Castro Calls On DeVos To Support Public Schools

It's a short news brief, but worth catching.

According to Politico this morning, DeVos had a meeting with the Congressional Hispanic caucus (not on her public schedule) which yielded this comment from Rep. Joaquin Castro (D-Texas):

“The Secretary’s primary focus is school choice,” Castro said. “However, her statements did not encourage us that the Department of Education has a strategy — or much desire — to earnestly improve the existing public school system. We are not interested in siphoning money from public schools to prop up a shadow system that includes private, for-profit schools.” 

Castro chaired the meeting and said he appreciated the visit but said they still have a "fundamental disagreements on how to best prepare kids for success in life, and the critical role of the Department in making our public schools stronger."

Castro has a mixed record on education issues, with strong support for the public system, but also strong support for the whole standards-and-testing mess. And the Castro brothers (a rising Texas brand) have been pretty friendly to the charter sector in the past. He's a successful Democratic politician in Texas, so that's an achievement in itself, but I also note that his quote opposes "for profit" schools, and as we've noted before, a non-profit charter is just a for-profit charter with a good money laundering system.

DeVos's office followed up on the meeting by saying "Glad for the meeting blah blah blah choice students." I may be paraphrasing a bit.

The Parenting Gap

Another reformster has come out against the use of Big Standardized Test results as a measure of school success, not just once, but twice in the last eight days. Corey DeAngelis (Cato) took the stand both at the ever-reformy The 74 and at a website called Townhall, a website so conservative it includes as piece about the coming Trump landslide.

There's nothing mysterious about DeAngelis's apostasy-- the use of BS Test scores as success measures has made voucher programs look pretty bad, and DeAngelis likes vouchers. What, you don't think people can support good ideas for bad reasons? And lots of reformsters are not dopes-- Jay Greene was a lonely voice in the reformy world that tests are lousy proxies for what we actually care about. He's finally getting some company. Yet again, reformsters are "discovering" what teachers have been trying to tell them all along. That's okay. Everyone comes to the truth in their own way in their own time. Glad to have more folks at the party.

The DeAngelis Townhall piece looks at a study out of Barbados and pulls some detail out on the way to this conclusion:

This new study adds to the mounting scientific evidence suggesting that standardized test scores are not strong proxies for the long-term outcomes that society actually cares about. In other words, education regulators ought to realize that the tools that they have to attempt to control the quality of schools are far from perfect. And they ought to realize that families already know what’s best for their own kids.

The first two sentences are spot on. And the third-- well, the third walks us up to an uncomfortable conversation that we've avoided having, because it involves issues that are not easily delineated, and because it requires teachers to confront their natural allies-- parents.

The choice fans relentlessly return to the idea of parental choice. Parents know best. Parents can choose.

There's a problem with that.

Some parents suck.

Every teacher can tell you the stories. Even teachers who teach in small rural areas like mine. There are the spectacularly bad parents that lead to

The student who was always tired because her trailer home had no heat because her father spent the utility money on beer...

The student whose only non-deserting parent was in jail for trying to run over that student with s car, on purpose, when the child was eight...

The student who was thrown out of the house because he got in a fist fight with his father, because his father wouldn't share his drugs (that student was later convicted of a double homicide)…

In some ways, these are not the most heartbreaking stories. Those are stories where you are sitting in an IEP (individualized education program) meeting with a parent who is being clear that they hope you can shape up their child who is worthless, lazy and stupid. Or the student who is sad and distracted because their father announced over the weekend that he was moving with his new wife and child to another state to start a new life, and his previous children, your student, was not welcome to visit, ever.

And that's before we get to more widely understood examples, like the parent who throws a child out for being gay. Or the simple unextraordinary stuff like "I stopped getting Pat up for school because it was just so hard" or "I didn't need no book learning to get through life and I don't see why Junior needs any either."

None of this is a factor of socio-economics. At least one of the parents above is a college-educated successful and comfortably wealthy physician.

