Yeah, I'm not big on the whole New Year celebratory thing. I will occasionally give in to the urge to do an end-of-year/beginning-of-year style post, but sometimes I think it's just as well to keep on keeping on. So here's this week's batch of worth-your-while readings.
Beware Silcon Valley Santas in the School
Michelle Malkin and I share little in the way of either style or beliefs, but if you want to see how the same hard-right folks who hated Common Core are now coming out swinging against Personalized [sic] Learning, here you go.
Charter School Cash Spent in Connecticut Elections
Man, democracy is just so inconvenient. Hence the periodic attempts to smother it under piles of money, like the last election cycle in Connecticut. Here's who came to play.
12 Educational Headlines You Probably Won't See in 2019
Short, but cute.
Homework App Worth Three Billion
If you want to see what education looks like when it's been stripped of all actual education and reduced to simply the appearance of education, the Chinese are the folks to follow.
The Waltons and Their Charter-Choice “Inroads”: Making Strategic Purchases
Oh, those wacky Waltons.
Gratitude
Mary Holden left the classroom, and then she came back. Here's a lovely seasonal piece about what she's grateful for.
About That Nephrologist On DeSantis Transition Team
You may remember that we looked at Florida's governor-elect and his transition team for the dismantling of public education. A couple of those names were mysterious, but here's one figured out.
Asking If Early Childhood Education Is Worth It Is The Wrong Question
This is a ball I refuse to take my eye off of.
Arne Duncan Still Pushing Privatization
Nancy Bailey takes a look at Duncan's most recent attempt to push the same old baloney.
Sunday, December 30, 2018
Friday, December 28, 2018
Why Teachers Don't Use The Software Their Districts Paid For
Ryan Baker (University of Pennsylvania's Center for Learning Analytics) unleashed a small surprise last month with a report indicating that the vast amount of software licenses purchased by school districts are simply never used. There are points on which we might quibble, including the smallish sample size of districts (48) and the very small sample size of data management companies (1). But the results still feel correct, and worthy of discussion. Schools spend a great deal of money on software that is barely used, if at all. Why does that happen?
Thomas Arnett at the Christensen Institute took a stab at explaining all that unused software, using the Institute's Jobs To Be Done Theory. We could call it Perceived Utility or Does This Actually Help Me, but the idea is simple. Teachers have an idea of what their job is, and they will evaluate software based on whether or not it helps do the job.
Arnett's team talked to teachers and uncovered three "jobs" that they believed were relevant:
Job #1: Lead way in improving my school.
Job#2: Find ways to engage and challenge more students.
Job #3: Replace broken instructional model so I can reach each student.
Software rarely helps with the first, can occasionally help with the second and might help with the third, says Arnett. I'm not so sure. It's hard to believe that in 2018, we still have folks who think a computer program will be engaging just because it's a computer program. But students are no more excited about computers than they are about pens.
On top of that, software has a very short interest life. In the last decade of teaching, I repeatedly saw the short lifespan of cool new apps play out with my students. First the new app is discovered, then it's shared, then everybody has to use it every day, then it loses its shine, then we're on to the next one. That process generally plays out in two-to-four weeks. The odds that software that is engaging in September will still be engaging in May, or even December, are slim-to-none.
Arnett's basic insight is sound; teachers don't use software that isn't useful to them, particularly if the time involved in setting it up, getting it to work and getting students comfortable with it is just too big a chunk of the limited teaching time in the year.
There are other issues that Arnett doesn't look at. A huge factor is time--how much will it take the teacher to learn the program, and how much preparation will the program require for use. There are, for instance, programs that allow for game-like quizzing and questioning, but which require hours of physically entering the questions into the program. A good review idea would be to have students write questions on note cards, and then the teacher can enter all of those questions into the program, requiring an hour or two of prep time. Or the teacher can just use the note cards, requiring zero hours of prep time.
The problem at the root of much unused software is the district's procurement process. The surest way to keep software from being used is to keep the teacher--the actual end user--locked out of the procurement process. When the software is purchased by people who aren't going to use it, it almost always turns out not to be useful. As Arnett notes, "A good sales pitch may get a product through the district office's front door," but it won't get the software used in a classroom.
Note: a quick peekaboo session does not fix this. It takes time and use to determine if software is really useful or not. Having teachers "look this over" for an afternoon, or even for a week, is not good enough.
If your district is going to purchase software, it needs to be software that teachers will actually want to use because it helps them do their jobs. The only people who can make that determination about the software is the teachers themselves. If they aren't involved in the procurement process, and if that doesn't include time for training and use of the software, you are wasting a ton of taxpayer dollars on software licenses that will gather a bunch of cyber-dust.
Originally posted at Forbes
Defining Reformy Terms Is Everything
EdChoice has released their annual report about education, with a particular focus on reformy stuff. It's a survey of teachers, parents and the general public, and a look at attitudes and beliefs about many aspects of education. I've read it, but this time I am not going to run through the whole thing for you, because I want to focus on the power of definitions in framing these kind of discussions.
If you're a bit of a cynic, you will conclude when it comes to surveys like this, the fix is in just because of the way questions are framed. If you are a trusting soul, you might conclude that surveys like this reveal some fundamental differences in how reformsters and public school advocates see some of these issues. Or you might conclude that this ind of a survey is a sort of marketing guide, a report on which methods of framing make it easiest to sell the product.
