DeVos Stands Up For Testocracy

Thursday, Betsy DeVos issued a letter clarifying the Department of Education's position on postponing the Big Standardized Test this year, and it closes one of the few remaining gaps between DeVos and Arne Duncan.

In a letter to chief state school officers, DeVos noted that there has been a pandemic. She thanked the school leaders for their efforts to meet the needs of all students (forgetting, perhaps, all the times she has recently claimed that most pubic schools haven't done a damn thing) and notes that some of the crew has been bringing up the issue of testing waivers for this school year.

The answer, she says, is a big fat "Nope." She expects that the BS Tests will be given. And she offers this:

As you’ll recall, statewide assessments are at the very core of the bipartisan agreement that forged ESSA. They are among the most reliable tools available to help us understand how children are performing in school. The data from assessments can help inform personalized
support to children based on their individual needs and provide transparency about their progress. There is broad and consistent support for assessments because there is general agreement among the public that a student’s achievement should be measured, that parents
deserve to know how their children are performing, and that it should be no secret how a school’s performance as a whole compares to other schools.

There's a lot of baloney in that paragraph. Who is the "us" in "help us understand how children are performing in school"? Because it's certainly not parents, who clearly do not sit around all year ignoring report cards and communication from teachers and direct observation of their own child, saying, "Once that BS Test score comes in, we'll know how the child is doing." DeVos is fond of saying that nobody knows the needs and capabilities of the child better than the parents, but apparently that's not entirely true if the parents depend on the BS Test score to know the child.  Maybe the "us" is bureaucrats and politicians, in which case we ask the question "why do they need to know?"

The tests are NOT the most reliable tool available; in some cases these tests, which may be poorly constructed and narrowly focused on just two subjects, are not even A reliable tool. The tests, given once per year and delivering only broad sketches of information, do NOT provide information useful for personalizing education. There is no "broad and consistent" support for the tests; there is an interest in useful data, but it is a huge leap to decide that the BS Tests provide any such data.

As for the notion that it should be easy to compare school performance--first of all, why should it be easy? Second, is there any reason to think that these tests actually make it easy? Third, how did we jump from measuring student scores to judging the school itself? A test made for one particular purpose cannot be used for anything else that pops into your head (send that memo twice to all the states using the SAT or ACT as their Big Standardized Test).

Then  there's this:

Make no mistake. If we fail to assess students, it will have a lasting effect for years to come. Not only will vulnerable students fall behind, but we will be abandoning the important, bipartisan reforms of the past two decades at a critical moment. Opponents of reform, like labor unions, have already begun to call for the permanent elimination of testing. If they succeed in eliminating assessments, transparency and accountability will soon follow.

Of course. If we stop weighing the pig, it will never gain weight. And because teachers oppose bad accountability, obviously they oppose any accountability at all.

And if all of this sounds familiar, it's because we already had all these conversation when Arne Duncan was secretary.

On Twitter, I somewhat glibly observed that there was no longer any Duncan policy that DeVos has not embraced. She has decided to go ahead and be the US school superintendent. She has gotten comfortable with using the levers in her office to circumvent Congress. And now she has landed hard on one-size-fits-all magical testocracy, which also brings her in line with the other Duncan fave-- Common Core. I mean, what does she imagine most of those BS Tests are kind of sort of aligned to, partly?

Matt Barnum pointed out that in my glibness, I overlooked items like DeVos's wholesale gutting of various protections that the Obama/Duncan administration put in place for students (though I will note that they weren't really any more aggressive about predatory for-profit colleges than she has been). I had lumped that under the heading of "acting like a national superintendent," but on reflection, I see that's cheating.

There is, in fact, one major remaining difference between Duncan and DeVos.

It's the cruelty.

Arne Duncan certainly was [fill in your favorite Duncansian critique here], but he seemed to be widely viewed as a nice guy, and he never aggressively pursued policies that put corporate interests ahead of student interests (not saying he never did it, but he was never aggressively let-them-eat-cakey about it). But from the days that she sat in her Senate approval hearing making it clear that she could not imagine a situation of discrimination or mistreatment that would prompt her to actually use federal powers to protect student interests, she has made it clear that the little people can just go get stuffed. Duncan was often wrong, clueless, misguided, unsupportive of public schools, too tuned in to corporate privatizer interests, and ill-suited to the job-- but he was never flat out mean.

