Some days I look at the landscape of educational issues, and I think that all our educational problems boil down to one, simple, two-part problem.
1) We don't spend enough money on education because
2) We don't want to.
We could erase the pockets of educational underserving, by spending the money necessary to fix the buildings, provide the resources, support the students, create a safe and effective learning environment. We could coax people back into teaching by raising the pay and providing supports to make the job more attractive (imagine a school with, for example, a secretary for every department). We could provide a better array of support staff-- nurses, counselors specifically for personal issues, post-high school planning, in-school issues. Hell, we could do simple things like provide school-issued pencils and backpacks and paper for each student, and if we thought uniforms were important, we could provide those, too.
But we don't. We propose solutions that aren't solutions, like school choice, which proposes that we take the same money that isn't enough to support a single system and spread it around among several systems, which is like Daylight Savings Time to create more sunlight or pushing your lima beans around to make it look like you actually ate them.
No, we stay stuck tight to a system of districting and funding that is welded to housing, which all but guarantees that schools will reflect the same segregation of students and resources that we find in our housing system. And we back that up with an attitude of "I've got mine, Jack," and a side of "I'm not going to pay my tax dollars to build a school for Those Peoples' Children." And some folks further shut down the conversation by declaring, "Well, we can't just throw money at education and after all, we threw a bunch of money at it and look where we are. Harumph."
Yes, yes, yes, I'm a taxpayer, too, and I'd rather hang onto a couple of bucks and not be treated like the government's personal ATM. I get that. And I know that the obvious model for unhesitant spending-- the US military-- is really not a good model, as it shovels tons of money into private machinery that somehow takes better care of corporate honchos than actual US soldiers in the field.
Still, if being devoted to the care and education of children were suddenly an international crime, would there be enough evidence to convict the US?
Yes, I'm feeling a little cranky today, but dammit, why do so many education policy discussions end up really being about questions like "How can we do the barest minimum for the tiniest cost" or "How can we change this system so that somebody can actually make some money off it" or "How can we change this system so that the right people are threatened and punished" or "How can we make a buck off some of the byproducts of the system?"
Yes, there are plenty of people working in education or education policy or education policy kibitzing who have basically accepted this limitation and so move forward asking "How can we squeeze more blood out of this turnip, because nobody is going to give us anything but this single turnip to work with." And the teaching profession is composed primarily of people who make do as best they can with whatever they have, no matter how too-little that is (right up until they quit or change professions, that is).
And, no, I don't imagine that there's a magical money tree growing somewhere in this land of the free and home of the trillion dollar deficit. I don't imagine that our politicians are going to wrestle with this, and we could blame them, but the fact is that if we were all demanding they wrestle with it, they would, whether they cared or not. If there's anything politicians can be counted on, it's their willingness to fake care about whatever they think the electorate wants them to care about.
That's what really gets me some days-- we have an education system that systematically, purposefully underfunds all schools except those located in wealthy communities, and we're really pretty much mostly okay with that. Oh, there are people who care, but mostly what we get are solutions that aren't solutions-- Common Core, vouchers, charters, data hooping, high stakes testing and teacher bashing ("Let's root out all the bad ones and then just replace them with great ones from the Great Teacher Tree") are all ways of trying to make things look better without actually addressing any of the underlying structural issues.
The real problem is intractable, so we fuss around with proxy problems and we argue about shit that is just shit.
What would it look like, I wonder on grumpy days like this, if there was an actual attempt to envision a school system without worrying about the how to pay for it part. How many things would we figure out that we could go ahead and do anyway.
Rant over. I'll eat some ice cream, go to rehearsal, have a good night's sleep, and come back in a cheerier place tomorrow.
Thursday, August 29, 2019
Wednesday, August 28, 2019
PA: Poorer Districts Worst Hit By Cyber Schools
A study released in February shows that poorer school districts are bearing the brunt of funding Pennsylvania's cyber schools. The study was published in the American Journal of Education, and you can tell it's serious because its title is painfully dull: Cyber Charter Schools and Growing Resource Inequality among Public Districts: Geospatial Patterns and Consequences of a Statewide Choice Policy in Pennsylvania, 2002–2014.
Bryan Mann (University of Alabama) is a professor of education policy and foundations, and co-author David Baker (Penn State) is a professor of sociology, education and demographics. As the title suggests, they looked at the changes in cyber enrollment and the patterns and financial costs of that enrollment from 2002 to 2014. And because it's behind an academic paywall, we'll have to depend on second-hand reporting of the results, as well as their own writing about it..
The abstract of the study, translated from heavy academese, boils down to this:
When cyberschools started, everyone said, "Cool! Computers! I bet that'll make kids damned smart!" But then it turned out that cyber schools don't actually school well at all, and as word got out in the media, upscale communities ditched it, while enrollment in poorer areas kept up. So now districts with low tax bases are losing "significant revenue" to the cybers, despite the "dubious academic benefits."
From the anecdotal perspective of someone who taught in a less-wealthy rural-ish district, that sounds about right.
There are several other takeaways from the study, all worth noting.
The study confirmed many of the usual criticisms of the cybers. Because Pennsylvania's payment system for cybers is an unholy mess that only a cybercharter lobbyist could love, the cybners are crazy profitable. And Mann and Baker note that
a steady stream of recent, scientifically sound, national evaluations reveals that cyber charter students tend to score lower on year-end tests and also have lower growth in learning over time than regular public school students. The same is true in Pennsylvania, where there is even evidence of knowledge loss (negative growth scores) from 4th to 8th grade in reading and math, literature, algebra, and biology among many cyber charter students.
They note, as I have in the past, that for a certain group of students with particular disabilities, cybers "can be a godsend."
The drop in enrollment in well-off communities while enrollment in less wealthy, less educated communities is documented in the paper.The number of students lost is virtually never enough to reduce any operating costs for the district, so the bullet has to be bitten in other ways. The average payout for a district is $800K, which in smaller districts is a serious amount of money, which districts deal with mostly by cutting staff and programs, or the more radical move of closing buildings. We've seen all three approaches in my region, and while it's impossible to draw a straight line from cybercharter payments to, say, not replacing an English teacher when he retired, and districts face other pressures (we'll talk about PA's pension mess another day), losing a pile of money to cybercharters certainly doesn't help.
