The Three Flavors of Choice

School choice has been a policy goal of many ed reform promoters for a while now, but for those not paying close attention, discussions of choice can be confusing because "choice" involves several different camps, camps that don't always necessarily get along. Each varies a bit depending on state laws, but here are the basics of how to tell them apart.

Charter Schools

A charter school system begins with an authorizer--the organization that says, "Okay, you can open your charter school in that location." In some states, the authorizer is the local public school board (this is why some charter operators work to be elected to local school boards). In others (e.g. Michigan) other groups may be authorizers, even if they are hundreds of miles away from the charter school site. Authorizers are responsible for checking to see that the charter school is behaving itself, though again, as in Michigan, that can get murky when the authorizer benefits financially from the charter school's operation.

Once a charter is authorized and operating, students may shift into the charter from their public system, and some amount of money follows them into the charter, redirected by either the state or the local school board. The money may follow the student, but it is still managed by the state. Within the charter community, there is considerable disagreement about how much regulation charters should be subject to.

Vouchers

In a voucher system, the state hands you a voucher good for X amount of tuition dollars. You can now try to cash that voucher in at any school that will accept it (and will also accept your child). The school does not have to be "authorized" to exist, and you can try to cash your voucher at anything from Phillips Hoity Toity Academy to Bob's School of Stuff. Spoiler alert: your voucher isn't nearly enough money to get you into the high-end school.

While a charter system involves opening a whole bunch of new charter schools, vouchers usually feed a pre-existing batch of private schools--specifically, religious ones. For example, 97% of the schools receiving vouchers in Indiana were religiously-affiliated. And because these are private schools, they are free to reject your student for being the wrong religion or race or hair color (To clarify: It is technically illegal for them to do so, but plenty of them still find ways to let families know who belongs and who doesn't.)

But isn't it illegal to give tax dollars to religious institutions? Well, that's the beauty of vouchers-- the government didn't give money to the religious schools. It gave money to parents, and the parents gave it to the religious school. Kind of like when the fourteen year olds in your neighborhood gives their twenty-two year old neighbor money to buy them beer. Totally legal. Ish.

One other wrinkle with vouchers--depending on how the law is written, voucher money may go to students who never actually attended public school in the first place. When a law like this is implemented, public schools suddenly lose a bunch of money even though their student population reduces by None.

Super-Vouchers

Education Savings Accounts are just one name for this approach to choice. Instead of a tuition voucher, you would have an educational account--perhaps an education debit card with X number of dollars on it. You could use this for private school tuition. Or if you wanted to home school, you could buy supplies. You could hire a coach to help your child do well on the SATs. Or, depending on how carefully the law is written, you could take an educational trip, or buy a PlayStation with some educational games.

Super-vouchers appeal to folks who envision an educational future in which students pick up a math course on line and a language course at a local academy and get a history credit by reading some god books and just generally a la carte their way to an education. But even some of my very conservative friends balk at the teeny tiny amount of oversight given to the spending of taxpayer dollars in these programs.

Choosing Sides

While all of these approaches come under the school choice umbrella, they do not necessarily play well together. Some charter supporters see vouchers as creating a really tight market to compete in; others are not comfortable with the tax-dollars-to-religious-school aspect. Some voucher supporters tolerate charters only as a stepping stone to get to full-on vouchers, because only vouchers will let tax dollars flow freely into religious schools (Betsy DeVos may well fit into this category). Voucher fans want full freedom from government oversight and worry about government regulations following the tax dollars into their schools, while many charter advocates have come to see a need for strong oversight in order to protect their brand from crooks and incompetents.

All three groups share the goal of wresting public tax dollars away from the public school system. But they differ in what should happen with those dollars once the wresting is done.

Originally posted at Forbes

The Rich Man's Bet

In the movie Trading Places, two rich old guys place a bet on a social experiment-- switching poor Eddie Murphy and rich Dan Ackroyd. It was a striking premise for the film precisely because it seems callous to place monetary bets on peoples' lives. Who would do such a thing?

Well, let's talk about social impact bonds, aka pay for success.

We've talked about this before, because SIBs have been waiting in the wings for their big chance on the education stage for a while now. The premise seems benign enough, but SIBs must inevitably lead to some highly undesirable consequences.

