If You Care About Early Childhood Education

If you're a regular reader of this blog, you know I have concerns about the current direction of education for the littles. These are not strictly academic concerns-- between. children, grandchildren, nieces and nephews, there are seven members of my family in the under-five age bracket.

So I am happy to see this announcement in my in-box from Defending the Early Years:

DEY is excited to announce its first Early Childhood Organizing Leadership Summer Institute to be held in July 2019. The Institute will bring together 15-20 early childhood educators and advocates from across the country to spend several days developing leadership skills and advocating on Capitol Hill. The institute will provide early childhood advocates with the opportunity to learn various organizing skills, identify threats to the early childhood profession, network with other early childhood leaders, and develop a platform for protecting childhood.

DEY was founded in 2012, one more grass roots reaction to the problems of Common Core. They have rapidly built an organization that is strong in both educating about the issues and advocating for better policies for the littles. They work with many experts and organizations in the field of early childhood ed, send reps to a variety of conferences, and pump out publications to help get their point across. They do a lot of good work.

That's why I'm excited to see this summer institute being launched. Early childhood is an area loaded with people who look at the crazy emphasis on making kindergarten the new first grade and making pre-k an academic activity and just a general trend that can only end with pumping algebra lessons into fetuses somehow-- anyway, folks look at all this and say, "Well, this is clearly wrong, but I don't know how to explain the wrongness and I don't know how to do anything about it." Littles are at a disadvantage because their parents are usually young and not sure how to wade into any of this (or worse, simply assume that The People In Charge must know what they're doing).

This institute seems like the perfect way to address some that. DEY is planning on two days of learning and one day of lobbying. It sounds very cool.

I can't pass on more specifics because apparently there aren't any yet, but there is a chance for you to weigh in on what you would like to see happen at the institute. Just follow this link to a survey.

And even if you can't travel, you should (if you have not already) check out DEY's website and sign up for their newsletter.

Oh, Arne.

Arne Duncan is always talking and it's never good.

Let's take a look at two recent batches of word salad thrown up by the former secretary of education and current ed reform gun-for-hire.

Earlier this month the Duncanator was the keynote speaker at Morgan Park High School's career day in Chicago. The appearance would have been unexceptional had Duncan not spelled out in perhaps the starkest terms ever his ideas about the relationship between education and crime.

Hats off to reporter Kyle Garmes, who led with a great fake-out sentence:

As he sat in front of juniors and seniors at Morgan Park High School (MPHS), Arne Duncan apologized.

You might immediately think of a dozen things that Duncan owes apologies for, but none of those are on his list. Instead, he apologizes on behalf of all adults for not keeping students safe from gun violence. But here is the kicker:

Duncan stressed the importance of students continuing their education after high school, whether in college or trade school. He frequently works with gun violence offenders and victims, he said, and many found themselves in precarious situations because they lacked knowledge.

“None of them received the education they needed,” Duncan said, “and unfortunately they ended up on the streets. … So, the work that CPS is doing is never done. We always have to get better; we always have to get better fast.”

Maybe Garmes didn't get that quote exactly right, but this certainly sounds like Duncan-- crime and poverty are caused by a lack of education. Gun violence offenders ended up in precarious situations because they lacked knowledge. Poverty, systemic racism, economic issues, starvation wages for crappy jobs, all the problems that come along with those-- no, Chris ended up in trouble because Chris's fifth grade teacher dropped the ball. Duncan did go on to acknowledge "other challenges" like mental health issues and peer pressure, but his same old message is clear-- almost all of society's ills, most especially issues of poverty and inequity, are the fault of schools.

In a way, this helps explain why he joined the anti-teacher chorus that tried to avert the LA strike through negative pressure. Sure, he has always sided with the corporate charter side of ed reform, and yes, establishment Democrats hold all the cards in California, so they must take all the blame, but the kicker to his list of Reasons Not To Strike is this--

Students who live in poverty and who are already behind will spend days or weeks not learning in the classroom.

So I guess the lack of education will turn them into criminals.

Fred Klonsky, in his pointed takedown of Duncan's pre-strike remarks ("L.A. Teachers Are on Strike. Arne Duncan Is An Idiot") points out that Duncan not too long ago was calling for a student walkout over gun regulation, so maybe his concerns aren't for the children at all. Maybe Duncan just continues to sympathize more with corporate reformsters like Eli Broad than he does with actual classroom teachers. Maybe he continues to be far more interested in charter schools than in public education. And maybe he continues to blame all of society's problems on schools and teachers because that way, there's no need to trouble his corporate thinks tank bosses or his establishment Democrat friends to be part of any solution other than some superficial support noises about education.