This article comes with an interactive map that shows you, district by district, what the dollar costs and budget percentages are for each district. It's worth a look.
If you are outside of PA, there are two other things to know-- PA has a cap on how much school districts can raise taxes, and cybercharters are approved by the state, so local districts have no control at all.
Baker and Mann say that after an initial boost for cybers (they started appearing here in 2000 and were put into law in 2002), 2005 marked the first downturn in enrollment, coinciding with the first published studies that showed lousy academic results.
So why do some school districts still end up having so many cyberstudents? The Notebook asked around in 2016, and heard answers like "safety" or the child was having trouble keeping up or escaping Big Standardized Test emphasis or getting away from other "problem students" in public school.
But not all reasons are so education-related. Two superintendents testified in August noted other reasons. Some can be very local, like students who have moved into an area to be near a parent in the nearby prison, and who don't want to have to talk about it. Some are more universal. Daniel Webb of Everett Area School District said some enroll to avoid accountability, e.g. the family who pulled all their kids because one child was disciplined for smoking.
The teacher bag of anecdotes contains many similar tales. The family who put a student in cyberschool because they were about to draw fines for chronic tardiness and skipping. The family who put a student in cyberschool to avoid repeated disciplinary issues. The family who put a student in cyberschool because he's failing, and he's heard that it's easy to pass cyberschools (which, given the lack of controls of who actually does the assignments, is probably true). Some students just like the idea of being able to get up when they want, go "to school" when they want, go hang out when they want. There is a repeated pattern of students leaving public school because they lack the self-discipline to cope with the institutional demands (we can discuss how much of the fault lies with the institution another day) without realizing that they are stepping into a setting where the demands on their self-discipline is even greater.
In fact, one of the areas that I have yet to see studied, is the number of cybercharter boomerang students-- students who leave the public school, cyberschool for a year, and then come back. I had those students in my classroom more than a few times; they always returned further behind than when they'd left (of course, if they hadn't stayed behind, then they probably wouldn't have returned). I'd ask these students what they did in cyberschool; often the answer was "Nothing."
But I digress. Part of the answer to the question posed by this study is that the bad news about cybercharters many failings was most likely to drive away students and families that were most concerned about academics, leaving behind families that enroll in cybercharters for other purposes, and for whatever reason, those families are in the less-wealthy rural-ish districts, which end up footing the bill.
There are remedies. Rep. Curt Sonney is no BFF of public education, but he has made numerous efforts to rein in the cybercharters, including a hugely sensible bill that would require parents to pay their own tuition to a cybercharter if the local public school offers an online option (many do, in a effort to woo back some families). Heck, someone could just shut down the ten-out-of-fifteenm cybercharters that are operating without a current charter agreement! But the cybers spend a huge amount of lobbying money in Harrisburg.
The standard argument is that cybercharters help make school choice more available, particularly in areas without bricks and mortar charters. What this study shows is that, by draining poorer districts of funding and forcing them to cut staff and programs, cybercharters are actually making fewer choices available for poorer PA districts. It really is long past time to shut them down.
Bryan Mann (University of Alabama) is a professor of education policy and foundations, and co-author David Baker (Penn State) is a professor of sociology, education and demographics. As the title suggests, they looked at the changes in cyber enrollment and the patterns and financial costs of that enrollment from 2002 to 2014. And because it's behind an academic paywall, we'll have to depend on second-hand reporting of the results, as well as their own writing about it..
The abstract of the study, translated from heavy academese, boils down to this:
When cyberschools started, everyone said, "Cool! Computers! I bet that'll make kids damned smart!" But then it turned out that cyber schools don't actually school well at all, and as word got out in the media, upscale communities ditched it, while enrollment in poorer areas kept up. So now districts with low tax bases are losing "significant revenue" to the cybers, despite the "dubious academic benefits."
From the anecdotal perspective of someone who taught in a less-wealthy rural-ish district, that sounds about right.
There are several other takeaways from the study, all worth noting.
The study confirmed many of the usual criticisms of the cybers. Because Pennsylvania's payment system for cybers is an unholy mess that only a cybercharter lobbyist could love, the cybners are crazy profitable. And Mann and Baker note that
a steady stream of recent, scientifically sound, national evaluations reveals that cyber charter students tend to score lower on year-end tests and also have lower growth in learning over time than regular public school students. The same is true in Pennsylvania, where there is even evidence of knowledge loss (negative growth scores) from 4th to 8th grade in reading and math, literature, algebra, and biology among many cyber charter students.
They note, as I have in the past, that for a certain group of students with particular disabilities, cybers "can be a godsend."
The drop in enrollment in well-off communities while enrollment in less wealthy, less educated communities is documented in the paper.The number of students lost is virtually never enough to reduce any operating costs for the district, so the bullet has to be bitten in other ways. The average payout for a district is $800K, which in smaller districts is a serious amount of money, which districts deal with mostly by cutting staff and programs, or the more radical move of closing buildings. We've seen all three approaches in my region, and while it's impossible to draw a straight line from cybercharter payments to, say, not replacing an English teacher when he retired, and districts face other pressures (we'll talk about PA's pension mess another day), losing a pile of money to cybercharters certainly doesn't help.
This article comes with an interactive map that shows you, district by district, what the dollar costs and budget percentages are for each district. It's worth a look.
If you are outside of PA, there are two other things to know-- PA has a cap on how much school districts can raise taxes, and cybercharters are approved by the state, so local districts have no control at all.
Baker and Mann say that after an initial boost for cybers (they started appearing here in 2000 and were put into law in 2002), 2005 marked the first downturn in enrollment, coinciding with the first published studies that showed lousy academic results.
So why do some school districts still end up having so many cyberstudents? The Notebook asked around in 2016, and heard answers like "safety" or the child was having trouble keeping up or escaping Big Standardized Test emphasis or getting away from other "problem students" in public school.
But not all reasons are so education-related. Two superintendents testified in August noted other reasons. Some can be very local, like students who have moved into an area to be near a parent in the nearby prison, and who don't want to have to talk about it. Some are more universal. Daniel Webb of Everett Area School District said some enroll to avoid accountability, e.g. the family who pulled all their kids because one child was disciplined for smoking.