The Basic Idea

Think of SIBs as a rich man's bet. Let's say that I'm a Goldman Sachs type financial institution (Goldman Sachs is a big fan of SIBs). I look at your local pre-school program on which you are spending $2 million, and I say, "I'll bet you that I can run that program for $1.6 million." So you turn the program over to me to operate. We agree on a metric that we will use to decide whether I won the bet or not; if I win, some portion of the $400K that was saved goes to me.

Yes, I'm simplifying the whole business, especially all the various financial tools used to play with the money involved. But you get the idea.

So what's the problem? Well, there are several Bad Things that are likely to occur as a result of our little bet.

Oversimplification of Goals

If we're going to settle a bet, we will need a simple and clear metric for determining success. After all, a goal like "pre-school graduates will be healthy and happy and excited about continuing their education." So we could pick something like "few pre-schoolers will require special services in grades 1-6." Or we could set a cut score for success on a Big Standardized Test or a success level score for a battery of smaller, daily, personalized [sic] learning style mini-tests. We could use a system of microcredentials and set success as students achieving a certain number of edu-badges.

Because we need something clear and specific, we are bound to create two problems. One is that clear and specific goals flatten education; the higher order, more important goals in education are neither simple nor easily measured. So we end up with "gets at least five out of seven multiple choice questions right on quiz about the excerpt" rather than "able to apply critical thinking to deep discussion of themes used throughout the novel."

And because we focus on flat, narrow data goals that are really proxies for our real goals, we open up the door to Campbell's Law and start working to game the numbers rather than educate the children.

Vast Hunger for Data

To settle the bet, we need all the data. In fact, the more data we collect, the more things we can find to make bets about. The personalized [sic] learning model doesn't have to be part of the SIB picture, just as blockchain-based permanent records need to be- but both are very conveniently positioned to push SIBs, and help create a multitude of revenue streams. It's like a mining company that says, "We'd like to dig up this whole area to collect pyrite" and then takes everything, including the gold and silver that are right next to the pyrite.

But for my immediate purposes, having the maximum amount of data lets me better push the students across the finish line that I've set for them. I'll just go ahead and monitor the students and watch the steady flow of data. It's like watching and making bets on the flow of data generated by the stock market, only this data is generated by tiny humans. SIBs, armed with vast data gathering capabilities, turn students into a human commodities market.

If it doesn't bother you to consider children as a commodity, then consider this-- the regular market has had a destructive effect on US business precisely because too many companies are now run poorly by CEOs whose philosophy is "We're not here to make widgets; we're here to provide stockholders with a good return on investment. Our job is all about getting those stock numbers to look good." The market too easily loses sight of what the actual point is supposed to be; a school where that happens, where the students are there not to be educated, but to generate profitable numbers for Goldman Sachs-- that's a school that has lost its way.

Privatization

SIBs are not just a bet; they are also a way for Goldman Sachs et al to buy the profitable part of a public entity, while letting the public still carry the risks and liabilities. It is a way to buy up public goods without actually owning it outright.

Investors still get all the important parts. They get to dictate how the school will be run, how the programs will be operated, how the students will be treated. They get to skim whatever profits they are able to squeeze out. But if the school, say, burns down-- well, that's not the investor's problem. Because while I'm characterizing this as a bet, it's different in one important feature. When I bet you that I can run your school more cheaply than you can, here's the deal-- if I win the bet, you give up a bunch of tax dollars, and if I lose the bet, I give up... well, I give up nothing. I give up the chance to collect some of the money. (And really, if I lose this bet, it's because I didn't do my homework and I somehow set terms that didn't favor my success,)

In the meantime, I get to treat the school like my own possession. And the taxpayers have given up control of the school that they still technically own.

Your Homework

If you'd like to read about social impact bonds until your eyeballs bleed, I recommend this list and this collection. The whole business can seem painfully technical at times, but there are people in the world who are very very very excited about seeing this happen, and we should be paying attention.

NPE: See You in Indianapolis

This years Network for Public Education conference is in Indianapolis, and I'm hoping to see you there on October 20 and 21.

This will be the fifth annual gathering of NPE, and I'm pleased to be presenting once again-- twice, actually. Once by myself (Dancing into the Apocalypse: Keeping Your Chin up as Privatization Marches On) and once in a panel about online learning and assessment led by Leonie Haimson and featuring Audrey Watters (for that panel I plan to just sit and go full fanboy).

