to a Frost-boosting profile of Frost, he works with business start-ups.
That glowing profile was posted at the website of ExcelinEd, the newest incarnation of Jeb Bush's Foundation for Excellence in Education which has long been the heavy hand reshaping the Florida education biz into something more appealing for profiteers and less useful for actual students. And the occasion of the profile was another of Frost's achievements.
Remember, Frost and friends didn't much care for FSBA. But booting the FSBA president out of her seat was not enough-- Frost decided to round up some like-minded reformy board members and create a new group-- the Florida Coalition of School Board Members (FCSBM). In particular, FCSBM is unhappy that FSBA is trying to stand in the way of the Florida legislature's various reformster-feuled proposals, going so far as to drag the state into court. Because when local school districts are attacked, they should welcome their dismemberment and defunding graciously, I guess. Oh, and the FCSBM address for incorporation was Frost's Vero Beach home.
So how did a carpetbagger manage to unseat the head of the state School Board association?
With some pricey help. We'll get into how some of this was spent in a second, but here's a char that breaks down the financial backing for Frost's campaign.
That's the American Federation of Children, the group that, in 2014, was still being run by Betsy DeVos, was tied closely to ALEC, and was funding reformy candidates left and right. Well, actually, only right. Here's how the Indian River Guardian reported on the race:
Frost, a newcomer to local politics with some questionable residency qualifications, (See: Frost says he is living in garage apartment at his father’s house in District 1), defeated Brombach 54 percent to 46 percent. In addition to being helped by local, though nationally funded, attacks on Brombach, Frost was helped by a flood of additional attack mailers, all paid for by the Florida Federation for Children. More outside help came from individual contributors to Frost’s campaign. Some two thirds of the direct contributions to Frost’s campaign were from out-of-state donors. In the reporting period ending August 18, Frost raised $6,340, $5,500 from out of state contributors, including several described as “venture capitalists.”
Frost has actually announced that he will not seek another term on the school board-- because he has bigger targets in mind:
I have to choose between reform on a small scale — Indian River County — and reform on a larger scale…I’ve chosen to focus on the state level. I will be joining, hopefully, the state board of education, and working on those constitution amendments over the next year, and that won’t leave time for running for office.
And there it is. The reformster pattern is to get your foot in the door-- any door-- and just keep failing upward into positions of greater and greater power. And now Florida is looking at one more anti-public-ed person in a position of power in their state.
I'm in Pennsylvania-- I really don't set out to spend so much time and attention of Florida, but they just keep providing examples of the worst of what can happen when the public school is under attack, and while I believe there are reformsters out there who are actually motivated by concern for students and education, none of them ever seem to turn up in the Sunshine State, so the attempts to carve up public education are just so... naked. In the other 49, we just need to keep paying attention. And if you're in Florida, God bless you, good luck, and make some noise (there's even a facebook page).
So who is Shawn Frost, and how did he get to be a big name in Florida education?
Well, Shawn Frost is this guy:
This particular Facebook post has since been removed, but it seems to capture Frost's special je ne sais quoi.
Frost is currently a member of the Indian River County School Board. He wanted this seat, badly enough to leave his wife and children back in their home at Vero Beach, FL (still listed as his "where I live" on Facebook), and move into a room above his parents' garage to meet the residency requirements (all of this was hashed out in court, ultimately in Frost's favor).
The seat that Frost ran for in 2014 was the seat held by the president of the Florida School Boards Association, a group that Frost and like-minded folks consider a bit too chummy with the public education system. Frost has been (according to Facebook) a marine, a science teacher, and a senior project manager at EFront, a software learning management system. And according to a Frost-boosting profile of Frost, he works with business start-ups.
That glowing profile was posted at the website of ExcelinEd, the newest incarnation of Jeb Bush's Foundation for Excellence in Education which has long been the heavy hand reshaping the Florida education biz into something more appealing for profiteers and less useful for actual students. And the occasion of the profile was another of Frost's achievements.
Remember, Frost and friends didn't much care for FSBA. But booting the FSBA president out of her seat was not enough-- Frost decided to round up some like-minded reformy board members and create a new group-- the Florida Coalition of School Board Members (FCSBM). In particular, FCSBM is unhappy that FSBA is trying to stand in the way of the Florida legislature's various reformster-feuled proposals, going so far as to drag the state into court. Because when local school districts are attacked, they should welcome their dismemberment and defunding graciously, I guess. Oh, and the FCSBM address for incorporation was Frost's Vero Beach home.
