John Kuhn is a Texas superintendent who has been watch the reform biz unfold for a while now. Here, in a quick two minute video, he connects the inequity of school funding to the injustice of offering poor schools not funding, not help, not resources, not support-- but standardized tests. The same politicians who keep some schools poor also demand that those schools hit the same marks that wealthy districts do.
It's the one thing that has never happened with standardized tests. No lawmakers or policy mavens declare, "This school has low scores-- we had better get them some more funding and resources and help right away." Instead, low test scores put a target on a school's back-- this one is ripe for privatizing, closing, replacing, chopping into easily-sold pieces.
Watch this, and pass it on.
2 School Districts, 1 Ugly Truth from S4E Media on Vimeo.
Remember this line: "Educational malpractice doesn't happen in the classroom. The greatest educational malpractice happens in the statehouse, not the schoolhouse."
Monday, December 11, 2017
Sunday, December 10, 2017
ICYMI: First Snow Edition
Okay, you may want to curl up with some hot chocolate and a blanket, because this week turned up an awful lot of reading material. Remember, only you can amplify the voices you think need to be heard!
Our School Systems Deserve Better Than This
Charles Pierce at Esquire takes a hard look at charter schools and segregation. You will not have to guess what he thinks.
Green Dots Suspension Rates Continue To Be Remarkably High
As the debates about school discipline heat up, School Data Nerd looks at hard data from one charter group, and finds that they are booting kids out at a high rate.
Douglas County School Board Ends Controversial Voucher Program
A few years ago, reformsters captured the Douglas County (Colorado) school board and proceeded to launch the nation's first district-level voucher system. Turns out that mostly what they did was wake up local voters. Here's how a reformy tide can be turned back,
Turkish Gulen Schools in America
The Gulen chain is perhaps the most notorious charter chain in the US, serving as a fundraising project for a Turkish government-in-exile. Mercedes Schneider looks at some of the most current tools for tracking these guys.
Success Academy's Radical Experiment
Everybody wanted to write about Eva this week for some reason. Here's the New Yorker's take on the queen of Success Academy
Tolerating failing schools in New Orleans-- as long as they're for black kids
Andre Perry takes a look at the latest bad news for fans of the NOLA chartering experiment
What Is Motivation Porn and Why Does Higher Education Seems Addicted To It
A great look a thing I didn't even realize was a thing, but as soon as I read this, I could see it everywhere. Grit, anyone?
Update on Summit Schools
Leonie Haimson took a trip to one of the schools running the Summit school-in-a-box program. In some ways, it seems even more unimpressive than I thought it would be.
Influencers and the Hillary Campaign
While technically water under the bridge, a reminder that Democrats are no BFFs of public education either. And some of this water is still flowing around making trouble.
A Portfolio of Schools
Matt Barnum at Chalkbeat kicks off a series of stories about the portfolio approach to reform, and it will probably not make you happy.
Voucher Schools Can Teach Whatever They Want
HuffPost did some heavy-duty research into what is actually taught at the mostly-religious schools that benefit from vouchers in this country. You may have expected the emphasis on anti-evolution and anti-science, but there's a also a healthy dose of political conservatism (and get them women back in the kitchen). How Betsy DeVos wants your tax dollars to work.
Kindergarten to Work Second Shift
In Florida, a parent offers a great response to the school district that wants her kindergarten student to go home and log onto the computer to do more school work.
She Breaks Rules While Expecting Students To Follow Them
Lisa Miller reviews the Moskowitz memoir and identifies some of Eva's central problems, like how she is proud of being a rebel, and demands that all of her students never rebel at all. It gets better.
How America Is Breaking Public Education
Always interesting when the mostly-conservative Forbes goes against type. The thesis here is a good one-- "we've disobeyed the cardinal rule of success in any industry: treating your workers like professionals."
Teach Kids To Start Unions
Rachel Cohen interviews Malcolm Harris, who has many intersting things to say about Kids These Days
Our School Systems Deserve Better Than This
Charles Pierce at Esquire takes a hard look at charter schools and segregation. You will not have to guess what he thinks.
Green Dots Suspension Rates Continue To Be Remarkably High
As the debates about school discipline heat up, School Data Nerd looks at hard data from one charter group, and finds that they are booting kids out at a high rate.
Douglas County School Board Ends Controversial Voucher Program
A few years ago, reformsters captured the Douglas County (Colorado) school board and proceeded to launch the nation's first district-level voucher system. Turns out that mostly what they did was wake up local voters. Here's how a reformy tide can be turned back,
Turkish Gulen Schools in America
The Gulen chain is perhaps the most notorious charter chain in the US, serving as a fundraising project for a Turkish government-in-exile. Mercedes Schneider looks at some of the most current tools for tracking these guys.
Success Academy's Radical Experiment
Everybody wanted to write about Eva this week for some reason. Here's the New Yorker's take on the queen of Success Academy
Tolerating failing schools in New Orleans-- as long as they're for black kids
Andre Perry takes a look at the latest bad news for fans of the NOLA chartering experiment
What Is Motivation Porn and Why Does Higher Education Seems Addicted To It
A great look a thing I didn't even realize was a thing, but as soon as I read this, I could see it everywhere. Grit, anyone?
Update on Summit Schools
Leonie Haimson took a trip to one of the schools running the Summit school-in-a-box program. In some ways, it seems even more unimpressive than I thought it would be.
Influencers and the Hillary Campaign
While technically water under the bridge, a reminder that Democrats are no BFFs of public education either. And some of this water is still flowing around making trouble.
A Portfolio of Schools
Matt Barnum at Chalkbeat kicks off a series of stories about the portfolio approach to reform, and it will probably not make you happy.
