Well, sure-- what else does one do after Valentines Day except shop for deep discounts on chocolate! While you're eating irresponsibly, here's some reading from the week. Remember to share.
School choice detrimental to public schools
A guest op-ed from a state senator in the Sun Prairie Star suggesting that choice is bad for Wisconsin.
Privatizing Oakland Schools
The Black Agenda Report takes a look back at Eli Broad's plan to privatize Oakland schools. It's not pretty.
Coaching and Parent Politics
From a blog called Friday Night Wives, a look at the problems parents are causing in the world of school sports coaching.
Crumbling Schools, Dismal Outcomes
Alexander v. Holmes was supposed to change everything for Southern black children; this article looks at how that isn't happen.
Ed department calls charter backers "desperate"
Matt Barnum at Chalkbeat outlines the blowback from charter boosters who, it turns out, can be just as ugly to their former allies as they are to the rest of us. They are not taking the new budget proposal well, and the ed department is not saying "sorry."
Male teachers of color make a difference at Memphis schools
USA today looks at how-- well, the headline tells it. A good look at how the isue is playing out in one city.
"If we don't learn from this one, shame on us"
The story of a Detroit charter that was set up to aio. A good explanation of why charter advocates ought to want regulation, and how DeVos-backed policies hurt students in Michigan.
The neoliberal misrepresentation of Indianapolis K-12 history
At Cloaking Inequity, a rebuttal to the recent reformy tale of Indianapolis ed history.
The temptation of training teachers
Adam Laats has another history lesson, looking at the history of the notion that we can train teachers in one effective teaching system and all will be well.
NJ Charters can't have it both ways
Charter history includes a lot of time spent in courtrooms arguing that charters are whatever it's most expedient for them to be. (Public? Private? Which one lets us kep our money?) Jersey Jazzman looks at the most recent version of the Both Ways argument, currently being put forward by New Jersey charters
Redefining reading achievement creates problems
Nancy Bailey looks at the odd assertion that, these days, children need to be taught to read sooner. For some reason.
The effective classroom. Do you know it when you see it?
Nancy Flanagan looks at the notion that just looking at a classroom will tell you everything you need to know about it.
Sunday, February 16, 2020
Thursday, February 13, 2020
FL: BEST Standards To Roll Back The Calendar
Somewhere Jeb! Bush is drowning his tears in his sarsparilla. His beloved Florida, the state that launched a thousand bad ed reform ideas, has tried to roll back one-- the Common Core./ Governor Ron Desantis dispatched a task force to drive a stake through the heart of the unbeloved standards and replaced them with B.E.S.T.-- Benchmarks for Excellent Student Thinking. No, it's not a name whose natural poetry inspires trust.
Ten Selling Points
I haven't ploughed through the entire many-paged actual standards yet. I will. I promise. But for the moment, let's just peruse the state's announcement trumpeting the major Points Of Awesometude, because they are plenty to digest, and they help give an overall impression (spoiler alert:.the impression is that Florida wants to go back several decades in time). There are two Top Ten lists (one for ELA and one for math), but I'm going to stick to the ELA list. Here are the Top Ten reasons that the new ELA standards are BEST. (Get it? Get used to it, because apparently the plan is to milk that BEST thing until all the swampland in Florida is developed.)
1) Florida-Created. Okay, I think it's cute that Florida thinks they're the best at this sort of thing, but I get that the selling point here is the "created by Florida teachers for Florida students" part. The task force used edcredible to help do thew work, plus listening tours. The committee member listing has so far evaded me, but given the administrations lack of love for actual public school teachers, I have my doubts here.
2) Skills for Lifelong Learning. This is exceptionally vague. Create great thinkers, communicator and researches. Bolder, brighter future! A booklist. "Skills," it should be noted, is a Common Core buzzword. And foundations for struggling readers. We'll get back to that.
3) Embedded civics. Florida is going to lead the nation in establishing civics literacy, including a civics reading list of foundational documents, with the Constitution introduced in 5th grade. The program will include civic knowledge, historical context, vocabulary, reasoning and debate-- the whole thing will "result in a complete understanding of American history," which, if rue, would put Florida's students ahead of every single adult in the country.
4) Content-rich. With an emphasis on classic literature (I am really waiting for a moment when I am rested and ready to peruse that list, because folks who's lives are built around literature can't decide what the necessary classics are, so when politicians strep in to settle the argument-- well, there's juts no way that can not end badly). The Common Core, they remind us, didn't focus on content, and that was/is indeed a problem, but it also didn't include ominous sentences like this one:
The inclusion of literary content enables students to learn and understand the full concept of cause and effect, the progression of a story, character development, heritage and much more.
Heritage? Uh-oh.
5) The Art of Reason and Debate. Rhetoric will be introduced in 6th grade. "This is because it teaches students the art and science of writing," says the promotional material, and I am here to tell you that the "science of writing" is not a thing. Even if you go looking for people purportng to write about it, they are really talking about reading. There is no science of writing.
6) Clear and concise language. These standards are easy to follow and understand, says the promo. The Core was wordy, detailed, and sometimes shoved multiple standards into one standard. Florida's not going to do that. They won't be confusing at all.
7) Cursive writing. Students need it to read the Declaration in its original form. It stimulates the bain in special ways. Fine motor skills. Increased retention. As a side note, this example shows hat BEST calls "benchmark clarifications" which appear to be the standards expressed as specific performance objectives. "Students will..."
8) Foundations for literacy. Florid will enforce by-God phonics. Also reading grade-level texts (including reading them aloud, apparently). And in keeping with the clear and concise language goal, "analyze the impact of various poetic forms on meaning and style," because the science of writing tells us that when you get really concise you might also end up being really vague. And there's a list of works to go with each standard and its benchmarks. What are the odds that BEST will stick with the Common Core philosophy that there's only one correct way to read each work? Also, what are the odds that Florida will scrap its I-can't-type-the-word-stupid-enough third grade reading retention rule?
9) Elevating he progression of English Language Arts expectations. They were shooting for both vertical and horizontal alignments, and there is a "clear progression from one year to the next." Plus more consistency within levels. I don't know what the sample standards are supposed to prove, but as samples, they do reveal more vagueness problems. Here's standard ELA.K12.EE.6.1--"Use appropriate voice and tone when speaking or writing." Yeah, that's helpful.
10) Integrated resources and clarifications. Each standard comes with benchmarks and explanations and texts that are for use with that standard.
