Well, here we still are, those of us who are fortunate enough to still be here. Let's read some things!
When teaching and parenting collide
I missed this when it landed at Chalkbeat a month ago-- Matt Barnum looks at teachers who have to balance virtual teaching and at-home parenting.
Teachers, parents and principals tell their story
Over at The Answer Sheet on the Washington Post, Carol Burris runs down some of the results of the big Network for Public Education pandemic stay-st-home education survey.
No To Race To The Top: Covid-19
It shouldn't come as a surprise, but Neal McClusky at the libertarian Cato Institute doesn't like the DeVosian competitive grant program (you know-- the one that looks eerily like Arne Duncan could have designed it) any more than I do, even if it is for different reason.
Coronavirus capitalism is coming for public schools
At The Progressive, Dora Taylor takes a look at the vultures circling overhead right now.
Exam Anxiety
The Verge looks at the increasingly super-creepy world of online exam proctoring. Because there's always one more way to advance the surveillance state.
Teaching US History in Michigan
At the blog A Walk Back in Time, a reflection on the crazy-pants demonstration in Michigan this week.
Betsy DeVos sued over garnished wages
DeVos once agains is dragging her feet on a policy that lets Those People get away with owing money, and so, onc again, she is being taken to court.
Betsy DeVos is the real civics failure
DeVos had some thoughts about the low NAEP history scores; Negin Owliaei is the Inside Sources with some thoughts about DeVos.
Where Are The Teachers?
John Ewing at Forbes.com raising the issue of how folks in authority fai to actually listen to teachers. "It’s commonplace to say, “We don’t respect teachers,” but we seldom consider what that means. Respect isn’t merely the way you treat people—respect is the way you value their expertise. "
The Wild West of Unregulated Unacountable Virtual Voucher Schools
The big push is on for virtual schooling. Why is that a lousy idea? Let Accountabaloney count te ways.
It's Time To Fix Standardized Testing
Testing expert Akil Bello has a blog, and right now, you can read about some ideas for fixing standardized testing. It's a little wonky, but therefor solid on details.
98 Success Academy Students Accepted to College
The always-charter-loving NY Post made a big fuss this week about SA getting 100% of its graduating class accepted to college. Gary Rubinstein would like to provide a little context-- like noting that that doesn't count all the students who left SA before this swell milestone. And he has the numbers, going back to kindergarten.
And this... Since this mess started, DeVos has repeatedly asserted that many schools have just quit. Here's another view, courtesy of Bald Piano Guy
Sunday, May 3, 2020
Saturday, May 2, 2020
Another Voucher Angle: Child Safety Accounts
It's one of the less common buttons pushed by reformsters intent on pushing school choice, and it might be one of the most backwards pitches out there.
Child Safety Accounts seem to be particular baby of the Heartland Institute, a thinky tank that leans way right. Their mission: "to discover, develop and promote free-market solutions to social and economic problems." They are big advocates for the "What global warming?" school, and believe that the left is using the coronavirus lockdown is "a dress rehearsal for the Green New Deal." These are the guys who put up a billboard linking global warming belief to the Unabomber. They no longer list their sponsors, but Media Bias Fact Check says that Exon-Mobil, Charles Koch, and the Lynde and Harry Bradley Foundation were among the money sources in the past.
So, zero surprise that their Center for Education Opportunities advocates heavily for choice in many forms. What might make them stand out is their rather loose interest in facts. Take this scare-sentence from their education pages:
Today about nine of every 10 students attend schools that are owned, operated, and staffed by government employees.
It will come as a big shock and surprise to teachers and administrators to discover that they own the public schools in which they work, and that those schools are not owned by, say, the district itself operating as an arm of the taxpayers and controlled by an elected group of citizens. The fact that Heartland hopes to strike fear by invoking "government" tells you plenty about these guys. Their three big ideas are to get rid of Common Core, more school choice, and removing the Blaine Amendments (aka making it okay to give public tax dollars to religious organizations). Their policy experts come from all the usual organizations-- EdChoice, Cato Institute, Tea Party Patriots, Center for Education Reform.
Like most thinky tanks, Heartland cranks out "policy briefs" and "research reports" and other pieces of writing which are attempts to dress up what are simply impassioned arguments for their preferred ideas. Which is cool-- here at the Curmudgucation Institute I am cranking out policy briefs all the time.
Which brings us to Child Safety Accounts. They floated this "policy brief" in 2018, then spruced it up in November of 2019 (which now just seems like eons ago, doesn't it). Periodically they'll also push an op-ed about it out into the world. There is even a book.
The pitch is simple. A lot of public schools are unsafe. Violent crimes happen there. A lot of students are bullied. To solve the problems of school violence, families should get education savings accounts to get away from such situations.
There are a variety of problems here.
One is the assumption that all of the issues being discussed-- bullying, assault, sexual misconduct, suicide, fights, school shootings, food allergies-- are centered in public schools, and a child need only get out of public schools to escape these problems. That seems unlikely. For example, if a child is being cyber-bullied, changing schools will in all likelihood do absolutely no good. Nor do I imagine that private schools are bully-free zones.
The actual operation of the program seems problematic. Parents can get their CSA account if they have a "reasonable apprehension for their child's safety" based on either the child's experience or data that schools would be required to report. In other words, any parent can get one of these vouchers just by saying they think they need one. That leaves two options-- people entering the program not-entirely-honestly, or some horrifying oversight agency that rules on whether your child is really in a trouble spot.
That fits with the format for CSAs--Heartland proposes a debit card which the parents can then spend on whatever educationy thing they feel they need. This is one of the big problems with ESAs-- exactly who is going to keep an eye on all these parents and make sure the taxpayers' money isn't being spent on cosmetics and clothes? Where's accountability in this scheme?
I also have questions about mobility under the plan. For instance, LGBTQ students are among the more likely students to experience bullying-- but what good with CSAs do them if they live in an area (say, Florida) where private schools have explicit anti-LGBTQ policies?
The authors of the "brief" are Tim Benson and Vicki Alger. Benson joined Heartland as a policy analyst in the Government Relations Department, with responsibilities that appear to include lobbying and cranking out "talking points, news releases and op-ed pieces." He's written a whole string of "Bullying statistics show that [insert state name] need Children Safety Accounts" articles. He's got a BA in History. Alger is a senior fellow at the Independent Women's Forum, an organization offering an alternative to feminism and backed by Koch money; they started out as "Women for Clarence Thomas." The IWF gave Betsy DeVos an award last year. Alger is a school choice advocate who travels about trying to sell education disruption. She's got her own LLC which is "committed to helping your organization translate limited-government free-market principles into effective education policy and practice."
And this is where we get to the backwards part.