Voucher Schools Can Teach Whatever They Want
HuffPost did some heavy-duty research into what is actually taught at the mostly-religious schools that benefit from vouchers in this country. You may have expected the emphasis on anti-evolution and anti-science, but there's a also a healthy dose of political conservatism (and get them women back in the kitchen). How Betsy DeVos wants your tax dollars to work.
Kindergarten to Work Second Shift
In Florida, a parent offers a great response to the school district that wants her kindergarten student to go home and log onto the computer to do more school work.
She Breaks Rules While Expecting Students To Follow Them
Lisa Miller reviews the Moskowitz memoir and identifies some of Eva's central problems, like how she is proud of being a rebel, and demands that all of her students never rebel at all. It gets better.
How America Is Breaking Public Education
Always interesting when the mostly-conservative Forbes goes against type. The thesis here is a good one-- "we've disobeyed the cardinal rule of success in any industry: treating your workers like professionals."
Teach Kids To Start Unions
Rachel Cohen interviews Malcolm Harris, who has many intersting things to say about Kids These Days
IN: Diminishing Education
Indiana's State Board of Education has voted to diminish the value and purpose of education in the state.
The BOE has adopted a new set of graduation requirements that will begin taking effect with the freshman class of 2019. With these standards, the board aligns themselves with the "college and career ready" crowd and leaves behind notions that education has any purpose other than to train students for future employment.
You can check out some of the specifics here, but this is one of those times when the devil is not really in the details, but is in the broad goals and purposes of the program. Graduates in the class of 2023 will need to meet the following requirements:
* Rack up enough course credits.
* Complete "post-secondary competencies" by doing one of the following: earning an honors diploma, finishing apprenticeship or career-technical courses or meeting college-ready standards for ACT, SAT, ASVAB tests.
* Learn and demonstrate employability skills.
The first is same old, same old. The second is, sadly, not new at this point. Just the status quo obeisance to the Cult of Testing, with the door open, at least, for something other than the usual testing gods.
But that third one.
Please note-- I do think it's a great idea for graduates to be able to find work. Getting a job is not a bad thing.
But to say that you cannot graduate until you prove that you can be a useful meat widget for a future employer-- that idea represents a hollowing out of educational goals. Be a good citizen? Become a fine parent? Lifelong learning? Developing a deeper, better more well-rounded picture of who you can become as a person, while better understanding what it means to be human in the world? Screw that stuff, kid. Your future employer has the only question that matters-- "What can you do for me, kid?"
The suppose Awesome Features of the new requirements don't make it sound any better. It opens the door to personalized learning, which-- well, problems with modern PL aside, saying you will now make everyone go to the same destination, but they can pick how they get there is the silliest version of personalization since Henry Ford offered cars in any color you want, as long as it's black.
But hey-- the new requirements will be locally flexible and workforce-aligned, so that your local business operators can stop by and say, "Whip us up forty good applicants for these jobs we might want to fill." Sure. I offer this deal-- I'll have my school take over vocational training for your plant the same day that you guarantee a job for every single graduate that we train for you. The requirements also make much of how the personalization comes because the students will be selecting their life career path, which leads me to believe that the Board has not actually met any fourteen-year-olds.
The new standards throw in rigor and currency, while tossing skills gap and other concepts that only make sense if you believe that the purpose of the education system is to serve business and corporate interests. If you think public education should serve the interests of students, parents and the community as well, then Indiana's great new idea is a great step backward.
Presumably local districts are free to add to this sorry list and bring their educational goals back in line with something a little more like education, but that can't erase the job training for meat widgets heart of these new requirements. The Board adopted them by a vote of 7-4, from which we can deduce that seven members of the Indiana Board of Education don't really understand their job.
The BOE has adopted a new set of graduation requirements that will begin taking effect with the freshman class of 2019. With these standards, the board aligns themselves with the "college and career ready" crowd and leaves behind notions that education has any purpose other than to train students for future employment.
You can check out some of the specifics here, but this is one of those times when the devil is not really in the details, but is in the broad goals and purposes of the program. Graduates in the class of 2023 will need to meet the following requirements:
* Rack up enough course credits.
* Complete "post-secondary competencies" by doing one of the following: earning an honors diploma, finishing apprenticeship or career-technical courses or meeting college-ready standards for ACT, SAT, ASVAB tests.
* Learn and demonstrate employability skills.
The first is same old, same old. The second is, sadly, not new at this point. Just the status quo obeisance to the Cult of Testing, with the door open, at least, for something other than the usual testing gods.
But that third one.
Please note-- I do think it's a great idea for graduates to be able to find work. Getting a job is not a bad thing.
But to say that you cannot graduate until you prove that you can be a useful meat widget for a future employer-- that idea represents a hollowing out of educational goals. Be a good citizen? Become a fine parent? Lifelong learning? Developing a deeper, better more well-rounded picture of who you can become as a person, while better understanding what it means to be human in the world? Screw that stuff, kid. Your future employer has the only question that matters-- "What can you do for me, kid?"
The suppose Awesome Features of the new requirements don't make it sound any better. It opens the door to personalized learning, which-- well, problems with modern PL aside, saying you will now make everyone go to the same destination, but they can pick how they get there is the silliest version of personalization since Henry Ford offered cars in any color you want, as long as it's black.
But hey-- the new requirements will be locally flexible and workforce-aligned, so that your local business operators can stop by and say, "Whip us up forty good applicants for these jobs we might want to fill." Sure. I offer this deal-- I'll have my school take over vocational training for your plant the same day that you guarantee a job for every single graduate that we train for you. The requirements also make much of how the personalization comes because the students will be selecting their life career path, which leads me to believe that the Board has not actually met any fourteen-year-olds.
The new standards throw in rigor and currency, while tossing skills gap and other concepts that only make sense if you believe that the purpose of the education system is to serve business and corporate interests. If you think public education should serve the interests of students, parents and the community as well, then Indiana's great new idea is a great step backward.
