Bill Bennett: Teachers, Know Your Place

EdWeek ruffled some feathers and reaped some clickbaity hate read traffic this week with a piece of concern trolling from Bill Bennett and Karen Nussle. Bennett was Reagan's USED secretary, and Nussle is the chairman of Conservative Leaders for Education, a group that Bennett launched two years ago and still serves as-- well, actually the website says that Nussle is president and Bennett is chairman. Nussle's actual background is running a "boutique" PR firm.

CL4E lives up to its name by favoring school choice and not being fans of unions, so nothing in the EdWeek piece is exactly surprising. But it is a fine example of the kind of baloney that gets served every time teachers strike.

There is a fundamental problem in education that has been on vivid display recently: confusion about whom our schools exist to serve. Our public school system exists to give our children a foundation in literacy and numeracy and to help them become informed citizens. It is not the purpose of the public schools to use children as leverage for the gains of others.

Yes, it's the old Think of the Children argument, which plays better than the real argument here, which is that teachers should know their roles and shut their holes. This paragraph also captures the belief in really low expectations for school (just teach 'em readin' and 'rithmetic). And the special hypocrisy of charter fans arguing that schools should not use children as a way to make money.

This guy has had it with uppity teachers.

But see-- only such confusion would "drive mass school closures and disruptions right in the midst of a critical time in a school year." One wonders when a better, unimportant time in the school year might come; one also enjoys the irony of choice fans decrying "disruption," which is usually one of their favorite things. I thought disruption was supposed to be a good way to break moribund institutions out of their terrible rut.

No concern trolling would be complete without a disclaimer:

We strongly believe in the importance and honor of great teaching and teachers. We believe policymakers should set budgets so that the best teachers are attracted and retained. Those decisions must be made at each state and district level.

Again, teachers-- know your place. These decisions should be made by people more important than you. But this point begs a question-- what are teachers supposed to do when policymakers don't make those decisions? What are teachers supposed to do if policymakers let schools decay and teacher pay drop so that nobody is attracted or retained?

This is a question that Bennett and his flak aren't going to answer, but consider this interview with Corey Robin, who is arguing that the central tenet of conservatism is the fight to make sure that the people who have the power keep it, and the people who don't never, ever take it. In Robin's view, Bennett's statement is its own answer-- decisions about teacher pay and school funding should be made at state and district level period end sentence. There is no what if. The policymakers decide and they are the ones with the deciding power and nothing is more important than preserving that power-- including crumbling buildings and evaporating teacher pools.

Bennett's point, of course, is that teachers shouldn't strike or walk out ever, and he offers several reasons.

First, abrupt school closures interrupt and damage student progress. "Teaching time does matter, and we should be very reluctant to interrupt it." Boy, that line makes great reading as I sit here in the middle of Pennsylvania's two-week testing window, during which my classes are suspended and interrupted so that we can give the BS Test. I might also direct Bennett to the problem of charters that close without warning during the year.

Bennett and Flak try to hit a quotable line here: "When coal miners strike they lay down their equipment. When teachers strike, they lay down their students' minds." So, in this analogy, my students have pickaxes for brains? My students are my tools? No, this is not a winner.

Second, the old "if you want to be treated like a professional, act like it." Which is a crappy argument, because you know what professionals do? They set a fee for their services, and if you want to hire them, you pay it. My plumber and my mechanic and my doctor and my lawyer do not charge me based on what I feel like paying them-- they set their fees, and if I want my pipes fixed, I fork over the money.

Bennett will add the old "teachers get summers off" argument for good measure. Fine. If you think we should have year-round school, do that. But don't diss me and my professional brethren because you're too cheap to pay for a full year's worth of services. Yes, teachers can use the summer to "pursue their financial goals or other endeavors," and I'm not sure what your point is. If you want more money, go get a job at the Tastee-Freeze?

And also (this second point turns out to be several points that seem to add up to "teachers are a bunch of lazy unprofessional money-grubbers anyway") Bennett wants to play blunt straight-shooter, saying "let's be honest" and admit these strikes have been about "pursuing financial ends." Which is unprofessional and unseemly.

There is a time, place and manner for these fiscal discussion. Strikes during the school year are not it.

Oh, bullshit. The teachers of Arizona and West Virginia and Oklahoma and Kentucky and Colorado and North Carolina have had all the discussions so very many times in a wide variety of places in every imaginable manner, and for their trouble they have gotten bupkus. Worse than bupkus-- they've gotten disrespect and abuse and in the meantime they've gone back to their moldy classrooms to do their professional best to work in a crumbling environment without enough resources. Bennett doesn't list the times and places and manners that would be more appropriate because he knows damn well whatever circumstances he describes, those teachers have already tried.

