Reformsters vs. Democracy

Many of us have said that one aspect of school reform is not simply about fixing schools, but is an attack on democracy itself.

Occasionally a leading reformster will just come right out and say it. Reed Hastings (Netflix) has been exceptionally clear that the whole elected school board thing has just got to go. Visionary CEOs shouldn't have to answer to anybody-- not employees, not unions, and not voters. Mayoral control has been a popular method for cutting elected school boards out of the loop.

Now Reformsters have spoken plainly in Arizona. Out in Koch country, the attempt to expand education savings accounts, a form of super-voucher, was thwarted by Save Our Schools Arizona, a true grassroots group that forced the ESA question to be decided by the voters. The voters hated ESAs by a two to one margin.

Did ESA hackers say, "Well, the people have spoken"?

Of course not.

“Empowerment Scholarship Accounts help families create a custom educational experience— one as unique as each child. Unfortunately, school choice opponents were successful in denying this option to all Arizona families, regardless of income,” Goldwater Institute President Victor Riches said in the statement.

“Across the country, ESAs have garnered the support of Republicans and Democrats alike because they provide a commonsense way for families to help pay tuition, provide tutoring, and purchase the tools they need to give their students the best chance at success in school and down the road.”

Well, no. Unless by "school choice opponents" he means "two thirds of the voters." ESAs have "garnered" support of some politicians in six states (and one, Nevada, created a program and then refused to fund it).

The voters of Arizona have been remarkably clear in rejecting the expansion of a system that already proved to be rife with unaccountable wastage of taxpayer money. The elected officials of Arizona, including their aggressively pro-privatization governor, can either listen to the voters, or they can listen to the deep-pocketed Reformsters. They can show themselves to be elected officials in a democracy, or the bought-and-paid-for hirelings of wealthy oligarchs.

Here's hoping they choose democracy.

USED Uninterested in Rural Ed

Buried in Section 5005 of the Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA) is this fun requirement:

review the organization, structure, and process and procedures of the Department of Education for administering its programs and developing policy and regulations, in order to—

(A) assess the methods and manner through which, and the extent to which, the Department of Education takes into account, considers input from, and addresses the unique needs and characteristics of rural schools and rural local educational agencies; and

(B) determine actions that the Department of Education can take to meaningfully increase the consideration and participation of rural schools and rural local educational agencies in the development and execution of the processes, procedures, policies, and regulations of the Department of Education.

Yes, the law requires a report be reported, and the department has by-God done it. And anyone who thinks that the department under Betsy DeVos has lost the ability to crank out useless bureaucratic argle bargle will be relieved to know that the current USED can waste everybody's time as well as ever.

The report is fifty pages long, and I've read it so that you don't have to. Here's a trip down the bureaucratic baloney-hole. It's not short, but I recommend you stick around for the twist.

The Cover

A badly laid out spread of four photos-- a tractor, a railroad crossing sign, some windmills, and a sad looking computer lab, all on a background of blue sky. Taken together they suggest that one feature of rural life is that it is poorly photographed.

Introduction

One page. It says, "Here's the part of the law saying to make a report. We made a report. This is that report."

The Department's Self-Assessment

This is not, as you might assume, an actual assessment of how well all or part of the department functions, but is a description of what the department is, how it is organized, and how it gives out money. It's a somewhat hilarious use of the word "assessment" by the department. If teachers were assessed this way, your assessment would be something like, "Mrs. McTeachalot is a human female who was hired to teach fifth grade at Boisonberry Elementary. She went to college and earned certification. On most days she teaches reading. She uses a textbook and sometimes gives homework on paper."

The Department's Efforts To Solicit and Incorporate Input From and Address the Needs of Rural Local Education Agencies

That's the real heading. Never look to government agencies for poetry. So starting in 2016, the department did some outreach.

This outreach was designed to (1) determine the main issues facing rural schools and LEAs; (2) gauge the Department’s efforts to solicit and incorporate input to address the needs of rural stakeholders, schools, and LEAs; and (3) gather ideas for ways the Department can enhance how it solicits and incorporates input from rural stakeholders.

