So it's finally almost summery here, for what that's worth. We can at least sit out on the porch. Meantime, here's some stuff to read. Well, a lot of stuff, actually.
Why High Stakes Testing Was Cancelled This Year
Steven Singer looks at some of the less-obvious reasons the Big Standardized Test is cancelled this year (and probably next year, too).
TFA Will Train New Recruits Virtually
So, while everything else is going on, Teach For America has adapted by giving their recruits even less training than usual. Gary Rubinstein has the details.
Who Does the Biden/Sanders Unity Panel Unite
Nancy Bailey has concerns about this cozy moment, and some details about the people on the panel.
CREDO Study Biased Against Public Schools
Thomas Ultican takes a look at CREDO's long, storied history, and why that gives us reason to doubt the sincerity of their newest researchy thing.
Cyber Charter School Has Failed Students
An op-ed takes Agora cyber-school to task for its consistent failure.
Will Coronavirus Be The Tipping Point That Ends Annual Testing In Schools
The Education Writers Association takes a look at the big testing question. A good survey of some of the views of the issue out there.
Does It Work? The Most Meaningless Question To Ask About Online Education
Yong Zhao cuts right to the chase with five critical reasons that there is no simple answer to that simple question.
A Looming Issue For Schools: Teachers Who Can't Or Won't Go Back
Chalkbeat takes a look at how covid-19 can further affect the re-opening of schools.
Not National, Not Parents, Not A Union
Maurice Cunningham takes a look at the National Parents Union and peels back the layers hiding the group's true nature.
Crazy Pandemic Behavior Messes With AI
"Machine-learning models are designed to respond to changes. But most are also fragile; they perform badly when input data differs too much from the data they were trained on. " Not about education per se, but this MIT Technology Review piece reminds us that the magic of AI is not very magical.
How Can I Keep From Singing?
It's going to be a while before things are normal in your school's music department again. Nancy Flanagan with a beautiful piece that tells why that matters.
The Sheer Number of School Districts Is Tilting the Playing Field
The New York Times looks at the role of district boundaries, the role in perpetuating inequity, and the sheer (large) number of districts in the country.
AP Online Exam Fiasco
Two worthwhile pieces here cover the AP testing mess. Teen Vogue has a piece from an AP teacher looking at just how ugly this mess was, while the indispensable Mercedes Schneider takes a look at how parents and students are reacting. The College Board once again has a not-its-finest-moment
moment.
And here's a bonus that I missed last week-- Diane Ravitch on Full Frontal
Sunday, May 17, 2020
Friday, May 15, 2020
How Dr. Perelman Helped Save Australia
(Note: If you're not in the mood to read the whole piece, skip down to the bold quote at the end-- it'll be worth it.)
Longtime readers know that Les Perelman is one of my heroes. Retired in 2012 from teaching and administration at MIT, he has continued his work in the world of education, most notably repeatedly poking holes in the balonified field that is robo-grading. Software that can assess writing is the Great White Whale of testing companies; it would let them offer measuring instruments beyond crappy multiple-choice items without the cost of actual human beings to score writing samples. Not a year goes by without some ed tech firm announcing that they have a super-duper piece of software (nowadays infused with magical AI powder) that can score a piece of student writing. They have been wrong every single time, and likely will continue to be wrong for a long, long time to come.
I have followed many of Perelman's exploits, but somehow I missed his adventure in Australia. And even if you don't think about Australia very often, it's worth noting this adventure because Australia is buffeted by some of the same winds of reformster baloney that blow across US schools.
Australia has had, since 2008, something called the National Assessment Program--Literacy And Numeracy aka NAPLAN. It's a national Big Standardized Test, what PARCC dreamt of becoming when it grew up.
NAPLAN had been sniffing around at the idea of scoring with software since 2012; in 2017, the New South Wales Teachers Federation commissioned Perelman to take a look. The results were not pretty.
The Australian Curriculum, Assessment and Reporting Authority (ACARA) was sad; they had done a report back in 2015 asserting, among other things, that the automated essay scoring "met or surpassed the quality of human markers." I don't know how you figure "surpassed," but I do know how you get software to equal the performance of humans-- you make the humans follow the same dumb rules that the software follows. As Perelman pointed out, the ACARA report "completely ignores" any research that is critical of robot scoring. ACARA's general manager of assessment said that Perelman and the NSWTF are "known critics" of robo-grading, reinforcing the notion that somehow any contrary voices should be ignored. This is not a good way to reach sound conclusions.
Perelman's conclusions were pretty clear:
It would be extremely foolish and possibly damaging to student learning to institute machine grading of the NAPLAN essay, including dual grading by a machine and a human marker.
In January of 2018, the government scrapped the robot scoring plans, but by then, Perelman had taken a good enough look at NAPLAN's writing assessment that he could see how bad the writing assessment was, and he spoke up about that.
It's the worst one of the 10 or 12 of the international tests that I've studied in depth. It's by far the most absurd and the least valid of any test that I've seen.
The word "bizarre" also turned up. Ouchies. And just so the average layperson could grasp what he was talking about, Perelman released a Guide To A Top Scoring NAPLAN Essay. It's got fifteen whole steps, but it's too good n ot to share, because it wouldn't be entirely useless for certain US writing tests. I'm going to condense them for length here; go look at the original:
Learn a bunch of big spelling words, and throw them in. Don't worry ab out meaning, but do worry about spelling them correctly. Repeat the ideas in the prompt often.
Five paragraph essay all the way. Every paragraph should be four sentences; don't worry about repeating yourself to get there. Start the last paragraph with "In conclusion," then repeat your thesis from graph #1. Somewhere work in a sentence with the structure "Although x (sentence), y (sentence). (Perelman's example-- Although these instructions are stupoid, they will produce a high mark on the NAPLAN essay.)
Use "you" and ask questions. Use connectors like "moreover" or "however." Start sentences with "In my opinion" or "I believe that" (not for the first or last time, Strunk and White are spinning in their graves). Repeat words and phrases often, and throw in passive voice (whirrrrr). Throw in one or two adjectives next to nouns.
