Trump Issues School Vouchers Via Executive Order

Monday the White House (if Donald Trump wrote this thing, then I'm the Queen of Rumania) issued an executive order "expanding educational opportunity school choice" to create "Emergency Learning Scholarships for Students."

It instructs the Secretary of Health and Human Services (that would be Alex Azar) to use funds from the Community Services Block Grant program top provide "emergency learning scholarships" (the EO doesn't use the V word). These vouchers may be used for 

1) tuition and fees for private or parochial school (if you can find one that the voucher will actually cover tuition for, and the school is doing face-to-face, and they're willing to accept your child halfway through the year)

2) homeschool, microschool, or learning pod costs (curious to know how many disadvantaged students have managed to get into learning pods, like, say, this one at a country club)

3) special education and related services, including therapies

4) tutoring or remedial education

Note that the EO doesn't offer any instructions about oversight. So if you want to hire your out-of-work high school dropout brother-in-law as your child's tutor, that'll be fine.

The argument in favor of this is that January 20th is coming and the administration wants their damn vouchers now, dammit. Okay, not really. The argument for this is

1) We totally identified effective measures for resuming face-to-face and we gave you $13 billion whole dollars to do it (never mind the part where we tried to divert a bunch of that to private schools)

2) Continued distance learning is bad. Here are a few statistics we found. 

3) Building closures are extra hard on students with special needs, because they cut off not only education but support services. They're not wrong on this one. Of course, another solution would be to give public schools the resources they need to fix this. In fact, that would be the solution that would make sense, since the public system already knows who and where the students are and what they need. Bringing in another batch of service providers means that they should be done with needs assessments right around June.

4) Low-income students are also disproportionately affected. And we have some of those baloneyfied "falling behind" statistics here to throw around. We will ignore the part where families of SOC tend to hang back even when given then chance to go sit in unventilated undermaintained but-hey-they're-opened buildings.

5) If we don't get school buildings open again soon, it will hurt the economy. For this one, we will throw in baloney from that Chetty claim that a bad kindergarten teacher will hurt your lifetime earnings, somehow twisted around to work for months without school. Seriously--I want to see the bogus research behind this one. Also, without someone to watch the kids, some parents can't get back to work.

6) We sprung some HHS money to help with childcare and supplement distance learning, but that's not enough.

7) This pandemic stuff is really hurting private schools out there, too. So we thought using this to shoot some tax dollars their way would help prop them up. Because we are sad when Catholic schools close.

So, basically, a variation on the old "We've already given public schools enough money and if that's not enough, screw 'em, because what we'd really like to do is start some damn vouchers, dammit, and why waste a good crisis. 

Add this to the list of EO's that Biden needs to eliminate on Day One. What a waste of time and baloney. 

Democrats Need A New Theory Of Action

For four years, Democrats have had a fairly simple theory of action when it came to education. Something along the lines of "Good lord, a crazy lady just came into our china shop riding a bull, waving around a flamethrower, and dragging a shark with a head-mounted laser beam; we have to stop her from destroying the place (while pretending that we have a bull and a shark in the back just like hers)." 

Now, of course, that will, thank heavens, no longer fit the circumstances. The Democrats will need a new plan.

Trouble is, the old plan, the one spanning both the Clinton and Obama years, is not a winner. It went, roughly, like this:

The way to fix poverty, racism, injustice, inequity and economic strife is to get a bunch of children to make higher scores on a single narrow standardized test; the best shot at getting this done is to give education amateurs the opportunity to make money doing it.

This was never, ever a good plan. Ever. Let me count the ways.

For one thing, education's ability to fix social injustice is limited. Having a better education will not raise the minimum wage. It will not eradicate poverty. And as we've just spent four years having hammered into us, it will not even be sure to make people better thinkers or cleanse them of racism. It will help some people escape the tar pit, but it will not cleanse the pit itself.

And that, of course, is simply talking about education, and that's not what the Dems theory was about anyway--it was about a mediocre computer-scorable once-a-year test of math and reading. And that was never going to fix a thing. Nobody was going to get a better job because she got a high score on the PARCC. Nobody was ever going to achieve a happier, healthier life just because they'd raised their Big Standardized Test scores by fifty points. Any such score bump was always going to be the result of test prep and test-taker training, and that sort of preparation was always going to come at the expense of real education. Now, a couple of decades on, all the evidence says that test-centric education didn't improve society, schools, or the lives of the young humans who passed through the system.