I know it's probably best for me not to keep going back to Duncan, but he remains a fine example of everything wrong with Democratic political animals when it comes to education. It remains to be seen if the strike shakes loose any Democrats who actually support public school teachers. That would be a serious improvement over this business where, on the one hand, teachers have the power and responsibility to cure all of society's problems, but, on the other hand, should know their roles, shut their holes, and do as their told.

FL: The Unsurprising Teacher "Shortage"

The Florida Department of Education has released a report on teacher shortages in the state, for the 2019-2019 school year, and the news is not great.

The news is not just that there's a shortage (that's old news), but that Florida deals with the shortages by filling classrooms with teachers uncertified for the subject. The news is also in where the shortages are being felt.

It's not unusual to see shortages in the special education area, and science also turns up on the list of shortages. But Florida's shortage areas include English, math, and reading, in addition to some science areas.

It is a puzzler, but let's drill down on some of the data, because the report has some really nice charts.

The report measures shortages with three different data points, then maths them together for an overall ranking, but the three categories are interesting. First, we consider the percentage of courses taught by people not appropriately certified. In that category, English ranks at the top, followed by reading, followed by Exceptional Student Education (that's pretty much every kind of special ed). ESOL (ESL) comes  in fourth, followed by general science and then math. The English is surprising-- since when have English and Reading been hard spots to fill.

If we look at projected openings (as reported by districts) a different pattern emerges. The top category for expected vacancies is elementary education. Elementary education comes in dead last for classes being taught by an uncertified teacher, which suggests that Florida schools have an easy time finding elementary teachers and a hard time holding onto them. ESE is second, Pre-K is third, and then it's English, math and reading. ESE is not unusual, but Pre-K? It's almost as if there's a state policy that makes Pre-K employment too shaky and unpleasant to consider.

The third category ranks subject areas by the percentage of college teacher program photo-teachers who complete their programs. Our problem areas at least look a little better here.

The report looks at how many people hold certificates in various subject areas, with 96,000 Floridians (about 22% of the total credentials) holding elementary ed certificates. Math (18K) and English (20K)  are not widely-held certificates. And general science accounts for just over 6,000 certificates.

These charts show off some fun data. The next one breaks down the number of classes taught by sub sect. So, there are 35,181 English classes taught in the state, and 4,498 of them are taught by someone who is not certified. Perhaps the most alarming stat on this chart is that out of 64,812 ESE classes, 5,277 are taught by someone without proper certification. That's huge number of students with special needs not getting proper educational care.

Let's look at new(ish) completes-- the number of new teachers rolling out of the teacher pipeline. Well, rolled out, because the most current data is rom 2015-2016. There are some big zeros here, like drama and computer science and tech education and school social worker. Math, only 165 new teachers, which was still way better than the sciences. English, 207. Reading, 214. The grand total was 4,372, which seems like slim pickings for the entire state of Florida and barely enough to match the number of teachers that were needed last fall).

Finally, a chart breaking things down by F and D schools, as well as urban vs. rural. D and F schools have about 11% of their courses taught by people without appropriate certificates. Urban schools run around 8% and-- surprise-- rural schools are in the best shape, with only 5.4% of their courses taught by those not certified (that's still 1,650 courses, so not nothing).

The report strictly reports the data and does not attempt to explain it. Lots of folks have taken a shot at explaining the source of Florida's teacher woes, but it doesn't take a rocket scientist. Some shortages are national (public education will always be the low bidder for folks who can science), but Florida has taken extraordinary and steady efforts to chew up public education and spit out the pieces.  While there are some terrible states for education policy in the US, Florida's political leaders have made a good case for Florida being the worst. Teachers are devalued and disrespected. public schools are steadily and systematically stripped of resources and support. And the bureaucracy has built a giant wall of stupid between teachers and the goal of educating students. Florida is also fully committed to the Cult of Testing, and I have to wonder if it's not entirely coincidental that the two highly tested subjects-- math and English/reading-- are then areas of shortage.

One worries that a whole portion of Floridian leadership looks at this report and says, "Good!" Everything that makes the public schools look worse simply makes the shabby, fraudulent and inadequate charter industry of Florida just look better by comparison. For some of Florida's leaders, it's not bad public policy-- it's just good marketing.

But there it is in the annual report. The shortage is real. How will Florida respond? Well, they could come up with recruitment ideas. Or they could make it easier to become a "teacher" by "alternative" certification means. Or they could sit on their hands a do nothing. Or they could actually listen to the Free Market's wisdom, which says that if you want people to make your job, you have to make it more attractive with better pay and work conditions. I'm sure that the Governor DeSantis's new education team, loaded with privatization fans, will do the wise thing.