There are some interesting comparisons between the teacher, parent, and public views. For instance, teachers report far more time spent on test prep. There are also some big differences of opinion about who should drive the accountability bus (though nearly nobody thinks it should be the feds). There are also some interesting results from teachers about the teaching profession, and that probably deserves its own look another day, though the methodology is a little unclear.
There are questions using the "when given more information" model for seeing how attitudes are affected when respondents are given another explanation, which is a perfect method for testing out language to see what moves the needle in your desired direction.
That thinking breaks some questions down in terms of "needs more PR work." For instance, the report finds that nobody is very excited about giving schools A-F grades and so concludes of the low numbers "We should view these numbers as a floor for how well these ratings are communicated to key stakeholders and the public at large." In other words, it's a PR problem. At this point I've read dozens of these sorts of reports, and the one thing one never, ever sees is "Apparently these teachers/parents/stakeholders are seeing problems that we are not seeing. We should go listen to them and find out what we're getting wrong." Instead, we get endless replays of this conversation:
Reformster: (Punches teacher in the face.)
Teacher: Ow!! Hey, knock it off! That is painful and unwelcome.
Reformster: I don't think you're fully understanding what I'm doing here.
To see the framing game really in action, let's go to page forty-five and EdChoice's language for defining the usual popular choice programs:
Education Savings Accounts (ESAs)
An "education savings account" in K–12 education—often called an ESA—establishes for parents a government-authorized savings account with restricted, but multiple uses for educational purposes. Parents can then use these funds to pay for: school tuition, tutoring, online education programs, therapies for students with special needs, textbooks or other instructional materials, or future college expenses.
See, it's "government authorized" and "restricted" which might lead someone to conclude that there is some sort of official oversight of how the money is used. But no-- ESAs are currently black holes into which money is thrown.
School Vouchers
A school voucher system allows parents the option of sending their child to the school of their choice, whether that school is public or private, including both religious and non-religious schools. If this policy were adopted, tax dollars currently allocated to a school district would be allocated to parents in the form of a “school voucher” to pay partial or full tuition for the child’s school.
I'll give them credit for admitting the vouchers can be used for religious schools. But you'll note that there's no language to indicate these are public tax dollars, and again, no words about accountability or oversight.
Tax-Credit Scholarships
A tax credit allows an individual or business to reduce the final amount of a tax owed to government. In a “tax-credit scholarship system,” a government gives tax credits to individuals or businesses if they contribute money to nonprofit organizations that distribute private school scholarships. A nonprofit organization gives a scholarship to a qualifying student who would like to enroll in a private school of their choice, including both religious and non- religious schools. The student’s parent then uses the scholarship to pay partial or full tuition for the chosen private school.
Well, that certainly sounds more complicated than "Contributors can send a kid to private school in place of paying their taxes."
Public Charter Schools
Charter schools are public schools that have more control over their own budget, staff, and curriculum, and are exempt from many existing public school regulations.
Nope. Framing charter schools as public school continues to be a rhetorical favorite of reformsters. But charters do not have the critical features of public schools-- not the transparency, not the accountability, not the need to follow rues that protect staff and students, not the mandate of responsibility for education of all students in an area.
Defining reform programs is critical. If you tell folks, "Charter schools are a policy by which every child gets a pony," support will likely go up. If you tell folks, "Charter schools are a way of stripping public tax dollars from public ed" or "charter schools are a program for running multiple redundant school systems at the cost of either increased taxes or reduced services for public school students" then support reduces.
This is why surveys like this one are only marginally useful-- when the advocates for a particular point of view set the terms of the discussion, they are tilting the playing field toward their own interests. And Reformsters, like anyone else with something to sell, pay plenty of attention to this. The words "common core" became toxic, so supporters went to "college and career ready standards." Advocates of Personalized [sic] Learning have determined that it's best sold with the fewest possible mentions of computers and technology, and so such language has been scrubbed from the pitches.
Language matters, and that's why we need to watch it closely- probably more closely than the results of advocacy research reports.
If you're a bit of a cynic, you will conclude when it comes to surveys like this, the fix is in just because of the way questions are framed. If you are a trusting soul, you might conclude that surveys like this reveal some fundamental differences in how reformsters and public school advocates see some of these issues. Or you might conclude that this ind of a survey is a sort of marketing guide, a report on which methods of framing make it easiest to sell the product.
There are some interesting comparisons between the teacher, parent, and public views. For instance, teachers report far more time spent on test prep. There are also some big differences of opinion about who should drive the accountability bus (though nearly nobody thinks it should be the feds). There are also some interesting results from teachers about the teaching profession, and that probably deserves its own look another day, though the methodology is a little unclear.
There are questions using the "when given more information" model for seeing how attitudes are affected when respondents are given another explanation, which is a perfect method for testing out language to see what moves the needle in your desired direction.