The teacher bag of anecdotes contains many similar tales. The family who put a student in cyberschool because they were about to draw fines for chronic tardiness and skipping. The family who put a student in cyberschool to avoid repeated disciplinary issues. The family who put a student in cyberschool because he's failing, and he's heard that it's easy to pass cyberschools (which, given the lack of controls of who actually does the assignments, is probably true). Some students just like the idea of being able to get up when they want, go "to school" when they want, go hang out when they want. There is a repeated pattern of students leaving public school because they lack the self-discipline to cope with the institutional demands (we can discuss how much of the fault lies with the institution another day) without realizing that they are stepping into a setting where the demands on their self-discipline is even greater.
In fact, one of the areas that I have yet to see studied, is the number of cybercharter boomerang students-- students who leave the public school, cyberschool for a year, and then come back. I had those students in my classroom more than a few times; they always returned further behind than when they'd left (of course, if they hadn't stayed behind, then they probably wouldn't have returned). I'd ask these students what they did in cyberschool; often the answer was "Nothing."
But I digress. Part of the answer to the question posed by this study is that the bad news about cybercharters many failings was most likely to drive away students and families that were most concerned about academics, leaving behind families that enroll in cybercharters for other purposes, and for whatever reason, those families are in the less-wealthy rural-ish districts, which end up footing the bill.
There are remedies. Rep. Curt Sonney is no BFF of public education, but he has made numerous efforts to rein in the cybercharters, including a hugely sensible bill that would require parents to pay their own tuition to a cybercharter if the local public school offers an online option (many do, in a effort to woo back some families). Heck, someone could just shut down the ten-out-of-fifteenm cybercharters that are operating without a current charter agreement! But the cybers spend a huge amount of lobbying money in Harrisburg.
The standard argument is that cybercharters help make school choice more available, particularly in areas without bricks and mortar charters. What this study shows is that, by draining poorer districts of funding and forcing them to cut staff and programs, cybercharters are actually making fewer choices available for poorer PA districts. It really is long past time to shut them down.
Tuesday, August 27, 2019
"Tired Of Being Treated Like Dirt" Teacher Morale In The 2019 PDK Poll
The title of the 2019 Phi Delta Kappa Poll of the Public's Attitudes Toward the Public Schools of "Frustration in the Schools," and the focus in much of the coverage has been on the results about teacher morale.
75% of teachers say schools in their community are underfunded.
50% of teachers have considered leaving the profession.
48% of teachers feel less valued by the community. (10% say they are valued "a great deal.")
55% of teachers would not want their child to follow them into the profession.
The breakdown of the teachers who have seriously considered getting out cite reasons that are all inter-related.
Inadequate pay is the marquee reason, and notably regional. Public school teachers are far less likely to feel fairly paid in the South and Midwest. That reason is followed closely by stress and pressure, which is followed by a lack of respect. Lack of support. Teaching no longer enjoyable. Testing requirements. Workload.
These are tied together with the single thread of distrust and disrespect for teachers. This has been evident on the national stage with issues like installing a Secretary of Education who had previously dismissed public education as a "dead end" or a Secretary of Education who asserts that student failure is because of low teacher expectations. Education has also carried the modern burden of the thesis that poor education is the cause of poverty, or even our "greatest national security threat," and so the entire fate of the nation rests on teachers' backs. And yet, teachers are not trusted to handle any of this; instead, we've had decades of federal and state programs meant to force teachers to do a better job. In the classroom, much of these "reforms" have sounded like "You can't do a good job unless you are threatened, micromanaged, and stripped of your autonomy." There is a special kind of stress that comes from working for someone who says, in effect, "You have a big important job to do, and we do not trust you to do it."
Teachers do not experience disrespect only on a national level. Talk to individual teachers about their own work circumstances and you will often hear about district and building administrators who treat teachers like children. When I was entering teaching forty years ago, one of the appealing features of the profession was autonomy, the freedom to pursue excellence in your classroom. There are some excellent school leaders out there who empower their teachers, but there are too many teachers out there who find themselves figuratively bound hand and foot, required to justify every action, treated like they are a source of trouble instead of valuable front-line professionals getting the work done. It is discouraging to work for a boss who does not trust you to behave like a responsible adult and do your job. Are there teachers who have proven not to deserve that trust? Of course--it's a huge profession. But if I had approached my classrooms with an attitude of "I'm going to assume you're all stupid behavior problems," I would have had a rough time. In a classroom, you get respect with respect.
Certainly pay matters. One cannot buy their family food with respect. But for many teachers, the low pay feels like one more act of disrespect, a very literal declaration that "you're just not worth it."
Let's not overstate the problem. According to the PDK poll, 52% of teachers feel respected by their community, and 40% feel they are fairly paid. There are teachers out there who still love what they do, and who are happy to keep doing it. And an excellent principal or superintendent can help support and lift up the staff.
But the effects of the issues covered by the poll have been felt for several years now. We hear regularly about a "teacher shortage," and districts across the country are having real trouble filling positions with qualified people. However, calling the situation a teacher shortage is incorrect. If you can't buy a Porsche for $1.98, that doesn't mean there's an automobile shortage. It means that you haven't made an attractive enough offer to the people with Porsches to sell. You need to make a better offer.
The PDK survey is a snapshot of how much less attractive the teaching profession has become. PDK gave a random sampling of those who considered leaving the profession a chance to explain why. Certain repeated phrases jump out. "Lack of respect," "No respect," "too little pay and respect," "we are treated like trash," and "tired of being treated like dirt."
There is no teacher shortage. The U.S. education system needs to make a better offer.
Monday, August 26, 2019
CA: The Homeschool Charter Business Behind The Latest Scandal
If you aren't in California, you may have missed this special little variation on the charter school business model-- homeschooling charters. It's a curious note in the recent big money charter scam in California, which we'll get back to in a moment.
This is what you get if vouchers and charters had a baby and it was raised by homeschooling wolves. Homeschoolers "enroll" their students in a "school," and that "school" gives the family a yearly "allowance" that the family directs the "school" to spend on their behalf. It's totally "legal" and not a profitable scam for circumventing California's tissue-like charter "laws" at all. Some folks love it; others, not so much.