In the meantime, let's hope that other states are paying attention. Because Florida doesn't really have a teacher shortage. What they have is a slow-motion teacher walkout, with teachers waling out because they just can't take it any more. Only unlike the kinds of walkout we've seen in Los Angeles or Oklahoma, this one won't end any time soon, and the teachers who walked out will never be back.

Jeanne Allen on LAUSD: Fire Them All

The Center for Education Reform is a charter advocacy group whose most visible feature is Jeanne Allen, CEO and sometimes President of a board that includes pioneering privatize Chris Whittle. Allen loves charters and hates teachers unions. As you might guess, she has some thoughts about the LA teacher strike. After I wrote about the strike at Forbes.com, the Pinkston Group, a PR fit, shared some her thoughts with me. Let me just quote them in their entirety:

In a post-Janus world, teacher unions cannot exist and continue to gain members unless they demonstrate and prove their value. This strike, like others we're seeing around the country, is a desperate attempt by the union to maintain relevance in a day and age where they can
no longer require teachers to join.

California needs to break the district up into 100 different pieces, have much smaller units, and allow for the freedom, flexibility, access and innovation that’s happening in charters. If it weren’t for charter schools, education in L.A. would be at the level of Mississippi. The UTLA sees charters
as such a threat to the status quo that it is willing want to hurt students kids even more to score a victory against charters.

My advice to the district: Hold strong. Replace them all. If they want a dramatic impact on education, fire the union and begin to repair the schools, just like Reagan fired the air traffic controllers.

Allen's dream of a perfect union meeting

So that's what a leading charter advocate thinks about the strike. It's a union trick to hold onto power. Los Angeles would have terrible schools if not for the awesome charters. Teachers just want to hurt students so they can keep raking in the big bucks. There are, of course, no slices of evidence in the real world to back up any of this. Nor will turning LAUSD into hundreds of tiny districts serve anyone except the children of the wealthy.

But Allen's big solution is super dopey-- fire them all. The Reagan nod is not completely out of left field; Allen's website notes proudly that she was "the youngest political appointee to serve at the pleasure of the president, Ronald Reagan, at the US Department of Education." But of the many anti-reality arguments I have seen from Allen, this is one drops the jaw the furthest. Replace over 25,000 teachers? In a state with a persistent teacher shortage? In the 2016-2017 year, there were under 24,000 students enrolled in teaching preparation programs in the state.

Talk about hurting kids just to score a victory-- Allen's nuclear option would trash everything just to teach those damned teachers a lesson.

Allen's position is worth noting only because she and the CER are not some fringe element. She gets to sit on reformy panels. CER gets Gates money (and in 2016 the organization took in a whopping $ million in contributions from... somewhere). She gets into the Wall Street Journal. And lest you think she's strictly a GOP phenomenon, Kara Kerwin, who filled the president role while Allen was on hiatus, started out in public policy in the offices of Chuck Schumer and Daniel Moynihan.

Allen and the CER have one virtue-- where other charter advocates may play a game of making nice with teachers and their unions, Allen leaves her mask off most days. If you wonder why teachers and their unions sometimes act vas if charter advocates are out to get them, and you're one of those folks asking "Where does that come from," well, Jeanne "Fire Them All" Allen is Exhibit A.

This is not a one-off. Allen was quick to decide Trump was okee-dokee after all and became a Trump-DeVos cheerleader. Allen has periodically issued announcements of renewed commitment to privatization. Allen put a $100K bounty on John Oliver's head for besmirching the charter brand. Allen whinged when her phrase "backpack full of cash" became a movie title. Allen blamed the GOP 2018 drubbing on a failure to keep a charter hard line.

One can only hope that nobody on the administration side of the LAUSD strike is considering listening to Allen's advice. It would neither solve the strike nor improve general health of the LA school district. It's just a more extreme statement of the very distinct policies that brought them to this strike in the first place; wiping out the school district and the teachers who work in it is not a path that serves the students of Los Angeles.

SAT: New Frontiers In Pointlessness

David Coleman, he who single-handedly built the architecture of Common Core ELA in the image of his own (untrained) biases about how language should be taught, is taking a step back from some of his College Board duties. That news has been accompanied by further evidence that the SAT is increasingly pointless.