Presumably local districts are free to add to this sorry list and bring their educational goals back in line with something a little more like education, but that can't erase the job training for meat widgets heart of these new requirements. The Board adopted them by a vote of 7-4, from which we can deduce that seven members of the Indiana Board of Education don't really understand their job.
Friday, December 8, 2017
Tolerating the Minimum
From the moment at her confirmation hearing when she fumbled the question about IDEA, Betsy DeVos has faced a huge disconnect between two impulses.
One is the impulse to make sure that students with special needs get the services they need. I've read enough to believe that DeVos is essentially sincere on this point. But it runs smack into her other impulse, which is that the government shouldn't tell anybody how to do anything.
This surfaced in her recent speech at Jeb Bush's Charterpalooza. Now here it is again at EdWeek, in a special commentary about students with special needs.
DeVos is spinning off the Supreme Court decision about Endrew F., a student whose parents wanted more than the "de minimis" offered by their home school district. They went to court to have the district pay for a more appropriate school setting for their son, and won, mostly. As an extra prize, they won the chance to become propes in DeVos's pro-choice arguments, a position that they have forcefully declined. But DeVos has kept it up anyway.
"When it comes to educating students with disabilities, failure isn't acceptable. De minimis isn't either," writes DeVos.
That's a noble position, and in many ways superior to the Duncan position that all effects of special needs could be erased by the power of high expectations (though she kind of believes that, too). It just doesn't fit very well with the rest of her plans for education. It's nice to say that failure is unacceptable, but unacceptable to whom? And who is going to make the school do something about it, if the government's position is that they shouldn't be strong-arming anyone?
First, if the government is going to dump a bunch of regulations and barely enforce the rest, exactly who is going to insure that students with special needs aren't failed? From her confirmation hearing onward, DeVos has consistently refused to envision a scenario in which her department would step in and tell a school, "You can't do that." So wishing for equity and extra effort and appropriate programs for students is, without the weight if any enforcement behind it, just wishing.
Second, DeVos thinks this is an argument for choice. It isn't.
Every family should have the ability to choose the learning environment that is right for their child. They shouldn’t have to sue their way to the U.S. Supreme Court to get it.
She repeats this line from her Charterpalooza speech, and it's a line that's thick with irony. Because, of course, if Endrew's parents were unhappy with the program offered him at a charter or voucher school, they couldn't sue anyone at all. The charter operators could simply smile and say, "Well, if we aren't satisfying your requirements here, you are certainly free to vote with your feet." And then they could point at the door.
Students like Endrew are expensive to educate. That was kind of the point of everything that led his parents to the Supreme Court. Charters are businesses, and as such, they have to make prudent fiscal decisions, and every business that ever existed learns that some potential customers just aren't worth it. Every business makes a distinction between customers they'll try to collect, and customers they will deliberately try to NOT collect. There is no business model based on providing goods or services to every single potential customer-- not for individual businesses or for whole industry sectors. For charter schools, high needs, high cost students like Endrew are not desirable-- and right now no court in the land can force those schools to properly serve a student like Endrew.
Endrew was fortunate that his parents found a school that could help him. But not all students with special needs will be so lucky. So what happens to a student that nobody wants to serve. If the public school is so strapped for resources, hollowed out by the costs of charters, and no charters are willing to accept that student, then what should the parents do? And exactly who is responsible for that student?
Students with special needs represent a special challenge. They are in danger of being more marginalized as more folks push the idea that schools are job prep centers, aimed at making every student a valuable asset to a future employer. But some non-zero number of students will never meet that standard. If we are evaluating humans strictly on cost-benefits basis, some students will cost far more to educate than they will ever put back into society. But those students are still someone's child, and they are still capable of love and kindness and everything that makes being a human more than just being a useful meat widget.
In any choice system, certain students-- some special needs, behavioral problems, low function, etc-- will be the hot potatoes. Nobody in the marketplace is going to want them. Betsy DeVos thinks a choice system is a perfect way to serve those students, but she's simply wrong. That's because in a choice system, the choice belongs to the school, not the parents. Providing choice without oversight, without attaching either funding or mandates to certain students, will create a system in which some students are well served and some students are out in the cold. If the public school system is the only school being told "You must educate these children" even as they are being stripped of the resources needed to do the job, those students will be abandoned in a mess that even the Supreme Court can't fix.
We shouldn't tolerate minimum efforts by schools to educate all students. We shouldn't tolerate charter and choice schools doing less than the minimum to educate all students. And it might help if the USED didn't tolerate a minimum effort from itself to getting a fully-funded equitable education for every student.
One is the impulse to make sure that students with special needs get the services they need. I've read enough to believe that DeVos is essentially sincere on this point. But it runs smack into her other impulse, which is that the government shouldn't tell anybody how to do anything.
This surfaced in her recent speech at Jeb Bush's Charterpalooza. Now here it is again at EdWeek, in a special commentary about students with special needs.
DeVos is spinning off the Supreme Court decision about Endrew F., a student whose parents wanted more than the "de minimis" offered by their home school district. They went to court to have the district pay for a more appropriate school setting for their son, and won, mostly. As an extra prize, they won the chance to become propes in DeVos's pro-choice arguments, a position that they have forcefully declined. But DeVos has kept it up anyway.
"When it comes to educating students with disabilities, failure isn't acceptable. De minimis isn't either," writes DeVos.
That's a noble position, and in many ways superior to the Duncan position that all effects of special needs could be erased by the power of high expectations (though she kind of believes that, too). It just doesn't fit very well with the rest of her plans for education. It's nice to say that failure is unacceptable, but unacceptable to whom? And who is going to make the school do something about it, if the government's position is that they shouldn't be strong-arming anyone?