For narrative essays, just steal a story from a movie or tv show-- markers are exoplicitly instructed to ignore that they recognize a story.
And the final and most important rule-- never write like this except for essay tests like the NAPLAN.
Perelman also took a look at the marking criteria (that's where "bizarre" comes in) and lays out the issues there in detail, noting its focus on low-level skills. ACARA's chief said "We will take Dr. Perelman's advice on board," which I assume is Australian for "Bless your heart" or "Go get stuffed."
The sequel to all of this was an award for Perelman from the NSWTF, naming him a Champion of Public Education, an award given not annually, but whenever there seems a call for it. Perelman's acceptance speech has somehow been viewed only about ten times on youtube (and a bunch of those are me) and it's worth a view, but here are some highlights:
Free public education is the cornerstone of a stable democratic and free society.
The main problem with edu-business [for profit entities in education] is that the most important products of education, such as critical thinking and analysis, are both the least tangible and the least profitable. They are expensive both in staffing and in assessment. Edu-business wants to MacDonald-ize education, make it cheap to produce and distribute, highly profitable and with little nutritive value. It wants, like Dickens' Gradgrind, to focus on relatively unimportant facts and rules that can literally be mechanically taught and mechanically counted. Edu-business values psychometricians over practitioners, testers over teachers, reliability over validity.
It's a little long for a t-shirt, but it might be worth the effort.
Longtime readers know that Les Perelman is one of my heroes. Retired in 2012 from teaching and administration at MIT, he has continued his work in the world of education, most notably repeatedly poking holes in the balonified field that is robo-grading. Software that can assess writing is the Great White Whale of testing companies; it would let them offer measuring instruments beyond crappy multiple-choice items without the cost of actual human beings to score writing samples. Not a year goes by without some ed tech firm announcing that they have a super-duper piece of software (nowadays infused with magical AI powder) that can score a piece of student writing. They have been wrong every single time, and likely will continue to be wrong for a long, long time to come.
Australia has had, since 2008, something called the National Assessment Program--Literacy And Numeracy aka NAPLAN. It's a national Big Standardized Test, what PARCC dreamt of becoming when it grew up.
NAPLAN had been sniffing around at the idea of scoring with software since 2012; in 2017, the New South Wales Teachers Federation commissioned Perelman to take a look. The results were not pretty.
The Australian Curriculum, Assessment and Reporting Authority (ACARA) was sad; they had done a report back in 2015 asserting, among other things, that the automated essay scoring "met or surpassed the quality of human markers." I don't know how you figure "surpassed," but I do know how you get software to equal the performance of humans-- you make the humans follow the same dumb rules that the software follows. As Perelman pointed out, the ACARA report "completely ignores" any research that is critical of robot scoring. ACARA's general manager of assessment said that Perelman and the NSWTF are "known critics" of robo-grading, reinforcing the notion that somehow any contrary voices should be ignored. This is not a good way to reach sound conclusions.
Perelman's conclusions were pretty clear:
It would be extremely foolish and possibly damaging to student learning to institute machine grading of the NAPLAN essay, including dual grading by a machine and a human marker.
In January of 2018, the government scrapped the robot scoring plans, but by then, Perelman had taken a good enough look at NAPLAN's writing assessment that he could see how bad the writing assessment was, and he spoke up about that.
It's the worst one of the 10 or 12 of the international tests that I've studied in depth. It's by far the most absurd and the least valid of any test that I've seen.
The word "bizarre" also turned up. Ouchies. And just so the average layperson could grasp what he was talking about, Perelman released a Guide To A Top Scoring NAPLAN Essay. It's got fifteen whole steps, but it's too good n ot to share, because it wouldn't be entirely useless for certain US writing tests. I'm going to condense them for length here; go look at the original:
Learn a bunch of big spelling words, and throw them in. Don't worry ab out meaning, but do worry about spelling them correctly. Repeat the ideas in the prompt often.
Five paragraph essay all the way. Every paragraph should be four sentences; don't worry about repeating yourself to get there. Start the last paragraph with "In conclusion," then repeat your thesis from graph #1. Somewhere work in a sentence with the structure "Although x (sentence), y (sentence). (Perelman's example-- Although these instructions are stupoid, they will produce a high mark on the NAPLAN essay.)
Use "you" and ask questions. Use connectors like "moreover" or "however." Start sentences with "In my opinion" or "I believe that" (not for the first or last time, Strunk and White are spinning in their graves). Repeat words and phrases often, and throw in passive voice (whirrrrr). Throw in one or two adjectives next to nouns.
For narrative essays, just steal a story from a movie or tv show-- markers are exoplicitly instructed to ignore that they recognize a story.
And the final and most important rule-- never write like this except for essay tests like the NAPLAN.
Perelman also took a look at the marking criteria (that's where "bizarre" comes in) and lays out the issues there in detail, noting its focus on low-level skills. ACARA's chief said "We will take Dr. Perelman's advice on board," which I assume is Australian for "Bless your heart" or "Go get stuffed."
The sequel to all of this was an award for Perelman from the NSWTF, naming him a Champion of Public Education, an award given not annually, but whenever there seems a call for it. Perelman's acceptance speech has somehow been viewed only about ten times on youtube (and a bunch of those are me) and it's worth a view, but here are some highlights:
Free public education is the cornerstone of a stable democratic and free society.
The main problem with edu-business [for profit entities in education] is that the most important products of education, such as critical thinking and analysis, are both the least tangible and the least profitable. They are expensive both in staffing and in assessment. Edu-business wants to MacDonald-ize education, make it cheap to produce and distribute, highly profitable and with little nutritive value. It wants, like Dickens' Gradgrind, to focus on relatively unimportant facts and rules that can literally be mechanically taught and mechanically counted. Edu-business values psychometricians over practitioners, testers over teachers, reliability over validity.
It's a little long for a t-shirt, but it might be worth the effort.