Homeschoolers love it. Here's a homeschooling blog plugging the whole set-up as a way to "customize" their child's education to reflect "that reflects our family’s interests, priorities, learning styles, and values." They get $2600 to have spent on their behalf, and they've used that for music lessons, basketball clinics, gymnastics lessons, field trips, sailing lessons, and curriculum (Amazon and Rainbow Resources are two examples of vendors in that biz). There is no state-0mandated curriculum, so families can select whatever they want. This particular blogger notes that he prefers "to use our funds on experiences and activities." Students do have to take the Big Standardized Test, but for these families, it is a no stakes test. This blogger notes that some families don't even open then envelope when the results arrive.
The charter companies love it. You might ask-- what do they actually do? Well, they have to track and spend the money, while providing "oversight" of that spending as well as lining up vendors for the homeschooling families to choose from (although, of course, vendors fight for that privilege). And an actual certified teacher has to visit the families about once a month. The charter still collects the full state per pupil payment, so the schools are lucrative; the CEO of Inspire (more about them in a moment) makes a whopping $380,000 a year. That's a lot of love.
Who doesn't love this model?
Well, there's plenty to not love. Before anybody started paying attention, charter homeschool money was being spent on some interesting "educational" activities. Here a parent in the Valiant Prep system (the other big name in the business) talks about how she spent some of her money
This year, we have used our funds for a few fun field trips. We visited Disney California Adventure, purchased a Chicago City Pass which allowed us to visit the Science Center, Museum and more, and attended a Harlem Globetrotter’s Game. We also have trips planned to Medieval Times which were purchased with Valiant Prep homeschool funds.
Those "homeschool funds" are, of course, taxpayer dollars. The state has clamped down on amusement park spending, but the homeschool charters have also gotten cagier-- Valiant used to have a publicly accessible directory of its approved vendors, but that page has apparently been taken down.
And then there's the authorizing of this business. Dehesa School District has been the authorizer of Inspire and Valiant, and if that rings any bells that's because the district and its superintendent are part of the May 2019 indictment of eleven folks who are charged with defrauding California of $50 million via A3 Charter Schools through fraudulent practices involving several charter schools-- including Valiant. And Dehesa's superintendent Nancy Hauer was also charged with over-billing the charters for the "oversight" provided by the district. Also backing up the scheme was Steve Van Zant, a superintendent and "key figure in San Diego area charter expansion" who has been in trouble before for charter-related shenanigans and so had to hide his involvement this time.
Dehesa's involvement is itself a sign of how this kind of money drives "misbehavior." They're a tiny rural district. They need money. and authorizing charter schools is a way to get it. Meanwhile, a whole lot of students are suddenly without a school at all, and since California lets school districts authorize charters that are grabbing students from other districts, Dehesa doesn't even have to pick up after the mess that it helped make. That's on the public schools serving the areas where the students actually live.
While Valiant has been at least partially shut down, Inspire is still going strong, and attracting attention. It expects to "enroll" 12,000 students this year, despite a growing reputation for financial "irregularities" and really lousy performance on that test its parents don't have to care about. Inspire expects to pull in $285 million in taxpayer dollars this year. 12,000 students at $2,600 per student will cost Inspire $31.2 million of that $285 million. That's a pretty hefty cut of the taxpayer's money.
And Inspire is a fresh face in this business. Nick Nichols started it in 2013 and acquired authorization from Dehesa in 2015. That was the year he left his job as Coordinator, Instructional Expert and Instructional Coach with the Los Angeles Unified School District. He'd been with LAUSD since 2001; the background he brought to that job was a BA in Social Studies from the Master's University. So, another education "expert."
Inspire has drawn plenty of criticism not just from advocates of public education, but from others in the charter biz. Because, I guess, "parental choice" is only an important guiding principle when nobody is using it to entice your customers to leave you.
Jeff Rice, founder and director of APlus+, the Association of Personalized Learning Schools and Services, had invited Inspire to join his chartery club, but told NBC7 that he changed his mind and removed them:
"As our relationship with Inspire evolved over time, we found that there were numerous reports of questionable practices,” Rice said. “Primarily it had to do with the use of public funds as well as recruiting practices.”
Inspire has annoyed other charters with its recruiting practices. Terri Schiavone, the head of the Golden Valley Charter School in Ventura said, "They target a school and then try to get as many of their teachers and students as possible." Schiavone also criticized the lack of oversight and the way customers are "enticed" by various incentives like the whole "buy tickets to Disneyland" thing. She's also one more person accusing Inspire of allowing religious curriculum, though the Inspire folks swear up and down that they don't allow that particular law to be broken. Inspire says the other charter schools are just jealous. I expected to find other charter operators saying, "Well, this is just the free market at work with competition that just pushes us to be better," but so far, no.
Of course, Inspire isn't marketing itself as better, because given its test scores, it can't. Instead it has to market itself as a chance to get a government subsidy for homeschooling while still teaching your children whatever you do, or don't, want to teach them, with no particular oversight, but with some extra dollars to make the experience more fun. Meanwhile, the model leaves so much extra unsupervised money floating around that it has attracted all sorts of bad actors and corruption.
As California tightens up its charter school laws, let's hope they take a look at the homeschool "charter" model and shut it down.
This is what you get if vouchers and charters had a baby and it was raised by homeschooling wolves. Homeschoolers "enroll" their students in a "school," and that "school" gives the family a yearly "allowance" that the family directs the "school" to spend on their behalf. It's totally "legal" and not a profitable scam for circumventing California's tissue-like charter "laws" at all. Some folks love it; others, not so much.
 |
| Let me just get this out of your way. |
The charter companies love it. You might ask-- what do they actually do? Well, they have to track and spend the money, while providing "oversight" of that spending as well as lining up vendors for the homeschooling families to choose from (although, of course, vendors fight for that privilege). And an actual certified teacher has to visit the families about once a month. The charter still collects the full state per pupil payment, so the schools are lucrative; the CEO of Inspire (more about them in a moment) makes a whopping $380,000 a year. That's a lot of love.
Who doesn't love this model?
Well, there's plenty to not love. Before anybody started paying attention, charter homeschool money was being spent on some interesting "educational" activities. Here a parent in the Valiant Prep system (the other big name in the business) talks about how she spent some of her money
This year, we have used our funds for a few fun field trips. We visited Disney California Adventure, purchased a Chicago City Pass which allowed us to visit the Science Center, Museum and more, and attended a Harlem Globetrotter’s Game. We also have trips planned to Medieval Times which were purchased with Valiant Prep homeschool funds.