This is not a simple issue to navigate. I don't support any kind of Parent Police, and I think removing a child from parental custody is a nuclear option to be used only in the most extreme of situations. And it should be noted that "extreme situations" do not include "lives a culture or lifestyle different from the one you prefer."

But the fact remains that a not-insignificant number of parents are not capable or concerned advocates for their children. An open market voucher system will leave those children without an effective advocate at all, or an advocate who is not so much shopping for a great school as they will be looking for a babysitter who won't bother them (and I am not even going to start today on how marketing will further cloud the issues).

Now I suspect that some voucher fans, like Betsy DeVos, are okay with that, that they will view a choice system as one more chance for the deserving few to rise to the top and the Lessers to sink down to their rightful place at the bottom. Did your parents choose a terrible school for you? Well, I guess it was nothing more than you and your kind deserve. And this, truly, is not far removed from the reformster idea of charters as a haven for strivers, so that they can get away from Those Peoples' Children. The idea of a two-tiered system is baked into some reform ideas, the educational equivalent of the idea that trying to use welfare and food stamps to elevate poor folks just upsets the balance of nature, and we need to stop trying to artificially raise people up above their station.

But for people who believe otherwise (and I think there are plenty on all sides), the problem remains. If you're going to propose a voucher/choice system, you must include some sort of safety net for students whose parents suck. Somewhere in your system there must be a means providing support for those students who won't get it at home.

Otherwise, for all your calls that every student should enjoy the privilege of school choice, you're really arguing for a system that creams the students who come from solid families and abandons those who don't. Such a system doesn't serve the interests of the children, the community or the taxpayers; it simply further cements the inequities that are already there. The biggest advantage that  children can have in life is parents who care about them, who love them, who watch out for them, who advocate for them. A choice system that does not look out for students who don't have such parents is just a system that widens the gap between the advantaged and the disadvantaged.

Public School Registration

It's that time. The local newspaper is loaded with notifications from all local school districts that it is now time for registering your student for school.

That means mostly kindergarten registrants, though it could be any grade. But here are some things that will not happen during this period:

* No parents will be handed complicated paperwork as part of the beginning of a long application process.

* No parents will be told there are no more seats available.

* No parents will be told they must enter their child in as lottery.

* No parents will be told that the school cannot (and will not) offer programs to deal with that child's special needs, so so sad, too bad, seeya.

* In fact, weeks or even months from now, no parents will be told that they missed the registration period so they are locked out of the district until next fall.

This registration period goes straight to the heart of a difference between public schools and charter schools. Charter advocates like to talk about students "trapped" in certain zip codes, but the beauty of the US public school system is the guarantee-- the guarantee that whatever your zip code, there is a school that will take your child in (or at a minimum, help make the arrangements necessary to get your child an education-- and pay for them).

If, due to some bizarre set of circumstances, 150 kindergarten students show up to register in your tiny district, the school doesn't get to say "We don't have that capacity-- go away!" They have to find or make the capacity.

Are there public schools that try to weasel around this requirement? Sadly, there are. But parents can take these schools to court. It's an unnecessary barrier that parents should never have to surmount, but compare it to charters, where if the school refuses to offer the special services a child needs, the parents' recourse is... well, nothing. Vote with your feet.

And yes, some of you will point out that some urban systems (looking at you, NYC) have hoops and paperwork and applications that rival anything a charter system ever thought of, and I'll point out that A) that's a bug, not a feature, and it ought to be changed, B) not all of the US is urban, and C) this is one of the way that some public school systems have made themselves vulnerable to charter challenges-- by losing sight of their real mission.

That's the promise of US public education-- wherever you are, wherever you live, wherever you have chosen to raise (or move) your family, right now, there's a school district where you can walk in and say, "I want to register my child for school," and they have to say, "Okay." And that is true all year. When charter schools can match that, then we can start talking about their claims to being public schools.