Small Things: Secretary DeVos, Twitter and Teachers Vs. Charters
For quite a while, National Charter School Self-Promotion Week was scheduled for the first week in may-- the same week that the PTA had, for decades, scheduled Teacher Appreciation Week. Last year somebody finally decided that maybe that wasn't the greatest idea and moved Charter Week to the second week in May. So we're just wrapping that lovefest up today.
Coincidentally, I recently broke down and started following the Betsy DeVos Twitter account, and I was curious how those back-to-back celebrations looked. There's nothing unexpected or earth-shattering here. Just one of those little data points.
DeVos on Teacher Appreciation Week.
On Monday afternoon, DeVos retweeted the official USED tweet that offered teachers "virtual hugs." DeVos added her own comment:
Teachers, thank you for all you are doing for your students to keep them learning and connected during this national emergency. Your dedication and commitment to the success of our nation’s students is truly inspiring!
She also retweeted a thank you tweet from Congresswoman Virginia Foxx, tea party buddy of Mike Pence, whose support for public education is legendary in the same way that Bigfoot is legendary-- almost never seen and unlikely to be real.
On Wednesday at 7:00 AM, she tweeted out her 45 second video message, again leaning hard on the extra work that teachers are doing right now (no mention of her repeated assertion that many US schools have simply shut down).
The rest of the week was devoted to touting her new Title IX rules and to celebrating the second anniversary of FLOTUS's "Be Best" anti-bullying campaign.
This was based strictly on her "tweets" tab, but I did check "tweets and replies" to make sure I wasn't missing anything about Teacher Appreciation Week-- all I found was her responding to a thank you tweet from a Teacher of the Year who wanted to thank DeVos for a phone call that made it possible for that teacher to share how awesome Richard Corcoran is, and , well, let's not go there right now other than to say, no, it appears that he is certainly not awesome.
Charter Swellness Week
On Monday, a retweet of the White House declaration of National Charter Schools Week, quoting "During National Charter Schools Week, and every week, let us celebrate the extraordinary work of public [sic] charter schools..."
Monday she also retweeted House Ed and Labor Republicans tweet that "charter school teachers go above and beyond" and called them "unsung heroes for raising the bar."
On Wednesday, the first of several anecdotal vignettes, with a nice picture of a happy charter student and a quote from a satisfied parent all on a slide with the Department of Ed logo in the corner. Then a retweet from Virginia Foxx touting choice and in turn reposting another House Ed and Labor Republican tweet about how "charter schools are putting kids first." Then a retweet from Ted Cruz praising charters for going above and beyond. Then a retweet of Gov. Doug Ducey and his proclamation about charter week in Arizona. Then an other nice anecdote slide from the department. Then a retweet from Congresswoman Debbie Lesko celebrating charter week.
Thursday, another anecdote slide, this time singling out a cyber academy for its "academic rigor." Two hours later, another cyber charter story (cyberschool helped this student be a figure skater).
Today we started out with a slide quoting Trump expressing his support for charter schools and choice. Then a "flashback" post to a stop on her Education Freedom tour at Detroit Edison Public [sic] Academy. And a retweet of Senator Ron Johnson celebrating charters in Wisconsin.
So
For Teacher Appreciation Week, DeVos recorded a forty-five second thank you. For Charter Week, she had someone in the department whip up at least five slides. Three tweets/retweets for Teacher Week. For Charter Week, at least thirteen.
As I said-- nothing momentous or huge here, but in these exceedingly weird times, I think it's worth highlighting once again that we have a Secretary of Education who is not a supporter of public education or the people who work there, who is, in fact, far more excited about a privately-run system for replacing the institution that she is charged with overseeing. I can't say that it's highly abnormal, because the office has never attracted many people who really support public education, but it's still weird that when public school teachers look up at state and federal authorities, they find people who are lined up against them. It's a weird way to run a national education system.
DeVos on Teacher Appreciation Week.
On Monday afternoon, DeVos retweeted the official USED tweet that offered teachers "virtual hugs." DeVos added her own comment:
Teachers, thank you for all you are doing for your students to keep them learning and connected during this national emergency. Your dedication and commitment to the success of our nation’s students is truly inspiring!
She also retweeted a thank you tweet from Congresswoman Virginia Foxx, tea party buddy of Mike Pence, whose support for public education is legendary in the same way that Bigfoot is legendary-- almost never seen and unlikely to be real.
On Wednesday at 7:00 AM, she tweeted out her 45 second video message, again leaning hard on the extra work that teachers are doing right now (no mention of her repeated assertion that many US schools have simply shut down).
The rest of the week was devoted to touting her new Title IX rules and to celebrating the second anniversary of FLOTUS's "Be Best" anti-bullying campaign.
This was based strictly on her "tweets" tab, but I did check "tweets and replies" to make sure I wasn't missing anything about Teacher Appreciation Week-- all I found was her responding to a thank you tweet from a Teacher of the Year who wanted to thank DeVos for a phone call that made it possible for that teacher to share how awesome Richard Corcoran is, and , well, let's not go there right now other than to say, no, it appears that he is certainly not awesome.
Charter Swellness Week
On Monday, a retweet of the White House declaration of National Charter Schools Week, quoting "During National Charter Schools Week, and every week, let us celebrate the extraordinary work of public [sic] charter schools..."
Monday she also retweeted House Ed and Labor Republicans tweet that "charter school teachers go above and beyond" and called them "unsung heroes for raising the bar."
On Wednesday, the first of several anecdotal vignettes, with a nice picture of a happy charter student and a quote from a satisfied parent all on a slide with the Department of Ed logo in the corner. Then a retweet from Virginia Foxx touting choice and in turn reposting another House Ed and Labor Republican tweet about how "charter schools are putting kids first." Then a retweet from Ted Cruz praising charters for going above and beyond. Then a retweet of Gov. Doug Ducey and his proclamation about charter week in Arizona. Then an other nice anecdote slide from the department. Then a retweet from Congresswoman Debbie Lesko celebrating charter week.
Thursday, another anecdote slide, this time singling out a cyber academy for its "academic rigor." Two hours later, another cyber charter story (cyberschool helped this student be a figure skater).