Bonus-- We've also got Five Big Wins when it comes to testing. Let's check those out:
1) Reducing the actual time students and teachers spend on state tests. I'm betting this is simply not true. The major time suck in testing is not the test, but the test prep. If you want to reduce the time spent on testing, you have to reduce the high stakes.
2) Reducing unnecessary, duplicative testing. Unnecessary according to whom? Do you really think there are tests being given and the people who decided to give them were thinking, "Well, this is unnecessary, but what the hell..."?
3) Replacing state tests with SAT or ACT. This is a dumb idea. First, that's not what those tests are designed for, and second, there's a mountain of research showing they aren't even good at their purported purpose-- GPA is still a better predictor of college success. But if I were the cynical type, I might think that forcing schools to have all their students--including the non-college bound ones-- take the SAT or ACT would be a good way to get more public schools to "fail."
4) Better aligning state tests, via SAT and ACT, to college readiness. Nope. See above research about how SAT and ACT are poor predictors of college readiness.
5) Everyone has to take the Florida Civics Literacy Test.
Two Major Takeaways
First, you remember when Common Core apologists kept sputtering, "It's not a curriculum-- it's just a set of standards." I don't anticipate any such argument in Florida, because BEST is pretty clearly most of a curriculum, complete with scope and sequence, a list of performance objectives, and a list of approved texts. All that seems missing is a specific date on which each standard is supposed to be covered. I'm not a huge fan of centralized standards, and I am even less a fan of centralized curriculum.
Second, from cursive writing to phonics to bringing back The Classics, this looks a lot like the product of a lot of grandparents who spent a lot of time getting sidetracked by complaints about all the things that Kids These Days don't do. I suspect that only the Florida setting saved students from a requirement that they walk to school in the snow uphill both ways. This smells like a document that is all about going back to the imaginary age of great schooling, aka "How school worked when I was a pup, you young whippersnapper. Now get off my lawn." Key word: imaginary.
Maybe the math stuff is genius, and maybe the standards themselves will turn out to be awesome (and not totally filled with bad Common Core paraphrasing), but it's hard to trust a state that is so openly intent on destroying its own public education system. I swear, I'll look at the standards at some point, but I'm not optimistic.
And most importantly, did they actually kill the Core?
Well, the proof--some of it-- is in the actual standards, but--
The short answer is if they aren't going to completely rewrite every accountability test they use, then No, they didn't get rid of the Core. They will keep teaching to the test, and the test is aligned to the Core. And the switch to SAT/ACT doesn't count, because they are Core-aligned as well.
They have, at the very least, added a full curriculum to the Core, making it more rigid and one-size-fits-all-y than the Core itself used to be. So, different-but-worse?
There will be initial parties and whoops of joy. We'll see how long those last. Like all attempts to escape the Core, like Florida's last such attempt, the main focus is PR. It has to be, because much of the hard-right objections to the Core (It will turn our children communist. It's a plot by that brown guy who snuck into the White House.) are bunk, and when people are upset about imaginary threats, you can't fix the threats-- you can only try to psyche the people into thinking you've killed the yeti, somehow. Unfortunately, as with Florida's previous attempt, that doesn't do anything about the actual problems you face with Common Core, and if you're not careful, people actually figure it out. So time will tell if the PR initiative sticks.
Stay tuned for more Florida adventures.
Ten Selling Points
I haven't ploughed through the entire many-paged actual standards yet. I will. I promise. But for the moment, let's just peruse the state's announcement trumpeting the major Points Of Awesometude, because they are plenty to digest, and they help give an overall impression (spoiler alert:.the impression is that Florida wants to go back several decades in time). There are two Top Ten lists (one for ELA and one for math), but I'm going to stick to the ELA list. Here are the Top Ten reasons that the new ELA standards are BEST. (Get it? Get used to it, because apparently the plan is to milk that BEST thing until all the swampland in Florida is developed.)
2) Skills for Lifelong Learning. This is exceptionally vague. Create great thinkers, communicator and researches. Bolder, brighter future! A booklist. "Skills," it should be noted, is a Common Core buzzword. And foundations for struggling readers. We'll get back to that.
3) Embedded civics. Florida is going to lead the nation in establishing civics literacy, including a civics reading list of foundational documents, with the Constitution introduced in 5th grade. The program will include civic knowledge, historical context, vocabulary, reasoning and debate-- the whole thing will "result in a complete understanding of American history," which, if rue, would put Florida's students ahead of every single adult in the country.
4) Content-rich. With an emphasis on classic literature (I am really waiting for a moment when I am rested and ready to peruse that list, because folks who's lives are built around literature can't decide what the necessary classics are, so when politicians strep in to settle the argument-- well, there's juts no way that can not end badly). The Common Core, they remind us, didn't focus on content, and that was/is indeed a problem, but it also didn't include ominous sentences like this one:
The inclusion of literary content enables students to learn and understand the full concept of cause and effect, the progression of a story, character development, heritage and much more.
Heritage? Uh-oh.
5) The Art of Reason and Debate. Rhetoric will be introduced in 6th grade. "This is because it teaches students the art and science of writing," says the promotional material, and I am here to tell you that the "science of writing" is not a thing. Even if you go looking for people purportng to write about it, they are really talking about reading. There is no science of writing.
6) Clear and concise language. These standards are easy to follow and understand, says the promo. The Core was wordy, detailed, and sometimes shoved multiple standards into one standard. Florida's not going to do that. They won't be confusing at all.
7) Cursive writing. Students need it to read the Declaration in its original form. It stimulates the bain in special ways. Fine motor skills. Increased retention. As a side note, this example shows hat BEST calls "benchmark clarifications" which appear to be the standards expressed as specific performance objectives. "Students will..."
8) Foundations for literacy. Florid will enforce by-God phonics. Also reading grade-level texts (including reading them aloud, apparently). And in keeping with the clear and concise language goal, "analyze the impact of various poetic forms on meaning and style," because the science of writing tells us that when you get really concise you might also end up being really vague. And there's a list of works to go with each standard and its benchmarks. What are the odds that BEST will stick with the Common Core philosophy that there's only one correct way to read each work? Also, what are the odds that Florida will scrap its I-can't-type-the-word-stupid-enough third grade reading retention rule?