Those "homeschool funds" are, of course, taxpayer dollars. The state has clamped down on amusement park spending, but the homeschool charters have also gotten cagier-- Valiant used to have a publicly accessible directory of its approved vendors, but that page has apparently been taken down.
And then there's the authorizing of this business. Dehesa School District has been the authorizer of Inspire and Valiant, and if that rings any bells that's because the district and its superintendent are part of the May 2019 indictment of eleven folks who are charged with defrauding California of $50 million via A3 Charter Schools through fraudulent practices involving several charter schools-- including Valiant. And Dehesa's superintendent Nancy Hauer was also charged with over-billing the charters for the "oversight" provided by the district. Also backing up the scheme was Steve Van Zant, a superintendent and "key figure in San Diego area charter expansion" who has been in trouble before for charter-related shenanigans and so had to hide his involvement this time.
Dehesa's involvement is itself a sign of how this kind of money drives "misbehavior." They're a tiny rural district. They need money. and authorizing charter schools is a way to get it. Meanwhile, a whole lot of students are suddenly without a school at all, and since California lets school districts authorize charters that are grabbing students from other districts, Dehesa doesn't even have to pick up after the mess that it helped make. That's on the public schools serving the areas where the students actually live.
While Valiant has been at least partially shut down, Inspire is still going strong, and attracting attention. It expects to "enroll" 12,000 students this year, despite a growing reputation for financial "irregularities" and really lousy performance on that test its parents don't have to care about. Inspire expects to pull in $285 million in taxpayer dollars this year. 12,000 students at $2,600 per student will cost Inspire $31.2 million of that $285 million. That's a pretty hefty cut of the taxpayer's money.
And Inspire is a fresh face in this business. Nick Nichols started it in 2013 and acquired authorization from Dehesa in 2015. That was the year he left his job as Coordinator, Instructional Expert and Instructional Coach with the Los Angeles Unified School District. He'd been with LAUSD since 2001; the background he brought to that job was a BA in Social Studies from the Master's University. So, another education "expert."
Inspire has drawn plenty of criticism not just from advocates of public education, but from others in the charter biz. Because, I guess, "parental choice" is only an important guiding principle when nobody is using it to entice your customers to leave you.
Jeff Rice, founder and director of APlus+, the Association of Personalized Learning Schools and Services, had invited Inspire to join his chartery club, but told NBC7 that he changed his mind and removed them:
"As our relationship with Inspire evolved over time, we found that there were numerous reports of questionable practices,” Rice said. “Primarily it had to do with the use of public funds as well as recruiting practices.”
Inspire has annoyed other charters with its recruiting practices. Terri Schiavone, the head of the Golden Valley Charter School in Ventura said, "They target a school and then try to get as many of their teachers and students as possible." Schiavone also criticized the lack of oversight and the way customers are "enticed" by various incentives like the whole "buy tickets to Disneyland" thing. She's also one more person accusing Inspire of allowing religious curriculum, though the Inspire folks swear up and down that they don't allow that particular law to be broken. Inspire says the other charter schools are just jealous. I expected to find other charter operators saying, "Well, this is just the free market at work with competition that just pushes us to be better," but so far, no.
Of course, Inspire isn't marketing itself as better, because given its test scores, it can't. Instead it has to market itself as a chance to get a government subsidy for homeschooling while still teaching your children whatever you do, or don't, want to teach them, with no particular oversight, but with some extra dollars to make the experience more fun. Meanwhile, the model leaves so much extra unsupervised money floating around that it has attracted all sorts of bad actors and corruption.
As California tightens up its charter school laws, let's hope they take a look at the homeschool "charter" model and shut it down.
Sunday, August 25, 2019
FL: Courts Thwart Charter Theft
Last fall, the Palm Beach County schools taxpayers voted to increase their taxes so that they could bring their public schools up to speed, specifically in terms of building security and teacher pay.
And they specifically earmarked the money from this four-year tax for public schools.
Some charter schools in Palm Beach County were upset, believing that the law entitles them to a cut of any tax dollars collected for education purposes. This is, after all, Florida, where the state government is working hard to gut the public system and replace it with a profitable privatized system.
So they sued. In January two (later three) charters took the PBC system to court, declaring that they were absolutely entitled to some of that money, regardless of what the voters said. (Because if there's one thing many charteristas agree on, it's that democracy is stupid.) Newspapers like the Palm Beach Post helped out by calling the money in question a "tax windfall", as if this was money that the public system just stumbled over in a brown paper sack stuffed in a principal's attic, and not "the money that voters specifically voted to spend on public schools."
A judge issued a ruling this week, and it made the charters sad. As reported by Andrew Marra in the Palm Beach Post:
A judge has rejected an attempt by three charter schools to claim a piece of a new $200 million-a-year property tax that voters approved last year for Palm Beach County’s public schools.
Marra nicely incorporates some of the charter slight-of-language:
The ruling is a stinging defeat for the county’s 52 privately operated charter schools, which have long complained that the school board discriminates against their students by denying them money from special voter-approved taxes.
Well, no, sad Florida charters. The school board doesn't do anything-- the voters vote for what the voters want to vote for. And then there's this bit of whinging:
“We’re disappointed but disagree with the judge’s ruling,” said Marie Turchiaro, executive director of Palm Beach Maritime Academy. “Charter school people have overcome many obstacles throughout the years and flourished in spite of them.”
Obstacles? Being backed by billionaires? Having most of the state political positions of education oversight in the hands of charter fans? I cannot imagine what obstacles Turchiaro is talking about, but if they are obstacles like this one-- the obstacle of taxpayers being able to tax themselves while naming the purpose for which that tax is collected-- then, well, yes, we generally favor obstacles to thievery.
And they specifically earmarked the money from this four-year tax for public schools.
Some charter schools in Palm Beach County were upset, believing that the law entitles them to a cut of any tax dollars collected for education purposes. This is, after all, Florida, where the state government is working hard to gut the public system and replace it with a profitable privatized system.
A judge issued a ruling this week, and it made the charters sad. As reported by Andrew Marra in the Palm Beach Post:
A judge has rejected an attempt by three charter schools to claim a piece of a new $200 million-a-year property tax that voters approved last year for Palm Beach County’s public schools.