First, if the government is going to dump a bunch of regulations and barely enforce the rest, exactly who is going to insure that students with special needs aren't failed? From her confirmation hearing onward, DeVos has consistently refused to envision a scenario in which her department would step in and tell a school, "You can't do that." So wishing for equity and extra effort and appropriate programs for students is, without the weight if any enforcement behind it, just wishing.
Second, DeVos thinks this is an argument for choice. It isn't.
Every family should have the ability to choose the learning environment that is right for their child. They shouldn’t have to sue their way to the U.S. Supreme Court to get it.
She repeats this line from her Charterpalooza speech, and it's a line that's thick with irony. Because, of course, if Endrew's parents were unhappy with the program offered him at a charter or voucher school, they couldn't sue anyone at all. The charter operators could simply smile and say, "Well, if we aren't satisfying your requirements here, you are certainly free to vote with your feet." And then they could point at the door.
Students like Endrew are expensive to educate. That was kind of the point of everything that led his parents to the Supreme Court. Charters are businesses, and as such, they have to make prudent fiscal decisions, and every business that ever existed learns that some potential customers just aren't worth it. Every business makes a distinction between customers they'll try to collect, and customers they will deliberately try to NOT collect. There is no business model based on providing goods or services to every single potential customer-- not for individual businesses or for whole industry sectors. For charter schools, high needs, high cost students like Endrew are not desirable-- and right now no court in the land can force those schools to properly serve a student like Endrew.
Endrew was fortunate that his parents found a school that could help him. But not all students with special needs will be so lucky. So what happens to a student that nobody wants to serve. If the public school is so strapped for resources, hollowed out by the costs of charters, and no charters are willing to accept that student, then what should the parents do? And exactly who is responsible for that student?
Students with special needs represent a special challenge. They are in danger of being more marginalized as more folks push the idea that schools are job prep centers, aimed at making every student a valuable asset to a future employer. But some non-zero number of students will never meet that standard. If we are evaluating humans strictly on cost-benefits basis, some students will cost far more to educate than they will ever put back into society. But those students are still someone's child, and they are still capable of love and kindness and everything that makes being a human more than just being a useful meat widget.
In any choice system, certain students-- some special needs, behavioral problems, low function, etc-- will be the hot potatoes. Nobody in the marketplace is going to want them. Betsy DeVos thinks a choice system is a perfect way to serve those students, but she's simply wrong. That's because in a choice system, the choice belongs to the school, not the parents. Providing choice without oversight, without attaching either funding or mandates to certain students, will create a system in which some students are well served and some students are out in the cold. If the public school system is the only school being told "You must educate these children" even as they are being stripped of the resources needed to do the job, those students will be abandoned in a mess that even the Supreme Court can't fix.
We shouldn't tolerate minimum efforts by schools to educate all students. We shouldn't tolerate charter and choice schools doing less than the minimum to educate all students. And it might help if the USED didn't tolerate a minimum effort from itself to getting a fully-funded equitable education for every student.
Snapchat Chief Joins Pearson Board
Michael Lynton is joining the board of Pearson, everyone's favorite educational behemoth. (h/t Caitlin McCarthy).
Who is he? An educational expert? A big name in the study of pedagogy? A guy with expertise in leading a school system? A person who's created a lot of valuable and successful educational material?
Nope. He's the chairman of Snap, the parent company of Snapchat, that social media app that your students love and you can't figure out how to work. Lynton is also the former chairman-CEO of Sony Entertainment. And he's not completely new to Pearson-- he worked for the publishing giant back in the late 90s as head of their Penguin Group.He has some other entertainment and publishing world credits as well.
Why Lynton? A plausible explanation is that Pearson has long banked its health on being able to conquer the digitizing and datafication of education, and Lynton fits that vision.
“The Pearson board and leadership already has strong digital talent and expertise, and Michael’s appointment augments that perfectly,” Pearson chairman Sidney Taurel said in a statement. “His experience and perspective will further strengthen Pearson and drive our transformation to be a more focused, simpler digital learning company.”
A fresh set of eyes may be called for, as Pearson's attempt to conquer US education via Common Core hasn't exactly gone as planned. Just last spring there was speculation they might be getting out of that market. But Lynton is a believer:
Education is the next frontier in the digital revolution and Pearson is uniquely well placed to lead the way. I’m impressed by the major investment in the products of the future and the creation of a single, global learning platform.
A single global learning platform. There is no reason, of course, to believe that such a platform would be good for education. But, wow-- would it ever be profitable as hell, particularly with its ability to gather, mine, and crunch data, a long-favorite vision of Pearson honcho Michael Barber.
Snapchat made a name for itself as a platform for sending messages and pictures that would immediately disappear, but I'm not sure I see how useful that approach would be for education. But if my students are any measure, Snapchat has been hugely successful at reaching the teen market, and I'm sure Pearson would find that helpful.
If nothing else, Pearson's acquisition of Lynton is a reminder that in the world of corporate ed reform, education credentials are not only unnecessary, but not particularly desirable. It's a business, run with business values and business goals.
Who is he? An educational expert? A big name in the study of pedagogy? A guy with expertise in leading a school system? A person who's created a lot of valuable and successful educational material?
Nope. He's the chairman of Snap, the parent company of Snapchat, that social media app that your students love and you can't figure out how to work. Lynton is also the former chairman-CEO of Sony Entertainment. And he's not completely new to Pearson-- he worked for the publishing giant back in the late 90s as head of their Penguin Group.He has some other entertainment and publishing world credits as well.
Why Lynton? A plausible explanation is that Pearson has long banked its health on being able to conquer the digitizing and datafication of education, and Lynton fits that vision.