EdWeek has the winning response to DeVos's declaration of Nerts To You States:

Richard Woods, the state superintendent of Georgia schools, swiftly criticized DeVos' letter in a statement released Thursday. "It is disappointing, shows a complete disconnect with the realities of the classroom, and will be a detriment to public education," said Woods, an elected Republican.

The rest of his response is pretty good, too.

A lot of things can still happen before next spring's testing season rolls around, not the least of which could be the department being under new management. Kind of makes one wonder if the Trump/DeVos administration thinks more testing is a winning campaign platform. Let's hope the landscape looks a little different by the time 2021 rears its ugly head.

As Schools Reopen, Beware These Five Bad Management Approaches

Not all schools are blessed with excellent management teams (a million teachers just rolled their eyes and said, “No kidding.”) But while schools can succeed in spite of bad management in the good times, in times of crisis, bad management can really derail the whole train. Trying to launch a school year during a pandemic with little to no help from state and federal governments will test every school district’s leadership team. Here are the management styles most likely to lead to disaster.

Just Hold Still And Maybe Nobody Will Notice

In some districts, the standard management response to a new crisis or controversial decision is to simply keep everything quiet and under wraps. In this management theory, the actual problem isn’t the real problem—the real problem is the public finding out about what’s going on and then saying things about it, in the news, on social media, or (worst of all) in phone calls to the administrator’s office.

We don’t have to imagine how this would look during current pandemic re-openings. In Paulding County, Georgia, the school district achieved sudden viral status for cramming mostly-not-masked students into crowded halls against CDC recommendations. Administration’s reaction? Clamping down on students for showing the world what is actually going on, and threatening any student (or, allegedly, teacher as well) who posts anything that portrays the school in a “negative light.”

Management that focuses on avoiding bad optics will be disastrous during this Covid-19 autumn. Principals and superintendents who favor this style will feel the urge to hide results for staff or students who test positive. At the very moment when families and staff desperately need those leaders to solve problems, their first impulse will be to hide the problems, instead. So far in 2020, that’s not working well for anybody.

There Is No You In Team

Good school district plans are going to be complicated and filled with building-specific details. It will be impossible to craft these plans without teacher input, and even harder to implement without teacher participation. It will require a team, and some superintendents and principals aren’t very good at the whole team thing.

If your district’s plan was designed by a committee of administrators, it will be loaded with blind spots and problems that teachers could have anticipated. That’s doubly problematic, because every spot that the committee missed will signal to staff that the plan can’t be trusted as a whole.

Staff members know the difference between a leader who really sees them as part of the team and an autocrat who just says the words. Your school’s staff will bring plenty of history back with them when school re-opens, and that will affect how well everyone pulls together. The biggest problem with even benevolent top down management in crisis is that the autocratic leader has to be right 100% of the time. That’s a big ask; if your district has never been built on real teamwork, managers had better figure out how to get it done quickly.

Floating Without A Rudder

For some school leaders, there is no vision beyond “Keep on doing what we’ve always done without rocking the boat.” Most of the time, staff doesn’t necessarily mind this—it gives them the freedom to use their own best judgement and do their job with minimal interference. But whenever there’s a problem, it can be scary to be riding on a driverless bus.

A school leader’s job is to make it possible for teachers and staff to do their very best. That can’t happen if they are managing crisis conditions on their own, particularly if the crisis is completely unlike any ever before encountered. If your school’s plan is, “We’ll just show up and do our thing and hope for the best,” that plan is not going to last past the first hour on the first day.

The only time this will end well will be when somebody with real leadership talent steps up to do the floating administrator’s job.

Firefighter

Over the course of a career, it is easy for school administrators to become firefighters, reactively attacking whatever conflagration just erupted somewhere in the building. But Covid-19 autumn re-opening is going to involve so many fires, all at once, mostly unlike any fires the administrator has ever put out before. This style of manager will be overwhelmed by the end of the first day, and their frantic running back and forth will just lend an air of panic and chaos to the proceedings. (Note: Even worse if they’re a shouter.)

Data Driven

Nothing about how we ended up at this point has anything at all to do with being data driven. Nor are most schools being given any tools that can be used to collect useful data for this re-opening. This means that the data driven administrator will have to either A) make up data, B) use bad data or C) abandon their data-loving management style. None of these options are going to be pretty.

If your administrator can’t make a decision without leaning on a batch of numbers splayed on a spreadsheet and just doesn’t know how to lead based on personal, professional judgment, they will be incapable of making useful decisions during this re-opening.

Note

All of this still applies if your school’s re-opening is going to be virtual.