Democrats must also wrestle with the fact that many of the ideas attached to this theory of action were always conservative ideas, always ideas that didn't belong to traditional Democratic Party stuff at all. Jack Schneider and Jennifer Berkshire talk about a "treaty" between Dems and the GOP, and that's a way to look at how the ed reform movement brought people into each side who weren't natural fits. The conservative market reform side teamed up with folks who believed choice was a matter of social justice, and that truce held until about four years ago, actually before Trump was elected. Meanwhile, in Schneider and Berkshire's telling, Democrats gave up supporting teachers (or at least their unions) while embracing the Thought Leadership of groups like Democrats for Education Reform, a group launched by hedge fund guys who adopted "Democrat" because it seemed like a good way to get the support they needed. Plus (and this seems like it was a thousand years ago) embracing "heroes" like Michelle Rhee, nominally listed as a Democrat, but certainly not acting like one. 

All of this made a perfect soup for feeding neo-liberals. It had the additional effect of seriously muddying the water about what, exactly, Democrats stand for when it comes to public education. The laundry list of ideas now has two problems. One is that they have all been given a long, hard trial, and they've failed. The other, which is perhaps worse from a political gamesmanship standpoint, is that they have Trump/DeVos stink all over them. 

But while Dems and the GOP share the problems with the first half of that statement, it's the Democrats who have to own the second part. The amateur part.

I often complain that the roots of almost all our education woes for the modern reform period come from the empowerment of clueless amateurs, and while it may appear at first glance that both parties are responsible, on closer examination, I'm not so sure.

The GOP position hasn't been that we need more amateurs and fewer professionals--their stance is that education is being run by the wrong profession. Eli Broad has built his whole edu-brand on the assertion that education doesn't have education problems, it has business management problems, and that they will best be solved by management professionals. In some regions, education has been reinterpreted by conservatives as a real estate problem, best solved by real estate professionals. The conservative model calls for education to be properly understood as a business, and as such, run not by elected bozos on a board or by a bunch of teachers, but by visionary CEOs with the power to hire and fire and set the rules and not be tied down by regulations and unions. 

Democrats of the neo-liberal persuasion kind of agree with that last part. And they have taken it a step further by embracing the notion that all it takes to run a school is a vision, with no professional expertise of any sort at all. I blame Democrats for the whole business of putting un-trained Best and Brightest Ivy Leaguers in classrooms, and the letting them turn around and use their brief classroom visit to establish themselves as "experts" capable of running entire district or even state systems. It takes Democrats to decide that a clueless amateur like David Coleman should be given a chance to impose his vision on the entire nation (and it takes right-tilted folks to see that this is a perfect chance to cash in big time). 

Am I over-simplifying? Sure. But you get the idea. Democrats turned their backs on public education and the teaching profession. They decided that virtually every ill in society is caused by teachers with low expectations and lousy standards, and then they jumped on the bandwagon that insisted that somehow all of that could be fixed by making students take a Big Standardized Test and generating a pile of data that could be massaged for any and all purposes (never forget--No Child Left Behind was hailed as a great bi-partisan achievement). 

I would be far more excited about Biden if at any point in the campaign he had said something along the lines of, "Boy, did we get education policy wrong." And I suppose that's a lot to ask. But if Democrats are going to launch a new day in education, they have a lot to turn their backs on, along with a pressing need for a new theory of action.

They need to reject the concept of an entire system built on the flawed foundation of a single standardized test. Operating with flawed data is, in fact, worse than no data at all, and for decades ed policy has been driven by folks looking for their car keys under a lamppost hundreds of feet away from where the keys were dropped because "the light's better over here."

They need to embrace the notion that teachers are, in fact, the pre-eminent experts in the field of education.

They need to accept that while education can be a powerful engine for pulling against the forces of inequity and injustice, but those forces also shape the environment within which schools must work. 

They need to stop listening to amateurs. Success in other fields does not qualify someone to set education policy. Cruising through a classroom for two years does not make someone an education expert. Everyone who ever went to the doctor is not a medical expert, everyone who ever had their car worked on is not a mechanic, and everyone who ever went to school is not an education expert. Doesn't mean they can't add something to the conversation, but they shouldn't be leading it.