There's a great roster of speakers scheduled for the Saturday-Sunday conference, with keynote speeches from Derrick Johnson (President, NAACP), Pasi Stahlbertg (University of New South Wales), Helen Gym (Philadelphia Councilmember), Jesse Hagopian (teacher, Garfield High School) and Diane Ravitch (President NPE). There will also be a chance for folks to meet by regions.

The conference is a great chance to meet up with other supporters of public education and to take energy and excitement from talking to folks. And in this day and age, it is nice to pout faces and voices with the names that we know from the interwebs.

You can register here-- there are still slots open. If you're there, please come up to me and say hi.

Some Close Reading Practice

Here at the Curmudgucation Institute, we have recently turned that corner and are now deeply interested in literature. The board of directors here at the Institute has become interested in many of the classics (and by "interested" I mean "interested in having them read aloud 20 or 30 times per hour"). But while we are deeply committed to Is Your Mama a Llama and Cleo and The I Love You Book and Feminist Baby and all the Llama Llama books, there is one book that commands our loyalty and devotion above all others.

Hop on Pop.

You can see here-- this is how much we love Hop on Pop. It is the first book that we have actually worn out enough to require duct tape intervention. Because I have had the opportunity to read this book roughly seventy squintillion times, I can't really resist the urge to apply some analysis via Close Reading 2.0, the Common Core-flavored version championed by literature-teaching whiz David Coleman.

Board of Directors in Executive Session

You can follow the links for more details, but let me remind you of the basic rules. Mostly, we have to stay within the four corners of the page. We cannot bring in prior knowledge, background info, or anything else that we can't see on the page (so nothing about Dr. Seuss's medical degree or unfortunate racist streak). For our purposes, we are going to cheat just a little, because the Board of Directors are barely toddlers, so they have very little prior knowledge at all and the printing on these pages is gibberish to them, as they don't yet know the concept of printed words and cannot actually say any words themselves (well, maybe "banana"). This is one of the problems with Coleman's version of Close Reading-- it is humanly impossible to stay within the four corners of the page because all reading involves the use of prior content knowledge. But we'll do our best to plumb the depths of this text.

Let's begin.

We are immediately presented with a puzzle- Pup is up, but without a point of reference, we do not know how far up, nor how Pup got there. Is Pup flying? Jumping? Has Pup been shot out of a cannon? There is much we do not know, and this troubling uncertainty in frame of reference will be a continuing theme in the work. For next we see Pup in a cup, but we do not know if Pup is tiny, or the cup is huge. Then, in the third image of the triptych, a reversal, with the cup now on top of Pup. But notice that Pup in this image has shed his collar! Has the reversal of roles brought about Pup's liberation? Pup looks happy. By accepting the burden of cuply oppression, has Pup now achieved a sort of freedom?

Like many moments in the text, we will have to set that aside for the moment, as the work is episodic in nature and we must look for thematic links between the episodes. We next encounter the character Red, who first is in bed alone, and then with three other individuals. While Red could be a male or female's name, Ned, Ted and Ed all evoke traditional maleness. One does wonder why Ed appears to be a miniature person. Red, disturbingly, is the one character in the book to have buttons, but Red also shows no sign of arms. Is this disability the reason Red stays in bed, even sharing it with three partners? Does this episode suggest that the loss of arms makes one unable to cope with life, instead taking to bed so that one's only social and community contacts are there in that soft and protected space?

Our next episode is one of the few to take up four pages; it is also one that tests the limits of Close Reading 2.0. Is the reader supposed to understand that this is a non-traditional use of a wall, or simply accept a small wall that does not appear to mark a boundary between two areas. The eight players appear nearly identical, though they have different numbers of buttons on their clothing (six, five and four). Those different numbers could indicate different levels of status among the players, and we can only guess why one player is privileged to hold the bat.

To add to that mystery, we find that when all the characters fall off the wall, one of the players has disappeared. All nine balls are still there, but instead of the original eight players, we now see only seven. The absence of the eighth player coincides with the disappearance from the scene of the bat. Nor do we see what caused them (almost) all to fall. Should we deduce that the eighth player has gone rogue and started knocking the other players off with his bat? That would fit the position of the seven falling players; some are on the ground, while some are still in the air, indicating they did not all fall at once. They all look dazed, alarmed, even surprised. This episode is the first to hint at destructive forces of chaos and disorder loose in this otherwise idyllic world.