Third, Bennett argues that some of these strikes have been about misdirected anger or invalid complaints, but teachers just want to "maneuver a sweeter deal." Yes, those damn scam artists, striking on a lark just to make a buck.

I give Bennett credit for just one thing-- usually when folks start flinging these arguments around they try to cushion them by saying that teachers by themselves are just swell-- it's those damned unions. But no-- Bennett and Flak go straight for the classroom teacher jugular.

There are several things he either doesn't understand or finds it expedient to pretend he doesn't understand.

First, teachers hate to strike. Striking is their second favorite choice; their first favorite choice is anything and everything else.

That means to get teachers to strike, particular in large numbers, you have to convince them that nothing else will work. You have to convince them that there's no hope of negotiating with you, that you don't take any of their concerns seriously, that you don't value their work, that you have no sincere desire to safeguard the future of public education and their profession. You have to convince them that trying to talk to you is hopeless and pointless.

In short, you have to sound a lot like Bill Bennett in this piece.

Of course, Bennett tips his hand at the end:

Perhaps they should examine how their own actions are eroding public trust in an institution so vital to our nation and our future. In doing so, they are driving people to be against public schools.

Why not drive teachers to strike if, like Bill Bennett, you are invested in driving students out of public schools and into charter/choice schools?

Think of the children? Bennett is thinking of the children and all the money they can drive to charter/choice schools. And he is guilty of exactly what he accuses teachers of doing. He says that teachers are using students as leverage for financial purposes; those purposes are, of course, preserving public education and the teaching profession in their states. Bennett would also like to use the students as leverage against teachers, so that the financial interests of those who are invested in keeping teachers underpaid and schools underfinanced can be preserved.

Who's the guiltier party in that comparison? Well, I figure this way- students depend on schools for education. If we listen to the striking teachers, the schools get better and better, with current books, and a high quality teaching staff recruited and retained. If we listen to guys like Bennett, the slow-motion walkout of teachers from the profession continues, the buildings continue to lose resources, and the schools that those children depend on just get worse and worse. I know which side I plan to back.

FL: Continuing the War on Littles

Of all the toxic effects of test-centered schooling-- here's some news from Florida:

Nearly half of the children who attended a state-funded voluntary pre-kindergarten program last year were not ready for kindergarten this year, according to the preliminary results of a new test administered last fall.

I was desperately hoping that the next line would read "and so Florida officials concluded that there was something definitely wrong with their test and probably with their expectations for kindergarten students as well."  But alas, I was doomed to disappointment.

The only tots that belong at a university

The test was a new one this year, administered in the first month of kindergarten, because it's never too soon to make children understand that they go to school in order to take standardized tests. Besides the newness of the test, there are other bad reasons for the result:

This set of scores is based on children who attended VPK during the 2016-17 school year. The state didn’t decide on STAR as the assessment tool until the summer of 2017, so the providers could not gear their instruction toward a specific test.

In other words, they weren't given a proper chance to teach to the test. Because when you send byour four-year-old to school, you want her to spend time learning how to take a standardized test. I mean, how better to foster a love of learning and school.

Several pre-K providers are quoted as being disappointed by the poor results and sad that they didn't have enough advance warning of what test the state would use. Because pre-K ought to be organized around a state test, rather than the needs and health and wonder and natural exploration of four year olds. Also, one pre-K provider is called Tiny Tots University. Florida-- what the hell is wrong with you?!

The TTU rep notes that the test does not in any way measure how far the student has come (because, you know, some of those three year olds are just big slackers), which speaks to one of the fatal flaws of test-centered schooling-- its complete disregard for what a child can be expected, developmentally, to accomplish in a certain time period. Instead we just keep moving the bar, so kindergarten is the new first grade, or maybe second grade, and pre-K is the new 1st grade, and fetuses had damn well better start drilling SAT vocabulary by the second trimester.

Oh, and did I mention that this test is administered on a computer. A five year old is supposed to navigate a standardized test. On a computer.

Florida provides funding for pre-K schools-- as long as they promise to emphasize test readiness. Some people (you know-- people who have actually met small human children) have an issue with this.

“There has been a propensity for the early learning educators to say the K-12 system is expecting too much from our children,” Beth Duda the executive director of the Suncoast Campaign for Grade Level Reading said. “K-12 pushes back and says there is a place for play-based learning, but it has to be grounded in benchmark standards.”