OK: More Money For Charters

Early-stage charter development in a state often features the Bargain argument-- we keep pouring money into public schools and getting nothing, but charters can do awesome things for less money, so let's get chartering!

But that's just Phase One, and in Oklahoma, it's time for Phase Two.

The Oklahoman editorial board thinks that Oklahoma is going to shift from austerity budgeting to doing some spending, and it sees several likely areas. Some sort of prison reform. Spending of school bond issues. Rep Chad Caldwell wants to study the correlation between spending and "educational outcomes," which presumably means test scores in a bogus study that ignore eleventy zillion factors in order to focus on just one. And this one:

Sen. Gary Stanislawski, R-Tulsa, will lead a study on equitable funding of charter schools. Some of Oklahoma's best-performing schools are charter schools, yet they are denied property tax funding other schools receive. As a result, some of the state's best schools are in some of the most dilapidated buildings. It's time to reassess a funding system that (perhaps inadvertently) financially penalizes excellence in education.

So in Phase Two we shift from "we can do the job more cheaply" to "Hey, why aren't we getting as much money as everyone else."

Stanislawski has attempted a bill like this before, arguing that it's costly to come up with a building to house a charter. And he's also behind the laws making cyber-charters in Oklahoma, a type of charter school that has not performed well, to the point that even charter supporters have been critical of them.

Stanislawski himself has been a voice resistant to making charters accountable for their use of taxpayer dollars, using an argument that the "charters are public schools" crowd might not support.

He equated it to the private sector. He said when the government pays a private company to do a job, they don’t ask how much everyone is getting paid, or how much the materials for the job are going to cost.

I'm not sure that really holds up, but thanks, Senator, for being one more voice that agrees that charters are private businesses and not public schools.

Stanislawski seems to sidestep one of the issues of using bonds to get physical facilities for charters, which is simply-- who owns the building? Is he proposing that the public issue bonds that are used to buy private property for an individual or business? When the government issues a bond for a public school, the process ends with facilities that are owned by the public. What we've seen in some states is government bonds being used to buy someone some private property.

That's before we even get to the damage done by diverting funds from the public school sector to private charter schools. It all seems kind of reasonable up front-- we just want these charters to have the same financial chance that public schools do. But McDonalds doesn't come to town and say, "Hey, we'd like to set up shop, but a building is really expensive, so could you issue a bond to build the facilities and then just give them to us as a gift?" And McDonalds is at least going to generate their own income once they get started-- a charter school will be living off of public tax dollars.

Oklahoma voters are encouraged to keep their eyes on their tax dollars, because once charters are established, they have really only two ways to increase their bank balance-- either cut the costs of operation, or by getting the legislature to send more money their way. Welcome to Phase Two.

Another Merit Pay Failure

Merit pay for teachers remains a golden dream for many Reformsters. Of course, there's a problem with that-- it doesn't actually work. It has not worked in a variety of settings and under a variety of conditions. Of course, "worked" is usually measured as "raised standardized test scores," which is a lousy measure of teacher quality, anyway.

The effectiveness of merit pay in the business world is questionable, but merit pay for teachers doesn't even make sense. After all, your bonus is supposed to come out of all the extra money that the business made this year; that is not how schools work. In education, you only have two options:

1) Set aside a pile of merit pay money at the beginning of the year and let the teachers fight over it.

2) If your teachers all have a really good year, raise taxes to pay for their bonuses.

Guess which model is more popular.

Your merit pay is out there, somewhere.

Merit pay for teachers is also premised on the notion that teachers could try harder-- they just aren't going to until they're bribed. But if that's really the case, then offering a tiny base pay with the prospect of tiny bonuses doesn't seem like the way to harness greed as a tool to overcome slothfulness.

But it turns out there's another way to screw up merit pay.