Today we started out with a slide quoting Trump expressing his support for charter schools and choice. Then a "flashback" post to a stop on her Education Freedom tour at Detroit Edison Public [sic] Academy. And a retweet of Senator Ron Johnson celebrating charters in Wisconsin.
So
For Teacher Appreciation Week, DeVos recorded a forty-five second thank you. For Charter Week, she had someone in the department whip up at least five slides. Three tweets/retweets for Teacher Week. For Charter Week, at least thirteen.
As I said-- nothing momentous or huge here, but in these exceedingly weird times, I think it's worth highlighting once again that we have a Secretary of Education who is not a supporter of public education or the people who work there, who is, in fact, far more excited about a privately-run system for replacing the institution that she is charged with overseeing. I can't say that it's highly abnormal, because the office has never attracted many people who really support public education, but it's still weird that when public school teachers look up at state and federal authorities, they find people who are lined up against them. It's a weird way to run a national education system.
Thursday, May 14, 2020
Fordham Advises Conservative Board Members In Parallel Universe
It's a curious little piece in the Fordham Institute's blog, this "Conservative Agenda for School Board Members." The co-authors are Michael Petrilli and Chester Finn, the current and former head honchos of the right-leaning thinky tank (though I will say-- and I'm just guessing here--the level of pearl-clutching in this piece sounds a lot more like Finn than Petrilli to me).
The stock photo is a couple of cute little white kids holding a flag and walking out into sun-dappled greenery. That.... well, sets a tone.
First, they acknowledge that they have sometimes in the past been "dismissive, even hostile" to school board members, mostly because they "often seemed willing to protect the status quo and resist changes intended to overhaul the jalopy we call American public schooling" (that jalopy line does sound like Petrilli).
But we’re ready to look afresh, mindful that it’s unfair to view anything in the sprawling K–12 sector as a monolith.
Cool. I'll be happy if reformsters decide to stop referring to public education as a monopoly. The writers have decided to think of school boards as one of "society's little platoons" in rebuilding overstressed communities. In fact, the duo sees school board members as "best positioned to push back against so much of the nonsense that courses through our schools and our society." That nonsense list is actually pretty short and not very inclusive-- "history emphasizing the nation’s shortcomings, antipathy toward strict discipline, and on and on..."
They admit that board members can't change everything single-handedly, and that in many places conservatives are outnumbered but they don't want to just "cede public schooling to the 'progressive' left, as we have seen in many universities." And they have three specifics that they would like conservative school board members to champion.
First, citizenship. Here the duo try to thread that needle that some conservative edu-wonks have been trying to use to sew up the chasm at the heart of US politics-- let's inculcate pride of our country while still acknowledging its failures and weaknesses. It's a nice thought, but in fact plenty of conservatives don't agree with it and consider any criticism of the country-- past or present-- unacceptable. Not that it's entirely clear what the writers mean by "past failings" since they also reject the 1619 Project's picture of the US as "fundamentally racist."
Second, restore character, virtue and morality to education. Once again, these conservative thinky guys are swimming upstream against their own team, which is filled with people who swear that Donald Trump, quite probably the least moral and virtuous man to ever hold public office, as blameless, anointed by God, and a heck of an excellent human being. The authors locate the core of character in self-discipline and, again, I'm hard pressed to make a case that this is a conservative trait any longer.
They see a liberal focus on making sure disciplinary actions are discriminatory, which they see as focusing on the interests of the "perpetrators." But that's incorrect-- insuring that rules, both as written and as implemented-- are non-discriminatory is very much in the interests of the institution and everyone in it. There is absolutely nothing that undercuts a school's ability to discipline students effectively than the sense among students that the rules are discriminatory, that it's not what you've done but who you are. Once students grasp that, all moral authority of the school is lost, and all you've got is a battle of wills and power.
Third, well, hey write something about conferring dignity and respect on all youngsters blah blah-- but we can sum it up as "make sure your school doesn't discriminate." Part of what they mean is that schools should offer multiple paths and stop favoring college-bound pathways; on this, I absolutely agree. But they also want to push the "success sequence" of finish school, get a full-time job, get married, and have babies-- in that order. What "research" there is to support this is a testament to the age-old inability to distinguish between correlation and causation, not to mention the power of nostalgia for a rosy Leave It To Beaver past that never existed. It's another way to suggest that if you're poor, it's your own fault. Conservatives who are really invested in that sequence would do better to ask why it strikes many people as unattainable or not useful instead of just tut-tutting at how Those People choose to live their lives improperly.
There's other stuff here. Weird items framed as opposites, like suggesting social-emotional learning and character education are conflicting approaches and not two names for the same thing. And a plea for taking ideas from the left and right "not just from the left," which strikes me as odd only because so many schools boards are far too wrapped up in practical concerns to get very ideological about anything.
The piece mostly belongs in the file labeled Reformster Selective Memory Loss. Once again, folks who were instrumental in pushing education reform ideas for decades now look at the results and declare, "How did this ever happen." In this piece, it's America that over-emphasized college readiness and not, say, the entire Common Core onslaught, which acknowledged career education in the "college and career ready" tag line--and nowhere else. The Core was, of course, heavily pushed by Fordham, just as they have been relentless cheerleaders for high stakes testing, which gives less than a fig for character, virtue, and civics.
And while they acknowledge some past hostility, I'm not sure that even that word captures a movement that has sought to chop off the democratic process in any way possible from mayoral takeovers to privatizing takeovers to backing board members who would sell out their districts to promoting an entire parallel system of education that involves no elected representation whatsoever. For Petrilli and Finn to say "we've at times been dismissive, even hostile" to board members, or even the idea of board members, is like Trump saying, "I have occasionally stretched the truth a bit."
Beyond that, the piece almost makes me sad with its affection for a brand of conservatism that has been pretty much shouted down and stomped out by what passes for conservatism these days. This really does read like a piece from some alternate reality where the conservative movement still has ideas, even if they're bad ones, instead of rage and a desire to own the libs. Petrilli has never been, to my knowledge, a fan of Trump, but if he's going to try to talk to elected conservatives, he can't pretend that Trumpism isn't out there.
