Rebecca Friedrichs Still Hates The Teachers Unions

In 2014, Rebecca Friedrichs, after twenty-some years in the classroom, decided to go ahead and be the face of a lawsuit that would be derailed when Justice Scalia died. The court would eventually get to take their shot at unions with the Janus case. But while Friedrichs may have lost a lawsuit, she did manage to launch a career as a far-right Christianist spokesperson. She has done plenty of work for other folks, while pushing her own group, For Kids and Country.

If you want to catch a full catalog of the many people she objects to, you can catch her latest op-ed in the Washington Times, the right-wing outlet.

Yeah, this lady.

She's casting a wide net here, and she's come up with more old boots than actual fish. She starts by going after the 1619 Project and Black Lives Matter. She does the standard nod to black lives while still All Lives Mattering it ("Again, don’t get me wrong. Black lives do matter! Indeed, every human life is sacred.") At the same time, she wants you to know that Black Lives Matter are Very Naughty:

But the organization named Black Lives Matter is not what it claims to be. Like the unions, it’s a Trojan horse of anti-American, anti-family beliefs masquerading as defenders of good.

Friedrichs needs to bring up the union because they are part of this whole anti-American plot. She notes that some historians disputed the project, but not the NEA.

Instead, the NEA coordinated directly with The New York Times, the Pulitzer Center, Southern Poverty Law Center and Black Lives Matter to put 1619 into the hands of educators and activists. Their goal? To assert a false but preferred narrative to advance a political agenda.

Then she connects this to other "pseudo-realities" being pushed onto "our culture." Fluid genders. Hysterical weak environmental claims. Families aren't the center of society, and and children don't respect authority. History is reframed to assault "our Judeo-Christian culture." Friedrichs gets increasingly wound up, calling the project rubbish. "How dare they!"

But her own grasp of history is weak.

The pilgrims sacrificed every earthly possession and their very lives to secure God-ordained liberties for every race, status and creed, guiding our Founders to their “self-evident” truth that “all men are created equal.” They inspired a free constitutional republic based on biblical principles that’s a beacon of hope in a very dark world.

Well, no. There are things to admire about the Pilgrims, but their desire to establish freedom for every race, status and creed is strictly imaginary. Exhibit A: the tendency of the Puritan-led Massachusetts Bay Colony to execute Quakers who came to proselytize. Nor was the republic based on Biblical principals.

But darkness always seeks to destroy light, so now our kids are forced to learn revisionist tales promoting atheism, racial division and ignorance of truth.

The union is part of a coalition aiming to destroy America. Really.

The NEA, The New York Times, their coalition and those they’ve indoctrinated have fallen for the devil’s oldest trick — pride. Fancying themselves “progressives” they’re stuck in the dark ages. Their false history actually subverts the progress we’ve made — creating hatred and divisions where there’s been healing, and ripping open old wounds and ignorance most Americans have overcome. They’re retraumatizing and legitimizing a victimhood mentality, forcing a chip onto the shoulders of black Americans and heaping mountains of undeserved guilt on those of white Americans. It’s dangerous; it’s destructive; and it’s dishonest. It’s also ripping our country apart.

Whoa. So either you can see what's wrong with all that, or I can't hope to explain it to you. B ut "forcing a chip onto the shoulder of black Americans" is a pretty astonishing reframing of US history. Yup-- Black folks would have been perfectly happy with how things were going if te left hadn'g somehow forced them to get all cranky.

But I brought this piece up to make one point. Back in 2014, it might have been possible to think, "Well, you know, people who oppose fair share might kind of have a point, and maybe she's just a lady who has a legitimate objection to having to give money to a union she disagrees with, and not some sort of rabid union-hater looking for any excuse to bust unions and their political power." Years later, she's clearly that second, union-hating one. It's nice to give people the benefit of the doubt, but they don't always deserve it. Friedrichs has turned out to be what she always appeared to be-- a shill for the folks who want to get rid of the union because A) unions lead to the help getting uppity and B)  because they tend to support the Democratic party, they are an obstacle to permanent GOP rule.

To Those Of You Worried About The Covid Slide

Dear concerned policy makers, bureaucrats, and edu-wonks:

Ever since NWEA, the testing manufacturer that promised it can read minds by measuring how long it takes students to pick a multiple choice answer, issued their report on the Covid-19 Slide, you have been freaking out a little because they hear you say that distance learning has been disastrous and if we do it again in the fall, we'll produce a generation of students too dumb to come in out of the rain.  Everyone from the Wall Street Journal to members of Congress has been experiencing bovine birth events in response to the report. I just want to make two quick points for you.