Arizona implemented merit pay on the state level via sales tax (after carefully looking at all the evidence that it wouldn't work) and, of course, made it available to charter schools as well. One charter thought it had found a clever way to use merit pay to plug holes in its own budget.

Heritage Elementary School is a K-8 charter school with campuses in Williams and Glendale, plus others under the La Paloma brand.  They focus on "superior academics and family values with a character-based curriculum." On their "careers" page they note that they have a "family environment, a great staff, supportive administration, and our teachers are treated with respect." One would hope the "respect" thing was a given, but since we're talking about Arizona, maybe it needs to be said.

I'm not sure everyone would agree, however. News broke last week that twenty teachers (all women) had been denied the second half of their merit pay because they had resigned from Heritage Glendale. First-- twenty teachers have resigned effective the end of this year?! Yikes. The school had about 920 students last year. The family seems to have some issues. The second half of the merit pay would be about $1,500 to $1,800 (the first installment was paid during the school year). Teachers can use that; the average pay at the school is $38,734 according to teachersalaryinfo.com, but Arizona Republic reports the average as $32,899. The school's principal, Justin Dye, was not very helpful:

I understand their viewpoint. The reality is the school board can decide how to use it (301 money). There are schools that hold the money…They could decide one teacher gets all the money. It's been done before.

So, tough luck. (I'll note here that Dye, because this is Arizona, runs some side businesses that are contracted by the school, like the preschool program and the transportation service.) It does raise the question-- exactly how motivational is merit pay when it may be awarded and then withdrawn on an administrative whim?

The action by the school's unelected four-person board was taken in June. Teachers appealed the decision, and were told that only those returning to Heritage would get their merit bonus. Then they threatened legal action. The Arizona Republic published stories about the stiffing of the teachers on Monday and Tuesday and, miraculously, the board decided to have a quick call-in meeting and decided in about ten minutes to fork over the promised pay that the teachers had already earned. 

Charter Superintendent Jackie Trujillo said the news coverage had nothing to do with the decision, but that Principal Dye had pushed the board to pay up. Trujillo also showed the Republic budget documents indicating that Heritage teachers would be getting a 17% raise-- which will mean that Heritage teachers' average pay will be only $14,000 less than the projected average for public school teachers.

(And don't forget-- this is Arizona, where charter schools get paid more per pupil than the public schools do.)

So one more Arizona charter establishes itself as a highly ethical and trustworthy place where teachers can expect to be treated like family, with respect, because character-based education is what they're all about. Also, merit pay. And if you're a teacher looking for work-- well, now you know about one more place that belongs on your Last Resort list.

What Ever Happened To Common Core

You remember Common Core. First it was going to save the educational universe (and help lift a couple of political careers). Then it was going to turn all our children into gay communists. Then, most everyone stopped using the words. These days, it's considered more appropriate to talk about "college and career ready." Meanwhile, while many states still have the Common Core Standards in place, many other states have made a show of throwing them out, then re-installing them under some new name.

But most of the heat and light surrounding the Core erupted on the policy level. A decade after they slid into view, what effects have the Core had on actual classroom teachers?

To begin with, the entire set of standards never really gained traction. The standards that really mattered were the ones that appeared on the Big Standardized Test. Whether it was the PARCC or the SBA or a special state-specific test, the end-of-year testfest dictated which standards really matter. For instance, the Core includes some standards about speaking and listening, but nobody in an actual classroom worries about those, because they are not on the high stakes BS Test.

Whether they were called anchor standards or key standards or special focus or else standards, some standards turned out to be far more important than others. In this way, the standards were re-written almost immediately.

The Core also had the effect of what Thomas Newkirk calls the "mystification" of education-- "taking a practice that was once viewed as within the normal competence of a teacher and making it seem so technical and advanced that a new commercial product (or form of consultation) is necessary." The Common Core turned teaching into a task that couldn't be entrusted to mere teachers (or parents).