9) Elevating he progression of English Language Arts expectations. They were shooting for both vertical and horizontal alignments, and there is a "clear progression from one year to the next." Plus more consistency within levels. I don't know what the sample standards are supposed to prove, but as samples, they do reveal more vagueness problems. Here's standard ELA.K12.EE.6.1--"Use appropriate voice and tone when speaking or writing." Yeah, that's helpful.
10) Integrated resources and clarifications. Each standard comes with benchmarks and explanations and texts that are for use with that standard.
Bonus-- We've also got Five Big Wins when it comes to testing. Let's check those out:
1) Reducing the actual time students and teachers spend on state tests. I'm betting this is simply not true. The major time suck in testing is not the test, but the test prep. If you want to reduce the time spent on testing, you have to reduce the high stakes.
2) Reducing unnecessary, duplicative testing. Unnecessary according to whom? Do you really think there are tests being given and the people who decided to give them were thinking, "Well, this is unnecessary, but what the hell..."?
3) Replacing state tests with SAT or ACT. This is a dumb idea. First, that's not what those tests are designed for, and second, there's a mountain of research showing they aren't even good at their purported purpose-- GPA is still a better predictor of college success. But if I were the cynical type, I might think that forcing schools to have all their students--including the non-college bound ones-- take the SAT or ACT would be a good way to get more public schools to "fail."
4) Better aligning state tests, via SAT and ACT, to college readiness. Nope. See above research about how SAT and ACT are poor predictors of college readiness.
5) Everyone has to take the Florida Civics Literacy Test.
Two Major Takeaways
First, you remember when Common Core apologists kept sputtering, "It's not a curriculum-- it's just a set of standards." I don't anticipate any such argument in Florida, because BEST is pretty clearly most of a curriculum, complete with scope and sequence, a list of performance objectives, and a list of approved texts. All that seems missing is a specific date on which each standard is supposed to be covered. I'm not a huge fan of centralized standards, and I am even less a fan of centralized curriculum.
Second, from cursive writing to phonics to bringing back The Classics, this looks a lot like the product of a lot of grandparents who spent a lot of time getting sidetracked by complaints about all the things that Kids These Days don't do. I suspect that only the Florida setting saved students from a requirement that they walk to school in the snow uphill both ways. This smells like a document that is all about going back to the imaginary age of great schooling, aka "How school worked when I was a pup, you young whippersnapper. Now get off my lawn." Key word: imaginary.
Maybe the math stuff is genius, and maybe the standards themselves will turn out to be awesome (and not totally filled with bad Common Core paraphrasing), but it's hard to trust a state that is so openly intent on destroying its own public education system. I swear, I'll look at the standards at some point, but I'm not optimistic.
And most importantly, did they actually kill the Core?
Well, the proof--some of it-- is in the actual standards, but--
The short answer is if they aren't going to completely rewrite every accountability test they use, then No, they didn't get rid of the Core. They will keep teaching to the test, and the test is aligned to the Core. And the switch to SAT/ACT doesn't count, because they are Core-aligned as well.
They have, at the very least, added a full curriculum to the Core, making it more rigid and one-size-fits-all-y than the Core itself used to be. So, different-but-worse?
There will be initial parties and whoops of joy. We'll see how long those last. Like all attempts to escape the Core, like Florida's last such attempt, the main focus is PR. It has to be, because much of the hard-right objections to the Core (It will turn our children communist. It's a plot by that brown guy who snuck into the White House.) are bunk, and when people are upset about imaginary threats, you can't fix the threats-- you can only try to psyche the people into thinking you've killed the yeti, somehow. Unfortunately, as with Florida's previous attempt, that doesn't do anything about the actual problems you face with Common Core, and if you're not careful, people actually figure it out. So time will tell if the PR initiative sticks.
Stay tuned for more Florida adventures.
NC: Can Fed Money Get Charters To Accept Poor Students
North Carolina's charter schools have some issues, such as draining resources from public schools and increasing segregation in a state that has not exactly set a high standard for de-segregation. White flight segregation academies are turning into charters, and they're also looking at district secession (white flight via redrawing school district boundaries).
But the federal government has awarded North Carolina a pile of money for-- well, here it's called "a statewide initiative to help meet the needs of educationally disadvantaged students" and here it's called "federal funding to help increase enrollment in charter schools, particularly for children from low-income groups" and here it's called "$36.6 million to increase the number of 'educationally disadvantaged students' attending charter schools."
You get the idea. Federal money is supposed to get charters to accept more poor students.
This is.... odd. If the whole point of charters is to give poor students the sort of choices that are available to wealthier families, why is it that North Carolina charters are apparently not providing those choices? "Economically disadvantaged students" (I love some good bureaucratic euphemisms) are the majority of the NC pub lic school population. In charters, they are 18.8%. It makes one wonder what the barrier might be, and why federal money is needed to breach it.
NC set up a whole program called ACCESS to award grants from the grant to "increase the EDS population in charter schools," and the applicants for the grant are required to show a variety of strategies, including a marketing and recruitment plan, a school climate plan, a transportation plan, and SMART goals including how the school will eliminate barriers. There's also a requirement for a weighted lottery, which would seem to indicate that poor families make a disproportionate portion of applicants in the first place.
This doesn't really address the mystery here. Did NC charters just end up with barriers to poor students because of some natural, organic process, or did they those barriers up themselves? Is the ACCESS grant supposed to help breach that barriers that charters found themselves surrounded by for no apparent reason, or are the grants a bribe to induce charters to take down the barriers that they created on their own. Are they suggesting that poor students are more expensive to educate and their business plans depend on not spending that sort of money on their charter students? In which case, is North Carolina just saying that all that noise about providing choices for all students is actually baloney? Or as a school board member put it:
It concerns me why there would be additional taxpayer money to remind charter schools to do the thing that they were originally intended for: to serve economically disadvantaged students.
ACCESS is not exactly setting North Carolina on fire. In the first round, a dozen charters applied fro grants. There are almost 200 charter schools in the state. This year the number is up. The charters are saying that they want to be diverse; they are not explaining why they can't just, you know, do it without grant money.
North Carolina has gotten a lot of things wrong when it comes to education, and this seems like more of that. However, there is one other wrinkle here-- the federal grant we've been talking about is from the federal charter grant program that has been zeroed out of existence and folded into a grant with twenty-some other education programs in the Trump budget. If Congress doesn't reverse that, ACCESS may find itself strapped for cash and Norh Carolina charters might have to start serving poor families without any extra federal grants to reward them.