“The Pearson board and leadership already has strong digital talent and expertise, and Michael’s appointment augments that perfectly,” Pearson chairman Sidney Taurel said in a statement. “His experience and perspective will further strengthen Pearson and drive our transformation to be a more focused, simpler digital learning company.”
A fresh set of eyes may be called for, as Pearson's attempt to conquer US education via Common Core hasn't exactly gone as planned. Just last spring there was speculation they might be getting out of that market. But Lynton is a believer:
Education is the next frontier in the digital revolution and Pearson is uniquely well placed to lead the way. I’m impressed by the major investment in the products of the future and the creation of a single, global learning platform.
A single global learning platform. There is no reason, of course, to believe that such a platform would be good for education. But, wow-- would it ever be profitable as hell, particularly with its ability to gather, mine, and crunch data, a long-favorite vision of Pearson honcho Michael Barber.
Snapchat made a name for itself as a platform for sending messages and pictures that would immediately disappear, but I'm not sure I see how useful that approach would be for education. But if my students are any measure, Snapchat has been hugely successful at reaching the teen market, and I'm sure Pearson would find that helpful.
If nothing else, Pearson's acquisition of Lynton is a reminder that in the world of corporate ed reform, education credentials are not only unnecessary, but not particularly desirable. It's a business, run with business values and business goals.
School Violence: The New Normal
There was a shooting yesterday in New Mexico. Two students were killed; the shooter is dead as well.
Hadn't heard about it? Or the shooting the day before in Colorado? That's understandable-- I just completed a cursory search of various news sites online, and only a couple included the story at all, and none included it as a major story. It's true that many sites use some form of click-based ranking-- the more people who click on the story, the more prominently it's featured on the page. I'm not sure whether that makes me feel better, or worse. Probably worse.
We have a new standard for coverage of school shootings in this country-- it's only news if it sets a new record of some sort. Usually that means highest body count. That's grim news indeed-- if your goal is to become famous as a school shooter, and you're paying attention, then you have to know that you'll only get there with a super-high body count. This may qualify as the most perverse incentive ever.
It was not always like this.
There was a time when any death in a school was news. It was shocking. It was alarming. Schools would shut down over the slightest hint that they might be targeted by some shooter.
We seem to have turned a corner. As many folks have noted, about the time we decided that the deaths of twenty children at Sandy Hook were sad, but not a reason to actually do anything. When we decided that the price of freedom is to occasionally have small children killed, their bodies violated by bullets-- well, after that point, there hardly seems any reason to make a fuss about it any more. Just another day. Dog bites man. Shooter kills students. Thoughts and prayers.
What seems most incredible these days are the conspiracy theorists who cry "False flag" for these shootings. Their concern is that the government will use the shooting as a reason to implement gun control. Which is truly ridiculous. The national debate about gun control is over, and the gun fans and the NRA won-- we're going to continue to do nothing, and we'll just write off the shooting deaths as the price of freedom.
Meanwhile, those of us who work in schools drill for active shooters as regularly as we drill for tornadoes or severe weather. Taxpayers will pay for door lock systems and camera surveiilance around the building. Occasionally we'll be subject to really alarming active shooter drills. And if we discuss solutions at all, it will be ridiculous ones, like arming teachers in the building.
I don't have any quick and easy answers to any of this, but I can't help noticing that this is one more sad commentary on how little we as a society actually value children. And if we can't even get serious about keeping them safe from harm, how can we get serious about giving them a decent education.
No, we've decided that a certain small percentage of our children are expendable, less valuable than my right to carry a gun around, to keep a firearm in my home or car or holster because, you know, if a man's not free to blow a hole in something or someone with a gun, then a man's just not free at all. And if the cost of that freedom is a few children killed every week, well, so be it. And in the meantime, we might as well adjust to this new normal by ceasing to make a fuss about it. IF it ain't a new record, it ain't news. Dog bites man. Shooter kills students. Thoughts and prayers.
Hadn't heard about it? Or the shooting the day before in Colorado? That's understandable-- I just completed a cursory search of various news sites online, and only a couple included the story at all, and none included it as a major story. It's true that many sites use some form of click-based ranking-- the more people who click on the story, the more prominently it's featured on the page. I'm not sure whether that makes me feel better, or worse. Probably worse.
We have a new standard for coverage of school shootings in this country-- it's only news if it sets a new record of some sort. Usually that means highest body count. That's grim news indeed-- if your goal is to become famous as a school shooter, and you're paying attention, then you have to know that you'll only get there with a super-high body count. This may qualify as the most perverse incentive ever.
It was not always like this.
There was a time when any death in a school was news. It was shocking. It was alarming. Schools would shut down over the slightest hint that they might be targeted by some shooter.
We seem to have turned a corner. As many folks have noted, about the time we decided that the deaths of twenty children at Sandy Hook were sad, but not a reason to actually do anything. When we decided that the price of freedom is to occasionally have small children killed, their bodies violated by bullets-- well, after that point, there hardly seems any reason to make a fuss about it any more. Just another day. Dog bites man. Shooter kills students. Thoughts and prayers.
What seems most incredible these days are the conspiracy theorists who cry "False flag" for these shootings. Their concern is that the government will use the shooting as a reason to implement gun control. Which is truly ridiculous. The national debate about gun control is over, and the gun fans and the NRA won-- we're going to continue to do nothing, and we'll just write off the shooting deaths as the price of freedom.
Meanwhile, those of us who work in schools drill for active shooters as regularly as we drill for tornadoes or severe weather. Taxpayers will pay for door lock systems and camera surveiilance around the building. Occasionally we'll be subject to really alarming active shooter drills. And if we discuss solutions at all, it will be ridiculous ones, like arming teachers in the building.
I don't have any quick and easy answers to any of this, but I can't help noticing that this is one more sad commentary on how little we as a society actually value children. And if we can't even get serious about keeping them safe from harm, how can we get serious about giving them a decent education.