There were, allegedly, listening sessions. And here's what may qualify as real news in this report:

In addition to the listening sessions, the secretary and senior staff regularly meet with stakeholders to discuss relevant issues and ensure that policy decisions are informed by stakeholder concerns.

Yes, Betsy DeVos s famous for how much time she spends out in the field visiting schools. Why, in the first sixteen months in office she visited 42 US schools. According to this report, those visits were "frequently" with rural stakeholders, like that time she visited a school in Wyoming. Virtual and phone interactions are part of the deal, too. The report does not address the question of who, exactly, is a stakeholder in the DeVosian concept of a privatized free market education world.

The department also "frequently" engages with rural stakeholders with gatherings and webinars, and staff "regularly attend conferences of organizations involved in rural education." They also "host rural stakeholders who are attending conferences in or visiting the Washington DC area." And don't forget the School Ambassadors Fellowship program, which brings a "cadre of outstanding teachers, counselors, and principals" to the department-- in "almost every year of the program," one of those guys was rural. Does it seem as if we are really grasping here?

But if you are among the rural stakeholders who's been privileged to be in a listening session, you'll be pleased to know that "various" sessions "inform discussions" about USED policies, procedures, processes, etc so that the needs of rural stakeholders are "meaningfully considered."

USED also conducts "significant research on rural issues," like twelve studies in current set of contracts has to do with issues that have to do with rural schools.

The State of Rural Education and Its Challenges

So here are some things that they figured out with all that research and listening that was going on.

28% of US public schools are in rural areas, serving 19% of the nation's students (according to the National Center on Education Statistics). Rural students do better on some parts of the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) and not on others. Everyone, city and rural, seems to be about the same in 12th grade.

Hey-- this one is actually kind of interesting. Rural adults over 25 have a higher percentage of high school grads than cities and suburbs, but a lower percentage of Bachelor's degree.

Poor rural schools face many of the same problems as poor urban schools, but remoteness and tininess can make matters worse. Rural districts also don't have cool things like people who can manage the complicated business of writing grants. And there's the whole lack of internet thing. No argument there-- there are still parts of my home district where the internet doesn't go.

Additional challenges: transportation issues related to distance, fewer careers and apprenticeship options, attracting and retaining teachers and administrators, a wildly fluctuating tax base, less ability to offer advanced courses. All reasonably accurate, though I think rural districts have a lot to teach about how to grow your own teachers and administrators.

I will give the report's authors five bonus points and some fat font for this next insight:

Adding to these challenges is the reality that each rural community is distinct.

They get into specifics, which are all good, but this point is huge. Nobody thinks that living and working in Los Angeles is exactly like living and working in New York City, or like any other major urban area. Everyone gets that each big city is distinctly unique.

But everyone who lives and works in a small town or rural area can tell you stories about someone who breezed in from out of town and figured that because he was Kind of Big Deal in a large city, there wasn't anything he needed to learn before he ran his shtick in a small pond. Every place is different from every other place; that does not change when you get below a certain threshold of largeness. It is one more reason that the search for education reforms that can be scaled up infinitely (aka "one size fits all") is a fool's errand. And (while I'm ranting) the reason that a free market driven education system is Very Bad News for rural communities is that the market there is too small to make it financially attractive to education flavored businesses. Maybe you can make it in New York City, but that doesn't mean you can make it here, where the learning curve may be just as steep, but the potential customer pool is too small to allow for mistakes. A big city charter can watch a veritable parade of parents voting with their feet right out the door, and that charter doesn't have to care because given the vast pool of families (and schools have a "customer base" that is constantly self-renewing) to replace the bipedal defectors.

For just one paragraph, the department is smart enough to understand at least a tiny part of this.

"Rural" is not a monolith but a compilation of thousands of unique communities and circumstances.