The stock photo is a couple of cute little white kids holding a flag and walking out into sun-dappled greenery. That.... well, sets a tone.
First, they acknowledge that they have sometimes in the past been "dismissive, even hostile" to school board members, mostly because they "often seemed willing to protect the status quo and resist changes intended to overhaul the jalopy we call American public schooling" (that jalopy line does sound like Petrilli).
But we’re ready to look afresh, mindful that it’s unfair to view anything in the sprawling K–12 sector as a monolith.
Cool. I'll be happy if reformsters decide to stop referring to public education as a monopoly. The writers have decided to think of school boards as one of "society's little platoons" in rebuilding overstressed communities. In fact, the duo sees school board members as "best positioned to push back against so much of the nonsense that courses through our schools and our society." That nonsense list is actually pretty short and not very inclusive-- "history emphasizing the nation’s shortcomings, antipathy toward strict discipline, and on and on..."
They admit that board members can't change everything single-handedly, and that in many places conservatives are outnumbered but they don't want to just "cede public schooling to the 'progressive' left, as we have seen in many universities." And they have three specifics that they would like conservative school board members to champion.
First, citizenship. Here the duo try to thread that needle that some conservative edu-wonks have been trying to use to sew up the chasm at the heart of US politics-- let's inculcate pride of our country while still acknowledging its failures and weaknesses. It's a nice thought, but in fact plenty of conservatives don't agree with it and consider any criticism of the country-- past or present-- unacceptable. Not that it's entirely clear what the writers mean by "past failings" since they also reject the 1619 Project's picture of the US as "fundamentally racist."
Second, restore character, virtue and morality to education. Once again, these conservative thinky guys are swimming upstream against their own team, which is filled with people who swear that Donald Trump, quite probably the least moral and virtuous man to ever hold public office, as blameless, anointed by God, and a heck of an excellent human being. The authors locate the core of character in self-discipline and, again, I'm hard pressed to make a case that this is a conservative trait any longer.
They see a liberal focus on making sure disciplinary actions are discriminatory, which they see as focusing on the interests of the "perpetrators." But that's incorrect-- insuring that rules, both as written and as implemented-- are non-discriminatory is very much in the interests of the institution and everyone in it. There is absolutely nothing that undercuts a school's ability to discipline students effectively than the sense among students that the rules are discriminatory, that it's not what you've done but who you are. Once students grasp that, all moral authority of the school is lost, and all you've got is a battle of wills and power.
Third, well, hey write something about conferring dignity and respect on all youngsters blah blah-- but we can sum it up as "make sure your school doesn't discriminate." Part of what they mean is that schools should offer multiple paths and stop favoring college-bound pathways; on this, I absolutely agree. But they also want to push the "success sequence" of finish school, get a full-time job, get married, and have babies-- in that order. What "research" there is to support this is a testament to the age-old inability to distinguish between correlation and causation, not to mention the power of nostalgia for a rosy Leave It To Beaver past that never existed. It's another way to suggest that if you're poor, it's your own fault. Conservatives who are really invested in that sequence would do better to ask why it strikes many people as unattainable or not useful instead of just tut-tutting at how Those People choose to live their lives improperly.
There's other stuff here. Weird items framed as opposites, like suggesting social-emotional learning and character education are conflicting approaches and not two names for the same thing. And a plea for taking ideas from the left and right "not just from the left," which strikes me as odd only because so many schools boards are far too wrapped up in practical concerns to get very ideological about anything.
The piece mostly belongs in the file labeled Reformster Selective Memory Loss. Once again, folks who were instrumental in pushing education reform ideas for decades now look at the results and declare, "How did this ever happen." In this piece, it's America that over-emphasized college readiness and not, say, the entire Common Core onslaught, which acknowledged career education in the "college and career ready" tag line--and nowhere else. The Core was, of course, heavily pushed by Fordham, just as they have been relentless cheerleaders for high stakes testing, which gives less than a fig for character, virtue, and civics.
And while they acknowledge some past hostility, I'm not sure that even that word captures a movement that has sought to chop off the democratic process in any way possible from mayoral takeovers to privatizing takeovers to backing board members who would sell out their districts to promoting an entire parallel system of education that involves no elected representation whatsoever. For Petrilli and Finn to say "we've at times been dismissive, even hostile" to board members, or even the idea of board members, is like Trump saying, "I have occasionally stretched the truth a bit."
Beyond that, the piece almost makes me sad with its affection for a brand of conservatism that has been pretty much shouted down and stomped out by what passes for conservatism these days. This really does read like a piece from some alternate reality where the conservative movement still has ideas, even if they're bad ones, instead of rage and a desire to own the libs. Petrilli has never been, to my knowledge, a fan of Trump, but if he's going to try to talk to elected conservatives, he can't pretend that Trumpism isn't out there.
Wednesday, May 13, 2020
Biden's Education Unity Task Force
Joe Biden and Bernie Sanders have announced a half-dozen unity task force thingies, one of which will be focused on education, more or less. Folks are reacting with varying degrees of freaking out on the social medias. I'm going to recommend that you take a deep breath. Here are some things to consider.
Concerns
Alejandro Adler is nobody to be excited about. He's an academic who is associated wit silly argle-bargle like this:
...to infuse education systems in these countries with skills-based teacher training, curriculum development, technology use, and, financing; to measure the impact of these interventions on youth well-being and long-term life outcomes; and to ultimately empirically inform and systematically transform education systems to advance social development
So, focused on measuring things that can't be measured and using education as a tool for social engineering. The language of pay for success. And skills. Great. Like that hasn't been a royal pain in education's butt over the past decades. Adler is the least exciting part of this group.
Maggie Thompson is an Obama alum with a background advocacy, none of it particularly associated with education. Christina Vilsack, on the other hand, taught middle school for almost twenty years, and now does a lot of literacy advocacy when weighing her own political options. Hirokazu Yoshikawa is another academic, specializing in education and globalism, with an extra focus on pre-school; he's te co-author on a book entitled Cradle to Kindergarten. And, of course, Lily Eskelsen Garcia and Randi Weingarten are also on the team.