That thinking breaks some questions down in terms of "needs more PR work." For instance, the report finds that nobody is very excited about giving schools A-F grades and so concludes of the low numbers "We should view these numbers as a floor for how well these ratings are communicated to key stakeholders and the public at large." In other words, it's a PR problem. At this point I've read dozens of these sorts of reports, and the one thing one never, ever sees is "Apparently these teachers/parents/stakeholders are seeing problems that we are not seeing. We should go listen to them and find out what we're getting wrong." Instead, we get endless replays of this conversation:
Reformster: (Punches teacher in the face.)
Teacher: Ow!! Hey, knock it off! That is painful and unwelcome.
Reformster: I don't think you're fully understanding what I'm doing here.
To see the framing game really in action, let's go to page forty-five and EdChoice's language for defining the usual popular choice programs:
Education Savings Accounts (ESAs)
An "education savings account" in K–12 education—often called an ESA—establishes for parents a government-authorized savings account with restricted, but multiple uses for educational purposes. Parents can then use these funds to pay for: school tuition, tutoring, online education programs, therapies for students with special needs, textbooks or other instructional materials, or future college expenses.
See, it's "government authorized" and "restricted" which might lead someone to conclude that there is some sort of official oversight of how the money is used. But no-- ESAs are currently black holes into which money is thrown.
School Vouchers
A school voucher system allows parents the option of sending their child to the school of their choice, whether that school is public or private, including both religious and non-religious schools. If this policy were adopted, tax dollars currently allocated to a school district would be allocated to parents in the form of a “school voucher” to pay partial or full tuition for the child’s school.
I'll give them credit for admitting the vouchers can be used for religious schools. But you'll note that there's no language to indicate these are public tax dollars, and again, no words about accountability or oversight.
Tax-Credit Scholarships
A tax credit allows an individual or business to reduce the final amount of a tax owed to government. In a “tax-credit scholarship system,” a government gives tax credits to individuals or businesses if they contribute money to nonprofit organizations that distribute private school scholarships. A nonprofit organization gives a scholarship to a qualifying student who would like to enroll in a private school of their choice, including both religious and non- religious schools. The student’s parent then uses the scholarship to pay partial or full tuition for the chosen private school.
Well, that certainly sounds more complicated than "Contributors can send a kid to private school in place of paying their taxes."
Public Charter Schools
Charter schools are public schools that have more control over their own budget, staff, and curriculum, and are exempt from many existing public school regulations.
Nope. Framing charter schools as public school continues to be a rhetorical favorite of reformsters. But charters do not have the critical features of public schools-- not the transparency, not the accountability, not the need to follow rues that protect staff and students, not the mandate of responsibility for education of all students in an area.
Defining reform programs is critical. If you tell folks, "Charter schools are a policy by which every child gets a pony," support will likely go up. If you tell folks, "Charter schools are a way of stripping public tax dollars from public ed" or "charter schools are a program for running multiple redundant school systems at the cost of either increased taxes or reduced services for public school students" then support reduces.
This is why surveys like this one are only marginally useful-- when the advocates for a particular point of view set the terms of the discussion, they are tilting the playing field toward their own interests. And Reformsters, like anyone else with something to sell, pay plenty of attention to this. The words "common core" became toxic, so supporters went to "college and career ready standards." Advocates of Personalized [sic] Learning have determined that it's best sold with the fewest possible mentions of computers and technology, and so such language has been scrubbed from the pitches.
Language matters, and that's why we need to watch it closely- probably more closely than the results of advocacy research reports.
Thursday, December 27, 2018
AZ: Proposed Teacher Gag Law Part of National Push
The proposed teacher gag law in Arizona may look like a piece of small time revenge legislation, but it is actually part of a larger movement to silence teachers in and out of the classroom.
When Arizona teachers walked out on strike, it led to a legislative move to increase education funding by $400 million. But it also led to an expectation that some legislators would seek some vengeance on the uppity educators.
Enter Rep. Mark Finchem (R) with House Bill 2002, a proposal to stifle teachers when it comes to discussing any kind of politics in the classroom called the "Teacher Code of Ethics." Among his provisions we find:
Teachers may not endorse, support or oppose any candidate or elected or appointed official.
Teachers may not bring up any "controversial issues" not related to the course.
Teachers may not endorse or participate in any actions interfering with military recruiter access to the school. Ditto for law enforcement.
Teachers may not advocate for one side of a controversial issue; they must always present both sides.
Teachers (or schools) may not segregate according to race, and must not blame any one race "as being responsible for the suffering or inequities" experienced by another race.
Mark Finchem hasn't been in the legislature long, but he's put his name on plenty of legislation, including a bill requiring public schools to report what buildings and equipment they aren't using (so charters can have it), a bill calling for extensive reporting on abortions performed, and a bill prohibiting interference with free speech on college campuses.
Finchem says HB 2002 has nothing to do with the #RedforEd movement, but comes out of discussions with concerned parents. I can believe that #RedforEd is not directly related, just as I think he's delivering a whole load of Arizona Road Apples when he says this comes out of parental concerns.
That's because this Teacher Code of Ethics rings a bell.
On Friday, Tallman sent a memo to the 203-member state House seeking support for a bill he dubbed the “Teacher Code of Ethics,” which legal experts questioned as unconstitutional overreach.
In the memo, Tallman said his bill would forbid public school teachers from endorsing, supporting or opposing candidates or incumbents for local, state and federal offices while in the classroom. On the job, teachers could not discuss enacted or pending legislation, regulations, executive orders or court cases involving any level or branch of government. They could not talk about activities “that hamper or impede” law enforcement actions or military recruiters on campus.