First, you don't need to freak out over the study. Because it's not so much a "study" as a rough best guess about how students might do on a single not-great standardized test of math and reading. On the other hand, you can freak out a little bit, because while the report is ludicrous, if you actually talk to teachers and students and families, you'll hear that distance disaster school is not great. But you really don't need to base any of your argument on NWEA's totally made up numbers.

Second. Let's pretend that the numbers aren't made up. Let's pretend that it's true that, due to the slide, students will lose 30% of a year's worth of math and 50% of as year's worth of reading. That would be super double-plus ungood.

Let me remind you of the 2015 study by CREDO, an organization that is pro-charter school, discovering that the average cyber-school student fell behind 180 days in math and 72 days in reading-- in other words, a loss of 100% of a year's worth of math and 40% in reading.

Some of you folks, like this pair of Congressional representatives, think that the numbers from the NWEA study are alarming enough that schools must absolutely get back into their traditional brick and mortar classrooms. I'm just asking-- if the numbers from NWEA are bad enough to require a shutdown of the whole distance crisis learning model, shouldn't the numbers for cyber-schools merit shutting those down as well? If you're concerned that the house is bursting into flames, why share some concern for the garage and barn that have been burning for over a decade?

ICYMI: Summer Vacation Edition (6/14)

Whatever summer vacation means this year, it has finally arrived at my house. Which mostly just means that my wife has shifted from working on things for this year to working on things for next year. Here are some things to read.

Predecessors Try To Fill Void Left By DeVos  

This is a strange little thing. First, that Duncan and Spelling see themselves as somehow way different from DeVos. Also, there's apparently an Old Secretary's Club, and DeVos is very not interested.

Yale Goes Test-Optional

Blame the corona pirates (that's what the Board of Directors calls the current pandemic), but this is the fifth ivy to dump the test for the next class. Susan Adams at Forbes has the story.

If Black Lives Matter, Then Let's Prove It By Fixing Our Schools  

An editorial from the Detroit Free Press points out the obvious-- you don't help launch lives that matter in underfunded, poorly maintained schools.

Teen Girls Organized Nashville's Largest Protest  

Speaking of students undertaking large projects. A great story of teens stepping up. At The Lily.

Teach for America 2020 Trainees To Enter Classroom With Only Tutoring Experience    

The indispensable Mercedes Schneider looks at how TFA is managing to lower the bar even further.

Where's All These Woke White People Come From?   

Michael Harriot at The Root is one of the best writers out there, and this piece is Exhibit A. Thoughtful and nuanced and just a great piece of writing.

Millions of Taxpayer Dollars Are Going To Schools That Push Conversion Therapy  

Rebecca Klein at Huffington Post has an enraging story about some of the private schools that are scooping up taxpayer money. She'd previously shown how some of these schools discriminate against LGBTQ students; now it turns out that's not the worst of it.

University students aren't cogs in a market.   

This story is from Australia, but you'll recognize the issues in the discussion of why students deserve to get more education than simply being loaded wit skills that employers want them to have.  

How Betsy DeVos Is Using the Pandemic To Get What She Wants  

The story has been told in bits and pieces, but Jeff Bryant at Alternet steps back for the full picture of how DeVos is using this crisis to push her own agenda in education.

AL: Why The State Pulled The Plug On A Charter For The First Time

Last week, the Alabama Public [sic] Charter School Commission took an unprecedented action and revoked a charter school's charter before it even managed to open. It's a tangly story, with connections to several charter school issues.

Woodland Prep was supposed to be a hot new charter school, but it came with so much baggage that there is an entire blog following the entire mess. Believe me-- I'm going to give you the broad strokes, but if you want to go down this rabbit hole, it runs deep.

At the center of all of this is Soner Tarim. Tarim has a degree from Texas A&M, is a trained biologist, and if you look at any of his bios, he sounds like a heck of a well-trained guy. He's a certified trainer via Texas Education Agency, and ran Harmony Public [sic] Schools, a Texas chain that likes to make claims like a 100% college acceptance rate. He's even connected to the Pahara Institute, a virtual education outfit connected to the Aspen Institute. Pahara-Aspen is connected to all sorts of cyberschool nonsense, and even has ties to our old friend David Hardy, the TFA-grown superintendent who crashed and burned in Lorain, Ohio. Oh, and he also is studying at Eli Broad's fake school for training superintendents.