So how did a carpetbagger manage to unseat the head of the state School Board association?
With some pricey help. We'll get into how some of this was spent in a second, but here's a char that breaks down the financial backing for Frost's campaign.
 | |||
| from The Indian River Guardian |
That's the American Federation of Children, the group that, in 2014, was still being run by Betsy DeVos, was tied closely to ALEC, and was funding reformy candidates left and right. Well, actually, only right. Here's how the Indian River Guardian reported on the race:
Frost, a newcomer to local politics with some questionable residency qualifications, (See: Frost says he is living in garage apartment at his father’s house in District 1), defeated Brombach 54 percent to 46 percent. In addition to being helped by local, though nationally funded, attacks on Brombach, Frost was helped by a flood of additional attack mailers, all paid for by the Florida Federation for Children. More outside help came from individual contributors to Frost’s campaign. Some two thirds of the direct contributions to Frost’s campaign were from out-of-state donors. In the reporting period ending August 18, Frost raised $6,340, $5,500 from out of state contributors, including several described as “venture capitalists.”
Frost has actually announced that he will not seek another term on the school board-- because he has bigger targets in mind:
I have to choose between reform on a small scale — Indian River County — and reform on a larger scale…I’ve chosen to focus on the state level. I will be joining, hopefully, the state board of education, and working on those constitution amendments over the next year, and that won’t leave time for running for office.
And there it is. The reformster pattern is to get your foot in the door-- any door-- and just keep failing upward into positions of greater and greater power. And now Florida is looking at one more anti-public-ed person in a position of power in their state.
I'm in Pennsylvania-- I really don't set out to spend so much time and attention of Florida, but they just keep providing examples of the worst of what can happen when the public school is under attack, and while I believe there are reformsters out there who are actually motivated by concern for students and education, none of them ever seem to turn up in the Sunshine State, so the attempts to carve up public education are just so... naked. In the other 49, we just need to keep paying attention. And if you're in Florida, God bless you, good luck, and make some noise (there's even a facebook page).
Sunday, December 3, 2017
ICYMI: Hello, December Edition (12/3)
Is this your first time here? Here's a collection of worthwhile reads from last week-- not all of the, but some of them. Give them a read and remember-- writers get read when you pass them on!
The FLCRC Seems Hell Bent on Privatizing Public Education
Florida does this weird thing with their constitution every several years. It's about time for it to happen again, and it doesn't look good for public education.
I Am the Teacher South Carolina Wants To Retain, and I Am Barely Hanging On
One more state having trouble holding on to teachers; one of them wrote a newspaper editorial to explain why
What Really Happened at the School Where Every Senior Got into College
Yet one more example of how miracle schools don't exist, and if sounds too good to be true, it is.
No We Didn't Sign Up for This
If this is a hair whiny for your tastes, I feel you. But it's a good listing of many ways the profession has changed in a short time.
How To Avoid Writing Like an Academic
For those of us who teach writing, a cool little set of instructions.
We Don't Need No Education
The editorial board at Metro Times takes Michigan's anti-public-ed GOP to task.
Bias in VAMS
There's another VAM lawsuit going on (this one in New Mexico) and Audrey Amrein Beardsley is there. In addition to an update, she offers some expert opinion from Michael T Kane.
A Punishing Decade for School Funding
The Center on Budget and Policy Priorities looks at how school funding has been doing since the crash of 2008. Come for the chart, stay for the analysis.
Are Schools Responsible for Teaching Boys To Respect Girls?
It's the issue of the month, and Nancy Flanagan has something thoughtful to say about it. If you don't save your EdWeek reads to follow her, you should.
Top Ed Tech Trends Fake News
Finally, your long read of the week, but well worth it, putting fake news in the context of our country as a whole and ed tech baloney in particular. From Audrey Watters.
The FLCRC Seems Hell Bent on Privatizing Public Education
Florida does this weird thing with their constitution every several years. It's about time for it to happen again, and it doesn't look good for public education.