Incorporating Input

USED has been trying to up its rural game, by creating another level of bureaucracy. Within the Office of Communication and Outreach (OCO) we will now find the Office of Rural and Community Engagement (it replaces the Deputy Assistant Secretary for Rural Outreach), which gets the delightful title ORCE. I will leave Betsy DeVos alone for a full month if she instructs the person who answers the phone for that office to say, "Hello. The ORCE is with you." Unfortunately, that seems out of line with the rest of its notably unwhimsical mission:

This office focuses on expanding interaction and engagement with rural LEAs, schools, and communities. ORCE supports the Department’s efforts to ensure greater internal and external awareness of rural education needs and contributes to the internal deliberations on policy development, communications, and technical assistance that impact rural education.

Also, the secretary served on some task forces that were sort of related to rural educationny things.

Addressing the Unique Needs

The staff wants to make sure that rural folks are "considered" and that rural LEAs are aware of programs and grants.

There are intra-agency efforts! Websites! Working groups! Meetings! Programs! Grants! Acronyms! REAP! SRSA! A community of practice! Email blasts! Language that looks like English, but only sort of: "The Department strives to maximize its outreach to eligible entities." There is also interagency coordination!

Actions the Department Can Take to Increase Rural Stakeholder Input

We start the list of things the department can do by listing things it is already doing, including things that have already been listed in this report. One begins to suspect that somebody at the department was told, "This damn thing had better be at least fifty pages long!" So there's the ORCE thing, and DeVos serving on task forces, and some grant stuff. The grant stuff actually gets into details, such as how the word "rural" has been included in some of the items on DeVos's priority list. Specifically:

* Increase access to choice. This, of course, requires some business types to decide that they want to try to operate a charter/voucher school in a place that only has a few hundred students to begin with.

* More computer science stuff.

* More computer tech (because it's magical).

* Creatively giving more students access to "effective educators" and/or effective principals.

That covers things the department is also allegedly doing. Additional things they could do...?

* Create an intra-agency work group, led by ORCE. It could meet regularly and collect information from the rural stakeholders, as well as other parts of the department that might discover useful info when they trip over some rural folks. Oh, and it could run more listening sessions. I don't mean to make fun of these-- listening would be great. But listening has not exactly been a hallmark of the DeVos department so far.

* But we want to expand them. More rural listening. By many methods, with many people. ORCE will coordinate.

* Look for ways to simplify the grant process. Maybe fix it so they can be handled by ordinary human beings.

* Provide appropriate training for rural LEAs to navigate the grant process. Webinars. Videos. Also, putting things on a website is not helpful for people with lousy internet.

* Explore options for working with other agencies and commissions. Because working together in harmony and cooperation is a hallmark of the Trump administration, and because Betsy DeVos is know for her cooperative nature. But hey-- one task force that she served on (Agriculture and Rural Prosperity Task Force) had sine action items that were definitely USED stuff and she could--oh, wait. That report came out in January. Maybe "action" is too strong a word.

* Comprehensive communication plan. We could, you know, tell rural districts stuff, and have a rural ed page on the department website.

* NCES is working on a special "status and trends" report for rural schools. That will be nifty.

Conclusion

There are many rural students. The department totally intends to care about them.

Appendices

The conclusion actually only got us to page 22. The rest is appendices, but-- no! no! stay with me. There's some useful stuff here.

For instance, Appendix B is a "sample of listening sessions conducted before the preliminary version of this report was issued. What's interesting? Let me break down the sequence.

2016 (February to October): 20 sessions (several virtual ones)
2016 (November): Trump elected.
2017 (February): DeVos confirmed
2017: (April to July): 5 sessions
2018: Preliminary version released

I have a gut feeling that DeVos doesn't really have her heart in this. Just saying.