That's Will Tallman, a legislator in Pennsylvania, speaking for an article published back in September.
I'm going to jump to the conclusion that this is not a remarkable coincidence. But all roads do not lead to ALEC, the infamous legislation mill that serves as a Tinder for legislators and corporate interests that want to find each other (at least, not right away).
If we roll the clock back to January of 2018, we find Dave LaRock, a Virginia choicer, proposing a Teacher Code of Ethics that reads like a rough draft of the Pa and AZ versions. But it turns out that LaRock appears to have cribbed his proposal from a website called StopK12Indoctrination.
StopK12 posted their version of the Teacher Code of Ethics in June of 2017, and it's clear that the other teacher codes are all versions of this original. But who are the StopK12 people? The site is remarkably clear of any "who we are" information. However, there are several videos featuring Sean Fitzgerald, who is elsewhere tagged as the site's editor. And if you decide you want to contribute to the muzzling of teachers, the link will take you to a site that will let you contribute to the David Horowitz Freedom Center.
Fitzgerald is a bit of a mystery, but he is earnest as all get-out. In one of his videos (he's on YouTube as "Actual Justice Warrior"), he repeats the old misleading about how we spend so much on education but are still outclassed on international testing. That's because we started indoctrinating children instead of educating them. Other videos rail against Islam in public schools, diversity, schools that glorify terrorist organizations, and the notion of white privilege. He's not happy about SJWs, the hard right code for social justice warriors. You can call him a hard right wingnut, but he's got over 23,000 subscribers on YouTube.
And he has teamed up with David Horowitz.
Horowitz is a well-established hard right writer and activist who is just ballsy enough to put his name right there on his lead organization (David Horowitz Freedom Center). His Center for the Study of Popular Culture has been tagged by the Southern Poverty Law Center as one of the "right-wing foundations and think tanks support[ing] efforts to make bigoted and discredited ideas respectable." He's a vocal anti-Muslim who joined the smear party labeling Barack Obama a secret Muslim. He has been very active in trying to squelch liberal voices in college and university teaching positions. And, perhaps most notably, this Steve Bannon buddy was the early mentor of Stephen Miller, the angry voice of racism in the Trump administration.
So, not ALEC this time?
Welllll…. Neither Tallman or LaRock have ALEC ties, according to the Center for Media and Democracy. Mark Finchem not only belongs, but was willing to sign an ALEC letter. But David Horowitz?
Horowitz was invited to be a key speaker at ALEC's 2018 gathering in New Orleans, a decision so controversial that it prompted Verizon to end a close, thirty-year relationship with the group. A coalition of 79 organizations sent out letters to various sponsors of ALEC, and many jumped ship-- though not the Koch brothers, who continue to give heavily to the organization. The Center for Media and Democracy covered the convention, the speech, and the problematic past of Horowitz, who responded by suing the group. Nobody at CMD was impressed.
We can say two things with certainty about the Arizona Teacher Code of Ethics.
First, it's dumb and repressive and almost certainly unconstitutional. Should teachers exhort their students to vote for a particular candidate? No. Do teachers have the right to discuss controversial political issues in their classroom, without being forced to present opposing views? Of course they do-- imagine a class a teacher must explain how Nazis and slave owners had valid points of their own. Almost as ludicrous as a class in which the effects of racism may be noted, but the source and practitioners of racism must remain cloaked in mystery. And a command to never, ever interfere with the police or the military has a real totalitarian ring to it.
All of the rules make sense when one considers the source-- a racist authoritarian xenophobic alt-right wingnut. This is not just about shutting down teachers (it really is bigger than being anti-#RedforEd) but about making sure that teachers cannot interfere with the imposition of a white supremacist alt-right dreamland.
The second thing we can say with certainty about this proposal is that Rep. Finchem did not whip it up himself after some conversations with concerned parents. HB 2002 is part of a wider attempt to shut teachers up so that they can't exercise First Amendment rights-- particularly not in ways that would contradict white nationalists .
It's a bill that deserves to die. And Rep. Finchem is a man who deserves some extra attention, to see just who feeds him these kinds of anti-American anti-freedom ideas for bills.
When Arizona teachers walked out on strike, it led to a legislative move to increase education funding by $400 million. But it also led to an expectation that some legislators would seek some vengeance on the uppity educators.
Enter Rep. Mark Finchem (R) with House Bill 2002, a proposal to stifle teachers when it comes to discussing any kind of politics in the classroom called the "Teacher Code of Ethics." Among his provisions we find:
Teachers may not endorse, support or oppose any candidate or elected or appointed official.
Teachers may not bring up any "controversial issues" not related to the course.
Teachers may not endorse or participate in any actions interfering with military recruiter access to the school. Ditto for law enforcement.
Teachers may not advocate for one side of a controversial issue; they must always present both sides.
Teachers (or schools) may not segregate according to race, and must not blame any one race "as being responsible for the suffering or inequities" experienced by another race.
 |
| This guy borrowed someone else's homework |
Finchem says HB 2002 has nothing to do with the #RedforEd movement, but comes out of discussions with concerned parents. I can believe that #RedforEd is not directly related, just as I think he's delivering a whole load of Arizona Road Apples when he says this comes out of parental concerns.