No! No it does not!! The play-based learning has to be grounded in play!

The continued pressure to force littles to be molded to suit the whims of a bunch of standards-wielding, test-selling numbskulls is just one of the worst things to come out of the reform movement. There is nothing quite so backward in all of education these days. I'm reminded of listening Yong Zhao speak a few years ago. We should not be trying to make sure that five year olds are ready for kindergarten, he said, but should be asking if kindergarten is ready for our five year olds. Betsy DeVos may consider Florida an educational exemplar, but asking all the wrong questions remains a hallmark of Floridian education. But the most important question that should be asked is simply, "Florida, what the hell is wrong with you?"

Spellings and Duncan Get It Wrong

Arne Duncan and Margaret Spellings, two ex-secretaries of education (Obama and Bush II), teamed up to write an op-ed for the Washington Post in which they got almost nothing right, starting with the headline: "What ails education? An absence of vision, a failure of will and politics."

The very first sentence puts Duncan and Spellings deep in the weeds:

We have long benefited from a broad coalition that has advanced bold action to improve America’s education system.

Evidence that Spellings and Duncan are two different people

"We"? Which "we" is that, exactly? Politicians who used education as a way to launch and relaunch their careers? Corporations like Pearson that have profited over the parade of flawed and failed policies? Folks who wanted to get into education-flavored business of charters? Who is this "we," because it's not teachers or students or communities or taxpayers. And how "long" is "long" supposed to be, and what exactly are these alleged benefits? And what was "bold" about any of it? I get that the new Duncan script casts reformsterism as a courageous act. 

But seriously-- what was "bold" about, for instance, enlisting Bill Gates and a shadow network of reformsters and political operatives to try to enforce Common Core as a top-down reform idea. What was bold about deliberately barring teachers from the plans for rewriting the US education system?

All of this is beside the point, which is that Duncan and Spellings are sad that the coalition has "waned," (which is the way wrong word here-- the moon wanes, but coalitions splinter or separate or fall apart of dump each other when they realize that in a Trump administration nobody needs the protective cover of faux progressives to legitimize the privatization of public ed... but I digress). But their sadness seems tied to so many things that even reformsters agree are not true.

Today, education is blessed with bipartisan agreement on what works, and cursed with bipartisan complacency at every level on taking action.

Nope. Not even sort of true. There is no widespread agreement on hat works. There never has been. Teachers have always spent their entire careers trying to find more Things That Work even as each new crop of students moves the target. And I honestly have no idea what the "complacency" things is about.

Both sides recognize the need to balance strong federal accountability with local innovation; to support high standards for teachers; and to encourage choice and diversity while keeping public schools as the core focus of national policy.

First of all, if Dunclings thinks that there are only two sides in the education debates, they have even less sense than I have given them discredit for. But they have to know that the DeVosian camp does not favor strong federal accountability at all, and that lots of folks are not at all fans of choice. Meanwhile, "high standards for teachers" is a meaningless phrase, and "encourage diversity" is pretty meaning-free as well. Nor is there widespread agreement about keeping the public schools as "core focus," unless you buy the fiction that charter schools are "public" schools.

Dunclings says that ESSA encourages states to implement those "principles," which is-- no, that's not how laws and regulations work. They don't encourage principles; they tell states what rules they have to follow. But Dunclings is unhappy with what states have proposed, labeling them "underwhelming and insufficient," and I can't fault Duncan in particular for not really grasping ESSA because the law was, after all, specifically designed to specifically slap him in his specific face. But since ESSA still keeps test-centered schooling at its core, along with being a set of regulations that will be enforced by someone who had no part in creating them and no interest in enforcing them, states can be forgiven for not exactly trying to jump the fence on these.

But Dunclings is an unrepentant top-downer:

In the absence of an aggressive national push, even the best ideas lack the momentum to create effective change on the ground.

In other words, if the feds aren't pushing from the top down, all you local yahoos just won't get the job done.

But now we're getting nostalgic again:

It wasn't always like this. While we didn't always agree about the best way to get there, for years we agreed on the destination.

Again with the "we." The rest of the graf suggests that maybe "we" is "far-sighted presidential and legislative leadership, and engaged business community and an enduring civil rights movement," which you'll note is a coalition that doesn't include parents, taxpayers, or professionals who have devoted their entire adult lives to working in the actual education field. Dunclings ability to Not Learn Anything remains impressive-- it's still not clear to them that teachers and parents and education professionals need to be part of any solution.