With the next page turn, the violence and danger previously only hinted at is now made explicit. Our narrator is being savagely attacked by some sort of beast that is prepared to drive spike-like fangs into the narrator's toe. And yet that beast is itself about to be chomped on by a violently aggressive demon child (seriously-- that is one crazy-evil looking little dude). The use of two full pages for this single image underlines its importance to the thematic underpinnings of the text. The universe of the book is not only plagued by eruptions of violence, but those eruptions can come from unexpected sources. No one is safe, not even the aggressors. And the reversal of roles that once looked harmless in the cup-pup episode now reveals a darker undertone.

This theme of violence and disorder continues in the next episode, where we briefly establish a quiet, harmless scene of two characters witnessing a bee. Then immediately that quiet is disrupted by yet another violent attack. But then, abruptly and without transition, the bees are gone, and we are contemplating three fish in a tree, a clear disruption of natural order (more so if, perhaps, the three bees have somehow been transformed into the three fish). But at this point in the narrative, where the tree-fish might have once been whimsical, they are now disturbing and disorienting. That is perhaps why fish are the best choice for the author's purpose-- a horse or emu would lack the echoes of whimsy more commonly associated with fish. Our characters, unlike the Pup and Red, do not smile cheerfully, but look alarmed and confused. What other horrors could be about to enter their day?

We now encounter Pat. Pat stands in a non-threatening manner, gloved hands at his side. He seems like a charming fellow. But then he begins a campaign of destruction, first preparing to sit on a hat, and then a yowling cat. In the hat frame, his fingers are arched, almost as if he plans to destroy the hat in a genteel, almost dainty manner. But upon causing the cat to yell out in terror, Pat shows some concern. But then he is serene again as he balances on a bat in a physically (and physiologically) improbably manner. He is unconcerned that he is disrupting the natural order-- in fact, does not even open his eyes to see the results of his behavior. (Note: This is not the bat from the wall players; that bat is clearly brown while this is not.)

Then fortune is again reversed, as Pat almost makes a catastrophic mistake. At first it merely seems that he is going to sit on a prickly cactus, but on closer examination we can see that the cactus's form recapitulates Pat's own form, this dark echo perhaps revealing a dark, shadow self that Pat is on the verge of joining with. In this reading, the other character does not just offer Pat rescue from self injury, but calls to Pat (whose eyes are now again open) to stop and achieve redemption rather than merging with his darker self.

We do not discover if Pat accepts this redemption or not, because we abruptly cut away to two characters, one wearing a traditional female signifier of a hair bow. They first tell us that they like to walk, but we can clearly see that they have no feet. They also tell us they like to talk, but both have their eyes shut and their mouths open, indicating that they are not conversing, sharing or listening to each other, but are simply talking past each other in a disconnected mockery of actual conversation (just as attempting to perambulate without feet is an imitation of walking).

When we turn the page, things have only gotten worse. The two smaller characters are happily jumping up and down, assaulting "Pop," apparently a father figure, with their jagged not-feet. And yet Pop himself does not tolerate this and erupts in an alarming expression of anger and frustration, demanding that they stop. (Note: While some may note a resemblance between Pop and Pat, they have different colored noses, and only Pat wears white gloves.) It is a complex and twisted scene in which childish play is interrupted by adult rage, all demanding, and yet the childish play is itself destructive and subversive. It is unclear which characters we are supposed to identify with, as the children are the point-of-view characters for the left-hand page, but Pop is our point of view character for the right page. This signifies, perhaps, that in a world of cyclical violence and chaos, we cannot reliably view any person or point of view as trustworthy or safe.

This violent scene can be seen as the climax of the work, leaving just the denouement.

A fuzzy haired character, whose outfit denies them even the use of their hands, looks lost and sad contemplating a block of letters that contains words-- but the author has pushed the words together to obscure and confuse meaning, just as the previous episodes have hinted at a reality that is resistant to any conventional sense of meaning and purpose. On the facing page another character walks away, dismissing the first characters plea for interpretation and sense. The second character is walking off the page, surrounded primarily by an empty field of white that denies all context or place and offers no hint of sense or meaning. We are back where we started with the flying Pup-- stripped of all useful details that can help us anchor this in a safe and understandable world.