I Am the Teacher South Carolina Wants To Retain, and I Am Barely Hanging On
One more state having trouble holding on to teachers; one of them wrote a newspaper editorial to explain why
What Really Happened at the School Where Every Senior Got into College
Yet one more example of how miracle schools don't exist, and if sounds too good to be true, it is.
No We Didn't Sign Up for This
If this is a hair whiny for your tastes, I feel you. But it's a good listing of many ways the profession has changed in a short time.
How To Avoid Writing Like an Academic
For those of us who teach writing, a cool little set of instructions.
We Don't Need No Education
The editorial board at Metro Times takes Michigan's anti-public-ed GOP to task.
Bias in VAMS
There's another VAM lawsuit going on (this one in New Mexico) and Audrey Amrein Beardsley is there. In addition to an update, she offers some expert opinion from Michael T Kane.
A Punishing Decade for School Funding
The Center on Budget and Policy Priorities looks at how school funding has been doing since the crash of 2008. Come for the chart, stay for the analysis.
Are Schools Responsible for Teaching Boys To Respect Girls?
It's the issue of the month, and Nancy Flanagan has something thoughtful to say about it. If you don't save your EdWeek reads to follow her, you should.
Top Ed Tech Trends Fake News
Finally, your long read of the week, but well worth it, putting fake news in the context of our country as a whole and ed tech baloney in particular. From Audrey Watters.
Saturday, December 2, 2017
Are Two Tiers the Right Choice?
I have long argued against a two-tiered education system. I may be wrong.
I was thinking about the two tiers last night as I was busy hollering at my elected representatives on twitter and facebook and the phone (I would have dispatched pigeons if I had them). It has long been a political go-to line to talk about the Two America's, usually as part of a promise to bring them together. I don't recall ever seeing such a brazen attempt to take the Two America's and build a bigger wall between them.
We could talk about the specifics of the Republic Tax Bill, but of course nobody really knows all the provisions (except maybe the corporate lobbyists who wrote them) because the bill was rammed through quickly without debate, discussion, or even being read first. But we know the broad outlines-- give more money to the rich. Give some pennies to everyone else, but only for a year or two-- and those pennies will be eaten up by all the other costs that the non-wealthy will bear. We will have a country where for some people $500 is lunch money chump change and for some people $500 is the difference between survival and financial ruin.
We could talk about the proven failure of trickle down economics, the approach that hasn't worked, ever. Nor does it make sense that it would. I don't spend more on my business just because I've got more money-- I expand my business because I think there's enough demand to support it. And demand does not grow because ten rich guys each have a few billion more. Demand grows because a billion poor and middle class people have more money to spend-- and the security to believe they don't have to hold onto it as a safeguard against unexpected disaster. Taking on a trillion or two in debt so that rich people can be richer doesn't help.
But wait-- you say-- aren't the Republicans eternally concerned about our Huge Deficit. How can they add a trillion to that already-huge gap? That, of course, will be Act II of this play. Some day in the not-too-distant future, the GOP will look around and go, "Holy smokes! Look at that huge deficit! We'd better start cutting things like Medicare and Medicaid and Social Security." Orrin Hatch has already stated that "we don't have money" to re-instate CHIP, the health insurance program for children.
Has the GOP horribly miscalculated, opening itself up to a blue wave in 2018? Maybe, but I'm not feeling very optimistic this morning, so I'm going to say that 1) the donor class will provide huge campaign financing, 2) the Democrats will nominate dopes and 3) the low-information voters who do get some sort of tax benefit in the first year will fail to notice that it disappears completely after the election.
So maybe we do need a two-tiered system of schools in this country. One tier for the wealthy, some nice private schools (complete with vouchers that give yet another kickback of tax dollars to the rich) that prepare them to be future leaders and well-off masters of the universe. And then another tier for those who had the misfortune to be poor and must be prepared to live on the bottom rungs of the ladder, because there is no hope in hell that they will ever get out. Oh, sure, a handful now and then will be found worthy, just to keep the fiction alive that we still have the prospect of upward mobility in this country (and always making sure to include a person or two of color so that it's clear, you know, that we aren't that racist). But mostly they will need the skills and training to survive in America's basement, because if they're born there, they will probably stay there, always living one health problem or bad accident away from financial ruin, never able to afford any education after high school, and condemned to a high school that is either an underfunded public school or a selective and possibly fraudulent charter school, established specifically to help them be more comfortable in their proper place (perhaps delivered through some half-assed software program that maintains their permanent personnel file for the convenience of their corporate overlords). Certainly this is what some people already envision; it's what Betsy DeVos means when she suggests that students should be "allowed" to go to school in a place that's the "best fit," like a snotty rich girl in an 80s comedy looking down her nose at lower class children and saying, "Dear, wouldn't you be happier somewhere with your own kind?"