You get the idea. Federal money is supposed to get charters to accept more poor students.
This is.... odd. If the whole point of charters is to give poor students the sort of choices that are available to wealthier families, why is it that North Carolina charters are apparently not providing those choices? "Economically disadvantaged students" (I love some good bureaucratic euphemisms) are the majority of the NC pub lic school population. In charters, they are 18.8%. It makes one wonder what the barrier might be, and why federal money is needed to breach it.
NC set up a whole program called ACCESS to award grants from the grant to "increase the EDS population in charter schools," and the applicants for the grant are required to show a variety of strategies, including a marketing and recruitment plan, a school climate plan, a transportation plan, and SMART goals including how the school will eliminate barriers. There's also a requirement for a weighted lottery, which would seem to indicate that poor families make a disproportionate portion of applicants in the first place.
This doesn't really address the mystery here. Did NC charters just end up with barriers to poor students because of some natural, organic process, or did they those barriers up themselves? Is the ACCESS grant supposed to help breach that barriers that charters found themselves surrounded by for no apparent reason, or are the grants a bribe to induce charters to take down the barriers that they created on their own. Are they suggesting that poor students are more expensive to educate and their business plans depend on not spending that sort of money on their charter students? In which case, is North Carolina just saying that all that noise about providing choices for all students is actually baloney? Or as a school board member put it:
It concerns me why there would be additional taxpayer money to remind charter schools to do the thing that they were originally intended for: to serve economically disadvantaged students.
ACCESS is not exactly setting North Carolina on fire. In the first round, a dozen charters applied fro grants. There are almost 200 charter schools in the state. This year the number is up. The charters are saying that they want to be diverse; they are not explaining why they can't just, you know, do it without grant money.
North Carolina has gotten a lot of things wrong when it comes to education, and this seems like more of that. However, there is one other wrinkle here-- the federal grant we've been talking about is from the federal charter grant program that has been zeroed out of existence and folded into a grant with twenty-some other education programs in the Trump budget. If Congress doesn't reverse that, ACCESS may find itself strapped for cash and Norh Carolina charters might have to start serving poor families without any extra federal grants to reward them.
Tuesday, February 11, 2020
Trump and DeVos Abandon Charter Schools
Surprise! Never mind Sanders or Warren. Just like that, the charter supporters have found themselves abandoned by the Trump administration.
The Trump budget axes federal support for charter schools, rolling the federal money for charters into a big fat all-purpose block grant, a big chunk of money retrieved from various programs that have been deemed redundant and ineffective. States will now get a big pile of money that they can spend on a loosely defined bunch of Education Stuff.
If they want to spend some of that on charter schools, they can. But by combining the various program moneys, the feds have now put charters in the position of having to compete on the state level against other programs for things like education for homeless children (you can see more of the details here in the department's budget summary).
Charter folks are not happy. National Review gave Nina Rees (President and CEO of the National Alliance for Public [sic] Charter Schools) a bunch of space to count all the ways she doesn't like this, from leaving families with fewer options to it would give too much power to folks who are against charters to, well, this fairly honest statement from Twitter
Pity those poor entrepreneurs.
This doesn't come out of nowhere. DeVos has always been pretty clear that she's interested in vouchers, and sees charter schools as mostly a way to crack open the public school system. You may recall that some charter advocates were pretty unhappy about the DeVos nomination, and that DeVos made some efforts early on to deliberately build bridges to the charter school world.
But DeVos's heart is with Education Freedom, her big fat tax dodge voucher program. And a block grant approach certainly throws power over many of these programs back to the states, another DeVosian goal. (And yes, it's technically Trump's budget, but if he can explain any portion of the education slice, I'll eat the keyboard on which I'm typing this).
The politics of this move are not entirely clear-- DeVos and Trump just made a lot of people angry who had gotten used to being Trump supporters, and Trump's budgets always include lots of big plays that the Congress then completely overules (like the annual Special Olympics cut). So the end result may be pissing off a bunch of allies for nothing.
But in the meantime, DeVos has shown her hand. One of the ironies here is that charter schools, by repeatedly trying to claim the undeserved mantle of "public" schools, may have put themselves on the wrong side of a secretary of education who thinks public schools suck. But if this budget move actually sticks, charter school advocates will find themselves battling on several flanks and public school advocates will have a new opportunity to curb charter growth. No matter what, charter fans now can see who their true friends aren't.
The Trump budget axes federal support for charter schools, rolling the federal money for charters into a big fat all-purpose block grant, a big chunk of money retrieved from various programs that have been deemed redundant and ineffective. States will now get a big pile of money that they can spend on a loosely defined bunch of Education Stuff.
Charter folks are not happy. National Review gave Nina Rees (President and CEO of the National Alliance for Public [sic] Charter Schools) a bunch of space to count all the ways she doesn't like this, from leaving families with fewer options to it would give too much power to folks who are against charters to, well, this fairly honest statement from Twitter
So “finding the courage to do something different” means keeping or increasing funding for programs like Indian Ed and Voc Ed but throwing away a program that helps entrepreneurs access funds to open innovative new public schools @BetsyDeVosED? https://t.co/xw4gTujnfY— Nina Rees (@Ninacharters) February 11, 2020
Pity those poor entrepreneurs.
This doesn't come out of nowhere. DeVos has always been pretty clear that she's interested in vouchers, and sees charter schools as mostly a way to crack open the public school system. You may recall that some charter advocates were pretty unhappy about the DeVos nomination, and that DeVos made some efforts early on to deliberately build bridges to the charter school world.
But DeVos's heart is with Education Freedom, her big fat tax dodge voucher program. And a block grant approach certainly throws power over many of these programs back to the states, another DeVosian goal. (And yes, it's technically Trump's budget, but if he can explain any portion of the education slice, I'll eat the keyboard on which I'm typing this).
The politics of this move are not entirely clear-- DeVos and Trump just made a lot of people angry who had gotten used to being Trump supporters, and Trump's budgets always include lots of big plays that the Congress then completely overules (like the annual Special Olympics cut). So the end result may be pissing off a bunch of allies for nothing.
But in the meantime, DeVos has shown her hand. One of the ironies here is that charter schools, by repeatedly trying to claim the undeserved mantle of "public" schools, may have put themselves on the wrong side of a secretary of education who thinks public schools suck. But if this budget move actually sticks, charter school advocates will find themselves battling on several flanks and public school advocates will have a new opportunity to curb charter growth. No matter what, charter fans now can see who their true friends aren't.