So, About ORCE and this report

Some folks were not happy about the creation of ORCE. AASA, the School Superintendents Association sent a five-page letter back in February arguing that both ORCE and the office it replaced were essentially toothless, attached to the Office of Communication and Outreach which, they argued, has no actually policy function and can't really "effectively weigh in" on anything having to do with rural ed (Also, nobody appears to be in charge of the OCO at the moment, and its page, untouched for a year and a half, doesn't mention ORCE)

Also, they noticed in looking at the preliminary version of the report, that the report doesn't actually say anything about anything, nor does it indicate any plans to do something useful for rural schools. The report talks a lot about listening, but neither this document nor any other from the department talks about what the listeners actually heard.

The superintendents also note that some of the recommendations of the task force report run counter to what the Trump administration is doing. Getting broadband to schools doesn't fit with proposing to cut E-rate. Improving health care in rural areas doesn't fit with gutting Medicaid.

The superintendents provide a hefty to-do list and, finally, express frustration that this report was supposed to be done two years after the enactment of ESSA (which may explain why much of it reads like a bad book report by someone who hasn't read the book).  Their letter ends with some masterful teacher scolding:

It was our sincere hope, with an additional six months, the department would have been successful in releasing  a draft report for public comment that is detailed, accountable, and outcomes‐based, and outlined an action  item framework that USED was tasked by Congress to propose, including a pathway for implementation.  The  preliminary report, as drafted, falls short of this goal and remains an incomplete work.  We urge USED to review  thoroughly all public comments, incorporate them the final report, and announce a date when the final report  will be submitted to Congress.   

Urging aside, none of that happened.

And For a Final Giant Red Flag

The head of ORCE is a guy named Michael Chamberlain, and he was not easy to locate. Pictures are few, but there's this one  

Which helped me match him up with this guy--

Wait a minute! Las Vegas?

Well, yes. Meet the head of ORCE, formerly a communications consultant, formerly an editor/writer for the conservative Franklin Center for Government and Public Integrity, and the Nevada Communications Director for Donald J. Trump for President. Also consulting, communications and, way back in the day, an estimator for a Roof Consulting company.

I think we can safely say that this report is not a game changer as much as a time and money waster, and that rural schools that have been waiting for help from powerful DC educrats should probably stop waiting. On the other, if your school has roofing issues, I may know a guy.

AZ: A Great Win

From AZCentral:

Gov. Doug Ducey may have gotten a second term but he also took a powerful punch to the gut as his plan for a massive expansion of school vouchers was killed.

From ABC15  

"This result sends a message to the state and the nation that Arizona supports public education, not privatization schemes that hurt our children and our communities," Beth Lewis, co-founder of Save our Schools Arizona, said in a statement Tuesday night. "Thousands of volunteers have poured blood, sweat, and tears into this effort for nearly two years in order to protect public education from continued attacks."

It was not just a story, but a lead story-- a bunch of naïve political virgins with no experience, no organization, and no money were taking on the Koch-backed governor on the Koch brothers' home turf. This was a gnat squaring off against an elephant.

And yet, they won victory, putting a proposal to expand vouchers on the ballot instead of allowing it to slip through the legislature. Ducey flexed his muscles, saying he didn't take office to play "small ball."

SOS Arizona had many things on their side-- determination, commitment, and a growing network of actual grass roots activists (who turn out to be more resilient than the fake astro-turf kind).

They had one other weapon n their side-- and this can't be overstated-- in that they were right.

Many stories have short-formed the education savings account as "vouchers," but ESAs are worse, draining taxpayer money to be spent on … well, just about anything. ESAs are not a liberal problem or a conservative problem. They are a privatizers trying to steal as much taxpayer money as they can problem. Vouchers are a bad idea; ESAs are a worse idea. They deserve to be beaten.

SOS Arizona was also right in pointing out that the process Ducey and his minions used was a baldfaced attempt to circumvent democratic processes. Voucher fans know one important part of voucher history-- n voucher program has ever been approved by the voters of a state. Voucher programs only exist where legislators were able to take the voters out of the mix. Again, from AZCentral

Arizona voters didn’t just defeat Proposition 305. They stoned the thing, then they tossed it into the street and ran over it.

