GA: To Get A Voucher, Give Up Rights

Georgia is on the voucher expansion bus that so many GOP-run states are vacationing on this year, but their vouchers (like those in some other states) have a special wrinkle--a requirement for students with special needs to give up their rights if they want a voucher.

Senate Bill 47 has a variety of the usual features, including a huge expansion of voucher eligibility (because, as many states are poised to re-demonstrate, the voucher playbook is to get a foot in the door by starting the program for the neediest students, and then expand expand expand). But it includes this fun paragraph: 

With respect to local school systems, the acceptance Acceptance of a scholarship shall have the same effect as a parental refusal to consent to services pursuant to the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act, 20 U.S.C.A. Section 1400, et seq., and a parental waiver of rights to educational accommodations under Section 504 of the federal Rehabilitation Act of 1973, 29 U.S.C.A. Section 701, et seq.

There's a bit of a one-two punch here, because SB47 also adds some language about funding-- whereas the old language said that the student should be followed by "an amount equivalent to the costs of the educational program that would have been provided for the student in the resident school system," the added language specifies that if the child had an Individualized Education Program (IEP), then the amount that follows them should factor in the cost of following that IEP. 

So, if I'm reading this correctly, the private school doesn't have to provide the IEP services, but it gets paid as if it were doing so. I should note that the voucher program being amended is Georgia's Special Needs Scholarship, a program already aimed at students with special needs.

There are plenty of explanations out there for why Georgia is asking parents to give up rights if they want to send their child to a private school, not the least of which is the fact that IDEA remains a huge federal unfunded mandate that requires schools to provide services, but has never come close to fulfilling the original federal promise to actually fund that mandate. And Georgia, like many states, is having a hard time attracting and retaining actual special education teachers, filling many, many, many special ed spots with teachers who lack the specialized training. And Georgia has a history using its network of special ed schools to warehouse students who are poor and Black. The Georgia Network for Educational and Therapeutic Support (GNETS) has drawn national attention over the years for its many failures.

When you can't meet a demand, figure out how to reduce the demand, I guess? There is certainly a weird irony in a program that says both "you are eligible if you have a 504 plan" and "you must give up your 504 plan if you want to use this program." It's a true Catch-22 to say that you can get your child a voucher specially set up for students to have their special needs met by agreeing not to require the school to meet your child's special needs.

Can a parent waive the rights of their child? Can the right to a free and appropriate education in the least restrictive environment even be waived at all? 

The answer in Georgia is yes. And it has been for a while. While SB47 cements the concept and insures that private schools don't have to meet IEP requirements, even when taxpayers are paying for the private education, the notion that choosing a private school means waiving IEP rights has long been clear in Georgia. 

Parents have always had that personal choice. As with many choice laws, the idea is not to provide choice, but for taxpayers to foot the bill for choices that already exist. What makes this extra special is the legislature deciding that the taxpayers--and the students--should get less for their money.

In the meantime, Georgia is also a state that brings up another question--why is it that in so many states, attempts to stifle voting rights are coming out of legislatures at the same time as attempts to defund and privatize education? 

ICYMI: Palm Sunday Edition (3/28)

Yeah, that snuck up fast. Let me remind you that you can get a daily dose of education commentary on the Network for Public Education Blog of Blogs. Meanwhile, let's see what we've got on taphere.

Ayanna Presley wants girls of color to stop being punished disproportionately

Rep. Presley is trying again with legislation to disrupt the over-punishment and detention of Black girls. Let's see how far it gets this time.

Let Me Teach Like a Normal @$$ Human

At Affective Living, from active shooter training to pandemesses, Chase Mielke would like to be less superhuman in the classroom.

More than $1 billion for 56 black charter graduates?

Julian Vasquez Heilig with a piece of information that is pretty stark and clear-- Texas spent $1.21 billion over two years on nine charter chains, and those chains graduated 56 Black students. 

What They've Lost

Have You Heard talks to students from Boston, and it turns out they aren't so concerned about that Learning Loss that education thought leaders are all worked up about right now.

Setting Ourselves, and Others, Free

Teacher Tom, the littles, and shame.

Our Kids Are Not Broken

Not sure how I missed this Atlantic piece last week, but it's worth a look. Not sure I agree with all of it, but I appreciate a positive look at the students right now

What we learned about Clearview AI and its secret "Co-founder."

Not directly related, but this New York Times piece digs a bit more into the surveillance giant watching us all.