First, let me be extra super clear-- every one of the problems that they address in the "brief" is an absolutely real issue. The numbers and "research" they've used is debatable when it comes to the specifics, but I'm not going to make any attempt at all to argue that there aren't real human children suffering real consequences of these real issues.
However, what we have here is the classic reformster argument. Construct a strong compelling portrayal of the problem, and then propose your solution without ever making a connection between the two. Here in this paper the authors dump all the problems facing students into a single bucket (suicide, school shootings, food allergies) with no thoughtful distinctions between them. The "paper" then moves to the solution (in fact, it lays out the solution first) without taking a single moment to consider A) any other possible solutions to the problem or B) explain why CSAs would be the most effective solution available.
This is literally a solution (education savings accounts) in search of a problem. Neither Benson nor Alger offers anything by way of showing the time and effort they've previously invested in trying to solve school bullying and while I can't possibly know their hearts or their entire lived experience, if that includes something relevant to solving these problems, wouldn't this be the time to bring it up. For that matter, a search through the Heartland education experts doesn't show anyone with a background focusing on these issues, or student mental health issues in general. This whole argument appears to have been constructed backwards-- we want to give parents ESAs, so what problem can we say that will solve?
Student suicide is a horrific problem and health care and education professionals have devoted entire lifetimes to searching for solutions. Bullying is a miserable issue, now exacerbated by computer technology, and counseling and education professionals spend lifetimes trying to come up with strategies that work. Fighting, assaults, gang violence-- ditto. School shootings? Yes, I believe a few people have spent some time trying to sort that issue out.
None of that work is reflected here. Nor is there any rigorous evidence-based examination of how the CSAs would solve this menu of problems. The authors just drop all the problems in that bucket and say, "Look, this would totally justify ESA policies. Let's use this." The driving question behind this "paper" is not "How can we best address the problems of school bullying?" It's "Has anyone got any new ideas about how to argue for ESAs?"
Maybe I'm wrong. Maybe they are just deeply concerned about these things and they've spent so much time looking at school issues through the lens of choice that they can't see it any other way. But for parents struggling to help a child struggling with any of these issues, getting a debit card and a "Good luck searching the free market for a school that will help" seems like not enough. These are serious problems that scream for serious solutions. That does not seem to be what the Heartland Institute is offering here.
If you want to solve school bullying, focus on school bullying (not ESAs). If you want to solve youth suicide, focus on suicide (not ESAs). If you want to end school shootings, focus on school shootings (not ESAs). But it seems a little tacky to co-opt these serious issues as part of a sales pitch for your favored policy.
Child Safety Accounts seem to be particular baby of the Heartland Institute, a thinky tank that leans way right. Their mission: "to discover, develop and promote free-market solutions to social and economic problems." They are big advocates for the "What global warming?" school, and believe that the left is using the coronavirus lockdown is "a dress rehearsal for the Green New Deal." These are the guys who put up a billboard linking global warming belief to the Unabomber. They no longer list their sponsors, but Media Bias Fact Check says that Exon-Mobil, Charles Koch, and the Lynde and Harry Bradley Foundation were among the money sources in the past.
So, zero surprise that their Center for Education Opportunities advocates heavily for choice in many forms. What might make them stand out is their rather loose interest in facts. Take this scare-sentence from their education pages:
Today about nine of every 10 students attend schools that are owned, operated, and staffed by government employees.
It will come as a big shock and surprise to teachers and administrators to discover that they own the public schools in which they work, and that those schools are not owned by, say, the district itself operating as an arm of the taxpayers and controlled by an elected group of citizens. The fact that Heartland hopes to strike fear by invoking "government" tells you plenty about these guys. Their three big ideas are to get rid of Common Core, more school choice, and removing the Blaine Amendments (aka making it okay to give public tax dollars to religious organizations). Their policy experts come from all the usual organizations-- EdChoice, Cato Institute, Tea Party Patriots, Center for Education Reform.
Like most thinky tanks, Heartland cranks out "policy briefs" and "research reports" and other pieces of writing which are attempts to dress up what are simply impassioned arguments for their preferred ideas. Which is cool-- here at the Curmudgucation Institute I am cranking out policy briefs all the time.
Which brings us to Child Safety Accounts. They floated this "policy brief" in 2018, then spruced it up in November of 2019 (which now just seems like eons ago, doesn't it). Periodically they'll also push an op-ed about it out into the world. There is even a book.
The pitch is simple. A lot of public schools are unsafe. Violent crimes happen there. A lot of students are bullied. To solve the problems of school violence, families should get education savings accounts to get away from such situations.
There are a variety of problems here.
One is the assumption that all of the issues being discussed-- bullying, assault, sexual misconduct, suicide, fights, school shootings, food allergies-- are centered in public schools, and a child need only get out of public schools to escape these problems. That seems unlikely. For example, if a child is being cyber-bullied, changing schools will in all likelihood do absolutely no good. Nor do I imagine that private schools are bully-free zones.
The actual operation of the program seems problematic. Parents can get their CSA account if they have a "reasonable apprehension for their child's safety" based on either the child's experience or data that schools would be required to report. In other words, any parent can get one of these vouchers just by saying they think they need one. That leaves two options-- people entering the program not-entirely-honestly, or some horrifying oversight agency that rules on whether your child is really in a trouble spot.
That fits with the format for CSAs--Heartland proposes a debit card which the parents can then spend on whatever educationy thing they feel they need. This is one of the big problems with ESAs-- exactly who is going to keep an eye on all these parents and make sure the taxpayers' money isn't being spent on cosmetics and clothes? Where's accountability in this scheme?
I also have questions about mobility under the plan. For instance, LGBTQ students are among the more likely students to experience bullying-- but what good with CSAs do them if they live in an area (say, Florida) where private schools have explicit anti-LGBTQ policies?
The authors of the "brief" are Tim Benson and Vicki Alger. Benson joined Heartland as a policy analyst in the Government Relations Department, with responsibilities that appear to include lobbying and cranking out "talking points, news releases and op-ed pieces." He's written a whole string of "Bullying statistics show that [insert state name] need Children Safety Accounts" articles. He's got a BA in History. Alger is a senior fellow at the Independent Women's Forum, an organization offering an alternative to feminism and backed by Koch money; they started out as "Women for Clarence Thomas." The IWF gave Betsy DeVos an award last year. Alger is a school choice advocate who travels about trying to sell education disruption. She's got her own LLC which is "committed to helping your organization translate limited-government free-market principles into effective education policy and practice."
And this is where we get to the backwards part.
First, let me be extra super clear-- every one of the problems that they address in the "brief" is an absolutely real issue. The numbers and "research" they've used is debatable when it comes to the specifics, but I'm not going to make any attempt at all to argue that there aren't real human children suffering real consequences of these real issues.