Like most of the CC architects, isn't stick around to make sure his baby was properly installed and put to use; instead, he moved to start cashing in, which in his case meant a lucrative gig at the College Board, the folks who bring us the SAT, PSAT and AP courses. He's been serving as both president and CEO of the company, but last week he stepped back from the president spot and the company installed Jeremy Singer in the post.

Singer is a fine fit. He's been the COO at College Board since 2013; before that he was with Kaplan, the test prep people. His career also includes a stint at McGraw-Hill, a school turnaround outfit, and a web-delivered solutions company. This after he started out in the business development biz, highlighted by a stay at McKinsey.

Digital baloney and business growth are his things, so it's not surprising that announcements of his rise focused on the "technological transformation" of the College Board. But some of the comments in this EdSurge article are not very inspirational.

Some probable goals: expanding the "partnership" with Khan Academy, simplifying the college application process, and "easing the financial burden" of applying to colleges. So, I don't know-- lowering their prices?

But then Singer also offers observations like this. Reflecting on his time with Kapplan, the test-prep giant:

His experiences had revealed how inaccessible commercial test prep was for low-income students, and it instilled in him the idea that “great test practice should be available to all students, not only those who could afford it,” he says.

You know what would be really great for students? A test that measures something other than how much test prep you did to take the test. Singer was the one who Khanified the AP tests, and other CB officials think that's swell:

“The Khan Academy partnership really makes it possible for students to access high-quality learning that they didn’t have before,” says Kaine Osburn, chair of the finance committee for the College Board’s board of trustees and superintendent of Lake Zurich Community Unit School District 95 in Illinois. “The test prep market was inequitable, and now it’s equitable.”

Emphasis mine, because weren't students supposed to have access to the high-quality learning of an AP course, generally taught by teachers have been trained to teach AP courses? Are you telling me that students don't need to actually take an AP course-- just watch a bunch of Khan Academy videos? Are you telling me that a video provides more "high quality learning" than a live human teacher? Yes, videos can be useful for certain types of instruction, but if I stood in front of a class, delivered a lesson, and then, when students asked questions, I just delivered the exact same lesson again-- well, nobody would be hailing my high quality instruction.

Another big Singer goal is to "boldly reduce complexity," and he has a point in saying that the College Board has used lots of complicated little ideas that mostly just reduce transparency of the whole business. Singer reduce some of this. The stated goal is to make applying to college less scary and less complicated. Of course, a really good way to do that would be to apply to a college that didn't require SAT scores at all. But the College Board isn't that interested in making college application simpler.

The College Board is a business, not a public service organization, so many of these simplification ideas look suspiciously like market capture ideas. For instance, the College Board has been working with the Coalition for College Application (a collection of 140-ish colleges) to set up a system by which students can submit SAT scores and college applications through a single site. This helps cement what has always been SAT's greatest marketing tool-- the perception that taking the SAT is one of those things you have to do to go to college.

EdSurge noted that ACT has been expanding its reach through acquisitions. It's an interesting question to ask Singer, who arrived at McGraw-Hill because the publisher acquired a company he was running. His reply is that College Board prefers partnerships; he mentions AIR and Pearson, though he might also have mentioned the College Board's success in getting some states to use the SAT as their required Big Standardized Test. He also talks happily about how these days, they are happy to be competing with the Big Boys for tech department talent.

At no point in the article does he talk about working to make the SAT a more accurate and useful measure of student academic ability.

But that's the SAT-- a test that mostly measures student socio-economic background and, of course, how well the student has prepped for the SAT. It is one of the great testing tautologies in the US education scene. Meanwhile, the best measure of college readiness and predictor of college success remains a student's high school GPA.  I don't want to see the 1,700 people at the College Board hungry and out of work, but I still have to wonder why we're still bothering wit the SAT at all.

ICYMI: Jazz In Church Edition (1/13)

Today was m day to visit my brother's church to play some jazz versions of old hymns. Fun times, but it ace for a full family day. Nevertheless, I have some reading for you from the week. Remember-- if you think it's a good one, share it and amplify the voice.

Charter Lobby Still Spending Money in Connecticut

Wendy Lecker lays out the ways in which the usual charter lobbyists are still plying their trade in Connecticut to garner as much influence as they can.

Challenging the Myths About Teachers

Love Long and Prosper is a new blog to us here at the Curmudgucation Institute, and this is a worthwhile post to serve as an introduction.

100 Arizona Charter Schools In. Danger Of Closing


No, that's not one of my usual typos-- about 100 charter schools in Arizona re in danger of going out of business because they've botched their financial management. Just mazing.

Whatever Happened to the Waiting for Superman Kids

Gary Rubinstein always asks the good questions. Like, whatever happened to the students who were used as the focus of Waiting for Superman, the classic public-school-trashing film.