Monday, February 10, 2020
Looks Like 2020 Is Going To Be A Big Betsy DeVos Year
Betsy DeVos may not be the most effective or qualified secretary of education ever, but she sure has managed to become the most famous (go ahead-- name five other education secretaries). And that fame is so very two-edged that she appears poised to be a major fixture on all sides of this year's election cycle.
On the one hand, she has been tapped to be a card-carrying Trump surrogate, and is apparently a big hit with the base. She's a perfect spokeswoman for the axis of free market Jesus, with a strong libertarian "let's burn down the government" streak, and she is not one to wander off message. And she has always been properly deferential, almost never plugging policies like her beloved Education Freedom tax dodge scholarship program without giving the President credit for being a huge supporter, even if he has no idea what the heck she's talking about. Maybe it's that she's a good party operative, or maybe she's naturally loyal, or maybe it's the knowledge that her family could buy and sell Trump a half-dozen times, so why not humor him? Hard to know.
She has one other secret weapon as an administration proxy-- she hasn't really accomplished all that much. Yes, she's pulled the department away from any support of civil rights, and yes, she's totally botched the college student loan forgiveness operation, yes, she's left her department fully understaffed, but it's not like she has redirected the department to funnel money into Trump properties or sold off valuable land or tried to personally profit off her office, like some other fine examples of the cabinet. It's not even like she's had to reverse herself of deeply held principles, like so many GOP members have had to do. In terms of actual solid accomplishments, there's just not much you can point at and either love or hate.
Not that it has stopped anybody. DeVos seems pretty easy for folks to hate. Even as she is being anointed as a Trump campaign surrogate, the Democrats have made her a surrogate of another kind.
The candidate field is filled with people who promise to fire her. We heard some of that in Pittsburgh in December in front of an education-focused audience, and it seems to have gathered steam. It's an odd promise to make--seeing a new President of the opposing party fill a cabinet with all new people is not exactly unusual. But some of the candidates really relish saying it, and audiences seem to relish hearing it. The polls suggest that it's the Democrats and not the Trumpists who have correctly identified the best campaign use of DeVos.
At the same time, my entirely unscientific survey suggests a slight uptick in "Betsy DeVos suck" articles, like this Teen Vogue op-ed from the AFT. Honestly, it's kind of weak sauce, but it's one of many reminders that DeVos exists, that she's part of this administration, and that she pisses you off.
It's a curious effect. Part of it is certainly her use of the bully pulpit as a pulpit from which to bully the very public education system that is theoretically in her stewardship. And she is certainly emblematic of the modern ed reform movement, which we might well call the Age of Amateurs, in which people who don't know what the hell they're talking about have found a dozen different ways to gather power over the education system in this country.
There's the smirk, the self-satisfied simper of a woman who is above All This, what people of faith sometimes call being in this world, but not of it. And while some folks have written off as dumb, she's not, and others of us get that she doesn't feel she owes anyone a straight answer. And it all comes wrapped in the "thinks she better than you" air of unearned wealth. It may not be fair, but it's easy to imagine that DeVos has a security detail to protect her from commoner cooties.
I don't hate DeVos. I think she's supremely unqualified for the job, her world view wildly wrong, and she remains a threat to healthy public education in this country, but she's my age, I've been around religious conservatives my whole life, and while I don't know her, I feel like I recognize her. I get why she inspires such rage-iness (and, to a lesser extent, why she inspires admiration in some quarters). I do question why Mike Pence, who is cut from pretty much the exact same cloth, but who has actually managed to cause more real harm, doesn't inspire the same sort of rage. Maybe it's because he hasn't repeatedly told millions of public school teachers they suck, or maybe it's the whole penis thing, again. I'll be happy to see her go away, though I think she has as much ability to do real damage as a private way-rich citizen as she does in her current job. Maybe more. But if she quit today, it certainly wouldn't affect my vote in November.
Whatever the case, it looks like we're in for nine more months of DeVos serving as both a punching bag and a cheerleader for Beloved Leader. What a strange new place we've come to, where a secretary of education is a big feature of a Presidential election.
She has one other secret weapon as an administration proxy-- she hasn't really accomplished all that much. Yes, she's pulled the department away from any support of civil rights, and yes, she's totally botched the college student loan forgiveness operation, yes, she's left her department fully understaffed, but it's not like she has redirected the department to funnel money into Trump properties or sold off valuable land or tried to personally profit off her office, like some other fine examples of the cabinet. It's not even like she's had to reverse herself of deeply held principles, like so many GOP members have had to do. In terms of actual solid accomplishments, there's just not much you can point at and either love or hate.
Not that it has stopped anybody. DeVos seems pretty easy for folks to hate. Even as she is being anointed as a Trump campaign surrogate, the Democrats have made her a surrogate of another kind.
The candidate field is filled with people who promise to fire her. We heard some of that in Pittsburgh in December in front of an education-focused audience, and it seems to have gathered steam. It's an odd promise to make--seeing a new President of the opposing party fill a cabinet with all new people is not exactly unusual. But some of the candidates really relish saying it, and audiences seem to relish hearing it. The polls suggest that it's the Democrats and not the Trumpists who have correctly identified the best campaign use of DeVos.
At the same time, my entirely unscientific survey suggests a slight uptick in "Betsy DeVos suck" articles, like this Teen Vogue op-ed from the AFT. Honestly, it's kind of weak sauce, but it's one of many reminders that DeVos exists, that she's part of this administration, and that she pisses you off.
It's a curious effect. Part of it is certainly her use of the bully pulpit as a pulpit from which to bully the very public education system that is theoretically in her stewardship. And she is certainly emblematic of the modern ed reform movement, which we might well call the Age of Amateurs, in which people who don't know what the hell they're talking about have found a dozen different ways to gather power over the education system in this country.
There's the smirk, the self-satisfied simper of a woman who is above All This, what people of faith sometimes call being in this world, but not of it. And while some folks have written off as dumb, she's not, and others of us get that she doesn't feel she owes anyone a straight answer. And it all comes wrapped in the "thinks she better than you" air of unearned wealth. It may not be fair, but it's easy to imagine that DeVos has a security detail to protect her from commoner cooties.