However, what we have here is the classic reformster argument. Construct a strong compelling portrayal of the problem, and then propose your solution without ever making a connection between the two. Here in this paper the authors dump all the problems facing students into a single bucket (suicide, school shootings, food allergies) with no thoughtful distinctions between them. The "paper" then moves to the solution (in fact, it lays out the solution first) without taking a single moment to consider A) any other possible solutions to the problem or B) explain why CSAs would be the most effective solution available.
This is literally a solution (education savings accounts) in search of a problem. Neither Benson nor Alger offers anything by way of showing the time and effort they've previously invested in trying to solve school bullying and while I can't possibly know their hearts or their entire lived experience, if that includes something relevant to solving these problems, wouldn't this be the time to bring it up. For that matter, a search through the Heartland education experts doesn't show anyone with a background focusing on these issues, or student mental health issues in general. This whole argument appears to have been constructed backwards-- we want to give parents ESAs, so what problem can we say that will solve?
Student suicide is a horrific problem and health care and education professionals have devoted entire lifetimes to searching for solutions. Bullying is a miserable issue, now exacerbated by computer technology, and counseling and education professionals spend lifetimes trying to come up with strategies that work. Fighting, assaults, gang violence-- ditto. School shootings? Yes, I believe a few people have spent some time trying to sort that issue out.
None of that work is reflected here. Nor is there any rigorous evidence-based examination of how the CSAs would solve this menu of problems. The authors just drop all the problems in that bucket and say, "Look, this would totally justify ESA policies. Let's use this." The driving question behind this "paper" is not "How can we best address the problems of school bullying?" It's "Has anyone got any new ideas about how to argue for ESAs?"
Maybe I'm wrong. Maybe they are just deeply concerned about these things and they've spent so much time looking at school issues through the lens of choice that they can't see it any other way. But for parents struggling to help a child struggling with any of these issues, getting a debit card and a "Good luck searching the free market for a school that will help" seems like not enough. These are serious problems that scream for serious solutions. That does not seem to be what the Heartland Institute is offering here.
If you want to solve school bullying, focus on school bullying (not ESAs). If you want to solve youth suicide, focus on suicide (not ESAs). If you want to end school shootings, focus on school shootings (not ESAs). But it seems a little tacky to co-opt these serious issues as part of a sales pitch for your favored policy.
Friday, May 1, 2020
Trump Teams Up With Catholic Church For School Vouchers
The Tablet is a magazine of Catholic news and opinion; they got their hands on a recording of the April 26 conference call phone meeting between some 600 prominent American Catholics and the "best [president] in the history of the Catholic Church."
According to Christopher White, reporting for The Tablet, the call included Cardinal Timothy Dolan (New York), Cardinal Sean O'Malley (Boston), Archbishop Jose Gomez (Los Angeles), Bishop Michael Barber (Oakland, and chair of the US Conference of Catholic Bishops committee of Catholic Education) and superintendents of Catholic schools in several major cities. On the administration side, the call reportedly included Betsy DeVos and Ben Carson.
Trump, who somehow worked in his childhood growing up next to a Catholic school in Queens, wanted his audience to know that he is their guy, that he wouldn't even allow the Paycheck Protection Program to move forward unless it included the ability of churches to use tax dollars to pay the salaries of workers in religious institutions. He also touted his "greatest economy in the history of the world" until it was "unfairly hit" by the coronavirus (which, he noted, could have been stopped a lot earlier "at the source, and everyone knows what I mean when I say that."
He touted his anti-abortion credentials, a position that is a new one for him, with his evolution on the issue corresponding with his decision to run for office. Makes sense-- raise your hand if you know someone, or ten someones, who supports Trump because anti-abortion. Trump also mentioned his pushback on the Johnson Amendment-- the one that says tax-exempt groups can't make political endorsements.
After this fifteen minute campaign stump speech, the floor was open to a combination of asking questions and kissing Dear Leader's ring.
Cardinal Dolan led off. Trump called him a "great gentleman" and "a great friend of mine" and Dolan said the feeling is mutual. Dolan has been pretty effusive about Trump, welcoming him to last Sunday's virtual mass and going on Fox to say he was "in admiration of his leadership." This is not a new thing. Dolan delivered the invocation before Trump's swearing in, and just a few months ago welcomed Attorney General Barr to Dolan's SiriusXM show to burble about what it's like to work for Trump.
Dolan's main thrust for the call was Catholic schooling. He called DeVos, Carson, and Kellyanne Conway "champions" and "cherished allies in our passion for our beloved schools." He thanked Trump for making sure that Catholic schools were included in the stimulus package, and identifying the main issues as "parental rights, educational justice, and civil rights of our kids." But he painted a grim picture for the long term, saying that "tuition assistance" for parents to keep sending their kids to parochial schools was needed.
“Never has the outlook financially looked more bleak, but perhaps never has the outlook looked more promising given the energetic commitment that your administration has to our schools,” Cardinal Dolan told the president. “We need you more than ever.”
Trump moved things right back to the point of the conversation-- vote for him in November. A defeat for him would mean "a very different Catholic Church," which means I don't know what, other than the usual play to the notion that somehow, in this country, Christians would be oppressed if Dear Leader were not there to lead them and I swear I will never fully grasp how the least Christian man to enter the White House somehow maintains Christian support. It's particularly striking because US evangelicals, the other wing of his religious support, historically are not big fans of the Catholic Church, at all.
The other big Catholic wigs were lined up for more of the same. Boston's Cardinal O'Malley said that Catholic schools have been unsurpassed in our country for moving people into the middle class. He also called for tuition support for parents."
To him, Trump said, "We'll be helping you out more than you even know."
Superintendents from LA and Denver called for school choice, with Escala of LA making the bold claim that Catholic schools in California "have saved the government over two billion dollars." Trump liked that savings figure and asked if they could come up with a national figure that he could use to argue with Congress. I'm guessing coming up with a national figure would be easy, unless you wanted it to be fact-based.
Bishop Barber called Betsy DeVos a great ally to Catholics, and said yay for Justices Kavanaugh and Gorsuch, "whom he characterized as supporters of school choice."
At one point, Trump made a fairly straightforward pitch. “What a similarity we have and how the other side is the exact opposite of what you’re wanting so I guess it’s an important thing to remember.”
Not all Catholics have been loving this. The more liberal National Catholic Reporter said "the capitulation is complete," accused the Bishops of providing "campaign footage" and said this:
Without a whimper from any of his fellow bishops, the cardinal archbishop of New York has inextricably linked the Catholic Church in the United States to the Republican Party and, particularly, President Donald Trump.
US Catholic leadership appears to be all in for Trump, in particular looking to him to provide that all important parent tuition assistance. I suppose that could take the form of an actual taxpayer funded subsidy straight to Catholic school parents, but vouchers or education savings accounts would spread the wealth and better obscure the fact that taxpayers would be subsidizing private schools that are free to discriminate on whatever basis they feel compelled to use. The Catholic Church needs some financial backing for their schools, and they've done very, very well where vouchers are legal.