Most chilling, the character says he will provide answers "tomorrow"-- and yet the episodes have shown us that meaning can be deconstructed and destroyed at any moment, violently, chaotically, and without warning. Will the character actually provide meaning and sense "tomorrow"? We are left with the uneasy feeling that he will not as we are left staring into a blank white, adrift in a void of existential disconnection, unsure whether or not we really want tomorrow to come as we gaze into the abyss.

Admittedly, one has to read Hop on Pop several hundred times before the spreading blanket of existential dread really settles in. We could delve into some more text-based questions (why is Pop lying on a green blanket? or is it a towel? has he just showered?) but the Board of Directors will be coming out of executive session soon.

History of Institutional Racism

I'm way behind on my reading and my recommendations thereof; it's on my retirement to do list.

The History of Institutional Racism in US Public Schools is an unusual work. At first glance, one might think, "Oh, this is one of those graphic novel thingies," but the basis of the project is a huge work of art on three fifteen-foot canvases, created by Susan DeFresne, a teacher and activist.

I wish that the book had included an image of the work as a whole so that the reader could grasp the sheer size of DeFresne's project. But in all other respects, the book provides a thorough examination of the project.

Panels are presented, enlarged and in sequence, with some shown multiple times to focus on particular details. DeFresne's scope is large and even with her huge canvass, she has to take some broad strokes to get from 1501 to the present day. She looks at the handling of many ethnicities in the US system, including the "education" of Native Americans, a tough subject that often goes unaddressed.

But what's particularly striking and useful about this book is the materials that she has included. After the reader has a chance to look through and examine the full work, DeFresne walks us through it again, panel by panel, sharing her notes and providing the reader with ways to interact with the material. She suggests research and discussion topics, and recommends actions that the reader may take. As the back cover says, "the emphasis is on restorative justice and reconciliation."

So the work is not just a recording of a remarkable research and art project, but a challenge to interact with that project and consider the many ways that institutional racism has affected public education in this country. It's a challenging work, and white readers may have frequent attacks of the "yeah buts," but that's in keeping with the mission of the publisher, Garn Press. There's much to chew on in these eighteen panels, and a different sort of reading experience for those who pick up this book. It's a particularly good choice for book clubs or reading groups.

The book is available through most major outlets. You can order a copy today.

ICYMI: Labor Day Edition (9/2)

It's that time again. And while the interwebs get quietish this weekend (fingers crossed) here's some good reading to catch up on. Remember to share!

In this Revolutionary School Some Teachers Have To Go On Unemployment

Fast Company ran a piece back in April about how the gig economy has come to one particular charter outfit. It's one more not pretty look at how hard this is on teachers (and therefor, their students).

Is Louisville Ground Zero?

Jeff Bryant looks at how the fight over schools becomes a fight over local control and whether or not the rich and powerful can buy their way past democracy.

Ohio Probes Charter School Operators Accused of Defrauding Parents

Oh, look! A charter school operator in Ohio turns out to be scamming parents. Again.

How America Is Breaking Public Education

You probably saw this one, but just in case you missed it, a look at how crushing teachers is messing up education.

Dispute Over Contract Highlights Clash of Priorities

A look at TNTP's attempt to cash in in Philadelphia, and the various other reformster groups that have joined it at the feeding trough.

Are You a Mentor or  a De-Mentor?

A nice piece with self-check for attitude issues.

Tearing It Up    

It's about tear art in history class, but it's also about the process by which teachers decide whether or not try something and whether or not to keep it.

Adequate and Equitable Funding: Are They Unreachable Goals?    

Jan Resseger with some excellent reflection on the problem.

Strikes: When the Masks Come Off

Back many years ago, I was the president of a striking local. It almost ended my career.

In most districts, there's a nice layer of politeness over everything, and people subscribe to the usual Nice Thoughts. Teachers are super important. We want our district to be the best. We respect our educators.

But in strike season, the masks come off.

Some people think that teachers are overpaid, self-important jerks who should be grateful they even have a job. And you will know that some people think this because they will call you, at home, to tell you so. They will make an extra effort to tell you that some people only get minimum wage and what makes you think you deserve any more than those people.