Marra nicely incorporates some of the charter slight-of-language:
The ruling is a stinging defeat for the county’s 52 privately operated charter schools, which have long complained that the school board discriminates against their students by denying them money from special voter-approved taxes.
Well, no, sad Florida charters. The school board doesn't do anything-- the voters vote for what the voters want to vote for. And then there's this bit of whinging:
“We’re disappointed but disagree with the judge’s ruling,” said Marie Turchiaro, executive director of Palm Beach Maritime Academy. “Charter school people have overcome many obstacles throughout the years and flourished in spite of them.”
Obstacles? Being backed by billionaires? Having most of the state political positions of education oversight in the hands of charter fans? I cannot imagine what obstacles Turchiaro is talking about, but if they are obstacles like this one-- the obstacle of taxpayers being able to tax themselves while naming the purpose for which that tax is collected-- then, well, yes, we generally favor obstacles to thievery.
ICYMI: SAHD Back To Work Edition (8/25)
Here we go. Time for me to watch my household partner get back to her gig. But while I'm adjusting to a new routine, there's still reading to do. Remember-- sharing makes the word go round.
Why Teachers Are Walking Out
I'm not so sure about some of the gender discussion in this post on the Known cast, but the basic idea is on point and the discussion is interesting.
Vandalism at Ed Department
If you missed this crazy tale-- this week a Black person's office was vandalized-- in the US Department of Education.
Judge Nixes Charter School Tax Theft
Every once in a while somebody in Florida gets it right. A judge has said no to a charter demand to get a cut of tax dollars raised explicitly for public schools. Coverage in the Palm Beach Post-- expect a sequel to this one.
Fighting Back Against The War On Childhood
Rae Pica writing one of those pieces that really shouldn't have to be written, but here we are.
11 Problems Facing Students As They Return To School
Nancy Bailey takes a look at the special new modern obstacles set up for students.
Flawed Algorithms Grading Essays
This time it's Vice reporting the story that must, apparently, be reported over and over again-- computer programs are still not capable of grading essays. But a frightening number of states are using them anyway. This is a thorough piece of reporting (they even used BABEL), and thre's something new-- the algorithms are not only bad, but they're racially biased, too.
Former KIPP CEO Soliciting for Fake Organization?
It takes the indispensable Mercedes Schneider to unravel this tangle of money and connections.
Money Matters
Matt Barnum at Chalkbeat reminds us, once again, that spending money on education makes a difference, citing four (count 'em, four) studies.
Guards Get Shoddy Training
The South Florida Sun-Sentinal reports that-- surprise!-- the armed guards in some Florida schools are not receiving great, mediocre, or even adequate training!
The Merit Pay Fairy Dies In Newark
Jersey Jazzman looks at the long, sad history of NJ's love of merit pay, and where it has all ended up. After you're read this one, move on to the sequel, Clapping Harder for the Merit Pay Fairy
Not Funding Schools or Paying Teachers? That’s a ‘You Problem’, Right?
Nancy Flanagan and the question of school funding.
Why Teachers Are Walking Out
I'm not so sure about some of the gender discussion in this post on the Known cast, but the basic idea is on point and the discussion is interesting.
Vandalism at Ed Department
If you missed this crazy tale-- this week a Black person's office was vandalized-- in the US Department of Education.
Judge Nixes Charter School Tax Theft
Every once in a while somebody in Florida gets it right. A judge has said no to a charter demand to get a cut of tax dollars raised explicitly for public schools. Coverage in the Palm Beach Post-- expect a sequel to this one.
Fighting Back Against The War On Childhood
Rae Pica writing one of those pieces that really shouldn't have to be written, but here we are.
11 Problems Facing Students As They Return To School
Nancy Bailey takes a look at the special new modern obstacles set up for students.
Flawed Algorithms Grading Essays
This time it's Vice reporting the story that must, apparently, be reported over and over again-- computer programs are still not capable of grading essays. But a frightening number of states are using them anyway. This is a thorough piece of reporting (they even used BABEL), and thre's something new-- the algorithms are not only bad, but they're racially biased, too.
Former KIPP CEO Soliciting for Fake Organization?
It takes the indispensable Mercedes Schneider to unravel this tangle of money and connections.
Money Matters
Matt Barnum at Chalkbeat reminds us, once again, that spending money on education makes a difference, citing four (count 'em, four) studies.
Guards Get Shoddy Training
The South Florida Sun-Sentinal reports that-- surprise!-- the armed guards in some Florida schools are not receiving great, mediocre, or even adequate training!
The Merit Pay Fairy Dies In Newark
Jersey Jazzman looks at the long, sad history of NJ's love of merit pay, and where it has all ended up. After you're read this one, move on to the sequel, Clapping Harder for the Merit Pay Fairy
Not Funding Schools or Paying Teachers? That’s a ‘You Problem’, Right?
Nancy Flanagan and the question of school funding.
Friday, August 23, 2019
Artificial Intelligence and Magical Thinking (HAL Knows How You Feel)
From the moment you read the title, you know this article from Inside Higher Ed by Ray Schroeder is going to be a corker-- Affective Artificial Intelligence: Better Understanding and Responding to Students.
Schroeder opens with "As a longtime professor of communication, I am fascinated with the cognitive characteristics of artificial intelligence as they relate to human communication," and that's a touch misleading. While he was an associate professor of communication back in the early 80s and a professor in a television production unit at the University of Illinois up until the late 90s, I think it might be a little disingenuous of him of him to skip over his work since then. He ran the University's center for online learning until 2013, when he became the associate vice chancellor for on learning. 2013 was also the year he became a founding director of the National Council of Online Education, a group that is "dedicated to advancing quality online learning at the institutional level." They are "powered by UPCEA, the association for professional, continuing, and online education."
In short, Schroeder is writing not as a professor with some academic curiosity about AI, but as a guy whose professional life for the past two decades has been centered on promoting and advocating for computer-driven instruction. That would have been appropriate to mention here, but IHE didn't even give Schroeder a bio blurb at the end of his piece.
So here's the set-up:
One of the challenges in person-to-person communication is recognizing and responding to subtle verbal and nonverbal expressions of emotion. Too often, we fail to pick up on the importance of inflections, word choices, word emphases and body language that reveal emotions, depth of feelings and less obvious intent. I have known many of my colleagues who were insensitive to the cues; they often missed nonverbal cues that were obvious to other more perceptive people.