There's a lot of pretty language, but quid pro quo-- money for votes-- seems to cover it. Nobody here is talking about the value of or cost to public education, nor even about the notion that maybe the government and taxpayers (and not just Trump) might look for some give from the Catholic schools like, say, a little less discrimination. Meanwhile, the Catholic Church would do well to remember that when you mix religion and politics, you get politics. And the politics of Trump is solidly anti-public education.
According to Christopher White, reporting for The Tablet, the call included Cardinal Timothy Dolan (New York), Cardinal Sean O'Malley (Boston), Archbishop Jose Gomez (Los Angeles), Bishop Michael Barber (Oakland, and chair of the US Conference of Catholic Bishops committee of Catholic Education) and superintendents of Catholic schools in several major cities. On the administration side, the call reportedly included Betsy DeVos and Ben Carson.
 |
| Well, those were some good times |
He touted his anti-abortion credentials, a position that is a new one for him, with his evolution on the issue corresponding with his decision to run for office. Makes sense-- raise your hand if you know someone, or ten someones, who supports Trump because anti-abortion. Trump also mentioned his pushback on the Johnson Amendment-- the one that says tax-exempt groups can't make political endorsements.
After this fifteen minute campaign stump speech, the floor was open to a combination of asking questions and kissing Dear Leader's ring.
Cardinal Dolan led off. Trump called him a "great gentleman" and "a great friend of mine" and Dolan said the feeling is mutual. Dolan has been pretty effusive about Trump, welcoming him to last Sunday's virtual mass and going on Fox to say he was "in admiration of his leadership." This is not a new thing. Dolan delivered the invocation before Trump's swearing in, and just a few months ago welcomed Attorney General Barr to Dolan's SiriusXM show to burble about what it's like to work for Trump.
Dolan's main thrust for the call was Catholic schooling. He called DeVos, Carson, and Kellyanne Conway "champions" and "cherished allies in our passion for our beloved schools." He thanked Trump for making sure that Catholic schools were included in the stimulus package, and identifying the main issues as "parental rights, educational justice, and civil rights of our kids." But he painted a grim picture for the long term, saying that "tuition assistance" for parents to keep sending their kids to parochial schools was needed.
“Never has the outlook financially looked more bleak, but perhaps never has the outlook looked more promising given the energetic commitment that your administration has to our schools,” Cardinal Dolan told the president. “We need you more than ever.”
Trump moved things right back to the point of the conversation-- vote for him in November. A defeat for him would mean "a very different Catholic Church," which means I don't know what, other than the usual play to the notion that somehow, in this country, Christians would be oppressed if Dear Leader were not there to lead them and I swear I will never fully grasp how the least Christian man to enter the White House somehow maintains Christian support. It's particularly striking because US evangelicals, the other wing of his religious support, historically are not big fans of the Catholic Church, at all.
The other big Catholic wigs were lined up for more of the same. Boston's Cardinal O'Malley said that Catholic schools have been unsurpassed in our country for moving people into the middle class. He also called for tuition support for parents."
To him, Trump said, "We'll be helping you out more than you even know."
Superintendents from LA and Denver called for school choice, with Escala of LA making the bold claim that Catholic schools in California "have saved the government over two billion dollars." Trump liked that savings figure and asked if they could come up with a national figure that he could use to argue with Congress. I'm guessing coming up with a national figure would be easy, unless you wanted it to be fact-based.
Bishop Barber called Betsy DeVos a great ally to Catholics, and said yay for Justices Kavanaugh and Gorsuch, "whom he characterized as supporters of school choice."
At one point, Trump made a fairly straightforward pitch. “What a similarity we have and how the other side is the exact opposite of what you’re wanting so I guess it’s an important thing to remember.”
Not all Catholics have been loving this. The more liberal National Catholic Reporter said "the capitulation is complete," accused the Bishops of providing "campaign footage" and said this:
Without a whimper from any of his fellow bishops, the cardinal archbishop of New York has inextricably linked the Catholic Church in the United States to the Republican Party and, particularly, President Donald Trump.
US Catholic leadership appears to be all in for Trump, in particular looking to him to provide that all important parent tuition assistance. I suppose that could take the form of an actual taxpayer funded subsidy straight to Catholic school parents, but vouchers or education savings accounts would spread the wealth and better obscure the fact that taxpayers would be subsidizing private schools that are free to discriminate on whatever basis they feel compelled to use. The Catholic Church needs some financial backing for their schools, and they've done very, very well where vouchers are legal.
There's a lot of pretty language, but quid pro quo-- money for votes-- seems to cover it. Nobody here is talking about the value of or cost to public education, nor even about the notion that maybe the government and taxpayers (and not just Trump) might look for some give from the Catholic schools like, say, a little less discrimination. Meanwhile, the Catholic Church would do well to remember that when you mix religion and politics, you get politics. And the politics of Trump is solidly anti-public education.
Thursday, April 30, 2020
How Will The Free Market Save The Most Challenging Students
Yesterday, Debbie Meyer put up a post at Project Forever Free that, unfortunately, does not strain the limits of credulity. It's about her journey as a parent and advocate, about the struggle to get her child the educational services that he's entitled to, and her subsequent work in helping other parents learn how to do the same.
Struggles between parents of students with special needs and the public school system are all too common. And yes, sometimes the parents want things that are simply not realistic and yes, the published versions of these battles are often missing critical information because the school cannot defend its position by opening up confidential student records. Even so, there can be no doubt that sometimes it takes a good-sized legal firestorm to get public school administrators off their butts and busy getting those students the educational services to which they are absolutely entitled.
I am not going to argue for a single second about the rightness of Meyer's story or suggest that there's something wrong in the advocacy work she does.
But it brings up a question that nags at me about charters, vouchers, ESAs and the whole spectrum of free market choice-centered ed reform ideas. Aside from my philosophical objections to such systems, I want to ask-- what happens to a child like this in a free market education system?
Early on in the article, Meyer says this:
I successfully advocated for my illiterate, suicidal fourth-grader to get a free and appropriate education at a school specializing in proper instruction for dyslexic kids and struggling readers.
"Free and appropriate education" is only a thing in public schools. If you tell me that parents like Meyer shouldn't have to hire lawyers and make phone calls and call for meeting after meeting and all manner of exertions to get their child that FAPE, I will absolutely agree with you. The level of advocacy that she talks about shouldn't be necessary, but here's the thing-- it's possible for parents dealing with public schools. A charter or private school--if they even accepted the student in the first place-- can offer a much simpler response to a parent like Meyer. "There's the door."