No, we've decided that a certain small percentage of our children are expendable, less valuable than my right to carry a gun around, to keep a firearm in my home or car or holster because, you know, if a man's not free to blow a hole in something or someone with a gun, then a man's just not free at all. And if the cost of that freedom is a few children killed every week, well, so be it. And in the meantime, we might as well adjust to this new normal by ceasing to make a fuss about it. IF it ain't a new record, it ain't news. Dog bites man. Shooter kills students. Thoughts and prayers.
Thursday, December 7, 2017
All Hail Queen Eva?
The Jan/Feb issue of the Atlantic offers a profile of Eva Moskowitz that is both thorough and disturbing, all the more so because it is written by Elizabeth Green, an education writer who co-founded Chalkbeat back in the day. The portrait is loving and glowing and troubling, particularly in the Age of Trump, suggesting that Moskowitz is the monster that education needs.
Green opens by taking us back to her days as a "young and enthusiastic" reporter, a whole decade ago. She had come to New York "to cover the biggest education revolution ever attempted." Back then, she thought the major players were Michael Bloomberg and Joel Klein, but looking back, she takes note of "a 5-foot-2-inch redhead from Harlem."
I had visited impressive schools before, but none quite like this.
From the beginning, it's clear that Green thinks Success Academies are impressive. That's an impression that she never really questions, and she seems to credit that impressiveness to just one factor-- Eva Moskowitz. Moskowitz, she says, "stalked the school corridors more like a rear admiral than a pedagogue," talking about the obstacles she faced. Green calls her "either paranoid or plagued, probably some of both." When Moscowitz feels "under siege, she could neither attack nor defend. She picked the Napoleon option."
Moskowitz had plans, Green notes. Ambitious plans, "not a proof point but a blueprint, not a Gap but a kind of educational superstore. A whole new school system, run by her instead of the government." Young Green found the plan to grow Success stunning, audacious. But Moskowitz made it all happen-- and more. Now "she has become one of the country's most influential crusaders at a turning point for charter schooling." It's a curious claim-- Moskowitz is one of the great charter survivors, but it's not clear that Eva has ever "crusaded" for anyone other than Eva.
But Green is not done providing uncritical praise:
Empire has not killed quality.
By now, you may have noticed the military leader references piling up. Moskowitz runs an "empire," and "marches" forward. And Green continues to uncritically list Moskowitz's victories in which Eva "trounces" her peers. Green reports on Success scores, but never asks how they are achieved. Nor does she mention that though Success students ace the state test, they have had trouble with NYC district tests for getting into top high schools.
Green acknowledges that even supporters keep Moskowitz at "what can generously be called a careful distance." But Green attributes this simply to Moskowitz's personal style. "Her acid tirades are legendary and can get scathingly personal more quickly than I might have believed had she not once dressed me down after I wrote a story she didn’t like."
Green says that Moskowitz's book is "plainly positioned to soften and humanize," and yet Moskowitz cannot restrain her prickly side, swiping at enemies, complaining about the media, and showing "no patience for critics who question Success's high-stress test prep." And here we arrive at Green's main thrust:
Personally, I draw the line at evil, but Moskowitz is undeniably scary. Cross her, and you’ve also crossed her students, her schools, and justice itself. Entrusting a person who has such an exceptional capacity for venom with the care of children can seem unwise. Which is just one reason I am more than a little terrified by the conclusion I’ve reached: Moskowitz has created the most impressive education system I’ve ever seen. And as she announces in her memoir, 46 schools is just the beginning. “We need to reach more students,” she writes.
"Most impressive education system I've ever seen" is a personal, subjective measure. But Green avoids examining it. She mentions the brutal child discipline tapes covered by the New York Times (which also lead to the discovery of the Got-to-go lists), but she doesn't consider the reality of what those stories reveal. She notes the criticism of test prep at Success, but doesn't question what that says about the schools. She avoids other criticism, like the issue of high student attrition (and no backfill) at the Success Academies. They remain, in her eyes, impressive.
The next section of the piece looks at Moskowitz's evolution and career. Her growing frustration with a system that wouldn't let her do what she wanted to do. Her political aspirations thwarted by the unions.
Green sets that against her own evolution as a reporter. She recalls the growth of other reformers who seemed to "enflame" parents and whose "district-hating came with a thuggish brand of teacher-bashing." She saw vilifying teachers and unions as counter-productive because "it alienated the same overloaded foot soldiers." Note where teachers rank in Green's military model of the education world. Green knows that people like Democracy and all, but, well, she also began to see the appeal of "blowing up school districts." She was disillusioned with public school districts and their general mess.
The reason isn’t terrible union contracts or awful management decisions. The fault, I came to see, lies in the (often competing) edicts issued by municipal, state, and federal authorities, which add up to chaos for the teachers who actually have to implement them. It’s not uncommon for a teacher to start the year focused on one goal—say, improving students’ writing—only to be told mid-year that writing is no longer a priority, as happened just the other day at a Boston school I know of. We could hardly have designed a worse system for supporting good teaching had we tried.
I'm with her on the terrible state and federal authority edicts (see most of the previous 2700 posts on this blog), but I'm not ready to let awful management off the hook. It is, in fact, administrators of districts who decide how much havoc those government edicts are going to create. But I think Green needs to let management off the hook, because she's working up an argument in favor of the superstar CEO model of school management.
Certainly, she declares herself a charter fan.
Of all the reforms that have set out to free schools from this trap, to date I’ve seen only one that works: the implementation of charter-school networks.
And she means large networks, ones that can supply teachers and be insulated from politics. And if you think this is an implied attack on Democracy, well, there's nothing implied about it--
They have strengthened public education by extracting it from democracy as we know it—and we shouldn’t be surprised, because democracy as we know it is the problem.