Maybe asking one public school system to serve both Americas is too much.
Sorry to be so grim. I'm sure I'll rally. But this morning it feels as if the ed reform debates are simply the tail on a larger dog that is busily devouring some of the basic ideals that have previously driven this country. It feels as if somehow we've just lost the whole American plot, and the drive to bust up public education and sell off the pieces is just one more symptom.
I was thinking about the two tiers last night as I was busy hollering at my elected representatives on twitter and facebook and the phone (I would have dispatched pigeons if I had them). It has long been a political go-to line to talk about the Two America's, usually as part of a promise to bring them together. I don't recall ever seeing such a brazen attempt to take the Two America's and build a bigger wall between them.
We could talk about the specifics of the Republic Tax Bill, but of course nobody really knows all the provisions (except maybe the corporate lobbyists who wrote them) because the bill was rammed through quickly without debate, discussion, or even being read first. But we know the broad outlines-- give more money to the rich. Give some pennies to everyone else, but only for a year or two-- and those pennies will be eaten up by all the other costs that the non-wealthy will bear. We will have a country where for some people $500 is lunch money chump change and for some people $500 is the difference between survival and financial ruin.
We could talk about the proven failure of trickle down economics, the approach that hasn't worked, ever. Nor does it make sense that it would. I don't spend more on my business just because I've got more money-- I expand my business because I think there's enough demand to support it. And demand does not grow because ten rich guys each have a few billion more. Demand grows because a billion poor and middle class people have more money to spend-- and the security to believe they don't have to hold onto it as a safeguard against unexpected disaster. Taking on a trillion or two in debt so that rich people can be richer doesn't help.
But wait-- you say-- aren't the Republicans eternally concerned about our Huge Deficit. How can they add a trillion to that already-huge gap? That, of course, will be Act II of this play. Some day in the not-too-distant future, the GOP will look around and go, "Holy smokes! Look at that huge deficit! We'd better start cutting things like Medicare and Medicaid and Social Security." Orrin Hatch has already stated that "we don't have money" to re-instate CHIP, the health insurance program for children.
Has the GOP horribly miscalculated, opening itself up to a blue wave in 2018? Maybe, but I'm not feeling very optimistic this morning, so I'm going to say that 1) the donor class will provide huge campaign financing, 2) the Democrats will nominate dopes and 3) the low-information voters who do get some sort of tax benefit in the first year will fail to notice that it disappears completely after the election.
So maybe we do need a two-tiered system of schools in this country. One tier for the wealthy, some nice private schools (complete with vouchers that give yet another kickback of tax dollars to the rich) that prepare them to be future leaders and well-off masters of the universe. And then another tier for those who had the misfortune to be poor and must be prepared to live on the bottom rungs of the ladder, because there is no hope in hell that they will ever get out. Oh, sure, a handful now and then will be found worthy, just to keep the fiction alive that we still have the prospect of upward mobility in this country (and always making sure to include a person or two of color so that it's clear, you know, that we aren't that racist). But mostly they will need the skills and training to survive in America's basement, because if they're born there, they will probably stay there, always living one health problem or bad accident away from financial ruin, never able to afford any education after high school, and condemned to a high school that is either an underfunded public school or a selective and possibly fraudulent charter school, established specifically to help them be more comfortable in their proper place (perhaps delivered through some half-assed software program that maintains their permanent personnel file for the convenience of their corporate overlords). Certainly this is what some people already envision; it's what Betsy DeVos means when she suggests that students should be "allowed" to go to school in a place that's the "best fit," like a snotty rich girl in an 80s comedy looking down her nose at lower class children and saying, "Dear, wouldn't you be happier somewhere with your own kind?"
Maybe asking one public school system to serve both Americas is too much.
Sorry to be so grim. I'm sure I'll rally. But this morning it feels as if the ed reform debates are simply the tail on a larger dog that is busily devouring some of the basic ideals that have previously driven this country. It feels as if somehow we've just lost the whole American plot, and the drive to bust up public education and sell off the pieces is just one more symptom.