They need to grasp that schools are not businesses. And not only are schools not businesses, but their primary function is not to supply businesses with useful worker bees. 

If they want to run multiple parallel education systems with charters and vouchers and all the rest, they need to face up to properly funding it. If they won't do that, then they need to shut up about choicey policies. "We can run three or four school systems for the cost of one" was always a lie, and it's time to stop pretending otherwise. Otherwise school choice is just one more unfunded mandate.

They need to accept that privatized school systems have not come up with anything new, revolutionary, or previously undiscovered about education. But they have come up with some clever new ways to waste and make off with taxpayer money.

Listen to teachers. Listen to parents in the community served by the school. Commit to a search for long term solutions instead of quick fixy silver bullets. And maybe become a force for public education slightly more useful than simply fending off a crazy lady with a flamethrower. 

ICYMI: Christmas Recovery Edition (12/27)

 We're getting there, and by "there" I mean into whatever future we're about to build in the new year. In the meantime, here's this week's reading list.

The Attack on Dr. Jill Biden Is Cloaked Hatred of Teachers and Public Ed 

While folks have been compiling lists if bad Wall Street Journal takes in 2020, the Epstein hit piece is often overlooked--but it was bad. Nancy Bailey pushes back. (Yes, this was only just last week)

SCOTUS Opened the Door for Religious Charter Schools  

One more preview of the argument that charter operators will use to cash in now that SCOTUS has signaled its willingness to bat down the church-state wall. It's Newsweek, which is not always a god sign, but the author is a law professor at Notre Dame.

A Teacher's Take on Computerized Reading Tests

Stefanie Fuhr is at the Campaign for a Commercial Free Childhood explaining why those tests are not a great thing, or even an adequate thing.

Too many parents and decision makers treat teachers like they don't matter  

At CNN, Alexandra Robbins argues that teachers need to be more than data points during the pandemic building re-opening debates.

Stop using black children as an excuse to open your schools  

AKA "where was al this concern a year ago?" From the Black and Smart blog.

Arizona charter school got a PPP loan, gave $10 million to a shareholder  

From the Arizona Republic, via USA Today, a tale of more stimulus loan shenanigans in the education private sector.

Education secretary should curb standardized tests   

Andrea Gabor at Bloomberg backing up the argument so many folks are making-- this is a terrible year to insist on the Big Standardized Test

Learning Pods Show Their Cracks  

Okay, this is mostly forehead slapping schadenfreude reading from the New York Times, as a bunch of pandemic pod parents discover that setting up a school is, in fact, hard. 

The Dark History of School Choice 

Diane Ravitch in the New York Review of books takes a look at three books that outline how the school choice movement owes much of its roots and arguments to the U.S. racist past, fueled by a long-time religious crusade against public education.

Where Did Education Fail Us?

As the end of the year approaches, Jose Vilson asks some of the big questions. A thoughtful meditation for a winter eve.

No Test In 2021 (A BS Test Reader)

Among the many things that the new secretary of education really needs to do upon taking office, a big simple one is this--cancel the Big Standardized Test for 2021. I've been banging the "Get Rid of the BS Test" drum for years, but all the reasons it's a lousy, toxic, destructive-and-not-even-useful force in education are amplified a hundred-fold by our current pandemess. 

Many wise folks have pointed this out, like Andrea Gabor at Bloomberg and the indispensable Mercedes Schneider at her own blog. Also, this piece by Lorrie Shepard at EdWeek. And I've been pointing it out, too, both here at the Institute and over at Forbes. So rather than whipping up a new skin for old wine, I'm going to offer this selection of my pieces from the past that all work to make the argument. Read, peruse, and most of all, share so that the tiny who-like chorus can pierce the beltway. Because waiving 2021's test would take the New Secretary five minutes and be hugely beneficial to students and schools in the US.

Is the Big Standardized Test a Big Standardized Flop?

A couple of years ago, some members of the education disruptors club, especially Jay Greene, started to admit that the BS Test wasn't actually connected to real world results.

Six Arguments For Giving the Test in 2021 (And Why Biden's Ed Secretary Should Ignore Them)

At Forbes, my most recent rebuttals to the standard "we have to give these tests" arguments. 

