AEI's Back To School "Blueprint"

Everyone has ideas about how schools can re-open again, from thoughtful and responsible educators to gun-waving loons on the steps of capitals. So why not have the American Enterprise Institute take a shot at it by calling together a reformsters' roundtable to look at the issue.

The blueprint brought together a "task force" loaded with familiar names-- Chris Cerf, Sharif El-Mekki, Kaya Henderson, Candice McQueen, Nina Rees, Gerard Robinson, Andrew Rotherman, Hanna Skandera and John White, to name a few. But hey-- they aren't waving guns or yelling threats at people in masks, so that makes them part of the rational part of the right tilted world, so let's see what they've come up with.

Let me begin with a digression on the nature of thinky tanks

Rick Hess and John Bailey are the nominal authors of this, and I want to pause for a moment to note that they offer an actual explanation for why thinky tanks should even be messing with this kind of thing:

At times like this, think tanks such as the American Enterprise Institute can play a constructive role. Because we are not burdened with the day-to-day responsibilities of serving students and families, we have the luxury to look further ahead. We can also bring together experts and veteran leaders who are versed in the particulars of what schools are facing and give them a platform to share their recommendations and guidance. Equally important, we can do all this with a degree of autonomy and independence, which can be more difficult for professional associations or partisan entities. 

The "this is our only job" argument is indeed part of the thinky tank raison d'etre; not having another day job does automatically give these groups an outsized voice in discussions about the work that keeps the people who actually do it too occupied to easily weigh in on it. It gives them the financial freedom to advocate for their point of view in outlets that don't pay a living wage for writing. And it gives them time for things like this.

"Autonomy and independence"? I don't really buy that part-- AEI, like most all thinky tanks, has its agenda. Think tanks are not research labs; they don't approach issues by asking, "I wonder what the answer is." Think tanks start with "Here's the answer we want to argue for-- let's craft an argument for it." Sometimes their chosen argument is a matter of their ideological bent; sometimes they are hired guns. And, of course, that's why they tend to assemble "experts" who fit the conclusion they want.

"We are not public health experts," they admit. Well, no. Nor are they education experts. Experts in the ins and outs of policy wonkery, but this task force is most devoid of anybody with real classroom experience (no, your two years with Teach For America and that charter you ran do not make you a teaching expert).

All that said-- the prospect of starting school up in the fall is scary and uncertain and unlike anything we've tackled lately. I firmly believe that solutions will be very, very specific and therefor the successful solutions will be crafted by the people there on the ground. But that doesn't mean we can't look at what this crew came up with.

Premises

The group assumes that school will open in the fall, but that we probably won't have a vaccine, so all manner of accommodations will be needed to deal with Covid-19. Those are fair assumptions.

Guiding principles? That decisions are best made by people close to the situation. That schools will have to figure out how to serve all students. That schools will need help from state and federal sources to provide resources that schools have had no time to prep for. Let me underline that--in Pennsylvania, teachers would have prepared their budgets for next fall around 6-8 months ago; meanwhile, districts don't get solid numbers for state financial support until this coming summer. It's a screwed up process that is extraordinarily ill-suited for the current problems.

Also, the health stuff piece is complicated and hard. I am summarizing brutally here.

So here are the areas that the committee recommends addressing

General Stuff

Coordinate with the community, mostly because the business of tracking and avoiding Covid-19 will occur everywhere. That means lots of good communication with the school system.

Also, regulatory flexibility. This is not wrong (PA, for instance, waived the 180 day requirement for this year), but it's a tricky issue. Of course, Reformsters have a whole list of school regulations that they would like to sweep away. So while the "hugely expedited timeline" for fiddling with regulations advocated here isn't wrong, it also requires some vigilance-- e.g., just how close Betsy DeVos came to saying that everyone could just scrap all regulations regarding students with special needs.

Privacy issues. For sure. I'm personally a bit shocked at how many people are adamant that they will not cooperate with contact tracing, a hugely important tool for figuring out where the disease is and where it's headed. Basically, someone asks you who you've been around since you got sick, and there are people out there determined to resist to the max. Add the issues surrounding juveniles and FERPA and HIPPA and this is going to be a contentious area. And it should be-- as with flexible regulations, a necessary response to the pandemic could be used to slip more shenanigans through.

School Operations

Everything will need to be deep cleaned, regularly. Protective gear for everyone. Playgrounds and sporting events may have to shut down. Not impossible, but not going to be cheap, either.

School meals? One of the areas of the blueprint where the committee basically says, "Yeah, this will be hard and schools are going to have to figure out what to do. Which is honest, but not very blueprint. Ditto for transportation. It's the fancy beltway equivalent of my local mechanic looking at engine pieces flying out through the hood of my car and saying, "Yeah, well, that right there's gonna be a problem."

Whole Child Supports

Educating the “whole child” is not a single set of courses, policies, or activities, but rather a mindset that should inform both school reopening plans and the support students receive.

Schools should consider an SEL needs assessment "to understand the full range of student and faculty needs" and I suppose an assessment could be any number of things, but I'm suspicious of any instrument that claims to know exactly what the SEL standards are and I'm doubly suspicious of anyone who needs these kinds of tools to connect with live human beings. The committee suggests connecting with "national organizations to provide the expertsie and support for schools and systems," and I'm not even sure who they could be talking about.