Thursday, November 30, 2017
Keeping Up Appearances
Sometimes in this country we are far less concerned with actually doing a thing than we are with looking as if we're doing a thing.
Airport security is a prominent example. Year after year, security experts remind us that airport security sucks, that it is just an elaborate piece of theater. It doesn't actually make us safer, but it puts on a show. It certainly looks like we're making the skies safer-- unless, of course, you understand what you're looking at.
The Keeping Up Appearances approach is handy when really getting serious about a problem would be difficult and expensive. KUA is all about going through some motions that will reassure folks without actually having to expend the work and money it would take to really deal with an issue.
Ed Reform has been a great example of the Keeping Up Appearances approach. At every critical juncture, when we could be asking "How can we best deal with this issue," policy leaders, bureaucrats, and politicians have instead asked "How can we look as if we're dealing with this issue?"
Coming up with national education standards would be a huge and difficult undertaking, requiring a lot of eyes and ears and tons of brainpower, as well as collecting and sifting through a mountain of research that exists and creating another mountain of research that doesn't exist. And that's before we even get to creating a structure by which a robust, resilient and constantly-revising set of standards can be kept up-to-date while responding to ongoing feedback.
But, hey-- that would be hard, and expensive. So let's just have a few self-appointed, high-self-esteem guys throw something together on the fly. We'll call in some political favors, get some rich backers, and push the Common Core out there. They aren't real national educational standards, but they make it look like we've got them. Close enough.
It's also really hard to tell exactly how well students are doing, or how effective schools and teachers are. It would require several more mountains of research into what real success looks like both in the short and long run, and that in turn would lead us to new, complex and creative measures of those most important factors that we have identified. It would take a whole organization just to collect, analyze, and interpret the data. It would be super-hard and hella expensive.
So instead, let's just make every kid take a standardized test. It won't really measure anything worth measuring, but it sure looks as if we're gathering honest-to-goodness data about student achievement and teacher effectiveness. Close enough.
Even school choice. I mean, we could set up a full, robust network of schools in a community, with each school offering different strengths and programs. We'd have to allow for extensive training and research into effective approaches, and the real expense would be staggering, with multiple facilities instead of one, and a surplus of seats. With students spread over several different entities, the oversight requirements just to keep students from falling through the cracks, let alone making sure that the various choice schools are delivering on their promises-- well, that would be a fairly huge extra department as well. The entire system could be impressive and exciting, but it would involve the costs of running several schools where we used to only fund one-- the taxpayer bill would be enormous, but if people were really serious about choice and variety and a superior education for every single child in America, political leaders would be able to lead a call for much higher taxes to make this dream real.
Or, we could just let anybody open any old kind of charter school, provide zero oversight, and let everyone fight over funding that is a fraction of what's needed. And just scrap that whole "make sure every child gets an outstanding education (and not just an opportunity)" business. Close enough.
High quality full education? Eh, just get some reading and math in there. In fact, just stick to the stuff that employers ask for. Attacking the problems of poverty? Just make some noises about how education will fix everything, somehow. Systemic racism? Just, you know, act real concerned occasionally. Trying to fix the teacher "shortage"? Have a committee issue some findings.
We could list dozens of ways in which policy leaders, politicians, and bureaucrats try to half-ass their way to looking as if they are addressing an issue in education. If you have been in the classroom for more than five years, you already have a list of all the times our "leaders" announced their latest plan to "fix" something about schools by way of some not-really-serious program whose real objective is to keep up appearances, to look as if we are actually working on the issues. The people really working on solutions-- those are the ones standing by the "leaders'" elbows saying, "Well, you know, that part where I get to make a bunch of money pretending to address this issue-- I like that part. Keep that part."
Meanwhile, teachers are in actual classrooms addressing actual issues with actual students, where authentic solutions are required. I can't help a student by trying to look as if I care about him. I can't teach a unit by trying to look as if we're studying it while I try to look as if I know what I'm talking about. I won't come up with evaluations for the students by looking as if I went over their work.
This lack of seriousness has always been a feature of public education. If it seems worse right now, that is perhaps because the White House is occupied by a guy who's mostly trying to look as if he's a President, surrounding himself with people who look as if they would be good for their jobs. Education has always been plagued by half-assed smoke and mirrors; now it's just a national problem for all sectors as well.