That's because this Teacher Code of Ethics rings a bell.
On Friday, Tallman sent a memo to the 203-member state House seeking support for a bill he dubbed the “Teacher Code of Ethics,” which legal experts questioned as unconstitutional overreach.
In the memo, Tallman said his bill would forbid public school teachers from endorsing, supporting or opposing candidates or incumbents for local, state and federal offices while in the classroom. On the job, teachers could not discuss enacted or pending legislation, regulations, executive orders or court cases involving any level or branch of government. They could not talk about activities “that hamper or impede” law enforcement actions or military recruiters on campus.
That's Will Tallman, a legislator in Pennsylvania, speaking for an article published back in September.
I'm going to jump to the conclusion that this is not a remarkable coincidence. But all roads do not lead to ALEC, the infamous legislation mill that serves as a Tinder for legislators and corporate interests that want to find each other (at least, not right away).
If we roll the clock back to January of 2018, we find Dave LaRock, a Virginia choicer, proposing a Teacher Code of Ethics that reads like a rough draft of the Pa and AZ versions. But it turns out that LaRock appears to have cribbed his proposal from a website called StopK12Indoctrination.
StopK12 posted their version of the Teacher Code of Ethics in June of 2017, and it's clear that the other teacher codes are all versions of this original. But who are the StopK12 people? The site is remarkably clear of any "who we are" information. However, there are several videos featuring Sean Fitzgerald, who is elsewhere tagged as the site's editor. And if you decide you want to contribute to the muzzling of teachers, the link will take you to a site that will let you contribute to the David Horowitz Freedom Center.
Fitzgerald is a bit of a mystery, but he is earnest as all get-out. In one of his videos (he's on YouTube as "Actual Justice Warrior"), he repeats the old misleading about how we spend so much on education but are still outclassed on international testing. That's because we started indoctrinating children instead of educating them. Other videos rail against Islam in public schools, diversity, schools that glorify terrorist organizations, and the notion of white privilege. He's not happy about SJWs, the hard right code for social justice warriors. You can call him a hard right wingnut, but he's got over 23,000 subscribers on YouTube.
And he has teamed up with David Horowitz.
Horowitz is a well-established hard right writer and activist who is just ballsy enough to put his name right there on his lead organization (David Horowitz Freedom Center). His Center for the Study of Popular Culture has been tagged by the Southern Poverty Law Center as one of the "right-wing foundations and think tanks support[ing] efforts to make bigoted and discredited ideas respectable." He's a vocal anti-Muslim who joined the smear party labeling Barack Obama a secret Muslim. He has been very active in trying to squelch liberal voices in college and university teaching positions. And, perhaps most notably, this Steve Bannon buddy was the early mentor of Stephen Miller, the angry voice of racism in the Trump administration.
So, not ALEC this time?
Welllll…. Neither Tallman or LaRock have ALEC ties, according to the Center for Media and Democracy. Mark Finchem not only belongs, but was willing to sign an ALEC letter. But David Horowitz?
Horowitz was invited to be a key speaker at ALEC's 2018 gathering in New Orleans, a decision so controversial that it prompted Verizon to end a close, thirty-year relationship with the group. A coalition of 79 organizations sent out letters to various sponsors of ALEC, and many jumped ship-- though not the Koch brothers, who continue to give heavily to the organization. The Center for Media and Democracy covered the convention, the speech, and the problematic past of Horowitz, who responded by suing the group. Nobody at CMD was impressed.
We can say two things with certainty about the Arizona Teacher Code of Ethics.
First, it's dumb and repressive and almost certainly unconstitutional. Should teachers exhort their students to vote for a particular candidate? No. Do teachers have the right to discuss controversial political issues in their classroom, without being forced to present opposing views? Of course they do-- imagine a class a teacher must explain how Nazis and slave owners had valid points of their own. Almost as ludicrous as a class in which the effects of racism may be noted, but the source and practitioners of racism must remain cloaked in mystery. And a command to never, ever interfere with the police or the military has a real totalitarian ring to it.
All of the rules make sense when one considers the source-- a racist authoritarian xenophobic alt-right wingnut. This is not just about shutting down teachers (it really is bigger than being anti-#RedforEd) but about making sure that teachers cannot interfere with the imposition of a white supremacist alt-right dreamland.
The second thing we can say with certainty about this proposal is that Rep. Finchem did not whip it up himself after some conversations with concerned parents. HB 2002 is part of a wider attempt to shut teachers up so that they can't exercise First Amendment rights-- particularly not in ways that would contradict white nationalists .
It's a bill that deserves to die. And Rep. Finchem is a man who deserves some extra attention, to see just who feeds him these kinds of anti-American anti-freedom ideas for bills.
Wednesday, December 26, 2018
PA: State High Court Will Hear Anti-School Tax Lawsuit
Can a court overrule an elected school board when it comes to taxation? The Pennsylvania State Supreme Court is one step closer to deciding just that in a lawsuit that has been kicking around for a couple of years now.
I wrote about this case in some depth back in 2016, and I'm going to quote liberally from myself.
 |
| Fun fact: One of Lower Merion's most famous alumni |
Let me recap the particulars of the case because, not surprisingly, this is a case in which nobody is looking like an angel.