On top of all these reform credentials, Tarim has one other important connection, and that's to the Gulen Charter empire. The Gulen chain is infamous and huge--centered around a Turkish political leader-in-exile now located in eastern PA. The chain is charged by, well, many many people of being a device for sucking up US tax dollars and using them to finance Fetulleh Gulen's. Again, there are entire websites devoted to following the many abuses and scandals.

In addition to the huge Harmony chain, Tarim also owns Unity School Services, a company that makes money operating other charters, like the Lead Academy chain, with which Unity had a nasty break-up.

But controversy of one kind of another has followed Tarim. In 2011 the New York Times wrote a story detailing Harmony's tangled connection to the Cosmos Foundation which was in turn connected to Gulen. Tarim denied the bulk of the story, but the Times outlined the usual pattern of the Gulen schools-- hiring Turkish nationals for all jobs, using plenty of H-1B visas (along with allegations that those employees are expected to bounce part of that pay back to the imam). One simple example: a $50 million construction contract for a company that had only been in business for one month. The Gulen network, which is huge, has taken advantage of states where charter oversight is lax, and hoovered up great mountains of US taxpayer dollars.

Still, Tarim keeps swinging. The US has considered Gulen Our Guy (though in the last couple of years that has changed a bit-- politics, you know), and so his chain remains untroubled by any federal concerns.

So Tarim left the Harmony network, though he kept trying in Texas. In June of 2019 he asked their state board top approve eight new charters, and met blistering resistance from board member Georgina Perez, who came to the hearing with six pages of questions. "He attempted to create his personal set of alternative facts," she told Larry Lee, a journalist who has made himself a leading expert in Tarim's machinations (Here's a great piece about how, with Tarim, it's always the other guy's fault).

In the meantime, Tarim had moved from Texas into some other states, including Alabama, where he tried to get a LEAD Academy approved but hit a roadblock when the Alabama Education Association took Tarim to court over an illegal approval process involving made-up rules and charter applicants who had zero experience running schools.

Then, for whatever reason, Tarim set his sights on a small rural area of Alabama. And that was where he wanted to build Woodland Prep.

Nobody wanted Woodland Prep--not the local leaders, not the local citizens. They were worried that a charter would drain resources from their already-struggling school. The National Association of Charter School Authorizers took a look at the application and said that it should be denied; it was full of inaccuracies and what Lee kindly calls "misrepresentations." But the Alabama Public [sic] Charter School Commission operates independently and answers to nobody, least of all the voters and taxpayers of Alabama. So in 2018, Woodland got its charter. But by this spring, it was still educational vaporware, a school that existed only as a Tarim sales pitch, and so it received a long-overdue pulling of the plug.

How many articles have I written about this? At least 50. And to be honest, I got to the point where I began to doubt that I would ever have the chance to write a headline like the one above.

In the end, it was as much a story about a very rural community that simply refused to quit fighting and standing up for what it believed in strongly. It was about a community that takes pride in its public schools and refused to be bulldozed by a group of education “experts” from out-of-state who were far more intent on making money than helping children.

Lee, incidentally, is a tremendous education journalist, covering Alabama in particular. He's been at it for a while, and he knows his stuff.

Soner Tarim has more irons in more fires than I can count at the moment, so keep your eyes peeled for that name. There are two lessons in the Woodland Prep story. First, nobody is so tiny that they can safely say, "It'll never happen here." Second, that nobody is so tiny that they can't still win.

Never Mind The Personalized Learning. Let's Do Personalized Learning Instead.

As the education world scrambles to figure out what next fall will look like, many, many voices are speaking up for reimagined schooling. One particular model has surfaced repeatedly, and it’s not at all new—but it could be.

Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos has set aside some of the stimulus fund for a competitive grant that would reward state-wide virtual schools, much like the model she admires in Florida. Many commentors are arguing that now is the perfect time to “innovate” and shift to personalized learning, or its twin sibling, competency-based education. One clue to what these folks are really talking about is the market research, which focuses on education tech companies. But Governor Andrew Cuomo gave a clear signal when he was announcing that Bill Gates would be helping reimagine New York schools:

The old model of everybody goes and sits in the classroom, and the teacher is in front of that classroom and teaches that class, and you do that all across the city, all across the state, all these buildings, all these physical classrooms — why, with all the technology you have.