I don't hate DeVos. I think she's supremely unqualified for the job, her world view wildly wrong, and she remains a threat to healthy public education in this country, but she's my age, I've been around religious conservatives my whole life, and while I don't know her, I feel like I recognize her. I get why she inspires such rage-iness (and, to a lesser extent, why she inspires admiration in some quarters). I do question why Mike Pence, who is cut from pretty much the exact same cloth, but who has actually managed to cause more real harm, doesn't inspire the same sort of rage. Maybe it's because he hasn't repeatedly told millions of public school teachers they suck, or maybe it's the whole penis thing, again. I'll be happy to see her go away, though I think she has as much ability to do real damage as a private way-rich citizen as she does in her current job. Maybe more. But if she quit today, it certainly wouldn't affect my vote in November.
Whatever the case, it looks like we're in for nine more months of DeVos serving as both a punching bag and a cheerleader for Beloved Leader. What a strange new place we've come to, where a secretary of education is a big feature of a Presidential election.
Sunday, February 9, 2020
ICYMI: Ice Edition (2/9)
It's the weekend of our b ig ice carving festival here in town, and the weather is perfect. There are cool sculptures to see, and it's the perfect festival for people who don't like crowds because nobody wants to stand around in the cold. And the Board of Directors has a lovely time.
In the meantime, here is some reading from the week.
Nashville Art School Will Purge Non-Christian Faculty
A religious university took over the school; now to root out all those non-believers.
Agassi scores again with $61 million charter school sale
A reminder that for some folks, the charter biz is just about making in real estate. Just like flipping houses, only more profitable.
He stood up against a school takeover. The Democratic Party threw him out.
From Rochester, a reminder that plenty of Dems are not the friends of public education.
Top-down teacher evaluation models are flawed.
I don't know that I agree with all of this, but I'll pass it along for this one line: "most of the time teachers are on their own. Most of the improvements they generate emanate from their own self-evaluation. By miles."
Learning "useless" things in school is (usually) not useless.
Learning Scientists with a great explanation of why not everything in school is about some obviously utilitarian purpose.
Dress codes are the new "whites only" signs.
Andre Perry at Hechinger Report responds to the latest round of racist-as-hell moves by schools to enforce dress and hair codes.
Bradenton school refuses "homosexual" parents
News continues to roll in from Florida, where the legislature is committed to spending pulic tax dollars on schools that discriminate against LGBTQ folks.
Schools trial body cameras
In England, another creepy leap forward for the surveillance state-- body cameras on teachers. Great. Just great.
Dallas and Tulsa: A Tale of two blockchains
Wrench in the Gears travels to Dallas and Tulsa and lays out some more bout the world of human capital investment. With many useful charts.
A Room Is Enough
One of those great moments in teaching, courtesy of the JLV.
In the meantime, here is some reading from the week.
Nashville Art School Will Purge Non-Christian Faculty
A religious university took over the school; now to root out all those non-believers.
Agassi scores again with $61 million charter school sale
A reminder that for some folks, the charter biz is just about making in real estate. Just like flipping houses, only more profitable.
He stood up against a school takeover. The Democratic Party threw him out.
From Rochester, a reminder that plenty of Dems are not the friends of public education.
Top-down teacher evaluation models are flawed.
I don't know that I agree with all of this, but I'll pass it along for this one line: "most of the time teachers are on their own. Most of the improvements they generate emanate from their own self-evaluation. By miles."
Learning "useless" things in school is (usually) not useless.
Learning Scientists with a great explanation of why not everything in school is about some obviously utilitarian purpose.
Dress codes are the new "whites only" signs.
Andre Perry at Hechinger Report responds to the latest round of racist-as-hell moves by schools to enforce dress and hair codes.
Bradenton school refuses "homosexual" parents
News continues to roll in from Florida, where the legislature is committed to spending pulic tax dollars on schools that discriminate against LGBTQ folks.
Schools trial body cameras
In England, another creepy leap forward for the surveillance state-- body cameras on teachers. Great. Just great.
Dallas and Tulsa: A Tale of two blockchains
Wrench in the Gears travels to Dallas and Tulsa and lays out some more bout the world of human capital investment. With many useful charts.
A Room Is Enough
One of those great moments in teaching, courtesy of the JLV.
Saturday, February 8, 2020
What Charter Advocates Want From States
What exactly would charter proponents like to see in state charter regulations? As it turns out, we don't have to guess, because the National Alliance of Public [sic] Charter Schools regularly publishes a ranking of the states based on the "strength" of their charter laws. This year's edition is the 11th, and it's available right now! Woot!
If you are concerned about the rankings, I can give you some highlights. Indiana, Colorado and Washington come in at spots 1, 2 and 3. Florida (State motto: "Making sure there is no public school system for Certain People's grandchildren") is down at 7. Maryland, Kansas, and Alaska are at the bottom. Five states are not on the list at all--no charter laws. There are some other surprises, like Ohio at a measly 23.
You can check to see where your state ranks, but for our purposes, the interesting part here is the actual criteria used-- the list, in effect, of the qualities of the NAPCS dream state. We launch the good stuff right after an intro from CEO Nina Rees and Todd Ziebarth, Senior VP of State Advocacy and Support. I have got to get some fancier titles going here at the Curmudgucation Institute.
There are 21 "essential" components for "strong" charter law. This is what charter advocates want your state to put in place. I'm going to run down the list, looking at why the want these items and why they are bad ideas.
1) No caps on charter growth. The charter industry would like the freedom to go after as much market share as possible. But that's a recipe for chaos and instability, which leads to a lot of waste, even if it avoids the kind of flat-out fraud that the industry often seems to attract.
2) A variety of charter schools allowed. "Including new startups and public school conversions." So not "variety" as in "many kinds of pedagogical approaches" as "many ways to get the business launched and structured."
3) Non-District Authorizers. Charter fans dislike the set-up that requires them to get permission to operate from actual public school systems-- the people whose blood they're going to be siphoning off, and who also know the difference between an effective school and a con job. The school district authorizer set-up provides maximum protection for the taxpayers whose money is on the line, and it has driven charter advocates to spend buttloads of money to get friendly faces on those boards. Authorizers who aren't connected to local taxpayers and voters are better for charters because, well, spending someone elses's money is always easier. This is why mayoral control, or college/university authorizers, or even some kind of state board with friendly political appointees is preferred.