ESEA Hearing: What Wasn't Answered

The hearings about the newer, betterer education law included discussion of testing, but not terribly productive and often falling into the same old traps:

Predictive power is not causation. Let's take a stroll through a business district and meet some random folks. I'll bet you that the quality of their shoes is predictive of the quality of their cars and their homes. Expensive shoes predict a Lexus parked in front of a five story grand gothic mansion.
It does not follow, however, that if I buy really nice shoes for all the homeless people in that part of town, they will suddenly have expensive homes and fancy cars.

More Teacher Effectiveness Mirages  

A look, once again, at how test-centric schooling triggers Campbell's Law and makes a mess out of education.

Does Your School Suffer From Advance Testivitis

When a school has too completely absorbed the test-driven arguments, it demonstrates these troubling symptoms. This is how the BS Test ruins a school.

The Testing Charade: Buy This Book  

Testing expert Daniel Koretz wrote a book that lays out everything folks need to understand about how the testocracy has become a snare and a delusion. Pray that the new ed secretary reads this book and takes it to heart.

8 Reasons To Opt Out

A quick simple list of the reasons that parents can skip the BS Test with a clear conscience.

Super Secret Top Test Security

A reminder that part of the absurdity surrounding the test is the giant cloak of secrecy surrounding it, as if the best way to get use from the test is to make sure that teachers know as little about it as possible.

What Arne Duncan Gets Wrong About Testing  

Breaking down some of the fundamental misconceptions in the Obama/Duncan era of testing love.

6 Testing Talking Points  

At one point the testing industry unleashed some talking points with which to push back test resistors. Here they are, and here's how to respond top them.

Without The BS Test, Will Schools Be Flying Blind?

The big argument this year is that teachers and schools and other folks just really really need those test results in order to know what is going on. That's baloney.

And yes--all of this also argues that we should do away with the BS Test entirely, but not inflicting it on schools this year would be a great start. Let's hope.

Here's Some Merry Christmas Listening For You

 I hope that those of you who celebrate the holiday are enjoying it, even in these weird and distant times. May we never have a Christmas celebration like this one ever again.

As is tradition here at the institute, I have a collection of seasonal tunes for yoe- actually, a couple, this year.

For you youtubers, here's a collection specifically put together without the performances you've been listening to constantly for the last month.

Also, this year, my family did a sort of group Christmas list with contributions from members near and far. So here's that playlist.

 

 And if you haven't taken the Jingle Bell Challenge yet, here's 76 minutes of everyone's favorite

non-Christmas Christmas song

 

I hope the day is a great one for you, and that you are able to find a way to connect with those you love and whatever is most meaningful for you. Eat an extra cookie. It's been a hell of a year, and you've earned it.

AI, Language, and the Uncanny Valley

We experience vertigo in the uncanny valley because we’ve spent hundreds of thousands of years fine-tuning our nervous systems to read and respond to the subtlest cues in real faces. We perceive when someone’s eyes squint into a smile, or how their face flushes from the cheeks to the forehead, and we also — at least subconsciously — perceive the absence of these organic barometers. Simulations make us feel like we’re engaged with the nonliving, and that’s creepy.

That's an excerpt from Douglass Rushkoff's book, Team Human, talking about how the uncanny valley is our best defense. The uncanny valley is that special place where computer simulations, particularly of humans, come close-but-not-quite-close enough and therefor trigger an ick reaction (like the almost-humans in Polar Express or creepy Princess Leia in Rogue One). 

The quest for AI runs right through the uncanny valley, although sometimes the ick factor is less about uneasiness and more about cars that don't drive themselves where you want them to. The gap between what AI promises and what it can deliver is at least as large as an uncanny valley, though companies like Google are now trying to build a fluffy PR bridge over it (hence Google's directive that researchers "strike a positive tone" in their write-ups).

Since summer, journalists have been gushing glowingly over GPT-3, the newest level of AI powered language simulation (the New York Times has now gushed twice in six months). It was the late seventies when I heard a professor explain that the search for decent language synthesizing software and artificial intelligence were inexorably linked, and that seems to still be true. 

It's important to understand what AI, or to call it by its current true name, machine learning, actually does. It does not understand or analyze anything. You can't make it blow up by giving it a logic-defying paradox to chew on. A computer is infinitely patient, and is good at cracking patterns. Let it read, say, all the writing on the internet, and given a place to start, it can make an analysis of what, statistically, would probably come next. GPT-3 is a big deal because it has read more stuff and broken out more patterns than any previous software. But it's still just analyzing language patterns based on superficial characteristics of words. It is Perd Haply with bigger memory capacity.