More note

All of these philosophies come with an overlay of management's emotional approach. In other words, your principal can be a data driven rage addict, or a data driven passive-aggressive twit.

Important note

Really poor administrators will display more than just one of these five styles.

Another note

The plan that your district submitted to the state probably doesn’t have anything to do with any of this. It’s a piece of paperwork meant to satisfy the state’s requirement, and may well have no relationship at all with reality.

The Only Bright Possibility

Many bad administrators are about to out themselves in the weeks ahead (and many very good ones are about to shine, as well). If your administrator turns out to be one of the lemons, don’t just blame Covid-19. Believe the evidence of your eyes and start looking for a way to trade up, fight back, or work around.

Originally posted at Forbes.com

TX: Why Vouchers For Private Schools Are A Bad Idea

Texas is a happy playground for charter operators, but fans of school voucher program using public taxpayer dollars to fund private school tuition-- well, they're been mighty disappointed on a regular basis. Even as US Senator Ted Cruz (yes, he's really from Texas) has tried to help push the Betsy DeVos voucher plan, a state-level program has been shot down again and again.

Mind you, they don't give up, and they keep coming back with assortments of bad arguments, like "vouchers will help rescue poor and minority students." You know-- "school choice is the new civil rights," say folks like Donald "I Haven't Recognized The Old Civil Rights Yet" Trump.

And every once in a while, a story comes along to help remind us why public tax dollars for private school tuition is a lousy idea.

Welcome to The Covenant School in Dallas, Texas. It's a highly-rated private religious school, with fancy things like a 7-1 faculty-student ratio. It get high marks for all sorts of things--except diversity. The state has a 38% Black student population, and Dallas itself has some segregation issues (only 6% of the Dallas Independent School District student population is white). Covenant's student body is only 6% Black. And with a tuition rate of $19K, not just anybody is going to be the "right fit" for this school.

But it turns out that Black students aren't the only group of students under-represented at Covenant.

Meet Devin Bryant. This 17-year-old student appears to be quite the school asset-- straight A,  "popular, well-behaved student, talented artist and gifted athlete who has made significant contributions" to the school's program. We know that's true because the school's headmaster said so himself, in the letter explaining why Bryant was just expelled.

Because Devin Bryant is gay.

Bryant, who has been a Covenant student since kindergarten, came out last October in an Instagram post (kids these days) and was scheduled to have a meeting with school officials last spring, but then pandemic madness hit. But this fall, when the seniors were painting their parking spaces, Bryant painted his to include mention that he is gay, and two days later, he was expelled.

Mom, who has been sending students to Covenant for twenty years, called to plead her son's case. Here's a part of the conversation with the headmaster that she shared with Dallas Voice:

“Are you a Christian?” she asked him. “Jesus would not do what you are doing.”

 He told her, “I’m doing what Jesus would want me to do.”

Yes, she signed a code of conduct agreement that included a "no gay" clause, which suggests that gay students could remains students in good standing at this Christian-ish school if they were willing to lie about it and keep on lying.

Now, none of this is all that unusual in the religious private school world, and it's a private school, so they're mostly free to do all the discrimination that they imagine Jesus wants them to do. But in states with voucher programs, your tax dollars are funding some of these places (yes, even if it's a tax credit scholarship education savings account accounting tricks bullshit program).

Note also that with a $19K tuition bill, nobody is going to this school strictly on a voucher. That voucher money will go mostly to students and families who already attend.

So good for you, Texas, on holding the line. Keep holding it. I'm pretty sure it's what Jesus wants you to do.

DeVos Continues Transformation Into Arne Duncan

Arne Duncan said many not-so-swift things, often revealing his true attitudes about the dismantling and privatization of public education. But one of his truly revealing moments came in 2010 when he famously argued that Hurricane Katrina was "the best thing that happened to the education system in New Orleans." For the many Black teachers who lost their jobs to Teach for America tourists, and the families who have had to navigate a fully privatized but never organized system of charters and private schools, that may sound a bit wrong.

Betsy DeVos came into the office billing herself as a sort of anti-Duncan. The feds would not impose on state control of schools. The department would not be the national school board. Right off the bat in her confirmation hearings, she made it quite clear that she could not imagine a case of discrimination against students that would move her to take any sort of action whatever.

But since the pandemic hit, she has become really comfortable with using the levers of the department to push her own policies for vouchers and defunding public education. Using department rules to rewrite laws passed by Congress and using the federal purse-strings to extort compliance--Betsy DeVos has become increasingly comfortable with those tools, using them just like Duncan did.