Now a history lesson:

That alliance [see above] allowed President Ronald Reagan to oversee "A Nation at Risk," a report that made education a priority in the national consciousness.

Some carefully chosen words there, since ANAR didn't involve any actual studies so much as an attempt to craft some support for a pre-chosen conclusion. ANAR was a lie, told to stampede citizens in the politically preferred direction. But once the ball was rolling, Dunclings notes how the play of Bush to Clinton to Bush II to Obama kept the federal top-down baloney wagon moving and nudged privatization into the Overton Window.

Dunclings takes one paragraph to thump the drum of magical high expectations and the belief that education overcomes all other socio-economic factors. And then we're on to What's Wrong Today. In keeping with the rest of the piece, they will denounce vagueries. "We lack the national leadership" to make the magic happen, and the consequence, somehow, is that state plans lack vision and ambition (again the idea that without the feds to whip them into shape, the states will screw everything up).

By far the best part of this lament is the submission of NAEP scores as proof of the lack of national leadership, which-- I mean, come on, Arne. You do realize that current NAEP scores come from students who got most of their education under your watch, right? That if current NAEP scores indict anything (an arguable point), they indict the rosy reformster past that you are trying to advocate for.

Students are suffering because of an absence of vision, a failure of will and politics that values opposition over progress. There is a moral imperative to act.

That "values opposition over progress" tips the hand here-- we are sad that Trump-DeVos is pursuing a policy of "undo everything they did when that black sumbitch was in the White House." I agree that is just one of the many saddening and sucky policies currently enshrined in DC, but I'm not so sure that DeVos is pursuing actual policies that are all that removed from the policies of Dunclings et. el. Charters, privatizing, move federal money to private hands, use tests to measure everything because real accountability is hard-- other than the DeVosian desire to let any kind of bias and discrimination run rampant, I just don't see much air between current policies and previous ones. If Dunclings want to argue that the Trump-DeVos embrace of racism and discrimination to a degree never tolerated even in previous GOP administrations-- that would be a point to make. But Dunclings wants to pretend that DeVosian charter love is somehow qualitatively different that Spellings and Duncan charter love, that DeVosian hostility toward public education is somehow much different than Spellings and Duncan disregard for public education. That's a tough sell.

Now Dunclings wants to flash back to the 35th anniversary soiree for ANAR and pretend that the report reached some sort of legitimate conclusion (not to mention the problem with pretending that for 35 years, we've been told to expect an educational apocalypse "any day now" and at some point, that just gets silly). Dunclings choice of pull quote is the "unilateral disarmament" one which always puzzles me-- what arms did we put down, and what enemy were we supposed to be shooting?

Dunclings calls federal education policy "rudderless and adrift," and I wish that were true, but the fact is, DeVos has been pretty clear about her priorities even as she has also been clear that one of them is to not ty to strong-arm her priorities from DC.

At a moment when students are marching in the streets for their right to a safe, quality education; when teachers across the country are demanding attention and investment from their political leaders; when every economic indicator confirms the growing importance of a sound education in forging a full, productive life, what is our shared national vision for our children?

As was always true, Dunclings has skipped right over the question of whether a shared national vision, especially a highly specific one like, say, Common Core, is in any way useful. They're also asserting without proof-- "every economic indicator" supports the importance of education? Really? Every single one? Supports it how, exactly? And as for angry teachers and students-- again, guys, the harvest may be coming in now, but this is a crop that was sown and grown under your watch. It's not something new; it's just something you're noticing now that DC is occupied by people who don't belong to the same country club as you. Look, I will gladly agree that Trump is probably the worst President in the history of Presidents-- but to pretend that what's happening in education right this minute somehow sprang into being the day he took office is foolish.

What else does Dunclings want? High standards and high expectations. Oh, and "respect for teaching," as if they had not been instrumental in eroding that same respect with policies that assumed that teachers will suck unless threatened and punished by "accountability measures." Also, could we please have more federal oversight for colleges and universities? And just generally get national policy makers better seats at the policymaking table. Yeah, boy, it really sucks when you think you have important insights to share on what you consider important work and the people setting the table refuse to include you. Does that feel bad, Arne? Does it sting, Margaret? Because it's exactly what actual working professional educators felt for years under your administrations.