There's even a link to back up the notion that nonverbal communication is complicated. So now we're ready for the pitch:
And that brings me to just how artificial intelligence may soon enhance communication between and among students and instructors. AI in many fields now applies affective communication algorithms that help to respond to humans. Customer service chat bots can sense when a client is angry or upset, advertising research can use AI to measure emotional responses of viewers and a mental health app can measure nuances of voice to identify anxiety and mood changes over the phone.
Sigh. This continues to be a big dream, most often associated with the quest for computerized SEL instruction. Various companies have claimed they can tell how we're feeling, using everything from face-reading software to measuring how long students take to click on an answer. And yes-- Amazon has been training Alexa to read the stress in your voice. None of these has worked particularly well. And maybe I'm on the phone with the wrong service chatbots, but despite Schroeder's claim, they can't understand anything that falls outside a certain range of response, let alone read my emotional state.
Schroeder assures us that computers can analyze lots of data, including vocal inflections and micro-expessions, and so far we're still within the realm of standard tecbno-over-promising. But then stuff gets weird.
Too often we fail to put ourselves in the position of others in order to understand motivations, concerns and responses. Mikko Alasaarela posits that humans are bad at our current emotional intelligence reasonings: “We don’t try to understand their reasoning if it goes against our worldview. We don’t want to challenge our biases or prejudices. Online, the situation is much worse. We draw hasty and often mistaken conclusions from comments by people we don’t know at all and lash [out] at them if we believe their point goes against our biases.”
Well, sure. If, for instance, we're heavily invested in computer tech, we might be inclined to ignore evidence that we've put our faith in some magical thinking. However, some of us are way worse at this than others of us. But for his next leap, Schroeder needs to establish that all humans are bad at understanding other humans. He is, of course, particularly interested in one application of this AI mindreading-- online classes:
Too often, I fear, we miss the true intent, the real motivation, the true meaning of posts in discussion boards and synchronous voice and video discussions. The ability of AI algorithms to tease out these motivations and meanings could provide a much greater depth of understanding (and misunderstanding) in the communication of learners.
All those misunderstandings on Twitter or message boards and even video will be swept away, because AI will be there to say, "Well, her mood when she posted that was angry and anxious, and what she really meant bto say was..." Schroeder quotes Sophie Kleber quoting Annette Zimmerman saying, "By 2022, your personal device will know more about your emotional state than your own family." He cites the recent Ohio State study that showed computers beating humans at certain types of emotion recognition under lab conditions and using photos instead of live people (he does nod at the nightmare application of this tech--more effective marketing). This is some magical baloney here, but we can still raise the baloney bar. Go back to that last paragraph:
Too often, I fear, we miss the true intent, the real motivation, the true meaning of posts in discussion boards and synchronous voice and video discussions.
So AI can see past everything, straight to the truth. Schroeder may be missing the more important applications of his still-imaginary AI. It could be used to read Hamlet or Ulyses or that confusing note my one ex-girlfriend left me, and it will be able to tell us all The Truth! When I think of how many students have struggled through "The Lovesong of J. Alfred Prufrock" and now we can just have the AI tell us what the true intent, the real motivation, the true meaning of the texts would be.
No, no, no, you say. The AI has to read the face of the source human, and those writers are all dead (well, except for my ex-girlfriend, but she wasn't looked at the webcam when she wrote the note). Okay, fine. We just get authors to compose all future works in front of a computer-linked camera, and there will never be any mystery again. We'll know the true meaning of it all, the true motivation behind the writing. I suppose with singer-songwriters, it would be good enough to let the AI watch a performance. Call up Don McClean and Carly Simon-- we can finally uncover the truth of "American Pie" and "You're So Vain."
Even if we stick to academics, it's hard to know where this could lead. Should a professor write an article or essay in front of a computer cam, and should the article then be accompanied by the AI explication-- or should the AI response to the work be published instead of the article? If the scholar just thinks about what he wants to write, will the AI write the full article for him? Can we just fire the professor and replace him just by asking the AI, which knows him so well, "What would Dr. Superfluous say in this situation?"
All right, I'll calm down. But Schroeder's crazy-pants predictions aren't done yet.
With AI mediating our communication, we can look to a future of deeper communication that acknowledges human feelings and emotions. This will be able to enhance our communication in online classes even beyond the quality of face-to-face communication in campus-based classes. Algorithms that enable better “reading” of emotions behind written, auditory and visual communication are already at work in other industries.
Yes, with software assistance, our human communication will finally include feelings and emotions! Dang. Maybe Schroeder hangs around with too many geeky flat-affect computer programmers, but as someone who worked with teenagers for thirty-nine years and someone who has a widespread and varied family and someone who is, you know, a human being living on Planet Earth, I would have to say that feelings and emotions are widely involved and acknowledged.
As to the assertion that online classes will actually have better quality communication than real live classes-- well, if I made my living pushing the online stuff, I might want to believe that, too. But I don't. Sure, higher education is a slightly different animal than K-12, but in the classroom, human relationships matter. Otherwise we would just ship each student a crate of books and say, "Go learn this stuff."
The working world has always included people who are bad at the interacting with and understanding of other carbon based life forms. But the kind of crutches and tools developed to help seem, because of the very problem, hard for them to use well. Like the guy who went to a training where they told him that when he was talking to someone he should insert their name in the sentence to connect better-- he just ends up seeming like a creepy bot. The idea that a professor could communicate better with students if he had software to explain the students to him--even if the software could actually do it--seems equally fraught.
Schroeder does end the piece with a sentence that acknowledges the huge privacy concerns of such a system. He doesn't acknowledge the oddness of his central thesis-- that we need computers to explain humans to other humans. Here's hoping the readers of IHE ignored him.