It's not a reassuring line-up.
On The Plus Side
The team is headed up by Representative Marcia Fudge (D-OH) and Heather Gautney, Ph.D. Fudge is a member of the Progressive Caucus and Gautney is the Fordham University professor who served as a Sanders campaign senior policy adviser.
The education concern about Biden has always been that he would just be Obama 2.0 (aka Bush 3.0). So the fact that they let a couple of left-wingers into the party is almost srt of encouraging if for no other reason than it signals that the campaign is aware that it has a problem with its progressive (aka "what used to be called actual Democrats") appeal.
Concerns
Does anyone else find it, well, odd, that the Biden campaign is only trying to unify with the Sanders campaign. It is less-than-encouraging that out of a wide, diverse field of candidates, the Biden campaign is just going to go with a show of unity between the two old white guys.
It would be nice to see the campaign steal more ambitiously from just about any other campaign (except Mike Bloomberg) but on the K-12 education policy page (which you find by scrolling waaaayyyyyyy down his page of policy stuff), it's just the same old weak sauce.
Why I'm Not Very Excited Either Way
First, this is political stuntsmanship. The key word is "unity," as in "honest, it's okay to vote for Biden even if you still haven't taken down your Warren or Sanders posters, because we really truly are one big happy family." In other words, this team is not about coming up with good education policy as much as it's about improving electability chances. They didn't call together a bunch of educators; they lined up a bunch of political operators.
Second, I don't know about you, but there is almost nothing that Biden could say or do that would make me trust him on education. Not even "Sorry, we really screwed the pooch back when I was VP" because at this point, it's way too late for me to believe any apology. He's denounced Betsy DeVos; he hasn't shown that he understands the Obama administration's responsibility for helping create her. We were always going to have to watch his every education move and be prepared to raise a stink if his administration did something awful. Nothing that he does between now and November is going to change that. (And--though I hate to say it-- he has to get elected first, and I'm not prepared to make any bets on this race.)
Third, the whole platform thing. I will never understand the deep and intense fights of party platforms. I can't recall a singe moment in history when a candidate has said, "I don't really like this idea, but the party put it in the platform, so I will now try to make it happen." Platforms are like mission statements-- good for collecting dust, but in the meantime, people are going to do what they're going to do. Maybe this team is actually going to do something that will have an effect on the policies that Biden (if elected) will pursue, but I'm not betting my lunch money on it.
Nothing has changed. Supporters of public education were always going to have to be vigilant and, when necessary, noisy for the next four years. That hasn't changed, especially not since the Democratic Party washed out everyone except a candidate who remains next-to-bottom tier when it comes to education. Nothing the campaign could do now would convince me to relax my concerns or vigilance, and that should be true for all public education supporters.
Concerns
Alejandro Adler is nobody to be excited about. He's an academic who is associated wit silly argle-bargle like this:
...to infuse education systems in these countries with skills-based teacher training, curriculum development, technology use, and, financing; to measure the impact of these interventions on youth well-being and long-term life outcomes; and to ultimately empirically inform and systematically transform education systems to advance social development
Maggie Thompson is an Obama alum with a background advocacy, none of it particularly associated with education. Christina Vilsack, on the other hand, taught middle school for almost twenty years, and now does a lot of literacy advocacy when weighing her own political options. Hirokazu Yoshikawa is another academic, specializing in education and globalism, with an extra focus on pre-school; he's te co-author on a book entitled Cradle to Kindergarten. And, of course, Lily Eskelsen Garcia and Randi Weingarten are also on the team.
It's not a reassuring line-up.
On The Plus Side
The team is headed up by Representative Marcia Fudge (D-OH) and Heather Gautney, Ph.D. Fudge is a member of the Progressive Caucus and Gautney is the Fordham University professor who served as a Sanders campaign senior policy adviser.
The education concern about Biden has always been that he would just be Obama 2.0 (aka Bush 3.0). So the fact that they let a couple of left-wingers into the party is almost srt of encouraging if for no other reason than it signals that the campaign is aware that it has a problem with its progressive (aka "what used to be called actual Democrats") appeal.
Concerns
Does anyone else find it, well, odd, that the Biden campaign is only trying to unify with the Sanders campaign. It is less-than-encouraging that out of a wide, diverse field of candidates, the Biden campaign is just going to go with a show of unity between the two old white guys.
It would be nice to see the campaign steal more ambitiously from just about any other campaign (except Mike Bloomberg) but on the K-12 education policy page (which you find by scrolling waaaayyyyyyy down his page of policy stuff), it's just the same old weak sauce.
Why I'm Not Very Excited Either Way
First, this is political stuntsmanship. The key word is "unity," as in "honest, it's okay to vote for Biden even if you still haven't taken down your Warren or Sanders posters, because we really truly are one big happy family." In other words, this team is not about coming up with good education policy as much as it's about improving electability chances. They didn't call together a bunch of educators; they lined up a bunch of political operators.
Second, I don't know about you, but there is almost nothing that Biden could say or do that would make me trust him on education. Not even "Sorry, we really screwed the pooch back when I was VP" because at this point, it's way too late for me to believe any apology. He's denounced Betsy DeVos; he hasn't shown that he understands the Obama administration's responsibility for helping create her. We were always going to have to watch his every education move and be prepared to raise a stink if his administration did something awful. Nothing that he does between now and November is going to change that. (And--though I hate to say it-- he has to get elected first, and I'm not prepared to make any bets on this race.)
Third, the whole platform thing. I will never understand the deep and intense fights of party platforms. I can't recall a singe moment in history when a candidate has said, "I don't really like this idea, but the party put it in the platform, so I will now try to make it happen." Platforms are like mission statements-- good for collecting dust, but in the meantime, people are going to do what they're going to do. Maybe this team is actually going to do something that will have an effect on the policies that Biden (if elected) will pursue, but I'm not betting my lunch money on it.