Then they backed up and ran over it again.

Voters defeated Ducey’s voucher plan by more than 2-1.

There can be no doubt that voucher fans will continue to push their ideas, but it's now more clear than ever that they can be beaten. Congratulations to Save Our Schools Arizona, and thank you.

1776 and All That

As fortune would have it, I am on stage this week conducting a concert production of 1776. It's intended as a celebration of the 25th anniversary of our local theater where, 25 years ago, the first production was 1776. I was musical director for that production, affectionately remembered as the show that ate my summer (we were scheduled to open on a date based on the contractor's predicted completion date-- when that date turned out to be optimistic, we had to keep the show fresh and alive for another month or so).

Even if you're not a musical theater fan, you may vaguely remember seeing the film version in a high school history class and watching Mr. Feeney help launch the country with the Declaration of Independence.

For what is essentially a musical comedy, the show paints a scruffy picture of the launch. The founding fathers are not noble or super-human, nor are they united in their vision of what do. John Adams is a pain the ass, and the Continental Congress is a bunch of hot grumpy guys who just want to go home. The show does perpetuate the tradition of whitewashing Thomas Jefferson, who besides being one more type of racist gawdawful slave owner and abuser, seems in many historical accounts to have been a weasely, emotionally disengaged shit. The Declaration is adopted not because of an act of bravery, but because of cowardice, the deciding vote cast by a man who doesn't want to stand out. And the show underlines, in its rawest, most brutal moment, how our founding fathers cemented a devil's deal with slavery into our very foundation. What would have happened, I wonder if the slave-dealing states had let the slaveholding states walk away and gone on without them.

There are things we have never gotten right as a country, and times that the tension between freedom and evil (can you be free if you aren't free to do wrong) has led to some bad, ugly stuff. And our national disinterest in nuance and complexity get in the way of looking at our own history-- don't tell me all this complicated stuff, just tell me the good guys and bad guys. When a hollow cartoon like Trump comes along, he plays to many of our weaknesses, and not just the obvious ones.

It reminds me that among all the lists of standards and educational goals, we almost never find "wrestles inconclusively with complicated pictures of human behavior." When we call for critical thinking, we still too often mean "able to distinguish evil bad guys from wonderful good guys."

We are all the villains of somebody else's story, but rarely our own. People suck, except when they don't. We don't talk nearly enough in education about how to navigate the complexities of being human and being in a world with other humans. We certainly don't get there by talking about literature only in terms of what reading skills we acquire by reading a work (or excerpts of it). These are the things I think about as I flap my arms in front imperfect people trying to give life to imperfect portrayals of real life imperfect people.

The flaws and mixes come in degrees; some are twisted in small and subtle ways, and some are towering messes, tangled beyond the point of functioning. Some spend their lives trying to become less tangled and messy, while some try to pretend they are just fine, tying more nots and twists in the process.

We like things simple and neat and clear, and sometimes, when you cut to the bone, things really are that simple at their core. But life is also about all the layers we put on top of those bare bones, and sometimes that's far more complicated than we like. Our country is founded n magnificent ideas and terrible sins, and we keep struggling with how to tell that story, keep struggling over the distance of decades and centuries.

Our theater is the result of many peoples' vision and in particularly the generosity of one guy who wanted to make his old home town better. The concert celebrates 25 years of local people volunteering and striving to create moments of art and beauty stretched across the full breadth of human experience. It's a thing we can all do. We can strive to make better the world in front of us, or we can turn away in fear-- and maybe still stumble into critical moments.

Life in the world is so terribly and beautifully made, and we have so little time to make something of it. How to be human, how to be in the world-- these are the things we try to grasp, even when we don't understand the shape of what we're grappling with. What standardized tests and microcompetencies aimed at vocational employability have to do with the big questions-- well, let's just say that modern ed reform has us poking at gnats when we should be trying to wrap our arms around the world. We think small, and we cheat our students.