4) Authorizer and Overall Accountability System Required. The requirement here is that the authorizer has to want to authorize, thereby ruling out those hostile local school boards. It also bars folks who do the opposite of the charter-friendly-face-on-the-school-board trick and try to get themselves on an authorizer board to slow down charter growth. It's okay for charter fans to try to pull off an inside job, but completely not okay for public school supporters to do the same. There's also a bit here about a state oversight group that makes sure authorizers are using "objective data" so that they don't have to put up with any "we're denying your charter because it's a terrible idea' nonsense.
5) Adequate authorizer funding. This is actually not a bad idea. If you don't fund the authorizers well, they will depend on their authorized charters for income, which is bad news. Of course, it also means more taxpayer dollars feeding this parallel school system.
6) Transparent Charter School Application, Review and Decision-making Process. If there's anything charters understand, it's the power of transparency. You can't contest, complain about, or try to reverse what you can't see. That explains both why charters resist any transparency about their own operations, but demand it for the processes that decide their own fate. I actually think transparency here is a good thing, but what's good for the goose is good for the charter management organization.
7) Performance-based Charter School Contracts Required. Charters would prefer to be judged on their student test scores-- and not much of anything else. Lay out in writing what academic and operational performance expectations they must meet, and that's it. This is one of the true differences between charter schools and public schools, where everyone is held accountable for a wide variety of things, some of which are never announced ahead of the moment that someone yells at you for not meeting them. This contract approach protects charters from any number of possible screw-ups and hard-to-quantify qualities like school culture ("You may think our school culture is oppressive and abusive, but there's nothing about that in our performance contract, so hush"). It is another of the ways that the business-minded folks of the charter world try to force hard-edged quantifiable results on the fuzzy world of education. I understand the impulse, but that's not how school works.
8) Comprehensive charter school monitoring and data collection processes. More data fetishizing, designed to collect cold hard answers to the contracted items in 7 (and to exclude any other concerns that folks want to bring up).
9) Clear processes for renewal, nonrenewal, and revocation decisions. Again, the power of transparency is respected again. Just for me, however, and not for thee.
10) Transparency regarding educational services providers. I have no beef here. Every cent the charter spends should be spent in broad, transparent daylight.
11) Fiscally and legally autonomous schools with independent charter school boards. This is ther essence of the modern corporate charter school-- the dream is that it is a business, run like a business, and just as autonomous as a business and answerable to nobody except, sort of, its "customers" which charter fans prefer to define as "parents." Except that the "customers" of education are all the human beings in the country.
12) Clear student enrollment and lottery procedure. "which must be followed by all charter schools."
13) Automatic exemptions from many state and district laws and regulations. Well, "except for those covering health, safety, civil rights, student accountability, employee criminal history checks, open meetings, freedom of information requirements, and generally accepted accounting principles." That leaves quite a few, but if the really important one hasn't hit you yet, let's move on to
14) Automatic collective bargaining exemption. The dream is little right to work schools.
15) Multi-school charter contracts and/or boards allowed. In other words, charter operators should be free. This allows investors and owners to make some serious money, while giving students the chance to attend schools run by people on the other side of the state. What fun is setting up a charter school operation if you can't scale up to a mini-empire?
16) Extracurricular and Interschool activities eligibility and access. Ah, yes. The old free rider clause, giving charters the freedom to avoid costly "extras" that families value so much by simply sending students to use the public school program. Worried that your kid won't be able to get that sportsball scholarship if he goes to No Sport Charter? Don't worry-- the public school still has to take him. Meanwhile, the charter gets to offer less without having to pay the price of being less competitive in the marketplace.
17) Clear identification of special ed responsibilities. Sigh. This is probably a good idea, because gaming special ed has been a popular way for charters to make a bunch of money. So maybe extra clarity would help. Or maybe it would just make it easier for charters to game the system because they can see more clearly where the loopholes are.
18) Equitable operational funding and equal access to all state and federal categorical funding. Charters want full access the various rivers of state and federal tax dollars flowing through the land of education. And they want it in a "timely" manner. Gee, remember the days when c harters bragged that one of their great strengths was that they didn't need all that money like public schools did?
19) Equitable access to capital funding and facilities. For many charter operators, the charter industry is all about dealing in real estate. They would like some public tax dollars, either directly or indirectly, to help them with that. Help them buy or build a facility with public money, or hand them a building that public money built-- either will be fine.
20) Access to relevant employee retirement systems. With the option to participate just like a public school. This seems like a minimal protection of the interests of the charter staff, and "work here and get no pension" seems like a tough recruiting pitch for charters, though I'd be curious to know how this works out given the high rate of churn and burn in charter staff.
21) Full-time virtual charter school provisions. So the charter dream state includes cyber charters? This seems like a point they might want to rethink, given that even charter fans acknowledge that cybers are pretty bad at what they do.
So there it is-- that's what charter folks want in a state. Taken together, strikes me as an attempt to create a separate reality where they can operate a business free from the vagaries and fuzziness tyhat is naturally part of the attempt to educate young humans. Yes, there's the emphasis on making it easier for them to start charter businesses and harder for other people to hold them accountable and even interfere with their businessy pursuits.
It's not that I think doing things in a businessy way is inherently wrong or bad (though there is a whole conversation to be had about the way that education reformsters and the charter industry have generally chosen Taylorism over Deming). But the business way of doing things is appropriate for businesses, and public education is not a business, and no amount of "strong charter lawmaking" can turn it into one. It makes no more sense than if I walked into Ford and said , "I'm going to take over this business, but I think I'd like it better if we ran it like a school instead of like a company."
At any rate, you have the list now. We know that charters can survive without all twenty-one components in place, but when you hear folks in your state talking about strengthening charter law, this is the list they have in mind. Keep your eyes peeled.
If you are concerned about the rankings, I can give you some highlights. Indiana, Colorado and Washington come in at spots 1, 2 and 3. Florida (State motto: "Making sure there is no public school system for Certain People's grandchildren") is down at 7. Maryland, Kansas, and Alaska are at the bottom. Five states are not on the list at all--no charter laws. There are some other surprises, like Ohio at a measly 23.
There are 21 "essential" components for "strong" charter law. This is what charter advocates want your state to put in place. I'm going to run down the list, looking at why the want these items and why they are bad ideas.
1) No caps on charter growth. The charter industry would like the freedom to go after as much market share as possible. But that's a recipe for chaos and instability, which leads to a lot of waste, even if it avoids the kind of flat-out fraud that the industry often seems to attract.
2) A variety of charter schools allowed. "Including new startups and public school conversions." So not "variety" as in "many kinds of pedagogical approaches" as "many ways to get the business launched and structured."