I understand how charter-choice fans envision certain parts of a free market education system would work. I think they're wrong, but I grasp their vision. But I've never seen an explanation of what is supposed to happen to a child like this.
A pubic school system cannot wash their hands of a child. Even if they say, "We can't/don't want to educate that child in our building," they must then foot the bill for a specialized school that can do the job. There is no corresponding responsibility in a choice system.
How is it supposed to work. Of the charters that will spring up, one will be interested in offering a costly program that will only serve a few students? In a voucher system, the voucher or ESA will provide enough money to cover tuition at a specialized private school for such students? Will charter and other private schools fall all over themselves competing for students who are difficult--and expensive--to educate? None of those things seems likely, at all. In a public school system, parents like Meyer ultimately have the law on their side (even though it shouldn't have to come to that). Who is on their side in a free market system? It can't be enough to have a politician say, "Here's a check. Good luck to you searching the marketplace for someone who both can and will educate your child."
Yes, this is the result of a philosophical issue, a fundamental shift from "The government is responsible for providing your child with a free and appropriate education" to "You now have the freedom to search the marketplace in hopes that it happens to make available what you need. See ya."
It's a philosophical issue, but these stories always remind me of parents I had known, and it is painful and distressing to watch them have to devote their time and energy to forcing a school to honor its legal obligation, but then I imagine them calling and sifting through a marketplace school by school and after they've rejected or been rejected by every available choice realizing that there is literally nothing else they can do, nobody they can call, nowhere to turn.
If you're a free marketeer, I invite you, sincerely, to tell me what I'm missing. In his book about Success Academy, Robert Pondiscio has an insightful line: "A significant tension between public schools and charter schools is the question of who bears the cost and responsibility for the hardest-to-teach students.” The answer, of course, has most often been that the public schools will shoulder that responsibility. But a mostly free market system where a small parallel public system is maintained as a catch-basket for students with special needs seems unlikely to make anyone happy.
Another possibility--one I've never seen discussed--is to make charter and choice schools bear the same weight of law as public schools, but I don't know how you would even begin to enforce such a thing--"Because Pat applied here, you have to accept Pat and you have to institute a program to meet Pat's special needs." How many ways would that school find to convince Pat's family to withdraw?
The public system may not much like the Debbie Meyers of the world some days, but they have to deal with them anyway. The free market education world does not, and I have to believe that's bad news for a lot of children.
Struggles between parents of students with special needs and the public school system are all too common. And yes, sometimes the parents want things that are simply not realistic and yes, the published versions of these battles are often missing critical information because the school cannot defend its position by opening up confidential student records. Even so, there can be no doubt that sometimes it takes a good-sized legal firestorm to get public school administrators off their butts and busy getting those students the educational services to which they are absolutely entitled.
I am not going to argue for a single second about the rightness of Meyer's story or suggest that there's something wrong in the advocacy work she does.
But it brings up a question that nags at me about charters, vouchers, ESAs and the whole spectrum of free market choice-centered ed reform ideas. Aside from my philosophical objections to such systems, I want to ask-- what happens to a child like this in a free market education system?
Early on in the article, Meyer says this:
I successfully advocated for my illiterate, suicidal fourth-grader to get a free and appropriate education at a school specializing in proper instruction for dyslexic kids and struggling readers.
"Free and appropriate education" is only a thing in public schools. If you tell me that parents like Meyer shouldn't have to hire lawyers and make phone calls and call for meeting after meeting and all manner of exertions to get their child that FAPE, I will absolutely agree with you. The level of advocacy that she talks about shouldn't be necessary, but here's the thing-- it's possible for parents dealing with public schools. A charter or private school--if they even accepted the student in the first place-- can offer a much simpler response to a parent like Meyer. "There's the door."
I understand how charter-choice fans envision certain parts of a free market education system would work. I think they're wrong, but I grasp their vision. But I've never seen an explanation of what is supposed to happen to a child like this.
A pubic school system cannot wash their hands of a child. Even if they say, "We can't/don't want to educate that child in our building," they must then foot the bill for a specialized school that can do the job. There is no corresponding responsibility in a choice system.
How is it supposed to work. Of the charters that will spring up, one will be interested in offering a costly program that will only serve a few students? In a voucher system, the voucher or ESA will provide enough money to cover tuition at a specialized private school for such students? Will charter and other private schools fall all over themselves competing for students who are difficult--and expensive--to educate? None of those things seems likely, at all. In a public school system, parents like Meyer ultimately have the law on their side (even though it shouldn't have to come to that). Who is on their side in a free market system? It can't be enough to have a politician say, "Here's a check. Good luck to you searching the marketplace for someone who both can and will educate your child."
Yes, this is the result of a philosophical issue, a fundamental shift from "The government is responsible for providing your child with a free and appropriate education" to "You now have the freedom to search the marketplace in hopes that it happens to make available what you need. See ya."
It's a philosophical issue, but these stories always remind me of parents I had known, and it is painful and distressing to watch them have to devote their time and energy to forcing a school to honor its legal obligation, but then I imagine them calling and sifting through a marketplace school by school and after they've rejected or been rejected by every available choice realizing that there is literally nothing else they can do, nobody they can call, nowhere to turn.
If you're a free marketeer, I invite you, sincerely, to tell me what I'm missing. In his book about Success Academy, Robert Pondiscio has an insightful line: "A significant tension between public schools and charter schools is the question of who bears the cost and responsibility for the hardest-to-teach students.” The answer, of course, has most often been that the public schools will shoulder that responsibility. But a mostly free market system where a small parallel public system is maintained as a catch-basket for students with special needs seems unlikely to make anyone happy.
Another possibility--one I've never seen discussed--is to make charter and choice schools bear the same weight of law as public schools, but I don't know how you would even begin to enforce such a thing--"Because Pat applied here, you have to accept Pat and you have to institute a program to meet Pat's special needs." How many ways would that school find to convince Pat's family to withdraw?
The public system may not much like the Debbie Meyers of the world some days, but they have to deal with them anyway. The free market education world does not, and I have to believe that's bad news for a lot of children.
Wednesday, April 29, 2020
This Is Not What School Will Look Like
Good lord-- the advice/guidance/clever thoughts about how to re-open schools, particularly if any state decides to follow Trump's latest unfiltered brain fart, seem to have been generated, once again, by people who have not been inside a school since they became adults. In some cases, the advice appears to come from people who have never met tiny humans at all.
The CDC joins many folks advising that school desks should be six feet apart. This raises several issues.
First, many classrooms have zero desks. Primary grades often have few or minimal desks. High school labs or shops have benches, not desks.