But here's a concrete solution. Since extracurriculars and sports are "critical" components of SEL, and schools will be hard-pressed to continue them, then let's privatize them. I am not sure how that helps-- do sports played by private athletic associations somehow involve more distancing? Also, one of the SEL benefits of extracurriculars and sports is that these groups are identified with the school itself (even more hugely true in rural areas like mine).

They do correctly identify mental health supports as a biggy. I'm not sure we can over-estimate some of the problems stemming from social distancing and isolation itself; there are students who haven't interacted with anyone but immediate family members for weeks, and that's likely to add to any stressors they're already dealing with. Add in financial issues, job loss, and plain old toxic family dynamics, and some students will be returning with huge amounts of emotional baggage.

So hire more counselors. And sign up for that telemedicine thing, because an internet counselor might help.

School Personnel

Here, more than anywhere in the plan, the group misses the boat.

Plenty of staff is over 55, so the group suggests getting rid of them. Early retirement incentives. Reassign the olds. This will obviously create some staffing shortages, so they have some thoughts. One is to "relax" class size regulations, presumably to allow larger classes, which is problematic for many reasons, not the least of which is that maintaining social distancing in a classroom of 100 students is nearly impossible unless you're holding class on a football field.

They suggest relaxing regulations in order to recruit from neighboring states-- but if all the states are going to be experiencing this shortage, which state would have all the excess teachers? And of course, that old favorite-- loosening certification requirements. All this to get the older teachers out of there, which is coincidentally a lo9ng-time goal of this crowd and their arguments against seniority protections.

There's another issue here as well. So we retire Mrs. McGeezer for her own safety, so that if Pat brings the virus to school, she won't get it. But what if Pat just gives it to Chris, another student who then takes it home to the grandparents. Removing the old folks doesn't really reduce the spread. Most importantly, since this report was whipped up, evidence has increased that plenty of the under-55 crowd are in danger from the virus as well.

The group would also like to take this opportunity to reframe the old argument that contractual obligations limit the district's freedom to Do Stuff. So they'd still like to see contractual limits on schedules, class sizes and work hours to go away, only now the idea is that this would be for the teachers' own good.

Money is going to be tight, so the group suggests looking for corners to cut and ways to right-size the district. Also, look to philanthropists to help plug the gaps. Sure.

Academics

There will be problems, particularly if there are more shutdowns.

Some of the suggestions for coping are a little silly, like getting ahold of the curriculum provider for help in using the publisher's materials to identify student learning gaps, modify instruction, etc. Is there any particular reason to think that book publishers have a better handle on current issues than actual classroom teachers?

Also, have printed copies of materials, and make adaptation for students with special needs. Yes, there is much of this report that may intend to just be thorough, but comes across as suggesting that teachers are dullards and dolts. Recommendations stop short of "Don't forget to eat food" or "The sun generally rises in the East," but they comer pretty close at times.

I do like this one-- have drills for internet education stuff, like fire drills. Which makes sense except that every teacher has a story about that time that they checked and checked and checked their tech, but when showtime came, the whole thing crashed. (See also: a few thousand frustrated AP test takers who had no trouble with the practice tests but whose actual test failed).

Time? Well, alternate days, longer days, longer years, summer school. Also, they'd like policymakers to consider using this opportunity to go with competency based education over seat time.

And once schools open-- test, test, test to see where students are. I just addressed this elsewhere, but the short answer is that teachers do this every regular fall already and now how to manage intake of new students, thanks. But as good fans of high stakes testing, these guys are afraid that by canning the Big Standardized Test this spring, we've missed all sorts of super-important data that's unavailable from any other source. They should relax.

Distance Learning

They don't call for replacement, but it's "better than nothing" and can support instruction. But now that we've been forced to use it, maybe check to see what worked or not.

Connectivity matters, and the report calls for every student to have a device and the "connectivity they need," which is a hell of a big ask. They also recommend take home mobile ho0t spots, which is not a solution if there's no connectivity for the hot spot either--it's like giving hooking their tv up to coaxial cable that isn't connected to anything on the other end.There are a lot of folks who have no connection, and a lot of other folks who have a crappy connection, and because connectivity is the realm, mostly, of private businesses, that's not going to change soon. It's just not cost effective to run the necessary infrastructure miles off the beaten path just to reach a handful of families. It's the same problem as mail delivery, electrical connectivity, and roads--there will not be a solution until government gets in the drivers seat. High speed high quality internet connection should be a public utility. Until it is, the solutions they propose are not actually solutions.

They also call for professional development, and here we hit a curious problem-- who exactly is going to deliver the training. Cyber-schools have had years and years to devote single-mindedly to the challenge of distance learning, and they have no real success to point to. There are teachers out there who have got a good handle on it, but they will be hard to locate and hard to connect to all the teachers who need the assistance.

When it comes to distance learning, mostly what we've got is a tool that few folks really know how to use effectively.

Blueprint?

Well, maybe a little. As is often the case on Food Network competition shows, this might have worked better if you hadn't given it that name. Because a blueprint is specific detailed instructions, everything you need in order to build something. This is not that. It's more of a List Of Things Somebody Is Going To Have To Figure Out, and that's really the most I would expect from a bunch of reform advocates, faux education experts, and thinky tankers. The detailed plans are going to have to come from people who are actually there on the ground, doing the work.

Some of the things on this list are obvious, some hardly explain anything, and some are off the mark. Read through if you like, but understand that far more useful things will come from local teachers and administrators, even if they aren't wrapped up in slick reports.

ICYMI: Shorts and T-Shirt Edition (5/17)

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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