Why Common Core failed

You will learn nothing new from this Tom Loveless piece for Brookings, but you will have the satisfaction of nodding and saying "I told them so," at your computer screed. However, I do have to issue a trigger warning because Emily Hanford pops up here.

Grit backlash (again)

As a bunch of academics get ready to kick grit around, Hechinger Report talks to Angela Duckworth and gives her a chance to reflect and respond.

Biden is Reigniting the Movement to Oppose Standardized Testing

At The Progressive, Jake Jacobs looks at how the administration's hard line on testing is riling up the troops again.

Who's Zooming Who?

Who's running ed policy in Tennessee? Not the people who are actually supposed to be, TC Weber discovers. Lots of dots to connect here.

Why I'm Opting My Son Out of Standardized Tests (And You Can, Too)

Jose Vilson on why his son will not be taking New York's BS Test this year. "Our students deserve more for their resilience than this country has offered them..."

Federal government pandemic schooling data--three key takeaways

Yeah, the feds finally tried to collect some information. Matt Barnum at Chalkbeat breaks it down.

It's tempting to replace teachers with tech, but it would be a mistake

Victoria Cain and Adam Laats are at the Washington Post to deliver a lesson from history.

What did Florida get for the $1 billion/year it sends to private schools

A blistering column from Patricia Drago in the Daytona Beach News-Journal. "Let’s stop the pretense and the hypocrisy. Either accountability matters, or it doesn’t. Either curriculum matters or it does not. Either teacher certification and school safety matter or they do not. A billion dollars a year says these things don’t matter in Florida."

Stickin' to the Union

Union bashing has been popular of late. Here's Nancy Flanagan with a reply to all that bashery.

The Country Moves Forward, Education Falls Back

Gayle Greene (no relation) is at Counterpunch calling out standardized testing and the folks who are keeping us at it.

Is Your Charter School A Public School?

It seems to be one of the eternal questions (well, sort of a question) of the education debates-- aren't charter schools public schools? So for those folks who are still a little fuzzy on this, let me offer a handy set of questions to help you decide. Here are the signs of a public school.

Is the school and its resources owned by the public?

Who owns the building? If the school closed tomorrow, who would take possession of the building, the desks, the chairs, the books, the music stands, etc etc etc. If the physical resources of the building are owned by the public, it's probably a public school.

Does the school accept all students?

Usually when discussing this point, we get all caught up in the ways that charter schools market, cream, council out, don't offer specialized programs, and set up enrollment hoops that allow them to decide which students they will and will not take. But let's simplify this issue. Does the school accept all students? All. If they have a lottery to award seats to a select few, the answer is no, they are not a public school. No public school district gets to say, ever, "I'm sorry, we only have enough seats for fifty of you, so we'll have a lottery, and the people who don't get a seat in the lottery, well, you'll be on your own. Not our problem." 

Is the school run by local elected officials?

When we get to the very top level of management, do we find a board of local people elected by local taxpayers? If so, it's probably a public school. We're in a fuzzy grey area in districts under mayoral control, but not at all fuzzy when discussing upper management that is not elected by anybody at all.

Did those local officials open the school?

Who decided this school should exist, and that local taxpayers should pay for it? If that decision was made by a board of local citizens elected by local taxpayers, it's probably a public school.

Are those local official required by law to meet only ever in public?

Can the board of local citizens elected by the local taxpayers meet in secret? Or must their meetings be announced and in public, with exceptions only for times when the group must adjourn for privacy regarding, say, personnel or student issues? Public school boards don't get to meet unannounced, privately.

Are all financial records available upon request, and subject to state audit?

If you've gone to court to block the state from auditing your school financial records, you are not a public school. It's simple, really-- you're spending taxpayer money, and the taxpayers are entitled to an accounting of it. Any taxpayer should be able to access your financials. The state should audit you regularly. 

Does the school operate under the same rules laid out by the state in its public school code?

This varies tremendously from state to state, but the principle remains. Do your students, your staff, your families all enjoy the same rights and protections provided to folks in public schools? Does your school operate by the same rules that have always been on the books, or does it enjoy a bunch of special exceptions?

Finally, here is a question that has absolutely no bearing on whether or not your charter is a public school-- is the school funded with public taxpayer dollars? 

The answer to this question tells us nothing. In voucher states like Indiana and Florida, public tax dollars are used to fund religious schools, and yet none of them would claim to be a "public school." Public tax dollars delivered by way of food stamps and rent support do not turn supermarkets and apartment complexes into public facilities. The mere presence of a public tax dollar does not turn a private business into a public institution. 