Next Green wants to argue that charter networks are "gaining traction" and spreading and she is going to trot out David Osborne, who's current tour in support of his book about Reinventing America;s School is remarkably selective in his use of facts.
She notes that opponents exist and that they call this whole trend "privatization," and while she reports that Moskowitz considers that an "inaccurate smear," she does not ask if the critics have a point. She brushes past it with a "whatever you label it," and now goes to bat for the idea of choice and lotteries.
She notes that district schools must take responsibility for all students in their sphere, whether they expel them or not, while charters can be more limited in their admissions. Green ignores the issue of backfilling vacated seats again here, and ignores the issue of lotteries that cream out only those families able to navigate that bureaucratic process. Green will, however, repeat the charter claim that they are a force for social justice. And she once again repeats, unexamined, the classic charter claim: "Charter schools, by contrast, hand the power of choice to parents who can’t afford to exercise it through real estate."
She reports uncritically the Moskowitz claim that charter schools are "the best shot at delivering the public school system we wish we had," as if Success Academy did not have a long record of serving only the students it wants to serve (which is not the public education system I wish for). She passes along Moskowitz's claim that charters are the solution to integration, as if the AP had not just released a report showing the exact opposite.
Finally, far down the page, Green admits that at Success " for all Moskowitz's eloquence about the importance of rigorous academics and extracurricular activities, test prep comes first." Finally we get to backfilling. And Green sadly notes that parents often choose schools for convenience and location, rather than excellence.
In her conclusion, Green wrestles with some issues without naming them. She earlier dismissed "privatization" as a concern, but in the final stretch she notices that Moskowitz and other charter operators are mostly a collection of rich people who are used to owning and running businesses. She claims that the unscrupulous operators gravitate toward the for-profit charters, but fails to notice the many ways that non-profits can be quite profitable (in fact, she need look no further than Moskowitz, who draws a higher salary than the chancellor of the entire New York City school system). By this point in the article, my frustration with Green is running pretty high-- she can walk right up to issues without actually naming them:
But I do think that bequeathing power over the education of America’s children to a tiny group of ever more influential plutocrats means that the rest of us will have much less say in the direction of public schools than we do today.
Well, yes. That's privatization. And anti-Democratic. And she goes on to note that overseeing charters is necessary, but difficult, because charters really resistant to being examined (again, she need look no further than Moskowitz, who has taken the state of New York to court to avoid being accountable for how she spends tax dollars).
What, Green worries, if the plutocrats who run these schools get legislators to weaken oversight and empower wealthy board members? And at this point I wonder if she has been covering Eva "Go To Albany and Demand That the Rules Be Changed To Suit Me" Moskowitz with only one eye half open. And is that eye plagued with some sort of shmutz that keeps her from examining the nasty little details of this "impressive" system?
In the end, Green seems ready to dump Democracy, scrap public schools, and elevate an autocratic Beloved Leader CEO charter system. In a way, it's fitting that in an era in which some people are willing to turn to a one-person authoritarian form of the Presidency under Beloved Leader Trump, some folks will also yearn for the same system for schools, arguing that she may be a dictator, she may be autocratic, she may require the suspension of Democracy, but I think she means well, and she makes the trains run on time. Just don't look too closely at where the train is running or exactly who gets to ride on board.
Green opens by taking us back to her days as a "young and enthusiastic" reporter, a whole decade ago. She had come to New York "to cover the biggest education revolution ever attempted." Back then, she thought the major players were Michael Bloomberg and Joel Klein, but looking back, she takes note of "a 5-foot-2-inch redhead from Harlem."
I had visited impressive schools before, but none quite like this.
From the beginning, it's clear that Green thinks Success Academies are impressive. That's an impression that she never really questions, and she seems to credit that impressiveness to just one factor-- Eva Moskowitz. Moskowitz, she says, "stalked the school corridors more like a rear admiral than a pedagogue," talking about the obstacles she faced. Green calls her "either paranoid or plagued, probably some of both." When Moscowitz feels "under siege, she could neither attack nor defend. She picked the Napoleon option."
 |
| Nice train. I hope it's on time. |
Moskowitz had plans, Green notes. Ambitious plans, "not a proof point but a blueprint, not a Gap but a kind of educational superstore. A whole new school system, run by her instead of the government." Young Green found the plan to grow Success stunning, audacious. But Moskowitz made it all happen-- and more. Now "she has become one of the country's most influential crusaders at a turning point for charter schooling." It's a curious claim-- Moskowitz is one of the great charter survivors, but it's not clear that Eva has ever "crusaded" for anyone other than Eva.
But Green is not done providing uncritical praise:
Empire has not killed quality.
By now, you may have noticed the military leader references piling up. Moskowitz runs an "empire," and "marches" forward. And Green continues to uncritically list Moskowitz's victories in which Eva "trounces" her peers. Green reports on Success scores, but never asks how they are achieved. Nor does she mention that though Success students ace the state test, they have had trouble with NYC district tests for getting into top high schools.
Green acknowledges that even supporters keep Moskowitz at "what can generously be called a careful distance." But Green attributes this simply to Moskowitz's personal style. "Her acid tirades are legendary and can get scathingly personal more quickly than I might have believed had she not once dressed me down after I wrote a story she didn’t like."
Green says that Moskowitz's book is "plainly positioned to soften and humanize," and yet Moskowitz cannot restrain her prickly side, swiping at enemies, complaining about the media, and showing "no patience for critics who question Success's high-stress test prep." And here we arrive at Green's main thrust:
Personally, I draw the line at evil, but Moskowitz is undeniably scary. Cross her, and you’ve also crossed her students, her schools, and justice itself. Entrusting a person who has such an exceptional capacity for venom with the care of children can seem unwise. Which is just one reason I am more than a little terrified by the conclusion I’ve reached: Moskowitz has created the most impressive education system I’ve ever seen. And as she announces in her memoir, 46 schools is just the beginning. “We need to reach more students,” she writes.