The other emotionally charged song seems like a side note to the story of the Declaration. It's a song that tells the story of a young soldier, barely more than a boy, lying wounded in the grass, calling for his mother as he slowly dies. While adults wrestle with other issues, children's lives drain slowly away.

It's a rough week. We are suffering through some of the worst people to hold office in this country in 242 years. But they're a symptom of problems we've had all along. We can do better.

PA: Scott Wagner Financed by DeVos Ed Reformsters

At PennLive.com they did some quick record checks and found these fun facts about the money behind this year's governor's race in PA. You'll never guess who's bankrolling Scott Wagner. (Incidentally, you don't have to guess-- you can play along at home by digging the finance reports out at the PA campaign finance records website).

This frickin' guy.

One interesting factoid is the numbers-- Governor Tom Wolf has almost 27,000 separate contributors to his race. GOP's Scott Wagner has 5,900 contributors.

Wolf's contributors ran from $1 to $500,000. Wagner's run from (weirdly) $2 up to $1,000,000. Wolf totaled up $29.8 million, while Wagner collected a mere $14.4 million. Wagner has kicked in $5 million of his own money and borrowed another $6 million.

But here's one more thing to take note of. Wagner's biggest donor not named Wagner is Students First PAC, which kicked in $1,000,000.

The name "Student First" might ring a bell; that group was founded almost a decade ago by Michele Rhee (former chancellor of DC schools and builder of the foundation of years of scandals in that district).  That group has long been busy in PA, trying to do away with all employment protections for teachers, pushing the Common Core, and trying yet again to make teachers easily fireable. So it would be quite something if Wagner was backed to the tune of a million dollars by that infamous group.

But he's not. In many ways, the truth is even worse.

It is easy to get tangled up in this (reporter Jan Murphy got thrown, too). But StudentsFirst is one group, and Students First PA is another group entirely. Rhee's group, except for a NY affiliate, has gone dark, its web address silent, though it still has a facebook page, sort of. (In 2016, it was reportedly going to be absorbed into the 50CAN network). But all that's a story for another day.

No, the Students First PAC is associated with Students First PA. It launched in 2010 and got at least part of an opening stake from three Philly businessmen who founded Susquehana International. But it had one other deep pocketed sponsor-- The DeVos Family. They are left over from a time, almost a decade ago, when DeVos was spanked by the courts for illegally funneling money into some state races, and so the American Federation of Students was born, a newer, better way to funnel money into races. This group proudly wears its AFC affiliation on its masthead, where the group repeats the usual reformster talking points. Only fitting, because the ALEC-linked AFC has long pushed the DeVosian agenda of vouchers and busting teacher unions.

The group is headed by Joe Watkins, a Philadelphia-based GOP media analyst (look for him on MSNBC). They have set out to be political players in the state before, most notably with a $3.65 million contribution to pro-voucher Democrat Anthony Williams for his failed run at the governor's office in 2010. Watkins was also named the chief recovery officer of the Chester Uplands PA school district, the district that may be the most damaged-by-charters district in the country (it didn't go super-well). And he's been a White House aide, including a stint working for Dan Quayle.

According to OpenSecret.org, the PAC has also contributed to something called the Education Opportunity PAC, a mystery group that has contributed to folks like PA GOP House leader Mike Turzai. OpenSecrets also turned up at least one listing for "Students First PAC, American Federation for Chhildren" listed at a Wynnewod address. Wynnewood is/was also home to the "Students First Corp" a non-profit. And then there's the abortive attempt to trademark the name in 2010.

All of which is beside the point. Scott Wagner received a buttload of money back in July from a group that has been all about vouchers, all about breaking teachers' unions, all about pushing the agenda of its patrons, the DeVos family. If you needed one more reason to vote against him, and you care about education, this should do it.

ICYMI: The Campaign Home Stretch Edition (11/4)

I could have called this the Moved My Son And His Family Into Their New Place Edition, which is the long way around to saying that I wasn't quite up to my usual level of collecting this week. And I'm not going to tell you to vote; I'm going to tell you to vote Democrat, even if your local Democrat sucks, because the GOP controlled government needs some sand in its gears. So vote Democrat.