3) Non-District Authorizers. Charter fans dislike the set-up that requires them to get permission to operate from actual public school systems-- the people whose blood they're going to be siphoning off, and who also know the difference between an effective school and a con job. The school district authorizer set-up provides maximum protection for the taxpayers whose money is on the line, and it has driven charter advocates to spend buttloads of money to get friendly faces on those boards. Authorizers who aren't connected to local taxpayers and voters are better for charters because, well, spending someone elses's money is always easier. This is why mayoral control, or college/university authorizers, or even some kind of state board with friendly political appointees is preferred.
4) Authorizer and Overall Accountability System Required. The requirement here is that the authorizer has to want to authorize, thereby ruling out those hostile local school boards. It also bars folks who do the opposite of the charter-friendly-face-on-the-school-board trick and try to get themselves on an authorizer board to slow down charter growth. It's okay for charter fans to try to pull off an inside job, but completely not okay for public school supporters to do the same. There's also a bit here about a state oversight group that makes sure authorizers are using "objective data" so that they don't have to put up with any "we're denying your charter because it's a terrible idea' nonsense.
5) Adequate authorizer funding. This is actually not a bad idea. If you don't fund the authorizers well, they will depend on their authorized charters for income, which is bad news. Of course, it also means more taxpayer dollars feeding this parallel school system.
6) Transparent Charter School Application, Review and Decision-making Process. If there's anything charters understand, it's the power of transparency. You can't contest, complain about, or try to reverse what you can't see. That explains both why charters resist any transparency about their own operations, but demand it for the processes that decide their own fate. I actually think transparency here is a good thing, but what's good for the goose is good for the charter management organization.
7) Performance-based Charter School Contracts Required. Charters would prefer to be judged on their student test scores-- and not much of anything else. Lay out in writing what academic and operational performance expectations they must meet, and that's it. This is one of the true differences between charter schools and public schools, where everyone is held accountable for a wide variety of things, some of which are never announced ahead of the moment that someone yells at you for not meeting them. This contract approach protects charters from any number of possible screw-ups and hard-to-quantify qualities like school culture ("You may think our school culture is oppressive and abusive, but there's nothing about that in our performance contract, so hush"). It is another of the ways that the business-minded folks of the charter world try to force hard-edged quantifiable results on the fuzzy world of education. I understand the impulse, but that's not how school works.
8) Comprehensive charter school monitoring and data collection processes. More data fetishizing, designed to collect cold hard answers to the contracted items in 7 (and to exclude any other concerns that folks want to bring up).
9) Clear processes for renewal, nonrenewal, and revocation decisions. Again, the power of transparency is respected again. Just for me, however, and not for thee.
10) Transparency regarding educational services providers. I have no beef here. Every cent the charter spends should be spent in broad, transparent daylight.
11) Fiscally and legally autonomous schools with independent charter school boards. This is ther essence of the modern corporate charter school-- the dream is that it is a business, run like a business, and just as autonomous as a business and answerable to nobody except, sort of, its "customers" which charter fans prefer to define as "parents." Except that the "customers" of education are all the human beings in the country.
12) Clear student enrollment and lottery procedure. "which must be followed by all charter schools."
13) Automatic exemptions from many state and district laws and regulations. Well, "except for those covering health, safety, civil rights, student accountability, employee criminal history checks, open meetings, freedom of information requirements, and generally accepted accounting principles." That leaves quite a few, but if the really important one hasn't hit you yet, let's move on to
14) Automatic collective bargaining exemption. The dream is little right to work schools.
15) Multi-school charter contracts and/or boards allowed. In other words, charter operators should be free. This allows investors and owners to make some serious money, while giving students the chance to attend schools run by people on the other side of the state. What fun is setting up a charter school operation if you can't scale up to a mini-empire?
16) Extracurricular and Interschool activities eligibility and access. Ah, yes. The old free rider clause, giving charters the freedom to avoid costly "extras" that families value so much by simply sending students to use the public school program. Worried that your kid won't be able to get that sportsball scholarship if he goes to No Sport Charter? Don't worry-- the public school still has to take him. Meanwhile, the charter gets to offer less without having to pay the price of being less competitive in the marketplace.
17) Clear identification of special ed responsibilities. Sigh. This is probably a good idea, because gaming special ed has been a popular way for charters to make a bunch of money. So maybe extra clarity would help. Or maybe it would just make it easier for charters to game the system because they can see more clearly where the loopholes are.
18) Equitable operational funding and equal access to all state and federal categorical funding. Charters want full access the various rivers of state and federal tax dollars flowing through the land of education. And they want it in a "timely" manner. Gee, remember the days when c harters bragged that one of their great strengths was that they didn't need all that money like public schools did?
19) Equitable access to capital funding and facilities. For many charter operators, the charter industry is all about dealing in real estate. They would like some public tax dollars, either directly or indirectly, to help them with that. Help them buy or build a facility with public money, or hand them a building that public money built-- either will be fine.
20) Access to relevant employee retirement systems. With the option to participate just like a public school. This seems like a minimal protection of the interests of the charter staff, and "work here and get no pension" seems like a tough recruiting pitch for charters, though I'd be curious to know how this works out given the high rate of churn and burn in charter staff.
21) Full-time virtual charter school provisions. So the charter dream state includes cyber charters? This seems like a point they might want to rethink, given that even charter fans acknowledge that cybers are pretty bad at what they do.
So there it is-- that's what charter folks want in a state. Taken together, strikes me as an attempt to create a separate reality where they can operate a business free from the vagaries and fuzziness tyhat is naturally part of the attempt to educate young humans. Yes, there's the emphasis on making it easier for them to start charter businesses and harder for other people to hold them accountable and even interfere with their businessy pursuits.
It's not that I think doing things in a businessy way is inherently wrong or bad (though there is a whole conversation to be had about the way that education reformsters and the charter industry have generally chosen Taylorism over Deming). But the business way of doing things is appropriate for businesses, and public education is not a business, and no amount of "strong charter lawmaking" can turn it into one. It makes no more sense than if I walked into Ford and said , "I'm going to take over this business, but I think I'd like it better if we ran it like a school instead of like a company."
At any rate, you have the list now. We know that charters can survive without all twenty-one components in place, but when you hear folks in your state talking about strengthening charter law, this is the list they have in mind. Keep your eyes peeled.
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