I swear we're almost done, but there's still this gem:

Education is what makes America the country it is. An educated populace, versed in civics, trained to reason and empowered to act is what safeguards our democracy. Equitable access to education — our greatest force for economic mobility, economic growth and a level playing field for all — is what underwrites the American meritocracy.

Lordy- this is a child's conception of how the country works. Everyone goes to school, and the people who do best in school are rewarded with the best jobs and the most money, because this is a meritocracy where people are rewarded for being the very best in a field and not for, say, being a President's basketball bro. Systemic racism, generational poverty, massive inequity in wealth distribution-- all of that will be wiped out if students just get high scores on the PARCC. Yet at the same time, we only need "access" to good education-- not actual good education for every single child. What else do we need?

We urgently need a new generation of business leaders who see the alignment between their corporate priorities and the national interest.

Well, I don't disagree, but I mean we need business leaders who are willing to pay their taxes and share the fruits of productivity with their workers, who occasionally put national and community interest ahead of the bottom line. I'm afraid Dunclings is speaking in the context of education, to which I say, no, we need more educational amateurs to back the hell up and let the professionals work instead of deciding that their wealth qualifies to appoint themselves education policy writers.

We also need teachers unions that want to help set standards. For what? They don't say. We need civil rights leaders to blah blah blah pretty sure they mean "get back to supporting charter schools." And we need "political leaders who know that a fair, prosperous country in forged in classrooms, not at campaign rallies" thereby absolving government of doing anything that might address these issues, especially if that government would ask corporations to pay their fair share or help make the country more prosperous and fair. No, the fact the business leaders didn't use their tax cuts to make workers more prosperous is clearly the fault of Mrs. Bilwiggen, the third grade teacher.

For the big finish, a call for the "coalition" to get back in line before we are a nation at risk again.

What a pair. Overseers of years of failed educational policies who still have nothing to offer remotely like "With the benefit of time, I can see we got A, B and C wrong." Instead they're still arguing that if they had just failed harder, and people had implemented their bad policies better, then the world would be a better place and Trump wouldn't be making them weep into their leather upholstery at their cushy new jobs. God, it's bad enough that we have to wait for Trump and DeVos to go away, but the previous failed occupants that were supposed to have gone away just keep coming back. Dear Dunclings, please just go away.

ICYMI: Teacher Appreciation Is Now Over Edition (5/13)

Hope you enjoyed your treats and pleasant e-mails. Now it's time to get back to it.

If you're new to the blog, every Sunday I pass along some links from the week that I think are worth a look. Here are some things to read this week. But if you can, maybe you should just get off the internet and give your mother a call.

LeBon James and the Narrative About Bad Teachers

Another must-read from Jose Luis Vilson

Free Concealed Carry Class Offered to Teachers

Turnout was a little low. There is a level of cluelessness in this news item that is almost charming.

America's Digital Divide

What if the divide is not between haves and have-nots, but between those who carefully monitor their child's use of screens and those who don't?

Important New Study

Jan Ressenger takes a look at a new study that shows how charters have an impact on public schools financially.

Don't Punish Schools Because Johnny Can't Read   

Nancy Flanagan on those damned 3rd grade reading policies.

Teacher Un-Appreciation Day

If the whole teacher appreciation thing makes you a little cranky, here's a piece for you.

The State Penalized My School For Trying to Integrate

Steve Singer's school attempted to fix a systemic problem; now they're on the failing list

Cotton Ropes in a Bag

Nobody captures the small moments and details that reveal Life among the Littles like Teacher Tom. How one day at the playground is affected by some pieces of rope.

WV GOP Teacher-Mocker Loses Re-Election

Here's a fun news item. This guy was an asshat about the WV teacher strike, so the teachers took him to school.

Arguing with Scissors

Some days it seems to me that all of our education problems come down to just one problem-- as a country, we're cheap.

We want an educational system that's a shiny new Lexus, but we want to pay used Yugo prices for it.

Our first educational priority is Do It Cheaply.

The major effect of this priority is the cutting of corners. We can't get the Lexus for what we're willing to pay, and so we have to decide what features to give up, what bits to do without.

All of our education debates can be understood as arguments about where to cut corners. Like this:

The push to keep teacher costs down, either by breaking unions or stagnating salaries or finding ways to turn it into a low skills job (just open the curriculum guide from Pearson and follow the instructions) are all about saying, well, let's spend less on staff. Let's cut that corner.

The test-centered accountability movement is about figuring out which corners deserve to be cut. Let's come up with a hard data number-based judgment that say, "These folks over ere are clearly not up to the task, so let's cut their corner, because clearly they aren't getting the job done. They are the Used Yugo of education, so we should only have to pay used Yugo prices for them."