Nothing has changed. Supporters of public education were always going to have to be vigilant and, when necessary, noisy for the next four years. That hasn't changed, especially not since the Democratic Party washed out everyone except a candidate who remains next-to-bottom tier when it comes to education. Nothing the campaign could do now would convince me to relax my concerns or vigilance, and that should be true for all public education supporters.
Tuesday, May 12, 2020
The Why Of Opening Schools Matters As Much As The When
Originally posted about three weeks ago. Not much has changed; only become more so.
At some point, schools are going to open again. Figuring out when will require some complicated medical and political calculus, and while lots of folks are hoping it will be just as easy as life going back to normal sometime over the summer, nobody is ready to bet the farm, or even a few select outbuildings, on that simple scenario.
The “when”of re-opening schools will matter, whether it’s early, late, or right on time. But it will be equally important to talk about the “why.”
It would be great if the “why” was something along the lines of “We want to get back to making good on the promise of a full and free education for every child” or even “We want children to get back to learning and planning for their futures.”
There are, unfortunately, less useful arguments in play.
Some of the battle over re-opening the US has become starkly political, with GOP lawmakers joining protestors on the steps of state capitols. Perhaps the very worst reason for re-opening US schools (or not) would be in order to score a political victory for one team or the other.
Another common pressure for re-opening comes from the desire to re-open the economy. It will be that much harder to get workers back on the job if they have nobody to watch the kids, and so the desire to get workers back on the line will go hand in hand with the push to get students back in the classroom.
One may ask, “What difference does it make why we’re re-opening schools, as long as we’re getting them open again?” But the “why” will have a huge effect on how the challenge is approached.
If schools are re-opened just as a means to another end (restarting the economy, striking a blow for freedom, etc), then important steps will be skipped and necessary corners may be cut.
Opening schools in a time of continued coronavirus will be challenging (I get into that here). Authorities can talk about spacing out desks in classrooms and, somehow, spreading out traffic in the halls, but if all of this hinges on class size reduction, where will all the additional teachers come from? And once you put actual live children, particularly the younger ones, back together in school, it will take roughly fifteen seconds for social distancing rules to be broken. A drop in the spread of the disease and reliable testing will be critical prerequisites for re-opening schools.
If the reasons for re-opening schools are not educational reasons, authorities will be tempted to just wave vaguely and say, “Just open them up again and then do that educationy stuff.” If all the attention is given to the custodial role of schools, the educational program will be inadequate.
The custodial role will matter. Students will be coming back from a time marked by trauma and disruption. Many will be out of practice when it comes to interacting with other children. Many more will have lost the basic routines of doing school. Teachers will have to deal with all of that baggage before they can even teach.
The educational piece will be far more complex than the usual September start-up. Some students are maintaining their education, even moving forward. Some, for a variety of reasons, are not. “Meet the students where they are” will be an extremely challenging directive, because students will be all over the map. Teachers are going to need time, support, and resources. And because many school budgets are going to take a big hit next year districts will have to be committed and clever to fulfill their educational missions. During this pandemic pause, the equity gap between schools is widening; states will have to work hard to close that gap when schools re-open.
All of this is challenging stuff, and if our “why” for re-opening schools is “We need somebody to watch the kids so that their parents can get back to work,” the nation is not going to meet that challenge. It’s going to be a back-to-school season like never before.
Originally posted at Forbes.com
At some point, schools are going to open again. Figuring out when will require some complicated medical and political calculus, and while lots of folks are hoping it will be just as easy as life going back to normal sometime over the summer, nobody is ready to bet the farm, or even a few select outbuildings, on that simple scenario.
The “when”of re-opening schools will matter, whether it’s early, late, or right on time. But it will be equally important to talk about the “why.”
There are, unfortunately, less useful arguments in play.
Some of the battle over re-opening the US has become starkly political, with GOP lawmakers joining protestors on the steps of state capitols. Perhaps the very worst reason for re-opening US schools (or not) would be in order to score a political victory for one team or the other.
Another common pressure for re-opening comes from the desire to re-open the economy. It will be that much harder to get workers back on the job if they have nobody to watch the kids, and so the desire to get workers back on the line will go hand in hand with the push to get students back in the classroom.
One may ask, “What difference does it make why we’re re-opening schools, as long as we’re getting them open again?” But the “why” will have a huge effect on how the challenge is approached.
If schools are re-opened just as a means to another end (restarting the economy, striking a blow for freedom, etc), then important steps will be skipped and necessary corners may be cut.
Opening schools in a time of continued coronavirus will be challenging (I get into that here). Authorities can talk about spacing out desks in classrooms and, somehow, spreading out traffic in the halls, but if all of this hinges on class size reduction, where will all the additional teachers come from? And once you put actual live children, particularly the younger ones, back together in school, it will take roughly fifteen seconds for social distancing rules to be broken. A drop in the spread of the disease and reliable testing will be critical prerequisites for re-opening schools.
If the reasons for re-opening schools are not educational reasons, authorities will be tempted to just wave vaguely and say, “Just open them up again and then do that educationy stuff.” If all the attention is given to the custodial role of schools, the educational program will be inadequate.
The custodial role will matter. Students will be coming back from a time marked by trauma and disruption. Many will be out of practice when it comes to interacting with other children. Many more will have lost the basic routines of doing school. Teachers will have to deal with all of that baggage before they can even teach.
The educational piece will be far more complex than the usual September start-up. Some students are maintaining their education, even moving forward. Some, for a variety of reasons, are not. “Meet the students where they are” will be an extremely challenging directive, because students will be all over the map. Teachers are going to need time, support, and resources. And because many school budgets are going to take a big hit next year districts will have to be committed and clever to fulfill their educational missions. During this pandemic pause, the equity gap between schools is widening; states will have to work hard to close that gap when schools re-open.
All of this is challenging stuff, and if our “why” for re-opening schools is “We need somebody to watch the kids so that their parents can get back to work,” the nation is not going to meet that challenge. It’s going to be a back-to-school season like never before.