The Core also narrowed instruction. There's been a great deal of discussion about how courses other than reading and math were squeezed out, with some schools even eliminating recess so that more time could be spent on the test-weighted subjects. But the Core narrowed instruction in other, less obvious ways, as well.

The Common Core Standards can be understood as data tags, a way to label tasks and achievements of students. But consider a set of data tags such as the mood tags on Facebook. Back in the old days, we made do with a simple like, but now Facebook users can also express amusement, love, or anger. But to keep such a system (and the data it generates) manageable, a certain narrowness of categories is necessary. So I can show Facebook that the video about pandas makes me laugh, but I can't tell them that it also elicits a wistful sadness from remembering my old dog, or that it also makes me a little angry to consider the conditions under which the pandas are kept. Emotions are complicated, but Facebook's tag system isn't, and so lots of information is thrown out.

The same is true of the Core. Writing is complicated, but the Core writing standards are not. Reading literature and non-fiction is complicated, but the Core simplifies the matter by being unconcerned about content. With the exception of a side note and a reference to certain American historical texts, the Core's reading standards could be taught by using the morning newspaper. If your expectation is that a "good" reading program would include certain classic texts, well, the Common Core doesn't really share your concern.

Now, at this very second, someone is hitting their keyboard to say that their school's standards-based reading program absolutely contains classic content. This highlights one other feature of the Common Core-- after all these years, individual districts, schools and teachers have rewritten it like crazy. Teachers, working in the laboratories of their classrooms, have kept what worked, thrown out what didn't, and have put back things that were missing. Many teachers have discovered an empowering truth about the Common Core-- one may teach anything in their classroom and claim that it is standards-based. There is nobody in a position of authority to contradict them.

Some observers of the education biz may have one other question about the Core-- won't the pushback on the BS Tests and the rise of personalized learning wipe the Core standards off the board?

The answer is no. If the Core can be understood as data tags, then carrying them over into a computer-based algorithm-driven system like the current model of personalized learning will be simplicity. In fact, it will make setting up an algorithm-driven software-centered program even easier, because it is a ready-made cataloging system already available and, in most cases, already in place.

So the Common Core Standards may have changed their name and be re-written in a dozen different ways, but they are still alive and bubbling beneath the surface of public education. Nothing the federal government has done or talked about doing has changed that in the slightest, and the new wave of education reform ideas will actually reinforce the Core. We may not be talking about them anymore, but in one form or another, we are still living with the Common Core Standards every day.

Originally published at Forbes. You can check me out over there these days.   

ICYMI: Back from Vacation Edition (7/22)

We're back from Seattle and I've managed to collect a few things for you to read. Remember-- the internet gives you the power to amplify the voices of others. Use it!

The Great Academy Schools Scandal  

Great Britain has been trying its own version of charter schools. It hasn't gone well.

College Board AP World History and Colonialism

David Coleman's College Board has decided, for some reason, that AP history needs to be scaled way back, reducing the scope of world history to just the white parts.

A Teacher Explains Why the Janus Ruling Is Bad for Students

Just in case it's not obvious already.

Mr Rogers and Talking To Kids

This is a great and insightful piece about how Fred Rogers crafted his message very precisely for children.

PARCC, Phil Murphy and Common Sense

Jersey Jazzman takes a look at some New Jersey issues that concern everyone.

Summit Learning Under Fire

Charter-in-a-box provider Summit is taking some heat in Idaho.

What Elon Musk Could Learn from Thailand

The NYT looks at the lessons Musk could learn from his attempt to save some boys in a well, and the lessons that the tech masters could all stand to learn about intervening in areas about which they know little.

How Can Schools Make Their Teachers Feel Valued and Supported

It's just about as easy as you think it is.

Do Not Follow New Orleans' Lead

Mercedes Schneider reminds us that NOLA is not exactly a shining success.

What Works Can Hurt

Yong Zhao with a reminder that the side-effects of education ideas can matter a great deal.