If your school answers "no," to the above questions, it is not a public school. That does not automatically mean that it is evil, destructive and a pox on your community. But it is not a public school. It is absolutely true that, under certain circumstances, charter schools could be public schools. But modern charters, as currently operated, aren't public schools. The word "public" has been used as a fig leaf, a bit of window dressing by some folks who want to mask privatization while giving certain charters an association with qualities they do not actually possess. But it does not matter how many times I call my pig a cow; when the butchering is all done, I'm going to be eating pork. 

Cardona's Failed Non-Defense Defense of 2021 Testing

USED Secretary Miguel Cardona appeared on All In With Chris Hayes, and while much of the interview centered on the issue of re-opening schools, it also included this exchange:

HAYES: There`s been some controversy around or some debate around standardized testing this year for understandable reasons. Arguments go in both directions, right? One is, you want to have a guidepost to measure precisely the effects we`re talking about, the other is it seems insane to subject schools to standardized -- children to standardized testing given the least standardized year in American history.

500 researchers and scholars wrote a letter to you basically saying, don`t force schools to give standardized tests this pandemic year, that it made no sense. It would exacerbate inequality and produce flawed data. There will be standardized testing this year. Why do you think that`s a good idea?

CARDONA: You know, this is analogous to the decisions, the difficult decisions that leaders had to make last July when we talked about reopening schools. And we know that there`s no one-size-fits-all. You know, when we were thinking about reopening schools, we have very small schools and we have very large schools, and states that had high numbers and states that have very low numbers of COVID. So, there`s no one size fits all.

So the flexibilities that were announced by the department last month, allowed for some of that variance. But let me tell you very clearly, that when we`re pushing out $130 billion state-level data, not necessarily the classroom data, because teachers know where their kids are, but that state- level data is going to ensure that we`re providing the funds to those students who are impacted the most by the pandemic.

We have to be very focused on addressing achievement disparities, opportunity gaps that were exacerbated by this. And those data do help make sure that we`re moving the money and the policies for those students that were affected the most, students of color, students with disabilities who whose impact by this pandemic were greater than many others.

I include Hayes' full question because 1) it's nice to see the letter from 500 scholars being cited and 2) God bless him for calling the testing insane. Because it is. On Twitter, Philly school parents are just catching on that their children will be welcomed back to face-to-face schooling with five days of the Big Standardized Test. 

But Cardona's defense of his decision is spectacularly uncompelling. Can we break it down?

1) There's no one size fits all about this decision, because there are lots of very different schools. Okay. But this assumes the sale--we only have to care that one size doesn't fit all if we've already decided to make everyone take the test. "There's no one size fits all" could just as easily (maybe more easily) be used to argue that there's no point in giving the test this year.

2) And so we have "flexibilities." Cardona wants to sell this as the department's concession to the whole "one size doesn't fit all" thing, but again--it's an argument made about how to require the Big Standardized Test, not why to require it. And it underlines and exacerbates just how non-standard this year's results will be. Tests taken at wildly different times, in wildly different ways, with the test in some cases truncated, somehow, and given to some less that full collection of students. How will this data be comparable to anything?

3) This is not about classroom data, "because teachers know where their kids are." Well, that's one thing that he has actually gotten right. And yet, there is no plan to try tapping into this vast pool of on-the-ground data. Unlike many test-pushers, Cardona acknowledges that teachers know--but he's still not going to ask them. "Hey, I really like that cute person over there, and I could just ask them if they liked me, too, but instead I'm going to ask their next-door-neighbor's cousin's friend what they think."

4) State-level data are going to "ensure that we're providing the funds to those students who are impacted the most by the pandemic." This is where it really comes off the rails. Is the plan to use BS Test data to determine which state is most impacted? Because the impactification in my part of PA is way different from how the pandemic has impactified Philly. Does he mean that state level data will be used to identify district by district impacts? Does he mean he's after building level data? Because if we're down to building-level data, we're pretty much back to the classroom data he said we didn't need. How does one target students without looking at classrooms? There's just some level of explanation missing here.

5) Very focused on "addressing achievement disparities"! Gah. So test scores. We need to have test scores, so we can focus on test scores. "Opportunity gaps that were exacerbated by this." We need test scores so we can try to raise test scores. Because if  we wanted to address actual opportunity gaps, then we could do that without test scores. We could, for instance, do an infrastructure survey to see which students had the opportunity to learn in a building that is well-maintained with facilities less than a century old. 