Airport security is a prominent example. Year after year, security experts remind us that airport security sucks, that it is just an elaborate piece of theater. It doesn't actually make us safer, but it puts on a show. It certainly looks like we're making the skies safer-- unless, of course, you understand what you're looking at.
The Keeping Up Appearances approach is handy when really getting serious about a problem would be difficult and expensive. KUA is all about going through some motions that will reassure folks without actually having to expend the work and money it would take to really deal with an issue.
Ed Reform has been a great example of the Keeping Up Appearances approach. At every critical juncture, when we could be asking "How can we best deal with this issue," policy leaders, bureaucrats, and politicians have instead asked "How can we look as if we're dealing with this issue?"
Coming up with national education standards would be a huge and difficult undertaking, requiring a lot of eyes and ears and tons of brainpower, as well as collecting and sifting through a mountain of research that exists and creating another mountain of research that doesn't exist. And that's before we even get to creating a structure by which a robust, resilient and constantly-revising set of standards can be kept up-to-date while responding to ongoing feedback.
But, hey-- that would be hard, and expensive. So let's just have a few self-appointed, high-self-esteem guys throw something together on the fly. We'll call in some political favors, get some rich backers, and push the Common Core out there. They aren't real national educational standards, but they make it look like we've got them. Close enough.
It's also really hard to tell exactly how well students are doing, or how effective schools and teachers are. It would require several more mountains of research into what real success looks like both in the short and long run, and that in turn would lead us to new, complex and creative measures of those most important factors that we have identified. It would take a whole organization just to collect, analyze, and interpret the data. It would be super-hard and hella expensive.
So instead, let's just make every kid take a standardized test. It won't really measure anything worth measuring, but it sure looks as if we're gathering honest-to-goodness data about student achievement and teacher effectiveness. Close enough.
Even school choice. I mean, we could set up a full, robust network of schools in a community, with each school offering different strengths and programs. We'd have to allow for extensive training and research into effective approaches, and the real expense would be staggering, with multiple facilities instead of one, and a surplus of seats. With students spread over several different entities, the oversight requirements just to keep students from falling through the cracks, let alone making sure that the various choice schools are delivering on their promises-- well, that would be a fairly huge extra department as well. The entire system could be impressive and exciting, but it would involve the costs of running several schools where we used to only fund one-- the taxpayer bill would be enormous, but if people were really serious about choice and variety and a superior education for every single child in America, political leaders would be able to lead a call for much higher taxes to make this dream real.
Or, we could just let anybody open any old kind of charter school, provide zero oversight, and let everyone fight over funding that is a fraction of what's needed. And just scrap that whole "make sure every child gets an outstanding education (and not just an opportunity)" business. Close enough.
High quality full education? Eh, just get some reading and math in there. In fact, just stick to the stuff that employers ask for. Attacking the problems of poverty? Just make some noises about how education will fix everything, somehow. Systemic racism? Just, you know, act real concerned occasionally. Trying to fix the teacher "shortage"? Have a committee issue some findings.
We could list dozens of ways in which policy leaders, politicians, and bureaucrats try to half-ass their way to looking as if they are addressing an issue in education. If you have been in the classroom for more than five years, you already have a list of all the times our "leaders" announced their latest plan to "fix" something about schools by way of some not-really-serious program whose real objective is to keep up appearances, to look as if we are actually working on the issues. The people really working on solutions-- those are the ones standing by the "leaders'" elbows saying, "Well, you know, that part where I get to make a bunch of money pretending to address this issue-- I like that part. Keep that part."
Meanwhile, teachers are in actual classrooms addressing actual issues with actual students, where authentic solutions are required. I can't help a student by trying to look as if I care about him. I can't teach a unit by trying to look as if we're studying it while I try to look as if I know what I'm talking about. I won't come up with evaluations for the students by looking as if I went over their work.
This lack of seriousness has always been a feature of public education. If it seems worse right now, that is perhaps because the White House is occupied by a guy who's mostly trying to look as if he's a President, surrounding himself with people who look as if they would be good for their jobs. Education has always been plagued by half-assed smoke and mirrors; now it's just a national problem for all sectors as well.
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