Fables of School Reform

Audrey Watters is one of the great chroniclers of ed tech. Here is another great look at the long history of reformy baloney.

How To Teach Virtue? Start with a Charter School

Nancy Flanagan has been watching reformster Checker Finn clutch his very expensive pearls for years, and she has a few thoughts about his latest outburst.

When You Give a Teacher A Gun

Mitchell Robinson takes a look at a piece about arming teachers, and he has a few thoughts.

Public School Students Are Being Erased From TV,  Movies, and Other Media

Steven Singer has noticed something odd happening with school aged characters in pop culture. They've stopped going to public school.

South Carolina Hasn't Enforced Class Size Limits Since 2010. It's Starting To Show.   

South Carolina continues to cut educational corners while hoping that its underpaid teachers can somehow pick up the slack.

Four Reasons Charters Are A Bad Fit For Rural Communities

For just a moment, I'm going to set aside the larger problems of charters and privatization nationally. Charter advocates and education reformers have recently turned their attention to rural communities. Last summer, Mike Petrilli (Fordham Institute) unleashed one of his wide-release op-eds to point out the "problem" of "charter deserts"--those markets where charter schools have made few inroads. Andy Smarick and Mike McShane just released an entire volume of essays about rural education, and at the 74, Arielle Dreher published a thoughtful piece about one of the tensions inherent in rural education--are schools supposed to educate students to revitalize the local community or to escape it?

There are fewer than 800 charter schools in the rural parts of this country, and some advocates of choice are anxious to open up that untapped market. But there are some reasons that charter schools are particularly bad fits for rural areas.

Rural Schools Are Part Of The Heart Of Their Communities

My children went to school in a tiny village where the two central institutions were the elementary school and the volunteer fire department. In rural and small town areas, grown adults still identify themselves by what high school they graduated from. Sporting events, school concerts, art displays--these are attended by all sorts of people who are not actual parents of the participants. Launching a charter school in this setting is about as welcome as having a guy move into the house next door and inviting your children to call him "Dad."

Rural Schools Run On Tight Budgets

One does not remove a few hundred thousand dollars from a rural school budget without really feeling it. Most rural districts are lean operations already, without fifteen jobs like Assistant Vice-Superintendent in charge of Paper that can be easily absorbed. Transportation may be a huge chunk of the budget, and there really isn't any way to tighten that particular belt. The minute a charter starts "redirecting" tax dollars away from a rural district, that district will feel the hurt.

Rural Communities Are Not Always Easily Entered By Outsiders

This is not to suggest that every rural community is straight out of Deliverance. But city folks often drastically underestimate how important it is to know the territory. Every small town can tell a story about some city big shot who rolled into town and thought he was going to institute sweeping changes, only to fall flat on his face.

In part, there is no mystery here. Someone who is a big-time operator in New York City would not imagine that he could just stroll into Chicago without first studying the lay of the land and getting connected to the right people. Why imagine that moving into a small town would be different. If anything, a small town is more difficult, because everybody knows everybody. True story: a sharp operator moved into our area as operator of the hotel in town and planned to make it the arts hub of the area. He planned to kick things off with a big festival featuring choirs from all four area high schools and to do that he called each director and told her that the other three were already on board. Those choir directors were neighbors and sang in the same church choir; his lies didn't help him get launched. Even when they are honest, outside operators have a hard time moving and shaking in rural areas.

Charter operators have a history of bypassing the local community they enter, of doing charters to the locals instead of with them. In cities where the power centers may be located far from the neighborhoods in question, that may be successful. In rural areas, it's less likely to succeed.

Rural Communities Are Limited Markets

Charters are launched with primary attention to business concerns, not educational ones. It is more appealing to launch your charter business in a city with a half a million potential customers than a rural area with five hundred potential customers. Rural areas offer little in the way of the attractive real estate deals that have powered some urban charters. Nor do rural areas have large numbers of wealthy backers willing to help finance a charter operation. If you are hoping, directly or indirectly, to make some money running your charter, there are riper markets to approach than rural ones. Even if you hope to do good, but want to be sure you have a solid financial basis, there are better places to launch than in a rural area.

When Do Rural Charters Make Good Sense

The small community of Tidioute, Pennsylvania, lost its public school due to budget cuts in the larger district of which they were a part. So to keep the heart of their community intact and their children's education local, they re-opened their local school as a charter school, operated and controlled by local folks.

It is the one approach to rural chartering that makes sense--a local school under local control created to meet a local need. That's a good charter.

Originally posted at Forbes