Stop Pretending and Make School Relevant  

I may or may not entirely agree with some of what Michael Soskil says here (I have my own ideas about the R word), but this piece is definitely worth a read.

Teachers versus the Koch Brothers in Arizona    

Arizona has one of the worst and most destructive voucher programs around. Jeff Bryant looks at the campaign to beat it back.

Snake Oil, Charter Schools and Disingenuous Debate

From Tennessee, a newspaper op-ed repudiates the charter movement.

Values That Express Our Ideas of Public Schools  

Jan Resseger with some writings to help focus your thinking as you head for the polls.

Halloween and the Value of Make-Believe   

Oh, yeah. Halloween happened this week. Nancy Bailey has some thoughts on the value of the holiday.

Ipads Are Not The Future of Education    

Just in case there was any doubt in your mind.

Billionaires Are Spending Their Fortunes Reshaping America's Schools. It Isn't Working.

From Vox. Add to the "ed reform is losing" file.  

Who Gets Access To Your Kids' Information?  

Project Unicorn's promises are vague and unconvincing. Did your school sign up?

DeVos Meets With Far More GOP than Dems

I don't know if this is news, exactly. But it's an interesting look at yet one more aspect of Betsy "My Mind's Made Up So I Don't Need To Listen TO Anyone" DeVos and her approach to leading the USED>

What a Difference a Decade Makes   

Nancy Flanagan is dead on with this piece about election outcomes, and the key quote (which comes from Sabrina Joy Stevens) is so important I'm going to put it here, just in case you don't follow the link.

I am very worried about people tying their emotional well-being and sense of empowerment to the outcomes of elections.

Is School Choice At Odds With Community?

A couple weeks back, Amy Lueck in the Atlantic took a look at how public high schools shaped communities in this country, depicting a relationship between school and community that certainly still looks familiar to those of us who live in ruralish areas where among grown-up adults, "Which high school did you go to" is still a legitimate conversational item and nothing much happens on autumnal Friday nights because football.

Lueck also took a moment to suggest that school choice is a threat to the sense of community that US high schools have fostered for a century or so. As you might expect, some reform types took exception.

Drawing the reformster rebuttal short straw at Fordham Institute was Brandon Wright, who took to the Fordham blog to say, "Oh, pshaw!" I can't say that I found it very convincing.

But she’s wrong in believing that working to give children and parents more options “reflects a distrust of education as a communal goal, not just an individual one.” Lueck erred in accusing school choice of “dismantling” this model. Proponents are not “leaving the public high school for greener pastures,” and the realization of our goals would not be an “abandonment of the American high school” or “the democratic project of the ‘common school’ that helped shape the American city.”

None of these points are his best choice for arguments. I don't know that choice reflects a distrust of community goals versus individual ones, but it certainly values individual choices over community goals. "Why should I sacrifice my child to your public school?" is a common refrain among reform parents. I don't even think it's a terribly unreasonable one, though it is more compelling from something other than white parents using choice as a means of escaping Those People's Children. But choice is, of course, all about making the best choice for your own child, community be damned. That doesn't make you evil, but it does represent a shift in the relationship with the community school.

And proponents are, of course, leaving for greener pastures. That's exactly the whole point of years of "students trapped in failing schools just because of their zip code" rhetoric. And of course choice is, while not always, often about abandoning the democratic model, as charterization almost without exception means the loss of any local representation of local control of schools. This is no accident; I'll refer you once again to Reed "Netflix" Hastings arguing that elected school boards should be done away with because they just get in the way.

So all of this is pretty weak, disingenuous sauce, but it's meant to set up Wright's main point, which is that the community anchor school that Nueck is writing about can't be killed because it's already dead.