Private Equity's Destructive Tendencies
This article ("Why Private Equity Keeps Wrecking Retail Chains Like Fairway") has been sitting on my desktop since late January, which is now, of course, roughly ten years in our collective past, but it's still worth a look. It's not about education, except that, given the deep and abiding love that hedge funds have for charter schools, this is absolutely about education.
Jordan Weissmann at Slate opens with
The list of retailers that have been bought and wrecked by private equity firms keeps on growing. This week, the beloved New York grocery chain Fairway filed for its second bankruptcy in less than four years and announced plans to sell off its stores, thanks to a disastrous run of mismanagement by a series of buyout shops. It’s on a list of casualties that now includes Toys R Us, Payless Shoe Source, and Sports Authority, among many others. That’s on top of financially troubled names like Neiman Marcus that have managed to avoid Chapter 11 or liquidation (so far).
Since January, Neiman Marcus has lost its bid to avoid bankruptcy. So add them to the list of retailers who died, not because they lost some sort of imaginary battle with Amazon.com or other online retailers, but because they were owned by hedge funders who had far less interest in running a business than they had in draining its resources. Even when you find a retailer who has gone under because of failure to keep up with the competition, like Sears/K-Mart (Oh, look! There goes J C Penney's), it's useful to look more deeply at why they can't compete-- like, say, investors draining the resources that could have been used to keep the business current.
Weissmann proposes three reasons that we keep seeing these stories, and the reasons tell us plenty about how the hedge fundies behave.
Theory 1: Sometimes, private equity firms really are just looters.
In other words, one way to make money is to just smash and grab, to perform the corporate equivalent of bad house flipping- buy cheap, invest in some cheap cosmetic improvements, sell big. This helps explain why so much of the charter biz is actually real estate biz. Like house flipping, these business deals can occasionally work out (Weissmann points out that Dollar General was saved by hedge fundies), but in the school-flavored charter business, there's nothing to save. So we get lots of charter schools that are really tools for milking profit out of a piece of real estate.
Theory 2: Private equity firms are especially terrible for industries experiencing upheaval, like retail.
Or metro newspapers. When a business is struggling anyway, throwing a bunch of debt and bean-counting into the mix is not helpful. The hedge funders who get into the charter biz are actually trying to create disruption and instability and then profit from it, which seems like a tough trick to pull off.
Theory 3: It’s too easy for private equity firms to borrow money.
People like free money, which is understandable. It's easier to try some janky investment scheme if t doesn't cost you much to get in the game. This is even truer in the charter biz. Maybe you can get your legislature to pass some of those rules that say taxpayers have to give your charter classroom space for free. Maybe you can get the taxpayers to foot the real estate costs. Barring that, there's the Community Tax Relief Act of 2000, which has this cool part that lets you double your investment in just seven years. It's the hedge fundies' favorite kind of risk--the kind where they shoulder very little of the risk themselves.
None of this stuff is the kind of free market competition that will make us all better that we were repeatedly promised. This is not the rising tide that lifts all boats. This is not even rescuing students trapped in their zip code. This is just figuring out ways to get money squeezed out of a business sector.
Weissmann notes that not all private equity is bad, and that's totally fair. Responsibly harnessed, private equity even occasionally makes things better. But it's not about taking a business and becoming so expert in the field that you can do better. In fact, it's axiomatic in the buy-up-companies world that management is management and it doesn't really matter what, exactly the company does--the point is to get a good return on your investment. And the humans involved are just numbers on a spread sheet. Why would anyone believe that such a philosophy would serve US education well?
Jordan Weissmann at Slate opens with
The list of retailers that have been bought and wrecked by private equity firms keeps on growing. This week, the beloved New York grocery chain Fairway filed for its second bankruptcy in less than four years and announced plans to sell off its stores, thanks to a disastrous run of mismanagement by a series of buyout shops. It’s on a list of casualties that now includes Toys R Us, Payless Shoe Source, and Sports Authority, among many others. That’s on top of financially troubled names like Neiman Marcus that have managed to avoid Chapter 11 or liquidation (so far).
Weissmann proposes three reasons that we keep seeing these stories, and the reasons tell us plenty about how the hedge fundies behave.
Theory 1: Sometimes, private equity firms really are just looters.
In other words, one way to make money is to just smash and grab, to perform the corporate equivalent of bad house flipping- buy cheap, invest in some cheap cosmetic improvements, sell big. This helps explain why so much of the charter biz is actually real estate biz. Like house flipping, these business deals can occasionally work out (Weissmann points out that Dollar General was saved by hedge fundies), but in the school-flavored charter business, there's nothing to save. So we get lots of charter schools that are really tools for milking profit out of a piece of real estate.
Theory 2: Private equity firms are especially terrible for industries experiencing upheaval, like retail.
Or metro newspapers. When a business is struggling anyway, throwing a bunch of debt and bean-counting into the mix is not helpful. The hedge funders who get into the charter biz are actually trying to create disruption and instability and then profit from it, which seems like a tough trick to pull off.
Theory 3: It’s too easy for private equity firms to borrow money.
People like free money, which is understandable. It's easier to try some janky investment scheme if t doesn't cost you much to get in the game. This is even truer in the charter biz. Maybe you can get your legislature to pass some of those rules that say taxpayers have to give your charter classroom space for free. Maybe you can get the taxpayers to foot the real estate costs. Barring that, there's the Community Tax Relief Act of 2000, which has this cool part that lets you double your investment in just seven years. It's the hedge fundies' favorite kind of risk--the kind where they shoulder very little of the risk themselves.
None of this stuff is the kind of free market competition that will make us all better that we were repeatedly promised. This is not the rising tide that lifts all boats. This is not even rescuing students trapped in their zip code. This is just figuring out ways to get money squeezed out of a business sector.
Weissmann notes that not all private equity is bad, and that's totally fair. Responsibly harnessed, private equity even occasionally makes things better. But it's not about taking a business and becoming so expert in the field that you can do better. In fact, it's axiomatic in the buy-up-companies world that management is management and it doesn't really matter what, exactly the company does--the point is to get a good return on your investment. And the humans involved are just numbers on a spread sheet. Why would anyone believe that such a philosophy would serve US education well?
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