6) We need the data to target the "students that were affected the most, students of color, students with disabilities whose impact by this pandemic were greater than many others." And as I've said before, if you're making the argument that Certain Students need to be targeted by the test results but you can already list who those students are, then why do you need the tests? He did the same thing in another setting, arguing "we have to make sure we are laser-focused on addressing inequities that have existed for years"-- but if they have existed for years and we have known about them for years, what will tests given under current circumstances tell us? And by the way--is this data for figuring out pandemic impact or long-standing inequity or what, exactly?

Plus--and this is a huge plus--the BS Tests, even if they do what they claim to do, only assess reading and math. The pandemic has had such a broad impact on students, from the subjects that couldn't be conducted in distance learning (band, welding, etc) to the social and emotional costs. To say that you need the tests so that you can rush out aid to the needed areas is like going into an earthquake-ravaged city and declaring, :"We'll figure out who needs aid by tallying up damage to sidewalks in neighborhoods." It's like triaging the many victims of a major bus accident by saying, "We'll assess need by checking for broken fingernails." 

This is a fail on many levels, but it fails most of all in that it simply does not make a case for subjecting students to the Big Standardized Test in 2021. If the goal was to defend that decision, Cardona simply didn't do it.

Look, I don't expect miracles. The BS Test is enshrined in ESSA, and it will take more than a Presidential magic wand to make it go away for good. But inflicting the test on students this year is a dumb, bad decision that will provide zero benefits for anyone other than the various corporations involved in the billion-dollar testing industry. Well, and the folks waiting to announce that the test results show that US public education is failing and it's time to disrupt it again some more.

What is perhaps most discouraging about Cardona's non-defense defense of the test is that it mostly just echoes the neoliberal Obama-Duncan era of ed reform. We've heard all of these arguments and some of this language before. It was bunk then, and it's bunk now. I was unexcited about Candidate Biden for education because he came with all that Obama baggage, and he didn't seem to have a plan beyond "Betsy DeVos bad." So far nothing has happened to make me change my mind. 

Do Rising Charter Tides Lift All Boats?

So lately we've been getting the charter-pushing return of the notion that the rising tide lifts all boats. Here's Fordham Institute's head honcho Mike Petrilli at The Hill, throwing in a side of "follow the science" because Petrilli is great (and I say this with all sincerity) at working the angles. 

The "science" that he's referring to is a 2019 study-ish thing that Fordham put out (with Walton financing), authored by David Griffith, entitled Rising Tide: Charter School Market Share and Student Achievement. The idea he sets out to prove is that when charters open up, the resulting competition causes all students in all schools--both public and charter--to do better. The rising tide lifts all boats.

Griffith's background is a BA in Politics and Philosophy; later on he went back to school for a Master's in Public Policy. He worked as a political aid for a couple of years, worked briefly as a "research assistant" at two different outfits, did some TA work after grad school, taught for one whole year at a DC charter prep school, then landed a job at Fordham as a Research and Policy Associate. Make of that what you will.

The "study" depends, as always, upon Big Standardized Test data. Its finding included a claim that "high charter market share is associated with" big gains for Black and Hispanic students, but no real gains for white or rural students.

I could pick apart this piece of charter marketing for you, but as it turns out, that job was already done at the time, by the folks at the National Education Policy Center. The NEPC review was conducted by Yongmei Ni; she's an actual professor, the department chair of education leadership and policy at the University of Utah, who has produced a whole bunch of actual peer-reviewed studies. 

Her review of Griffith's "study" can be found here. Here's the short form of her findings:

One should interpret the findings and conclusions with extreme caution because of major issues surrounding the data and methods, including the measure of charter market share, the sample selection criteria, and the overreliance on results based on a small number of districts, especially the ones with over 95th percentile of charter market share. Overall, the findings have little use to policymakers because of these issues with data and methods and because the report does not probe beneath the surface.

The problems with Griffith's work are many. 

The rationale for the conclusions are the result of treating correlation as causation. The positive results (all student achievement rising across the district) only appears in certain samples, and there is no evidence offered that the effect is caused by charter school presence. 

The research literature cited in the report is carefully cherry picked. The market share measurement is inaccurate. The data is inaccurate. And the selection of samples is arbitrary and "very puzzling." And there's some stuff about cubic spline regression that can be a little confusing for laypeople, but I can fully understand the point that ultimately, Griffith bases his findings on data from about six or seven districts.