What most advocates have been selling for years is not actually personalized at all, but is a system in which content delivery and assessment are handled by software. An algorithm, often touted as Artificial Intelligence, decides which assignments to deliver to the student. There may be a human “mentor” available to the students, but the computer manages most of the “educating.” The argument is that software is fast, deep, and flexible to “personalize” education, or that the software can move a student through a list of competencies and certify each one, checking off the list at the student’s personalized speed. 

The model has been tried by charter chains like Rocketship Academy, without a great deal of success. But it’s appealing at the moment because sitting each student down in front of a computer screen in separate locations is the ultimate in social distancing (and replacing expensive humans with software is appealing to some folks, too). Nevertheless, it’s hard to have personalized learning when you have removed persons from the education.

But what if we reclaimed the term “personalized education”? What if we decided that the key to personalized learning is not computers, but human beings? Could we meet the needs of students and the recommendations of the CDC? Let’s play the reimagining education game. What could actual personalized education look like?

To really personalize education, you need to provide more time and opportunity for teachers and individual students to interact. There are many ways we could do this, but let’s try this—split the school day in half and have teachers spend half the day teaching class, and half the day in conference with individual students. Reduce class size to a maximum of fifteen; that will allow teachers to get to know students better, sooner, and will also make it easier to do social distancing within the classroom. It retains class meetings, which provide the invaluable opportunity for learning to occur as part of a community of learners.

Students would have either morning or afternoon classes, reducing the number of students in the building at any time. Cafeteria services could be cut to a minimum while still providing meals to go for students who need them. Classes would be structured so that lots of the work is done outside of school. Teachers and students would maintain on-line contact and students could reach out for help at any time; keeping in contact virtually doesn’t work too badly if there’s a meat world relationship as the foundation. 

Each student would have personal contact with a teacher who has ample time to work with that student one-on-one. Teachers would have time to really learn the strengths and weaknesses, interests and goals, of every student. Teachers and families could develop individualized education programs (IEPs) for every student, not just the law mandates. There would even be time to design and implement courses of independent study, and leeway to focus on mastery and not just seat time. 

There are all sorts of challenges with this vision. Transportation in particular would be a problem for lots of working parents. Creative scheduling would be needed to give high school students a full schedule in half days. And teaching staff would have to be increased, even doubled, to make this work, as well as increasing the physical space for the school (though moving away from the institutional bricks and mortars would fit well with the personalized approach). That cost alone guarantees that nobody is actually going to try this.

Covid-19 or not, we’ve always known what’s required for truly personalized education. Instead, we’ve focused on how to keep costs low, how to make schooling “efficient.” Truly personalized education is costly. We should not be fooled by people who attempt to slap that label on a cheap alternative.

Originally posted at Forbes.com

Five Examples Of What's Wrong With Ed Tech

I get pitches-- e-mails from PR folks who have noticed that I write about education and want to offer me a chance to talk to an up-and-coming visionary who can tell me all about Bunkadiddle Corporation's new program! The pitches have taken on a pandemic sheen for a few months now ("In these trying times, when students and teachers are all struggling, we offer this Shiny New Thing!"). Mostly they highlight everything there is to dislike and distrust in edu-business, but a couple of weeks back I got a super-entry in the category, a pitch that threw five "sources" at me, and they serve as a fine example of what's out there and why it's Not Good.

These companies are all "best in the space" (all of these pitches are for best top exemplary companies--always) and offer to help with the "two looming thoughts" for re-opening schools. How to keep people safe, and how edtech will be implemented. Which is the first bad sign, because I know lots of teachers are wrestling with concerns about students and health and classrooms and curriculum, but hardly anybody who is specifically worried about how to find edtech a happy place (the correct answer is, "I'll use any ed tech that actually does something I need to do better than I can just do it myself, and the rest can just take a hike.")

These five companies didn't ask to be raked over coals here, and it seems mean, even for me, to call them out by name after they handed me their info in an email. But here they are, offering to do their thing for pandemic times.

Our first CEO's LinkedIn profile leads with "A tireless visionary and the founder of multiple technology companies."