It's the state itself that has set the stage for this baloney.
As part of Pennsylvania's ongoing work to
In Lower Merion, recent enrollment growth has exceeded projections and the impact on staffing and facilities planning has been significant and unexpected. Additionally, the District faces increasing unfunded and underfunded state-mandated costs, including retirement and special education. Without the ability to plan ahead for its financial needs and maintain adequate reserves, the District will lose critical flexibility during a time of uncertainty and growth. The implication for school programs is enormous.
That's not an unusual claim in Pennsylvania. Districts are climbing up a mountain of pensions debt, a huge series of balloon payments on pension liabilities that have been accumulated by a decade of bad choices and exacerbated by the financial collapse back in 2008 (thanks a lot, Wall Street). How bad is it?
For the next decade, school districts will have to make pension fund payments equal to a full third of their total budget.
In this climate, stashing a big pile of money in the bank is not an unusual district move. On the other hand, Lower Merion seems to have been pretty aggressive in building up its rainy day fund.
Lower Merion is one of the wealthiest districts in the Philly area, spending a whopping $22K per pupil and just dropped $200 million on two new high schools in 2009 and 2010.
And it would seem that Lower Merion may have the worst budget process ever. The lawsuit and the ruling both leaned on what appear to be some serious mistakes in the predicted outcome of the year:
For instance, in 2009-10, the district projected a $4.7 million budget hole but ended the year with a $9.5 million overage. In 2011-12, it anticipated a $5.1 million gap but wound up with $15.5 million to the plus side.
Lower Merion business manager Victor Orlando testified that the district has between $50 and $60 million in the bank. This is in itself requires some of the aggressive accounting that the lawsuit complains about-- Pennsylvania also has laws about how much money a district can park in its general fund.
So the answer here may be that the buttload of money is in designated accounts, set aside for capital improvements or future gut-wrenching pension payments. The district has been voluble and public in asserting that it has been transparent, followed proper budgeting behavior, and has managed resources for maximum flexibility. They've got a whole response on their website, and while it is forceful and unapologetic, it also skips over any sort of specific explanation of why the district appears to be essentially making millions of dollars of profit every year.
And it would seem that Lower Merion may have the worst budget process ever. The lawsuit and the ruling both leaned on what appear to be some serious mistakes in the predicted outcome of the year:
For instance, in 2009-10, the district projected a $4.7 million budget hole but ended the year with a $9.5 million overage. In 2011-12, it anticipated a $5.1 million gap but wound up with $15.5 million to the plus side.
Lower Merion business manager Victor Orlando testified that the district has between $50 and $60 million in the bank. This is in itself requires some of the aggressive accounting that the lawsuit complains about-- Pennsylvania also has laws about how much money a district can park in its general fund.
So the answer here may be that the buttload of money is in designated accounts, set aside for capital improvements or future gut-wrenching pension payments. The district has been voluble and public in asserting that it has been transparent, followed proper budgeting behavior, and has managed resources for maximum flexibility. They've got a whole response on their website, and while it is forceful and unapologetic, it also skips over any sort of specific explanation of why the district appears to be essentially making millions of dollars of profit every year.
But before we throw up our hands and declare shenanigans on the district, let's look at the plaintiff, who is not exactly unfamiliar to the court system.
Wolk's two children did not attend school in the district, but he has a big house there and pays more taxes than he thinks he ought to. When the district's superintendent released a letter accusing Wolk of trying to establish public schools as lesser than private schools by choking off taxpayer support, Wolk replied with a letter of his own (referring to himself in third person).
There was no need for a tax increase this year or any year in the last ten according to audited statements. We have the highest paid teachers, highest paid administrators, and too many of them, and the most expensive school buildings and the highest per student cost of any place in the nation. Our school performance is on par with districts that spend half of what LMSD spends which means that the administrators have failed in their jobs and the people supposed to provide oversight, the Directors, have done nothing.
He also brings up senior citizens on fixed incomes who are afraid of losing their homes, because no discussion of school taxes in Pennsylvania can occur without bringing up the spectre of senior citizens afraid of losing their homes. I am not sure exactly who in Wolk's uber-rich neighborhood could be worried about losing their home over taxes.
Wolk has been explaining himself on the subject for months. In May he wrote a letter to the editor complaining about the district's wild spending way, creating debt by building "two Taj Mahal high schools" along with bunches of busing. The district's attorney has claimed that he simply jumped past the proper procedure:
“There was another procedure he was supposed to follow, the way it should have been done is through the budget process, and then through the Department of Education, which is the way these things are supposed to be done,” said Putnam.
Wolk's critics (and he has plenty) repeatedly accuse him of advocating a two tier system, with just the basics for public school students. Here's an oft-quoted excerpt from his lawsuit.
Public school education means basic adherence to the minimum requirements established and imposed upon school district by the State Board of Education, Public education is not courses, programs, activities, fee laptop computers and curriculums that are neither mandated nor normally part of a public education standard, and are normally provided only by private institutions at larger expense to individual patrons who prefer to afford their children education and opportunities that are neither required, nor offered, nor appropriate for public education paid for by the taxpayers.