But now she's added another Duncan touch-- saying the quiet part out loud. In an interview with Wharton Business Daily, DeVos characterized the coronavirus pandemic as a "good thing." Like Duncan, she's happy to see all the destruction because she's hoping it will let her rebuild her way.

Public schools are too "static," says the woman who has declared they had better all open up in a traditional brick and mortar face-to-face format, or else. Public schools are too "one-size-fits-all," says the woman who has never spent time inside a public school. Public schools can't be "nimble" and "pivot," says the woman who supports giving billions of dollars to charter and private schools that demonstrate an alarming habit of nimbly pivoting from "open" to "closed" when they face any kind of challenge.

P.S. She has also rebranded her Education Freedom tax credit school voucher bill as the School Choice Now Act, which I guess is a nimble pivot from one name to another for a bill that can't get Congress to pay much attention at all. This insistence that everyone else be a nimble pivoteer, while you are ceaselessly beating the same drum and paying zero attention to your critics is another Duncan hallmark.

Trump Demands Patriotic Classrooms

Trump's education agenda is, well, terse. Eleven words, two items. And the second of the two is "Teach American Exceptionalism."

Monday, Trump expanded on that idea, saying that the nation needs to install "patriotic education" in schools. It's his plan for quelling rebellion in cities and countering "lies" about US racism (i.e. the "lie" that it exists). Gotta counter that "left-wing indoctrination" that all those indoctrinaty teachers are up to all the time (in between, you know, collecting lunch money and checking masks and updating web-based assignment materials).

As reported by Politico, here's the Trumpian solution to all our problems:

Children must be taught that America is “an exceptional, free and just nation, worth defending, preserving and protecting,” he said.

“The only path to unity is to rebuild a shared national identity focused on common American values and virtues of which we have plenty,” he said. “This includes restoring patriotic education in our nation's schools, where they are trying to change everything that we have learned.”

"To change everything we've learned" signals that in the spectrum of Trumpian policy ideas, we are in that folder labeled "Grampaw Hates This New-Fangled Thing."

What is American Exceptionalism, Anyway? 

I put a subheading here so that you can skip this history lesson portion of this post if you wish.

I'll also note that "American exceptionalism" is one of those phrases that ignores that "America" is two continents, North and South, containing a large number of nations other than the United States. It is just like American exceptionalism to assume that we are so much more special that we can just appropriate the name of the continent for just our nation.

That is the basic meaning of American exceptionalism-- that the US is special/better, inherently better, stronger, and more moral because of our special background and our special history and our special values, and that gives us a certain authority, moral and otherwise, in the world.

The roots of the idea run deep. The Puritans considered themselves to be God's chosen people, and they wanted to establish a "city on a hill." It fit nicely with the Puritan's problematic dichotomy-- everyone's a sinner and nobody deserves to go to heaven, but on the other hand, I'm one of God's chosen people so that kind of makes me better than you and gives me the right to tell you how to live."

Many authorities credit de Toqueville with the origin of the idea, and Joseph Stalin (yes, that Stalin) with the actual phrase, apparently in response to US communists who
insisted that this country was an exception to the way communist rules usually played out.

American exceptionalism, in general use, is just vague enough to be adaptable. It's nationalism wearing a cool Halloween mask, We're special (better) because of how we're founded, and we're special (better) because of our form of government, and we're special (better) because our history is a tale of virtue triumphing again and again, and our very special (better) nature means that we are born to be a world power, a major leader, and a shining example to al other countries.

Yes, But, Trump?

The very slogan "Make America Great Again" runs counter to American exceptionalism, because exceptionalism is premised on the idea that we are great, always great, burned-into-our-dna great. So we couldn't be un-great and in need of re-greatification. The pitch seems to be that evil lefty Democrat radicals have somehow diluted our greatness with their bad behavior and, particularly, their repeated insistence that we are racist and inequitable, and they've brought in a bunch of Those (not white) People to further spread that evil propaganda, and Those (not white) People who are not really part of our heritage are also putting a cramp in our greatitude.

Is it possible to find lots of lefty rhetoric to back up the notion that the left hates this country? Yes, certainly. Does all of this smell suspiciously like a retreaded version of the 1960s arguments around slogans like "My country, right or wrong"? You know--back in the days when Trump was using his bone spur to avoid putting his life on the line for this great and exceptional nation.