Schroeder opens with "As a longtime professor of communication, I am fascinated with the cognitive characteristics of artificial intelligence as they relate to human communication," and that's a touch misleading. While he was an associate professor of communication back in the early 80s and a professor in a television production unit at the University of Illinois up until the late 90s, I think it might be a little disingenuous of him of him to skip over his work since then. He ran the University's center for online learning until 2013, when he became the associate vice chancellor for on learning. 2013 was also the year he became a founding director of the National Council of Online Education, a group that is "dedicated to advancing quality online learning at the institutional level." They are "powered by UPCEA, the association for professional, continuing, and online education."
 |
| "Dave, are you sad, or just gassy?" |
So here's the set-up:
One of the challenges in person-to-person communication is recognizing and responding to subtle verbal and nonverbal expressions of emotion. Too often, we fail to pick up on the importance of inflections, word choices, word emphases and body language that reveal emotions, depth of feelings and less obvious intent. I have known many of my colleagues who were insensitive to the cues; they often missed nonverbal cues that were obvious to other more perceptive people.
There's even a link to back up the notion that nonverbal communication is complicated. So now we're ready for the pitch:
And that brings me to just how artificial intelligence may soon enhance communication between and among students and instructors. AI in many fields now applies affective communication algorithms that help to respond to humans. Customer service chat bots can sense when a client is angry or upset, advertising research can use AI to measure emotional responses of viewers and a mental health app can measure nuances of voice to identify anxiety and mood changes over the phone.
Sigh. This continues to be a big dream, most often associated with the quest for computerized SEL instruction. Various companies have claimed they can tell how we're feeling, using everything from face-reading software to measuring how long students take to click on an answer. And yes-- Amazon has been training Alexa to read the stress in your voice. None of these has worked particularly well. And maybe I'm on the phone with the wrong service chatbots, but despite Schroeder's claim, they can't understand anything that falls outside a certain range of response, let alone read my emotional state.
Schroeder assures us that computers can analyze lots of data, including vocal inflections and micro-expessions, and so far we're still within the realm of standard tecbno-over-promising. But then stuff gets weird.
Too often we fail to put ourselves in the position of others in order to understand motivations, concerns and responses. Mikko Alasaarela posits that humans are bad at our current emotional intelligence reasonings: “We don’t try to understand their reasoning if it goes against our worldview. We don’t want to challenge our biases or prejudices. Online, the situation is much worse. We draw hasty and often mistaken conclusions from comments by people we don’t know at all and lash [out] at them if we believe their point goes against our biases.”
Well, sure. If, for instance, we're heavily invested in computer tech, we might be inclined to ignore evidence that we've put our faith in some magical thinking. However, some of us are way worse at this than others of us. But for his next leap, Schroeder needs to establish that all humans are bad at understanding other humans. He is, of course, particularly interested in one application of this AI mindreading-- online classes:
Too often, I fear, we miss the true intent, the real motivation, the true meaning of posts in discussion boards and synchronous voice and video discussions. The ability of AI algorithms to tease out these motivations and meanings could provide a much greater depth of understanding (and misunderstanding) in the communication of learners.
All those misunderstandings on Twitter or message boards and even video will be swept away, because AI will be there to say, "Well, her mood when she posted that was angry and anxious, and what she really meant bto say was..." Schroeder quotes Sophie Kleber quoting Annette Zimmerman saying, "By 2022, your personal device will know more about your emotional state than your own family." He cites the recent Ohio State study that showed computers beating humans at certain types of emotion recognition under lab conditions and using photos instead of live people (he does nod at the nightmare application of this tech--more effective marketing). This is some magical baloney here, but we can still raise the baloney bar. Go back to that last paragraph:
Too often, I fear, we miss the true intent, the real motivation, the true meaning of posts in discussion boards and synchronous voice and video discussions.
So AI can see past everything, straight to the truth. Schroeder may be missing the more important applications of his still-imaginary AI. It could be used to read Hamlet or Ulyses or that confusing note my one ex-girlfriend left me, and it will be able to tell us all The Truth! When I think of how many students have struggled through "The Lovesong of J. Alfred Prufrock" and now we can just have the AI tell us what the true intent, the real motivation, the true meaning of the texts would be.
No, no, no, you say. The AI has to read the face of the source human, and those writers are all dead (well, except for my ex-girlfriend, but she wasn't looked at the webcam when she wrote the note). Okay, fine. We just get authors to compose all future works in front of a computer-linked camera, and there will never be any mystery again. We'll know the true meaning of it all, the true motivation behind the writing. I suppose with singer-songwriters, it would be good enough to let the AI watch a performance. Call up Don McClean and Carly Simon-- we can finally uncover the truth of "American Pie" and "You're So Vain."
Even if we stick to academics, it's hard to know where this could lead. Should a professor write an article or essay in front of a computer cam, and should the article then be accompanied by the AI explication-- or should the AI response to the work be published instead of the article? If the scholar just thinks about what he wants to write, will the AI write the full article for him? Can we just fire the professor and replace him just by asking the AI, which knows him so well, "What would Dr. Superfluous say in this situation?"
All right, I'll calm down. But Schroeder's crazy-pants predictions aren't done yet.
With AI mediating our communication, we can look to a future of deeper communication that acknowledges human feelings and emotions. This will be able to enhance our communication in online classes even beyond the quality of face-to-face communication in campus-based classes. Algorithms that enable better “reading” of emotions behind written, auditory and visual communication are already at work in other industries.
Yes, with software assistance, our human communication will finally include feelings and emotions! Dang. Maybe Schroeder hangs around with too many geeky flat-affect computer programmers, but as someone who worked with teenagers for thirty-nine years and someone who has a widespread and varied family and someone who is, you know, a human being living on Planet Earth, I would have to say that feelings and emotions are widely involved and acknowledged.
As to the assertion that online classes will actually have better quality communication than real live classes-- well, if I made my living pushing the online stuff, I might want to believe that, too. But I don't. Sure, higher education is a slightly different animal than K-12, but in the classroom, human relationships matter. Otherwise we would just ship each student a crate of books and say, "Go learn this stuff."
The working world has always included people who are bad at the interacting with and understanding of other carbon based life forms. But the kind of crutches and tools developed to help seem, because of the very problem, hard for them to use well. Like the guy who went to a training where they told him that when he was talking to someone he should insert their name in the sentence to connect better-- he just ends up seeming like a creepy bot. The idea that a professor could communicate better with students if he had software to explain the students to him--even if the software could actually do it--seems equally fraught.
Schroeder does end the piece with a sentence that acknowledges the huge privacy concerns of such a system. He doesn't acknowledge the oddness of his central thesis-- that we need computers to explain humans to other humans. Here's hoping the readers of IHE ignored him.
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