They're not kidding. Their profile lists him as founder for six companies, including gaming center management software, a communications platform, a business ecosystem, and a company that brings entrepreneurs to co-live in Bali. They've done a TED talk. They signed the Founders Pledge. They graduated from Copenhagen Business School in 2006, Harvard (Business Valuation, Mergers & Acquisitions) in 2007, and Northwester University Kellogg School of Management, specializing in business marketing, entrepreneurial ventures, venture capital, bargaining and negotiations, in 2008. After finishing at Northwestern, he spent a year at McKinsey and Company. Four of the six companies were founded after his McKinsey days.

Their most recent company creates virtual lab simulations and offers the promise "your students will learn twice as much with" their product. Twice as much as what is not explained, but they promise that it will close the knowledge gap. The email argues that "motivation and engagement issues with at-home learning can be solved by utilizing the right ed tech platforms," so hey-- problem solved. You can get up to eight simulations for $49 per student, or go "full course" with over 140 simulations for $99 per student. And they're global. The CEO/Founder, you may notice, has zero background in education; the company website offers no indication if anyone who works there has an education background.

Our next CEO/Founder/President graduated from the University of Phoenix with a MBA in 1996, founded the company in 2003 (though incorporation papers filed in Delaware in 1999), and has been riding that pony ever since, growing through acquisition. The CEO also did some work with distance learning companies, including his alma mater.

The company runs for-profit education services, specializing in the "data driven" personalized learning. They've had legal troubles in multiple states, including charges of illegal robo-calling sales prospects. It bought a couple of universities that it grew through online learning, except that they also became a prime exhibit of predatory for-profits that didn't actually produce useful degrees.

This company is in my email touting their newest subsidiary, an on-demand tutoring service with over 10,000 tutors available. Within management, there does not appear to be a single person with the slightest background in education--it's all business. In fact, there are several management committees--none are related to education.

Number three. MBA from Wharton in 2010. Prior to that they worked as a business analyst at Capital One, and spent two years at Bain and Company, along with some summer "associate" work. Degree in hand, he went to InMobi for signing publishing partnerships, then founded their company in 2013. They are "on a mission to make high-quality education accessible to everyone in the world." Also, "learn in-demand skills online--on your schedule." You get a mentor, too. The focus appears to be almost entirely on tech-related career prep. Networking is their big thing, and their pitch to me seems to be at least partly about people "looking to reskill due to the pandemic."

Our fourth CEO/Founder graduated top of the heap from University of Virginia with a degree in Foreign Affairs and Spanish. From there it was a United Nations commission, the Brazilian Embassy, the Organization of American States, and a Fulbright Scholar for a year at the US State Department. An account executive at Powell Tate, and a program advisor at UPEACE/US. All of that in the space of five years. Then a big job at Atlas Service Corps, an international exchange for non-profit leaders.

Somewhere in there in 2007, they founded a company that "cultivates students' social and emotional learning skills that empowers them to navigate the complex and rapidly-changing realities of our world." It uses interactive videos, movement and creative expression and the program was "developed with educators in alignment with CASEL." Since this CEO was a dancer, too, they may come the closest of any to having some piece of qualification for the work they're doing. But the company can also pitch baloney stats with the best of them; the email promises that they have "helped schools see a nearly 40% increase in students' ability to manage and resolve conflict by using their program." I can't imagine how one would design a study to actually measure that.

Their management team at least includes jobs like Senior Education Consultant, but one such consultant has a BS in finance, another "has been working in the education market" for years "in several aspects of education, including fundraising, publishing and technology," which are totally not aspects of education. The third such consultant has been working in edtech for the past 7+ years; only in the tech world are seven years enough to qualify you as a senior anything.

CEO number five has worked since 2006 in marketing., launching a self-titled consulting group in 2016. Then in 2018 they became CEO of "a language learning organization on a mission to empower students to learn new skills, and by so doing, expand their horizons and foster understanding and communication across cultures and communities." The business website seems far less student-oriented and more aimed at the adult and corporate market. You can join a group class for $399 or take private lessons at $32/hour, and there are corporate packages, too. This CEO is prepared to talk to me about the importance of personalized learning.

The five CEOs have two things in common--1) they are offering huge, sweeping, grandiose promises about education and 2) they have absolutely no background in education whatsoever. Well, three things--3) they smell an opportunity to grow some market while schools are shuttered.

The sadder thing is that, per my in-box, this is just one batch of cubes off the iceberg.

John Oilver and Defund the Police

I don't do this often, but all I'm doing in this post is asking you to watch this video from John Oliver looking at the police, how we got here, what we could do. And you must watch through to the very end.