The free market competition boosters believe that competition-- beautiful, magical, competition-- will goad the Used Yugo to perform like a Lexus in order to keep its own corners from being cut. Wave those scissors at people, say the free marketeers, and they will give you way more for at less.

The privatizers want to claim that they can do more for less, that government run schools are loaded with fat, sloppy corners just begging to be cut, and savvy businessmen can do it (especially if you let them keep some of whatever they trim off).

Charter school fans combine many of these arguments. We'll be more efficient. We'll do more with less. And by allowing strivers to escape from schools loaded with slack and waste, we'll free those schools to have their corners cut to the bone without hurting these deserving children we've put in the charter lifeboat. Because creating more schools, more capacity, more school systems means, as current zero-sum laws stand, that a bunch of corners must be cut.

In fact, too many corner cutting arguments are about which children shouldn't have to ride in the used Yugo. My children, of course, should not. I'm not sure about those children next door, but the children of Those People (you know-- the non-wealthy, non-white ones) definitely don't need to ride in a Lexus. Cut their corner. Cut it good. And if we're going to give resources to the children of Those People-- well, there are a bunch of corners that can be cut, a bunch of corners that Those People don't deserve. Because at the end of the day, it's hard to allocate scarce resources without ending up with racist results.

Do we have to cut all these corners at all? Refomsters have long said, Yes," backing it up with the old "We spend a gazillion dollars on education and yet scores haven't gone up," which is a bizarre argument. It's like saying, "Well, I have offered the dealer $100 for this new Lexus, and he still won't give it to me, so obviously we shouldn't offer him more." The cost of a thing is not based on what you prefer to pay for it.

Most of our education debates in this country are simply arguing with the scissors-- "That guy over there-- that's the guy whose corners should be cut." We could end most of the charter and choice debate tomorrow simply by fully funding all systems instead of making charter and choice and public schools fight over the scraps.

I am not arguing in favor of unregulated profligate spending (though I do wish the reformsters who argued that education is a matter of national defense had followed that thought with "and therefor education must get the kind of unrestrained spending.") But let's face it-- in the USA in 2018, there is zero danger of unrestrained overspending on education. I am arguing for more honest discussions. Let's talk about what it would take to "rescue" all-- not just a select few-- students in struggling schools. If we want choice, let's talk about what it would take to honestly fund all choices. Even if, as I suspect it might, it comes down to saying out loud "Letting rich folks keep their money is more important to us than giving each child a great education," at least saying it out loud will let us argue about the real issue.

As it is, every education discussion starts with an unspoken premise: Since we don't want to spend what it would really take to have a better education system, we're going to have to cut some corners.

It would be great to challenge that premise. Heck, it would be great to acknowledge it so that we could talk about what we're really talking about instead of the topics that we use to mask that premise. Then we could talk about education instead of scissors and corners.

Happy Charter Week

At first glance, putting Charter School Celebration Week O'Self Congratulations on the same week as Teacher Appreciation Week may seem a bit obnoxious, but I've come to see it as sort of appropriate, a symbol of how the charter business competes with public school teachers for resources and attention. Kind of like putting Fight Cancer Week and Celebration of Tobacco on the same calendar dates, it encourages people to see that there's a fundamental conflict here.

Not that there needs to be. The irony for me is that even though I write extensively about the many ways in which modern charters are detrimental to public education and just plain bad policy, it doesn't actually have to be that way. Charters could work. Charters could be a great addition to the education landscape. But instead, charter fans have chosen to pursue them in the most destructive, counter-productive manner possible. It's like a landscaper says, "Your yard would look so much better with some azalea bushes," and you think that, yeah, they would, but then  the landscaper puts the bushes in by ripping holes in the front wall of the house and planting the bushes directly into the water and sewage lines for your home.

So I'm going to celebrate charter week with a little reader of posts that have run here, laying out the ways in which the charter industry has gotten it wrong.

Charter schools are an inefficient use of taxpayer dollars. If your complaint about public school is that too few tax dollars make it into actual classrooms, well, charters are generally worse, paying teachers less and administrators more, as well as piling on additional expenses like advertising budgets. Charter marketing has its own set of problems, including a heavy reliance on assertions that just aren't true.

Charters appear to be making segregation worse. Not saying it wasn't already getting bad on its own-- but charters are exacerbating the problem.