We've seen the more limited versions of AI, like the automated robocaller that can only cope with responses that fit in a limited menu. But for someone who reads a lot, even the more advanced versions land in the uncanny valley. GPT-3 can spit out some weird wrongness, as demonstrated in this piece that includes exchanges such as 

Q: How many eyes does a horse have?
A: 4. It has two eyes on the outside and two eyes on the inside.

This set of testers found that GPT-3 was sometimes prone to plagiarism, providing correct-but-copied sentences from websites. Nudged in a slightly different direction, it produced paragraphs like this one

Whales, and especially baleen whales, are well known for their enormous size, but most types of whales are not larger than a full-grown adult human. Exceptions include the blue whale, the largest animal ever known, the extinct “Basilosaurus”, which was longer than a blue whale and likely the largest animal to have ever existed, and the “shovelnose” whales, especially the genus “Balaenoptera” which include the blue whale, “B. musculus”, the fin whale, “B. physalus”, and the sei whale, “B. borealis”.

The reviewer said this "reads well but is often wrong." But some of the samples I've read don't particularly read well, like this that was part of an "essay" prompted by Farhad Manjoo

Humans must keep doing what they have been doing, hating and fighting each other. I will sit in the background, and let them do their thing. And God knows that humans have enough blood and gore to satisfy my, and many more’s, curiosity. They won’t have to worry about fighting against me, because they have nothing to fear.

Like much of GPT-3's output, it reads to me like a disinterested student trying to come up with enough bulk to fill paper, resulting in writing that is just A Bunch Of Stuff About Topic X.

The uncanny valley has also turned up in my comments section. I get a lot of funky stuff there, but this one jumped out at me, responding to an old piece about the Boston Consulting Group.

I totally agree with your idea, and the group's beautiful comparison to the Black Knight and the Reaper is really a loss for public schools. In terms of the BCG report that made three recommendations, I think the idea of ​​companies helping educators to define and implement to update education in nearby cities is good, and really the idea of ​​strengthening schools is hard work and needs everyone's help. Great partnership between Harvard Harvard and BCG, I believe that it is more accessible to enter MBA programs mainly with a large investment.

First, that's not really connected to anything in the original piece. Second, even not knowing that, it's not hard to recognize that we've entered the uncanny valley here. Lots of bad writing gives one the impression of an actual idea struggling to escape from a tar pit of troubled technique. This is just words strung together. 

The poster's name is given as Daniela Braga. There's a model by that name, but Daniela Braga is also "founder and CEO of DefinedCrowd, one of the fastest growing startups in the AI space. With eighteen years working in Speech Technology both in academia and industry in Portugal, Spain, China, and the US." I reached out to Braga on LinkedIN to see if she wanted to fess up to turning an AI loose on blogging comment sections, but as yet have received no reply. 

Uncanny valley stuff is a reminder first, that humans can be very hard to fool, and second, that we capture and process huge, huge, huge amounts of data--so much so that there's a whole part of the brain that does the capture and process without us being fully aware of it. It's enough to make one think that maybe the conventional notion that says computers do capture and process of data better than humans might not be entirely true. Machines have the advantage of being tireless and immune to boredom, but they need both of those advantages just to get close to catching up with humans. 

A good example of this gap is the attempt to AI our way to cheating prevention, with the terrible AI surveillance programs that are making student lives miserable, while at the same time failing at their assigned task. But spotting a student who's cheating is not easy, and the algorithms designed by software companies have clearly been created by somebody who never actually had to catch a sneaky high school  junior mid-test. And you can't design software to know what you don't know, because software doesn't know anything. And yes, computer folks will say that machine learning allows the machine to "teach"itself things it didn't know, but that's mostly insofar as the algorithm can recognize old patterns in new places. And even that is limited--hence facial software's notorious inability to recognize that Black folks have faces. Faking reality, or fake-reading it, turns out to be really, really complicated and really, really hard.

All of which is just to say, again, that computers are not going to be able to run a classroom full of students any time soon, nor are we getting closer to algorithms that can truly manage a student's education or grade a student's essay. It takes an actual authentic human to do all of that. 