"Most impressive education system I've ever seen" is a personal, subjective measure. But Green avoids examining it. She mentions the brutal child discipline tapes covered by the New York Times (which also lead to the discovery of the Got-to-go lists), but she doesn't consider the reality of what those stories reveal. She notes the criticism of test prep at Success, but doesn't question what that says about the schools. She avoids other criticism, like the issue of high student attrition (and no backfill) at the Success Academies. They remain, in her eyes, impressive.
The next section of the piece looks at Moskowitz's evolution and career. Her growing frustration with a system that wouldn't let her do what she wanted to do. Her political aspirations thwarted by the unions.
Green sets that against her own evolution as a reporter. She recalls the growth of other reformers who seemed to "enflame" parents and whose "district-hating came with a thuggish brand of teacher-bashing." She saw vilifying teachers and unions as counter-productive because "it alienated the same overloaded foot soldiers." Note where teachers rank in Green's military model of the education world. Green knows that people like Democracy and all, but, well, she also began to see the appeal of "blowing up school districts." She was disillusioned with public school districts and their general mess.
The reason isn’t terrible union contracts or awful management decisions. The fault, I came to see, lies in the (often competing) edicts issued by municipal, state, and federal authorities, which add up to chaos for the teachers who actually have to implement them. It’s not uncommon for a teacher to start the year focused on one goal—say, improving students’ writing—only to be told mid-year that writing is no longer a priority, as happened just the other day at a Boston school I know of. We could hardly have designed a worse system for supporting good teaching had we tried.
I'm with her on the terrible state and federal authority edicts (see most of the previous 2700 posts on this blog), but I'm not ready to let awful management off the hook. It is, in fact, administrators of districts who decide how much havoc those government edicts are going to create. But I think Green needs to let management off the hook, because she's working up an argument in favor of the superstar CEO model of school management.
Certainly, she declares herself a charter fan.
Of all the reforms that have set out to free schools from this trap, to date I’ve seen only one that works: the implementation of charter-school networks.
And she means large networks, ones that can supply teachers and be insulated from politics. And if you think this is an implied attack on Democracy, well, there's nothing implied about it--
They have strengthened public education by extracting it from democracy as we know it—and we shouldn’t be surprised, because democracy as we know it is the problem.
Next Green wants to argue that charter networks are "gaining traction" and spreading and she is going to trot out David Osborne, who's current tour in support of his book about Reinventing America;s School is remarkably selective in his use of facts.
She notes that opponents exist and that they call this whole trend "privatization," and while she reports that Moskowitz considers that an "inaccurate smear," she does not ask if the critics have a point. She brushes past it with a "whatever you label it," and now goes to bat for the idea of choice and lotteries.
She notes that district schools must take responsibility for all students in their sphere, whether they expel them or not, while charters can be more limited in their admissions. Green ignores the issue of backfilling vacated seats again here, and ignores the issue of lotteries that cream out only those families able to navigate that bureaucratic process. Green will, however, repeat the charter claim that they are a force for social justice. And she once again repeats, unexamined, the classic charter claim: "Charter schools, by contrast, hand the power of choice to parents who can’t afford to exercise it through real estate."
She reports uncritically the Moskowitz claim that charter schools are "the best shot at delivering the public school system we wish we had," as if Success Academy did not have a long record of serving only the students it wants to serve (which is not the public education system I wish for). She passes along Moskowitz's claim that charters are the solution to integration, as if the AP had not just released a report showing the exact opposite.
Finally, far down the page, Green admits that at Success " for all Moskowitz's eloquence about the importance of rigorous academics and extracurricular activities, test prep comes first." Finally we get to backfilling. And Green sadly notes that parents often choose schools for convenience and location, rather than excellence.
In her conclusion, Green wrestles with some issues without naming them. She earlier dismissed "privatization" as a concern, but in the final stretch she notices that Moskowitz and other charter operators are mostly a collection of rich people who are used to owning and running businesses. She claims that the unscrupulous operators gravitate toward the for-profit charters, but fails to notice the many ways that non-profits can be quite profitable (in fact, she need look no further than Moskowitz, who draws a higher salary than the chancellor of the entire New York City school system). By this point in the article, my frustration with Green is running pretty high-- she can walk right up to issues without actually naming them:
But I do think that bequeathing power over the education of America’s children to a tiny group of ever more influential plutocrats means that the rest of us will have much less say in the direction of public schools than we do today.
Well, yes. That's privatization. And anti-Democratic. And she goes on to note that overseeing charters is necessary, but difficult, because charters really resistant to being examined (again, she need look no further than Moskowitz, who has taken the state of New York to court to avoid being accountable for how she spends tax dollars).
What, Green worries, if the plutocrats who run these schools get legislators to weaken oversight and empower wealthy board members? And at this point I wonder if she has been covering Eva "Go To Albany and Demand That the Rules Be Changed To Suit Me" Moskowitz with only one eye half open. And is that eye plagued with some sort of shmutz that keeps her from examining the nasty little details of this "impressive" system?
In the end, Green seems ready to dump Democracy, scrap public schools, and elevate an autocratic Beloved Leader CEO charter system. In a way, it's fitting that in an era in which some people are willing to turn to a one-person authoritarian form of the Presidency under Beloved Leader Trump, some folks will also yearn for the same system for schools, arguing that she may be a dictator, she may be autocratic, she may require the suspension of Democracy, but I think she means well, and she makes the trains run on time. Just don't look too closely at where the train is running or exactly who gets to ride on board.
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