Well, that's pretty clear. Some nice things are only for private school students, and taxpayers shouldn't have to pay for anything except the basics.
The implications here are fairly huge; should Wolk prevail, we'll live in a state where charter, voucher, and other private school parents could sue the public school system every time it even thought about raising taxes, using the court system to help maintain a two-tiered system of schooling.
And if that wasn't enough, the plaintiff's also indicated in the original suit that they would like the board stripped of authority and replaced by a state-appointed overlord. Of course, we have a system for stripping elected officials of authority-- it's call an election-- but like many reform-minded folks, these plaintiffs appear to object to democracy when it affects their wallets.
So, the case will be heard and decided, and then the loser will appeal it to the State Supreme Court, and we'll finally see if the court system is willing to override democracy. It's a shameful mess, and shame on the school district for making such an easy target of themselves, and shame on Arthur Wolk for deciding that he should be the arbiter of what students do or don't deserve.
Stay tuned.
And if that wasn't enough, the plaintiff's also indicated in the original suit that they would like the board stripped of authority and replaced by a state-appointed overlord. Of course, we have a system for stripping elected officials of authority-- it's call an election-- but like many reform-minded folks, these plaintiffs appear to object to democracy when it affects their wallets.
So, the case will be heard and decided, and then the loser will appeal it to the State Supreme Court, and we'll finally see if the court system is willing to override democracy. It's a shameful mess, and shame on the school district for making such an easy target of themselves, and shame on Arthur Wolk for deciding that he should be the arbiter of what students do or don't deserve.
Stay tuned.
Will Education Suffer (Again) In 2020
I have about as much desire to start working on the 2020 Presidential election as I have to jab pointy sticks covered with habanera sauce into my soft fleshy parts. But I am beginning to suspect that we have little choice.
You can see the problem by looking at the early "favorites" for the Dems.
Consider, for instance, Cory Booker. Booker is charismatic and s already working on his ground game. And he is squarely located in the corporate wing of the Democratic Party. I could pull up a c purple dozen progressive critiques of Booker, but in many ways this piece from the hard right captures the problem pretty clearly. The writer was really upset that Booker was taking a stand against Betsy DeVos as secretary of education because previously Booker had been a huge fan of hers.
Here he is back in 2013, standing before DeVos's organization, the American Federation for Children, forcefully arguing for his pro-school choice credentials.
Just a youthful error, and maybe he has since evolved? Here he is delivering the 2016 keynote address for AFC, praising them and encouraging them to keep doing their great work.
Or there's Beto O'Rourke, who is unlikely to happen in 2020, but whose shimmering star is also instructive. He did campaign against some aspects of education reform, but as the 74 points out, his wife operates a charter school and has been an active advocate for expanding choice in Texas. And as many people who aren't progressive Democrats have noted, his voting record is more conservative than the average Texas Democrat.
The DeVos brand has now become so closely associated with the toxic Trump Presidency, it's easy to lose sight of the broad support she has received for years. Sure, she ended up as Trump's ed secretary, but there were plenty of candidates who would have been happy to point her, including-- at least in the early stages of the campaign-- Hillary Clinton.
By being so spectacularly awful, Trump can potentially create a big problem for education voters in 2020. Let's put it this way-- would you be willing to let Trump have another term because the Democratic candidate doesn't denounce charter schools forcefully enough? I'm pretty sure I won't be. And that, combined with the number of Democrats who are still in the reformy choice camp, is our problem.
"You can't win this election unless you support public education" is not going to be a credible threat. So what do we do? Well, I'm not a trained political strategist, but I have some thoughts, and one of them is that we need to have this conversation sooner rather than later. Here, in no particular order, are some thoughts.
Raise the strategic costs. Chances are that Democratic candidates are going to want to use the pool Trump ceded them by his awfulness. There will be a strategy session about running mostly as a Democrat, but throwing in some more conservative positions to woo GOP v voters who are unhappy with Trump, but reluctant to vote Dem. We need to advocate hard for choice/charter policies NOT to be one of those bones that the Democrats throw to sad Republicans.
Union strength. The NEA and AFT had been on the wrong side of so many reform issues until it was too late, and they made some seriously stupid calls for the 2016 election. It would be really nice if they could avoid a repeat of those botches. We know the way that happens. The unions refused to scold Arne Duncan until membership finally forced them to. The unions were very vocal in their support of Common Core until membership pushback muted that support.
Educate the politicians. The real position of politicians when it comes to public education is "I have no idea." They know what their aids tell them, and their aids know what advocates tell them, and the majority of advocates are in the choice-privatize camp. And politicians are trying to play catch-up on the issue. Education in the not too distant past was still a "safe" issue like apple pie and kissing babies, and many politicians are still trying to catch up to the new reality that education is now a complicated debate that requires you to Know Things and Take Actual Positions. But politicians can learn; Clinton thought espousing choice was a slam dunk (heck, lots of corporate donors told her so) but after moments like being booed by NEA members, she learned to identify some of the problems well enough to panic her pro-choice donors. In short, politicians can be educated about some of the problems with charters, choice, vouchers, and other reformy ideas. And really, we should already be doing this, all the time.