Oversight of charters (and the public tax dollars they spend) is rather a mess, with even reformsters arguing about how authorizers could provide decent oversight,  even as they argue for few restraints and requirements for charters.

Oversight is needed because so many people have entered the charter biz simply to make a buck. There are so many ways to use charters to fleece the public, including self-dealing real estate entities, plain old real estate operators, get in the authorizing biz, just commit fraud-- the list goes on and on. The bottom line is that every abuse people imagine of for-profits is equally possible, probable and present in non-profits.

Virtually all modern charters are businesses. They may bill themselves as non-profits, but that is a distinction without a difference.  They are looking to make money, and that means their own businesses interests are in direct conflict with the interests of students (every dollar spent on a student is a dollar the operators don't get to keep).

Some states, like Ohio and Florida, do charters so very poorly that families often find themselves abandoned by a failed charter. Some are simply trying to give private operators access to public dollars.

Reports repeatedly find that charters have a negative financial impact on public schools. How could they not? A fundamental flaw with the modern charter approach is that it must increase the total educational cost for a community. Until someone discovers a magical way to run ten schools for the same money used to run one, charters will hurt everyone financially. On top of that, some states have tried to make charters more appealing by deliberately gutting their public system.

Oh, and cyber-charters continue to exist even though nobody believes they actually do any good at all (except for investors and lobbyists).

Charters insist on pretending to be public schools. They are not. Really not. Not even if they manage to change the meaning of "public."

Charter operators are good at rattling off the list of public school problems, and much of the time they are not wrong. Systemic racism, lack of resources, serving populations that bring extra baggage to school-- these are all clearly real issues. What is not clear is how charters solve any of these problems.

I'll repeat-- I can imagine circumstances under which I would love and welcome charter schools-- but those aren't thew circumstances we have right now. Right now charters bleed public schools dry, proudly announcing that they have "saved" one child even though they had to poke holes in the boat that still carries ten other children. They are aggressively unaccountable to the public, lacking transparency, serving only a select few, and consuming resources that could be better focused on making the public system better serve all students.

Gates and Zuckerberg Never Learn

The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative are going to attempt-- once again-- to change the whole world of education.

Their newly-released Request For Information is looking for "all promising ideas for how to use existing and new knowledge and tools to achieve dramatic results against the challenges we describe." The list of challenges sadly does not include "the repeated failure of rich amateurs to impose their unproven ideas on the US public school system." Instead, the RIF looks at three particular areas. Let's look.

Writing       

The problem? College and career success (because we're still flogging that expired equine) are "highly dependent" on "effective" writing skills, which include "evaluation of arguments and evidence, critical and creative thinking about solutions and sources, identifying support for a key idea or process, plus clear and evocative argument making."

Gates-Zuck are going to ignore all of those qualities by basing their argument on NAEP writing test results to argue a lack of proficiency. Mind you, I agree that we have a writing proficiency problem, however, I blame it mostly on the test-driven school movement of the past 18 years. That doesn't make their list of obstacles, which includes a lack of time for sufficient practice and feedback because teachers are overloaded, and while computer scoring of essays "holds promise" (it doesn't), it can't help yet (and it never will). They also blame a lack of "high-quality writing assignments," whatever that is supposed to mean.

Here are the areas they believe "require more exploration"

Evidence-based solutions for writing instruction, including mastery of the "spectrum of skills encompassing narrative, descriptive, expository and/or persuasive writing models," a "spectrum" that I'll argue endlessly is not an actual thing, but is a fake construct created as a crutch for folks who don't know how to teach or assess writing.

New proficiency metrics. Can we have "consistent measures of student progress and proficiency"? I'm saying "probably not."  "Can we use technology to support new, valid, efficient, and reliable writing performance measures that are helpful for writing coaching?" No, we can't.

Educator tools and support. Gates-Zuck correctly notes that "effective" writing instruction requires time and resources, so the hope here is, I don't know-- the invention of a time machine? Hiring administrative assistants for all teachers? Of course not-- they want to create "tools" aka more technology trying to accomplish what it's not very good at accomplishing.

Peer-to-peer collaboration and feedback. I'm a little st8umped here, because this is both old hat and widely done. My best guess is the real question is "can we develop some software to get involved in this process."

Non-academic correlates. Gates-Zuck wants to attach the whole range of soft-skill SEL to writing instruction. "Can we develop evidence-based interventions" that help everything across the board "while protecting student privacy." Can we create some software that will teach students to be more human?