You may have a decent working relationship with your administrators. When the strike hits, they may show you exactly what they think of you. Our superintendent was a "We're all a team and you guys are our most important team members and I want to help you accomplish great things," and after the contract negotiations and strike, nobody ever believed him again.

It's not always bad news. While one board member was publicly vocal about her feelings, explaining that the district had the money, they just didn't want to give it to us, the board president and I met once a week for breakfast, not to negotiate behind our teams' backs, but just to keep lines of communication open. It was a reminder that people who are divided by seriously different positions can still value each other.

But mostly the strike was like looking into the abyss. You know when you teach that lots of people don't value what you do, but you learn to push that knowledge into the background, like a faint buzz. But in strike season, it is in your face, loud and strong and unavoidable. You know that the board's main goal is to do the least they can get away with without actually breaking the law, and they want to do it for the least possible money-- but you just kind of ignore it, except that in strike season you can't. Every morale-busting profession-belittling obstacle and attitude that is usually only implicit now becomes explicit.  (Up to an including the person who is right now getting ready to type in the comments, "Well, then, if teachers don't like it, don't strike. Just take what you're offered and shut up.")

I thought of all that today when I saw this news item from Washington state, where teacher pay is erupting into a variety of possible strikes. That's because of a court decision in 2012 that found the state systematically underfunding schools. The results of that suit included a massive pile of money raised explicitly to raise teacher salaries.

You would think that would be it. Boards would say, "Okay, we have this money that we're supposed to give to the teachers. Let's give it to the teachers." And in some districts things have gone smoothly. In others, not so much. Teacher contracts have to be negotiated locally; you would think the fat stack of cash marked "for teachers" would smooth this process, but... well, you remember my board member who said "We have the money but we don't want to give it to them." So several districts are already on strike, and some are getting ready to.

Which brings us to yesterday's story-- the board of the Wapato school district has authorized their superintendent to sue the teachers, to use the power of the courts to force the teachers to work.

This is dumb.

The first rule of striking is (or should be) this-- when the strike is eventually settled, as it must be, everyone in your district will still have to work together. Watch what you say and do, because you won't be able to take it back (that goes double for what over-stressed striking teachers say to each other).

Wapato could settle their contract tomorrow. They could settle with a contract that gives the teachers everything they want. But they will still have to live with the fact that their board and their superintendent saw them as enemies that needed to be slapped down by The Law. And that's not something you come back from easily; no cheery professional development morning, "Hey, you teachers are the most important part of our team here at Wapato" changes that.

If I said it once, I said it a hundred times-- "This contract is not a battle to be one by one side or the other, but a problem for us to solve together." I know there are union folks who would disagree with me, just as I know that sometimes the other side is just so hopelessly awful that there's no option but full-out battle mode (the strike in my very first year of teaching was in just such a district). And yes, there are districts where the internal relationships are so badly broken that you can't break them any worse.

But for everyone else, a strike runs the risking of breaking relationships that a district needs to operate well. Maybe it's inevitable if what is behind the mask is nasty and dark. Maybe you're better seeing it than not. But I struggled. For several years after the strike, I thought about, even half-explored other lines of work I could pursue. I was never closer to leaving the classroom than I was then, and there were people on my board and in my administration that I never turned my metaphorical back on ever again.

When strikes happen, people worry about the obvious short term stuff. What about the seniors? What about the sports season? What about day care for the small children? What about our vacations? Those things certainly matter, but my experience is that students are far more flexible and resilient than you think. We lost all our vacation days except for the actual day-of-holidays; it ended up not being that big a deal (It was, as one student put it, "the same as what my old man has to do at his job").

No, the real damage from strikes comes in long term relationships, the trust. The masks come off and you see what people really value-- in particular you see what they value more than education. And that can be startling. And the longer things drag on, the more heated people become and the easier it is to lose sight of the actual goal-- a fair contract that pays teachers well, provides good working and learning conditions, and keeps the district healthy (why do so many board want to pursue a motto of. "If you can't get a real job anywhere else, settle for us") while respecting the economic realties of the taxpayers.

Wapato's board screwed up big time. Admittedly, I don't know the district, so maybe the board and administration have already made such a hash of things that it can't get any worse. But at a bare minimum this didn't help. They may have gained a point of negotiating leverage, but they've lost credibility with the people who work for them. I guarantee you, once the contract is settled, there will be teachers looking at the exits.