Vote in 2019. Off-off year elections matter. Because they are exclusively local, they happen close to the ground. They send a message about what the grass roots are thinking, so get out there and vote for school board member, county dog catchers, and city councilpersons.
2020 presents us with some real troublesome possibilities. We could end up with a better President and a worse secretary of education. DeVos has been truly awful so far, from favoring the rights of money-makers over anyone else, and going after civil rights with a hatchet. But as much as she loves choice and vouchers, her belief in federal hands off has kept her from dismantling public education as aggressively as someone else might. Imagine She Who Will Not Be Named, former DC chancellor, making a comeback as USED secretary-- and she is nominally a Democrat.
2020 may end our nation's current mess (or it may not), but it seems unlikely that it will bring relief for public education. The minimum preparation we need to do is getting over the fantasy that some Democratic savior will sweep in and make things right. We will need more than the fantasy. We can certainly offer thoughts and prayers, but as always, backing them up with real action would be even better.
[Update: If you want to be really alarmed about Cory Booker, read this piece from earlier in his career.]
You can see the problem by looking at the early "favorites" for the Dems.
Here he is back in 2013, standing before DeVos's organization, the American Federation for Children, forcefully arguing for his pro-school choice credentials.
Just a youthful error, and maybe he has since evolved? Here he is delivering the 2016 keynote address for AFC, praising them and encouraging them to keep doing their great work.
Or there's Beto O'Rourke, who is unlikely to happen in 2020, but whose shimmering star is also instructive. He did campaign against some aspects of education reform, but as the 74 points out, his wife operates a charter school and has been an active advocate for expanding choice in Texas. And as many people who aren't progressive Democrats have noted, his voting record is more conservative than the average Texas Democrat.
The DeVos brand has now become so closely associated with the toxic Trump Presidency, it's easy to lose sight of the broad support she has received for years. Sure, she ended up as Trump's ed secretary, but there were plenty of candidates who would have been happy to point her, including-- at least in the early stages of the campaign-- Hillary Clinton.
By being so spectacularly awful, Trump can potentially create a big problem for education voters in 2020. Let's put it this way-- would you be willing to let Trump have another term because the Democratic candidate doesn't denounce charter schools forcefully enough? I'm pretty sure I won't be. And that, combined with the number of Democrats who are still in the reformy choice camp, is our problem.
"You can't win this election unless you support public education" is not going to be a credible threat. So what do we do? Well, I'm not a trained political strategist, but I have some thoughts, and one of them is that we need to have this conversation sooner rather than later. Here, in no particular order, are some thoughts.
Raise the strategic costs. Chances are that Democratic candidates are going to want to use the pool Trump ceded them by his awfulness. There will be a strategy session about running mostly as a Democrat, but throwing in some more conservative positions to woo GOP v voters who are unhappy with Trump, but reluctant to vote Dem. We need to advocate hard for choice/charter policies NOT to be one of those bones that the Democrats throw to sad Republicans.
Union strength. The NEA and AFT had been on the wrong side of so many reform issues until it was too late, and they made some seriously stupid calls for the 2016 election. It would be really nice if they could avoid a repeat of those botches. We know the way that happens. The unions refused to scold Arne Duncan until membership finally forced them to. The unions were very vocal in their support of Common Core until membership pushback muted that support.
Educate the politicians. The real position of politicians when it comes to public education is "I have no idea." They know what their aids tell them, and their aids know what advocates tell them, and the majority of advocates are in the choice-privatize camp. And politicians are trying to play catch-up on the issue. Education in the not too distant past was still a "safe" issue like apple pie and kissing babies, and many politicians are still trying to catch up to the new reality that education is now a complicated debate that requires you to Know Things and Take Actual Positions. But politicians can learn; Clinton thought espousing choice was a slam dunk (heck, lots of corporate donors told her so) but after moments like being booed by NEA members, she learned to identify some of the problems well enough to panic her pro-choice donors. In short, politicians can be educated about some of the problems with charters, choice, vouchers, and other reformy ideas. And really, we should already be doing this, all the time.
Vote in 2019. Off-off year elections matter. Because they are exclusively local, they happen close to the ground. They send a message about what the grass roots are thinking, so get out there and vote for school board member, county dog catchers, and city councilpersons.
2020 presents us with some real troublesome possibilities. We could end up with a better President and a worse secretary of education. DeVos has been truly awful so far, from favoring the rights of money-makers over anyone else, and going after civil rights with a hatchet. But as much as she loves choice and vouchers, her belief in federal hands off has kept her from dismantling public education as aggressively as someone else might. Imagine She Who Will Not Be Named, former DC chancellor, making a comeback as USED secretary-- and she is nominally a Democrat.
2020 may end our nation's current mess (or it may not), but it seems unlikely that it will bring relief for public education. The minimum preparation we need to do is getting over the fantasy that some Democratic savior will sweep in and make things right. We will need more than the fantasy. We can certainly offer thoughts and prayers, but as always, backing them up with real action would be even better.
[Update: If you want to be really alarmed about Cory Booker, read this piece from earlier in his career.]
Tuesday, December 25, 2018
For Your Christmas Listening Pleasure
It's family time here at the Curtmudgucation Institute, but for your holiday enjoyment, if you've had enough of the same old same old on the radio, here is a big mixed bag of holiday music for you.
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