Exhibit A is "most urban districts," like DC and New York City, both of which strike as noisy outliers. He also invokes Chicago, the city that "nearly doubled the number of public high schools available to residents." Wright doesn't offer a link to his source for that figure and I can't figure out where it comes from, even if he's including charter schools, but lots of folks will give you sources about the fifty schools that Chicago closed under Emanuel (a sequel to the many schools closed by Arne Duncan). Wright tosses in  Democracy Prep as a charter that increased students' voter registration rate, which as context-free anecdote is nice, but doesn't prove much of anything. He also cites a study that shows choice producing more students with progressive views on diversity and who are less likely to commit crimes, however, that study from CATO (the libertarian thinky tank) is actually arguing that choice parents are motivated to seek out character education, so choice won't make society worse. So the finding is-- parents who consider character important raise children with better character. None of this has any real bearing on Wright's point, or Lueck's either. Holding socially beneficial values is not the same thing as holding strong community ties; you could, I suppose, argue that the real benefit of strong community ties is socially beneficial values and choice families just get there via another route, but it would be a tough point to make and Wright isn't trying to make it. He's just talking about apples and oranges as if they're fruit of the same tree.

Instead, Wright falls back on that old standby-- public schools stink.

That model is broken. And its flaws manifest in ugly, harmful ways. Schools regularly grant diplomas to students who aren’t ready for college, career, or adulthood. Teachers and administrators encourage everyone to apply to and attend college, even those who aren’t ready and end up wasting time and money chasing a degree they never earn. Districts ignore promising career and technical education programs that help young people find gainful, secure vocations. And education professionals everywhere go on pretending that a single kind of school can effectively serve the varied needs of each and every child.

Wright doesn't provide evidence of any of that, because he can't. None of those things is demonstrably true. Nobody knows how to measure for certain whether students are ready for college or career, so the schools regularly grant diplomas is unprovable. In no school anywhere do teachers encourage "everyone" to attend college. While CTE may be the new belle of the ball for many Reformsters, out here in the actual world, many, many, many school systems have had thriving career and tech ed programs for decades. And I don't know a single person anywhere in public ed who thinks a single kind of school even exists, unless by "single kind" he means "building made out of solid material where trained, certified professionals deliver instruction" in which case, okay, he's got us (but what the heck alternative is he proposing). The vast majority of US high schools provide a wide variety of kinds of education in a single building, and each building reflects the concerns and emphases of its local community because democratically elected school board (and not corporate CMO board running the school from somewhere else).

His strongest point (though he doesn't make it well) is that public schools have often failed to properly serve non-wealthy, non-white communities. That's a true thing-- consider the fifty schools that Chicago closed, whose student population was 90% black. But his "evidence" is that 38% of twelfth graders score below basic on the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP), with a disproportionate number of those being poor, Black and Brown students. He also notes that college attainment numbers for those students is also low, as are college completion figures. The college stuff is a legitimate concern; the NAEP score is not (because what those students don't need is more test prep-- those test scores don't open doors for anybody).

The public school system has earned criticism about its treatment of poor, Black and Brown students. But this is an old reform trick-- state the problem real hard, but gloss over any evidence that your solution does or does not work. Public schools have this issue. Do choice problems solve it?

No. Choice programs show that, given the chance to select the students who will achieve, those students will achieve in your school. But choice programs also reduce available resources for those left behind. And none of this-- no one of it-- addresses Leuck's original point-- that high schools can provide an anchor for their community, and disrupting that anchor disrupts the community as well. The charterization of New Orleans didn't just disrupt public schools-- it ejected hundreds of black teachers, a middle class backbone of communities their, and splintered neighborhoods as children were sent in a hundred different directions.

We know what the solution is-- give the underserved schools the resources that they need. It's simple, and cheaper and more efficient than trying to run multiple parallel systems.

Wright nods to one other issue in his final paragraph-- choice requires an area big enough to support it. Once you get outside urban areas, Wright's arguments don't even make sense. I suggest that Fordham get at least one foot out of the beltway and set up a field office in rural area. Office space is cheap in my town.