Second, let's do some math. Imagining that each properly buffered student is in the center of a 6' x 6' square. That's 36 square feet of space, meaning that a class of twenty students would need 720 square feet of classroom-- so 20 feet by 36 feet, just for students. Increase the space if you want furniture like a teacher's desk or bookshelves or cupboards. The 36 square feet is not a new idea; apparently 35 square feet has been a long-standing standard for child center designs, though this article argues that 54 square feet is a better figure for the littles. For the older students, guidelines seem to fall around 30 square feet--but that decreases as the number of "stations" increases.
There are apparently "classic works" about the size of school rooms, and without putting further research into school construction, I can say that classrooms mostly probably have enough room to kind of pull this six feet distancing thing off-- if all classes are fifteen students or fewer. So all schools have to do is expand their teaching staff enough to bring class sizes down to the fifteen-or-fewer level. And find enough classrooms for all those additional classes they have to create.
So that problem is solved, provided we can simply teleport students into their seats. The problem, of course, is that students move around.
Authorities are suggesting, "Well, just stagger the movement between classes." On the elementary level, that's sort of doable. Though a teacher who is taking her class of fifteen to the library now has to monitor a string of students 84 feet long, which may be a bit of a challenge. On the high school level, the challenge is much larger. Since students do not move from class to class in one solid group, staggering class dismissals means that some students will "pile up" in front of classrooms where the students have been dismissed yet. This in turn creates more travelling bottlenecks in the hall. Routing students between classes so that no collections occur in the hall will be a major challenge for administrators. Teachers are also going to have to look at arrival time as a seating chart factor-- if Pat is the last to class and has to walk through other students' bubbles to get seated, then that's a problem.
The CDC says, "Eat lunch in the classroom" and that seems fine-- someone will have to deliver the lunches (can't have the students go through the line without sacrificing lunch lady social distancing), and every classroom will have to have a fridge for brown baggers. Doable. Though if your contract includes a duty-free lunch period for teachers, that will have to be revisited.
Entrance into the building in the morning? That could be kind of slow, particularly for schools that already have security sweeps and metal detectors. But if 100 students are waiting in line to enter, and they are standing 6 feet apart-- well, that's going to create its own kind of obstacle in the neighborhood.
Busing? Run the busses at 1/6 capacity and make six runs in the morning and afternoon? In an area like mine, where a bus run is sometimes 30-45 minutes, that would be a challenge, but maybe that's where you give different grades different start and finish times during the day. Going to be a challenge for multi-child families.
No recess? Or recess in distance bubbles? Phys ed class? I don't want to think about what elementary school kids will be like without any physical activity. Other classes are going to suffer as well; what exactly will a band or orchestra look like with members sitting six feet apart? Chorus?
And how does it work when a teacher has to keep saying, "Yes, I can help you with that problem, but only from over here." Teachers will have to master a whole new level of diligence for even the simplest things, like several students needing to sharpen pencils at the same time, or handing out workbooks or papers.
All of this, as expensive and annoying and ridiculous as some of it may seem, is probably doable at most schools (some specific locations will even have advantages, like schools where the rooms open on the outside and not on a hall). But none of these challenges is the largest one.
Students.
How do you convince students to comply with all of this?
What elementary students will comply with not running over to hug their best friends? What kind of play or social development occurs when children are required to play by themselves? When someone is sad and crying (an event that, I am told, occurs roughly every 22 minutes in the primary grades), which teacher is going to say, "I'm not going to hug you, and nobody else in here is allowed to, either."
On the high school level, where students take a certain delight in bucking the system, what is going to happen when all you have to do to be a rebel is get close enough to someone to touch them? And just how far will some schools go to put their foot down and discipline their way to compliance ("I'm sorry, Mrs. Wiggleworth, but Pat is suspended for repeatedly standing four feet away from other students").
And what kind of dreadful school culture grows in an environment where you are never supposed to get close enough people to look them in the eye or touch them?
I could go on and on; I'll bet those of you who are teachers have already thought of a million issues. The main point is this-- when folks like the CDC say, "Well, just space classroom desks six feet apart and have them eat lunch in the classrooms," they don't seem to understand that they have addressed roughly 6% of the issues that will come up in coronavirus school. It's going to take a huge amount of thinking through, and it would be useful (once again) if the Big Cheeses In Charge actually consulted the people who will be the boots on the ground for any such venture.
P.S. I have skipped over the part where a team of forty-seven maintenance people wipes down the entire school with bleach every half hour. Extra staff, extra people to distance around, and oh, the fumes.
The CDC joins many folks advising that school desks should be six feet apart. This raises several issues.
First, many classrooms have zero desks. Primary grades often have few or minimal desks. High school labs or shops have benches, not desks.
There are apparently "classic works" about the size of school rooms, and without putting further research into school construction, I can say that classrooms mostly probably have enough room to kind of pull this six feet distancing thing off-- if all classes are fifteen students or fewer. So all schools have to do is expand their teaching staff enough to bring class sizes down to the fifteen-or-fewer level. And find enough classrooms for all those additional classes they have to create.
So that problem is solved, provided we can simply teleport students into their seats. The problem, of course, is that students move around.
Authorities are suggesting, "Well, just stagger the movement between classes." On the elementary level, that's sort of doable. Though a teacher who is taking her class of fifteen to the library now has to monitor a string of students 84 feet long, which may be a bit of a challenge. On the high school level, the challenge is much larger. Since students do not move from class to class in one solid group, staggering class dismissals means that some students will "pile up" in front of classrooms where the students have been dismissed yet. This in turn creates more travelling bottlenecks in the hall. Routing students between classes so that no collections occur in the hall will be a major challenge for administrators. Teachers are also going to have to look at arrival time as a seating chart factor-- if Pat is the last to class and has to walk through other students' bubbles to get seated, then that's a problem.
The CDC says, "Eat lunch in the classroom" and that seems fine-- someone will have to deliver the lunches (can't have the students go through the line without sacrificing lunch lady social distancing), and every classroom will have to have a fridge for brown baggers. Doable. Though if your contract includes a duty-free lunch period for teachers, that will have to be revisited.
Entrance into the building in the morning? That could be kind of slow, particularly for schools that already have security sweeps and metal detectors. But if 100 students are waiting in line to enter, and they are standing 6 feet apart-- well, that's going to create its own kind of obstacle in the neighborhood.
Busing? Run the busses at 1/6 capacity and make six runs in the morning and afternoon? In an area like mine, where a bus run is sometimes 30-45 minutes, that would be a challenge, but maybe that's where you give different grades different start and finish times during the day. Going to be a challenge for multi-child families.
No recess? Or recess in distance bubbles? Phys ed class? I don't want to think about what elementary school kids will be like without any physical activity. Other classes are going to suffer as well; what exactly will a band or orchestra look like with members sitting six feet apart? Chorus?
And how does it work when a teacher has to keep saying, "Yes, I can help you with that problem, but only from over here." Teachers will have to master a whole new level of diligence for even the simplest things, like several students needing to sharpen pencils at the same time, or handing out workbooks or papers.