And the whole business should include continuous improvement. Always looking for ways to get better. Kind of like every decent teacher on the planet. I swear-- so much of this rich amateur hour baloney could be helped by having these guys shadow an actual teacher all day every day for a full year. At the very least, it would save these endless versions of "I imagine we could move things more easily if we used round discs attached to an axel. I call it... The Wheeble!"

But after listing all the fine print, we cut to the chase:

The goal is ​not​ to replace the classroom teacher, but rather to provide teachers  with new integrated tools (including those involving peers working collaboratively) and supports (including well-designed professional development) to improve their ability to assess student performance and provide rapid and targeted feedback and remediation.

In other words, we're looking to build some software to teach writing (and How To Be Human).

Mathy Stuff 

More test results stand in for evidence that math understanding and mindsets are in trouble right here in River City. There's a lot of math-related jargon here, but if we skip down a couple of pages, we get to the heart of the matter. First on the list of areas requiring exploration:

Tools and resources that support teachers to personalize the learning experience for all type of student learning needs:​

Once again, this personalized [sic] learning platform should also incorporate cognitive and affective state, continuous improvement, and be not boring. The list also calls for "informing, not automating," which is basically a call for a bigger, better data dashboard. Possible products of this research could be intelligent tutoring systems, technology-enhanced content, and artificial intelligence.

Yes, Gates-Zuck are ready to go all-in on personalized [sic] learning.

Which brings us to the third area:

Measuring and Improving Executive Function    

Are you creeped out yet? Well, here's the first paragraph of this section:

Student success in academics and in future careers is associated with their ability to wrestle with multiple ideas at once, think flexibly, and regulate their actions and thoughts. These skills describe the basic executive functions (EFs) of working memory, cognitive flexibility, and inhibitory control. Strong childhood EFs predict higher socio-economic status, better physical health, and fewer drug-related problems and criminal convictions in adulthood. 

EFs have been shown to be measurable, malleable, and robustly associated with success across the lifespan.

Gates-Zuck are going to fix all the poor and deprived students of the country by putting them in front of some executive function software, so that we can get their cognitive skills and self-control to work the way the authors of the software think they should. They are going to track EF abilities, and they are going to mold them to what they "should" be. And these will involve "technology-enhanced programs in and outside of school."

The program will also measure EF qualities of the educator and environment, and take a look at the early "precursors" of these skills as well as looking at "neural underpinnings." 

This is all extraordinarily creepy as all get-out. And the longer you look at it, the creepier it gets-- follow the links if you dare.

Reasons To Maybe Not Be Completely Creeped Out

This is personalized [sic] learning at its worst-- a kind of Big Brother on Steroids attempt to take over the minds, hearts, and lives of children for God-knows-what nefarious schemes. Only two things make me feel just the slightest bit better about this.

First of all, I'm not sure that Gates-Zuck are evil mad scientist types, cackling wickedly in their darkened laboratory. I'm more inclined to see them as feckless-but-rich-and-powerful computer nerds, who still believe that education is just an engineering problem that can be solved by properly designed sufficiently powered software. They're technocrats who think a bigger, better machine is the best way to fix human beings. 

Second of all-- well, wait a minute. The two guys who have bombarded education with enough money to make a small island and who do not have a single clear-cut success to point to-- these guys think they've got it figured out this time? They have never yet figured out how to better educate the full range of ordinary students (nor ever figured out what "better educate" means) now think they can unlock the formula for better educating students with larger challenges? 

This is like going to a circus and the announcer hollers that Evel Von Wheeble is going to jump his motorcycle over fifty buses, and you get very excited until you read the program and see that Von Wheeble previously attempted to jump over ten, twenty and twenty-five buses-- and he failed every time. 

I suppose that we can also take some comfort in knowing that at this point, Gates-Zuck is just trying to round up people who think they can help them get over just one bus, and maybe everyone will just say, "I don't care how much money you have, this is patently ridicu--" No, who am I kidding. People will line up around the block to work on this. When you have Gates-Zuck type of money, nobody ever tells you to take a hike because you've failed too many times.

On top of that, while the edu-amateurs have no real successes to point at, they have done prodigious damage in their attempts. Gates became convinced that national standards would be awesome, and now we're all stuck with the shambling ghost of Common Core and the tests welded to it. Instead of jumping over the buses, they may well just drive a tank through all fifty of them, leaving twisted burned rubble in their wake.

Never mind. I don't feel any better about this. Gates and Zuckerberg continue to learn nothing about education, but it's the rest of us who keep having to pay their tuition.