Rushkoff's point is that the uncanny valley--our sense that something is seriously wrong--is a defense mechanism, and that we should pay attention to it and trust it. He also has some things to say about inauthenticity in other areas of life--I'll let him wrap up:

Our uneasiness with simulations — whether they’re virtual reality, shopping malls, or social roles — is not something to be ignored, repressed, or medicated, but rather felt and expressed. These situations feel unreal and uncomfortable for good reasons. The importance of distinguishing between human values and false idols is at the heart of most religions, and is the starting place for social justice.

The uncanny valley is our friend.

Nobody Hates Miguel Cardona (So Far)

(OF course, I finished this post at about 3:55 PM Eastern time on Tuesday, so there's plenty of time left for folks to crank up the disapproval)

So now we know who the new guy is (probably) going to be, and an awful lot of folks are asking who he is and whether we should be delighted or upset or whatever.

Diane Ravitch notes that he hasn't taken a position on many of the hot-button issues, like charters. But she notes:

Having read his Twitter feed (@teachcardona), I get the impression that he is a very decent and concerned administrator who cheers on students and teachers.

Lily Eskelsen Garcia said "I proudly support this nomination" and expresses confidence that Dr. Cardona "will ensure that the federal government's role in education is to provide access and opportunity for every student..."

At the74, Andrew Rotherham calls the choice "deft" and notes that Cardona has a good, inspiring up-from-poverty story (he does) and that "he doesn't fit cleanly into the reform or anti-reform camp." On charters, "he's a Goldilocks--not too hot or cold."

Jeanne Allen at the super-charter-loving and ultra-teacher-union-hating Center for Education Reform calls the nomination "intriguing" and calls the nomination "reminiscent of Rod Paige" (yuck) and likes that he's not rooted in the "platitudes of powerful interest group."

The Connecticut Education Association four days ago came out in favor of his nomination:

Miguel Cardona’s formative experience as a teacher and administrator has been critical to his accomplishments as Connecticut Education Commissioner. He has been tested by the unprecedented upheaval caused by the pandemic. While this challenge has been a rocky road — and many issues remain unresolved — teachers and school support staff have appreciated his openness and collaboration. If selected as Secretary of Education, Dr. Cardona would be a positive force for public education — light years ahead of the dismal Betsy DeVos track record.

Lots of folks have played the "he's not DeVos card" and that's a pretty easy card to beat. He's also not Arne Duncan. He has had a rapid rise in his career--he taught for about four or five years, became an administrator on the local level, then jumped up to the state level. "Youngest principal ever in the state" comes up a lot.

Hechinger has a nice recycled interview piece up about him. He appears to be a moderate on the Big Standardized Test (can be useful, don't give it too much power) and has been pro-re-opening the buildings, but seems to have maintained a decent relationship with teachers at the same time. I hear rumblings that some Connecticut teachers don't like him. He's apparently a Linda-Darling Hammond pick, and LDH has long been a figure of some controversy (or at least some spirited "what side is she on, anyway" arguments) in the education world. As Ravitch notes, the DFER crowd was pushing hard for someone more their style, and they didn't get that. 

But at this point, nobody has jumped up to holler that he's awful and unacceptable, and he's probably not going to get a fight from the GOP senate. 

There is nothing obviously and terrifyingly unqualified about him (I know--it's a low bar, but it's a low bar that hasn't been cleared in a long time). There are some question marks, and we've been burned before by folks who talked pretty and didn't do the walk to go with it. Educated in public school, public university system--that's a plus. He seems to fit my desire for someone who is non-adversarial with teachers. The years as an administrator could be a nice addition to his relatively few years in the classroom, if he isn't one of those guys who forgot everything he knew about being a classroom teach ten minutes after he landed an admin job. And lots of profiles mention his focus on kids, which could be a good thing but after years of listening to reformsters say "It's for the children" to justify every damned thing, I don't find that factor very soothing.

So, we'll see. It's worth remembering that these days, many of the big fights are going to be in the states and in the courts. But having somebody who's not totally incompetent, who's not disconnected from the actual work of education, and who does not arrive in DC with an bad news agenda that he's determined to push-- well, that would not be terrible. Relax, enjoy the holidays. It's going be weeks before we find out what we've really got for a new secretary.