All of this, as expensive and annoying and ridiculous as some of it may seem, is probably doable at most schools (some specific locations will even have advantages, like schools where the rooms open on the outside and not on a hall). But none of these challenges is the largest one.
Students.
How do you convince students to comply with all of this?
What elementary students will comply with not running over to hug their best friends? What kind of play or social development occurs when children are required to play by themselves? When someone is sad and crying (an event that, I am told, occurs roughly every 22 minutes in the primary grades), which teacher is going to say, "I'm not going to hug you, and nobody else in here is allowed to, either."
On the high school level, where students take a certain delight in bucking the system, what is going to happen when all you have to do to be a rebel is get close enough to someone to touch them? And just how far will some schools go to put their foot down and discipline their way to compliance ("I'm sorry, Mrs. Wiggleworth, but Pat is suspended for repeatedly standing four feet away from other students").
And what kind of dreadful school culture grows in an environment where you are never supposed to get close enough people to look them in the eye or touch them?
I could go on and on; I'll bet those of you who are teachers have already thought of a million issues. The main point is this-- when folks like the CDC say, "Well, just space classroom desks six feet apart and have them eat lunch in the classrooms," they don't seem to understand that they have addressed roughly 6% of the issues that will come up in coronavirus school. It's going to take a huge amount of thinking through, and it would be useful (once again) if the Big Cheeses In Charge actually consulted the people who will be the boots on the ground for any such venture.
P.S. I have skipped over the part where a team of forty-seven maintenance people wipes down the entire school with bleach every half hour. Extra staff, extra people to distance around, and oh, the fumes.
Tuesday, April 28, 2020
Khan Academy:This Is Better
We are just going to keep seeing these kinds of headlines until this mess is behind us: Khan Academy founder: Balance between in-person, online learning could be ‘silver lining’ of crisis.
Is it? Is it a silver lining that some ed tech folks are going to grab some market share over this? Khan Academy has seen a steady uptick in the use of their product, which, for those of you who somehow missed it, is a huge library of instructional videos (some of them especially aimed at test prep for SATs).
I confess to being highly skeptical about video instruction. If I stand in a classroom and deliver direct instruction, take no questions, and if prompted will only re-deliver the exact same instruction over and over again, then I am a lousy teacher. But somehow if I do all that on a video on line, I'm now a visionary genius. It's not that I see no place for instructional videos--I've watched plenty of great ones. But that's not teaching. It's particularly not teachig with younger vstudents.
“Even when we didn’t have school closures, their value was if I’m a teacher in a class with 30 students, how do I cater to their individual needs? ... So I’m hoping that as we come out of this the silver lining will be we will understand how to leverage both in the best possible ways,” Khan continued. “How to blend them, if you will.”
I think they can be blended in the same way that a sprig of decorative parsley is blended with a lobster dinner. It can be a nice extra touch, but A) everything will be just fine without it and B) if your lobster dinner is equal parts lobster and parsley, send it back.
Also, "Go watch this video" is not very awesome individualized instruction.
Khan offers other advice, too.
“What we’ve been doing is trying to provide extra support,” Khan said. “We’ve published schedules for parents and teachers so they can understand how to structure the day. We’ve just published some learning plans so students can understand not just how to keep learning through the end of the school year, but how to leverage summers so that the learning doesn’t stop.”
Schedules?! Yikes. And exactly what expertise does KA have in structuring the day? Go ahead-- scan their staff for folks with classroom teaching expertise, or whatever kind of formal training background that would qualify you to tell parents how to structure a day.
This is the hubris and opportunism of Silicon Valley ed tech-- I've come up with one useful little tool, so I'm now an expert on how the entire construction project.
Look, I know this is hard, and everybody wants to find a way to help, but too many ed tech outfits seem to think the pandemic pause is their moment, their chance to rise to greater prominence, to build their brand, to drive the bus. It's not helpful.
Is it? Is it a silver lining that some ed tech folks are going to grab some market share over this? Khan Academy has seen a steady uptick in the use of their product, which, for those of you who somehow missed it, is a huge library of instructional videos (some of them especially aimed at test prep for SATs).
I confess to being highly skeptical about video instruction. If I stand in a classroom and deliver direct instruction, take no questions, and if prompted will only re-deliver the exact same instruction over and over again, then I am a lousy teacher. But somehow if I do all that on a video on line, I'm now a visionary genius. It's not that I see no place for instructional videos--I've watched plenty of great ones. But that's not teaching. It's particularly not teachig with younger vstudents.
“Even when we didn’t have school closures, their value was if I’m a teacher in a class with 30 students, how do I cater to their individual needs? ... So I’m hoping that as we come out of this the silver lining will be we will understand how to leverage both in the best possible ways,” Khan continued. “How to blend them, if you will.”
I think they can be blended in the same way that a sprig of decorative parsley is blended with a lobster dinner. It can be a nice extra touch, but A) everything will be just fine without it and B) if your lobster dinner is equal parts lobster and parsley, send it back.
Also, "Go watch this video" is not very awesome individualized instruction.
Khan offers other advice, too.
“What we’ve been doing is trying to provide extra support,” Khan said. “We’ve published schedules for parents and teachers so they can understand how to structure the day. We’ve just published some learning plans so students can understand not just how to keep learning through the end of the school year, but how to leverage summers so that the learning doesn’t stop.”
Schedules?! Yikes. And exactly what expertise does KA have in structuring the day? Go ahead-- scan their staff for folks with classroom teaching expertise, or whatever kind of formal training background that would qualify you to tell parents how to structure a day.
This is the hubris and opportunism of Silicon Valley ed tech-- I've come up with one useful little tool, so I'm now an expert on how the entire construction project.
Look, I know this is hard, and everybody wants to find a way to help, but too many ed tech outfits seem to think the pandemic pause is their moment, their chance to rise to greater prominence, to build their brand, to drive the bus. It's not helpful.
Monday, April 27, 2020
Rethinking Accountability For Education, Post-Pandemic.
It made sense for states to cancel the big end-of-year standardized reading and math test even before it became obvious that many students will never be back to school this spring to take the tests. In this extraordinary year, the tests were never going to supply valid data that could be compared to other years.
Now that this year looks to be a “short” year for students, the same argument should be made for next year’s test as well. If (please, God) students go back to school next fall, most will be starting out with less preparation than any class in recent memory. Not only will they have been shorted academic content, but primary students who haven’t been in a classroom in over half a year will not easily slip back into a school routine in just a day or two. In other words, next year will also be a short year. The Big Standardized Tests would once again be a waste of time, time that could be better spent on instruction.