The problem with that argument has always been the lack of any room for nuance or complexity. Has the US grown and prospered in ways that are unique to some special US genius? Of course not. Are there plenty of things to be proud of anyway? Absolutely. Are the areas for vast improvement? Without a doubt. But the American exceptionalist view is that the country is perfect, the best in the world (though "best" remains a fuzzy term), and to so much as suggest that we might be #2 or #7 is considered anti-American. Or worse yet, detrimental to Trump's re-election chances.

So, teachers. 

So calls like Trump's are for teachers to stop bringing up all those Bad Things. Teach the right values, the right history. You're allowed to bring up bad things in our past as long as you explain how we exceptionally fixed the problem ("We used to have slavery, but then we fought the war and that was never a problem again ever"). Teachers are commanded to foircibly yank us back to the fifties when there were no problems because straight white guys got to decide everything and everyone who wasn't a straight white guy just stayed in their proper place.

There are plenty of things to love about this country-- the way we set out a batch of principles and have spent centuries trying to live up to them, the tricky balance of a three-headed republic, our cultural ability to absorb and synthesize, our opportunities to advance (even if they've been shrinking). And we could really, really, really use some civics education, because too many people have too small a grasp of the wheels and levers of our government.

But none of that means we should embark on some sort of North Korean style "education" initiative to forcibly embed some jingoistic version of blind nationalism into each and every young brain. Among our exceptional American values is the idea that demanding unquestioning obedience and idealization of the state is a Bad Thing. We should preserve that value. Patriotism, like any other kind of love, is meaningless when forced and stupid when it's blind.

ME: Pandemic Excuses More Uncertified Teacher Replacements

On August 26, Governor Mills of Maine issued an executive order that any warm body with any kind of college degree (or maybe even without) may be certified as a teacher.

The executive order actually has three parts. One gives instructions on how to count attendance if you want your state subsidy. One gives some loose instruction on facility disinfection. And one expands the eligibility for emergency teacher certification. Because of the "emergency shortages in essential school staff," 

DOE may issue an Emergency Teacher Certificate to an individual how holds a 4-year postsecondary degree or the equivalent in work and/or academic experience as determined by DOE.

Certification may also be issued to any college student enrolled in a teacher prep program. Also, they'll accept teacher certification from any other state. 

These emergency certificates will last only for this school year--at least, that's the deal for the moment. They have to be mentored, and the state isn't waiving criminal background checks. 

Maine has been doing okay-ish on the Covid front, though they just experienced a new outbreak cluster, thanks to a church and a rural wedding that largely ignored state guidelines. But they've still got a shortage of teachers willing to work under current conditions. That situation is not new--only the coronavirus part is. Maine's solution is understandable, but between the race to implement teach ing software and to grab any warm body to stick in a classroom, the pandemic is not exactly a boom for the teaching profession. At least Maine's warm body order has an expiration date.

ICYMI: This Month Can't End Too Soon Edition (8/30)

Sometimes you're just really ready to get to te next chapter, or just the next page. Not an uncommon feeling these days, even though it's not clear that the next chapter will be any less troublesome than this one. We'll see soon enough. In the meantime, here are some readings from the week.

As Teachers Livestream Classes, Privacy Issues Arrive   

From Sarah Schwartz at EdWeek. And no, she's not talking about those evil teachers who are worried that distance learning will lay bare their terrible indoctrination plans.

Teachers shot during training sue Sheriff's department   

Remember the teachers who were shot with non-lethal but really painful and scary bullets during an active shooter drill? They've decided to take it to court.

Money for nothing  

This op-ed from the York Daily Record looks at how PA cyber schools are hoovering up all the aid, because profiting from a crisis is fun, even if it screws over public schools.

Masks are optional; spaghetti straps are banned.  

From The Lily. These girls called their school on the whole "we can't require students to wear masks but female skin will be outlawed with the full force of school rules" baloney.

Another loss for Betsy DeVos; a win for students.

Another editorial about DeVos's recent court losses, which aren't news at this point, but this piece from the Los Angeles Times editorial board is still worth a read.

A perk for some neighborhoods: first dibs on top schools

From the New York Times, a look at yet another system that keeps NYC schools among the most segregated in the country.

Education Malpractice?  

At Dad Gone Wild, another example of how some professional education disruptors manage to cash in creatively.

Black Families Don't Need "Fixing"; They Need Better School Financing  

Andre Perry at EdWeek with the dismaying facts and figures of just how much we underfund Black schools and education. 

Frog and Toad Tentatively Go Outside After Months of Self-Quarantining

From McSweeneys, a gentle spin on two favorite characters on a new adventure.