Now that this year looks to be a “short” year for students, the same argument should be made for next year’s test as well. If (please, God) students go back to school next fall, most will be starting out with less preparation than any class in recent memory. Not only will they have been shorted academic content, but primary students who haven’t been in a classroom in over half a year will not easily slip back into a school routine in just a day or two. In other words, next year will also be a short year. The Big Standardized Tests would once again be a waste of time, time that could be better spent on instruction.
But for the past 20 years, the Big Standardized Test has been the center of accountability for school districts, individual schools, and classroom teachers. With the test on hold, this is the perfect time to revisit accountability tools for education.
Some folks have tried to suggest that the COVID-19 pandemic underlines the importance of testing and therefor underlines the importance of our old high stakes testing system. In fact, it does the opposite. COVID-19 testing is a simple binary; do you have the virus or not? But it is absurd to suggest that a single standardized math and reading test can somehow answer a binary question like, “Is this child well-educated or not?” Even ed reform fans have known for a while that the big standardized test does not deliver useful information. The pandemic reminds us that when it comes to testing, you need something that provides a clear answer to a clear question.
It’s time to scrap the big standardized high-stakes tests entirely, and replace them with a system that would provide real accountability. Any such system will need to start by answering a few simple questions.
The defining question for any accountability system is this:
Accountable to whom, for what?
The “to whom” part is the hard part of educational accountability, because classroom teachers serve a thousand different masters.
Teachers need to be accountable to their administration, to their school board, to their students, to the parents of their students, to the taxpayers who fund the school and pay their salaries, to the state, to the students’ future employers, and to their own colleagues. School administrators also need to be accountable to those various stakeholders, but in different ways. Each set of stakeholders also has a wide variety of concerns; some parents are primarily concerned with academic issues, while others give priority to their child’s emotional health and happiness.
Parents may want to know if their children are on track for future success, or how their children’s progress compares to others. Those are two different measures, just as “How tall is my child” and “Is my child the tallest in class” are two different questions, each of which can be answered without answering the other.
Taxpayers want to know if they’re getting their money’s worth. State and federal politicians may want to see if benchmarks they have imposed on schools are being met. Teachers want to know how well their students are learning the various content the teachers have been delivering. Administrators may want to identify their “best” and “worst” teachers. School boards may want to know if their new hires are on track.
Answers to every single one of these questions require different measures collected with different tools. Some questions can’t be answered at all (there is no reliable way to rank teachers best-to-worst). One of the biggest fallacies of the ed reform movement has been the notion that a single multiple-choice math and reading test can somehow measure everything.
The reform dream was to be able to reduce school quality to a simple data point, a score or letter grade that tells us whether a school is any good or not. This is foolish. Ask any number of people to describe their idea of an “A” school; no two descriptions will match. A single grade system must by definition be reductive and useless for anything except as a crude tool for punishing some schools and marketing others.
Teachers and their unions are not opposed to accountability; they are opposed to accountability measures that are random and invalid. Meanwhile, accountability discussions never seem to include measures that would hold politicians accountable for getting schools the support and resources that they need. A good example would be the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA), a law that Congress passed to hold schools accountable for properly educating students with specials needs, and also a law that Congress has never come close to fully funding.
K-12 school accountability is possible and desirable. Robust and useful methods are out there (check out Jack Schneider’s Beyond Test Scores for a good example). But any system that could offer true accountability in education requires long, complicated conversations (involving more than policy wonks, lobbyists and politicians) about what exactly we want to measure, how it can be measured, and how we want to use the data. The high-stakes testing model was slammed into place without any such conversation.
The argument has often been that such conversations would take too much time. Well, we’ve got plenty of time right now, and a situation that can help clear our thinking about what we really, really want from schools. Let the conversations begin.
Originally posted at Forbes.com
Some folks have tried to suggest that the COVID-19 pandemic underlines the importance of testing and therefor underlines the importance of our old high stakes testing system. In fact, it does the opposite. COVID-19 testing is a simple binary; do you have the virus or not? But it is absurd to suggest that a single standardized math and reading test can somehow answer a binary question like, “Is this child well-educated or not?” Even ed reform fans have known for a while that the big standardized test does not deliver useful information. The pandemic reminds us that when it comes to testing, you need something that provides a clear answer to a clear question.
It’s time to scrap the big standardized high-stakes tests entirely, and replace them with a system that would provide real accountability. Any such system will need to start by answering a few simple questions.
The defining question for any accountability system is this:
Accountable to whom, for what?
The “to whom” part is the hard part of educational accountability, because classroom teachers serve a thousand different masters.
Teachers need to be accountable to their administration, to their school board, to their students, to the parents of their students, to the taxpayers who fund the school and pay their salaries, to the state, to the students’ future employers, and to their own colleagues. School administrators also need to be accountable to those various stakeholders, but in different ways. Each set of stakeholders also has a wide variety of concerns; some parents are primarily concerned with academic issues, while others give priority to their child’s emotional health and happiness.
Parents may want to know if their children are on track for future success, or how their children’s progress compares to others. Those are two different measures, just as “How tall is my child” and “Is my child the tallest in class” are two different questions, each of which can be answered without answering the other.
Taxpayers want to know if they’re getting their money’s worth. State and federal politicians may want to see if benchmarks they have imposed on schools are being met. Teachers want to know how well their students are learning the various content the teachers have been delivering. Administrators may want to identify their “best” and “worst” teachers. School boards may want to know if their new hires are on track.
Answers to every single one of these questions require different measures collected with different tools. Some questions can’t be answered at all (there is no reliable way to rank teachers best-to-worst). One of the biggest fallacies of the ed reform movement has been the notion that a single multiple-choice math and reading test can somehow measure everything.
The reform dream was to be able to reduce school quality to a simple data point, a score or letter grade that tells us whether a school is any good or not. This is foolish. Ask any number of people to describe their idea of an “A” school; no two descriptions will match. A single grade system must by definition be reductive and useless for anything except as a crude tool for punishing some schools and marketing others.
Teachers and their unions are not opposed to accountability; they are opposed to accountability measures that are random and invalid. Meanwhile, accountability discussions never seem to include measures that would hold politicians accountable for getting schools the support and resources that they need. A good example would be the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA), a law that Congress passed to hold schools accountable for properly educating students with specials needs, and also a law that Congress has never come close to fully funding.
K-12 school accountability is possible and desirable. Robust and useful methods are out there (check out Jack Schneider’s Beyond Test Scores for a good example). But any system that could offer true accountability in education requires long, complicated conversations (involving more than policy wonks, lobbyists and politicians) about what exactly we want to measure, how it can be measured, and how we want to use the data. The high-stakes testing model was slammed into place without any such conversation.
The argument has often been that such conversations would take too much time. Well, we’ve got plenty of time right now, and a situation that can help clear our thinking about what we really, really want from schools. Let the conversations begin.
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