So a tiny, hand-picked set of samples gets him the results he wants, if you squint and don't examine the data too thoroughly, and if you don't want to talk about how such a thing could happen.

Yongmei Ni finds that the study is not useful for guidance of policy and practice, but apparently we're going to do just that by trotting it out again to claim that the rising charter tide lifts all education boats. It may not matter, as GOP choice fans seem to have deserted charters in favor of voucher programs, but here's your reminder that following the science will not lead you to any boat-lifting charter school revelations.

ND: Kneecapping Public Education

North Dakota's governor just signed SB 2196 into law, allowing the state to quietly slip forward in 2021's race to dismantle public education. While other state legislatures have focused on vouchers, North Dakota took its leap forward by focusing on unbundling and competency basxed education.

SB 2196 is short and the changes it enacts even shorter. It amends the rules about instructional time requirements with this sentence:

Establish and certify a North Dakota competency framework to allow students who have demonstrated content mastery of units required under sections 15.1-21-01 and 15.1-21-02 to waive unit instructional time requirements under section 15.1-21-03.

In headline-ready English, that means the bill will "expand learning outside classroom." Or as state K-12 Superintendent Kirsten Baesler puts it, "A student’s ability to learn is not completely dependent upon how much time he or she spends sitting in a classroom." Baesler was a school librarian, a principal, and a school board member. In office since 2013, she was a proponent of Common Core (she also has two arrests--one for domestic violence and another for DUI).

The bill now allows students to accumulate school credit for "community volunteer projects, internships, and other educational options." Baesler has thrown some other language at it, touting "personalization" and "methods of learning." She asserts that it will do these things "while maintaining academic strength and accountability," although nothing in the bill calls for an oversight or accountability. Will Pat be able to earn math credits by working as a cashier at the Piggly Wiggly, or get phys ed credits for helping on Uncle Bob's farm? 

The bill is also promoted as giving districts "flexibility," which I suppose is true in the sense that they will have the flexibility to cut classes and fire the teachers who taught them. 

The unbundling of education usually comes attached to vouchers. That legislation is kicking around the North Dakota (HB 1369 would create education savings acounts--vouchers), supported by the usual suspects (including the Catholic church, because ka-ching), but North Dakota has been pretty resistant to school choice in the past, and this bill is not doing well, either.

The lack of voucher support for this new bill means that student "flexibility" will be tied to family resources. Can't afford to play private league soccer or go to summer camp? Well, then, you'll just have to take phys ed in public school. Can't afford a special private math tutor? Public school math for you. Of course, since there may not be anybody checking to see just how legit the "flexible" credit earning is, this may be less of a problem than I'm imagining. 

The bill passed with large support, and while North Dakota is largely run by the GOP, the news could still find a Democrat to say something uninformed about it:

"It creates great opportunity to continue to move further away from the industrialized 'I lecture, you learn' model of education," Sen. Erin Oban, D-Bismarck, said in support of the bill.

Industrial model. Hasn't changed in years. Yeah, that's definitely not public education, but it's important never to let facts stand in the way of dismantling public education.

Covid, Learning Loss, and Katrina 2.0

Well, here we go.

Here's Morgan Polikoff in the Los Angles Times, explaining that we are in a terrible mess, that educational attainment, or at least test scores (as measured by another testing manufacturer) are dropping, that the mental health of children in the nation is a mess. And hurray for the Biden relief plan, which throws a pile of money at all these education. But. But but but. Our educational structures can't handle this, Polikoff argues. Too many districts with boards and parent groups and teacher unions and famnilies and students and they just aren't up to "identifying what works and then providing it equitably to students and families." 

What does he think has to happen?

This is where state and national leaders simply must step in. They need to provide clear and specific guidance on the best ways to spend American Rescue Plan dollars to address the negative impacts of the pandemic on children and families. They must not leave decisions to local actors — burdening them with the task of figuring out what works and implementing it.

Local control is a bad thing, and it needs to be swept aside, as witnessed by the data we have so far.

Polikoff asserts that three things are needed going forward in this state-controlled education universe. And number one is measurement--academic tests, social and emotional well-being tests. And they should go on for years "so we can follow our progress well beyond the end of the pandemic." Oh, and the "measurement plans should be carefully constructed to ensure the results are directly useful for informing instructional and other decisions" which is a cool idea except that there are no such standardized tests currently in existence, especially if you also want them to simultaneously serve the entirely other purpose of providing government reports on how the system is going as a whole. Teachers can do this kind of assessment, and, in fact, do so every day, but not in a way that scales up for state-level progress reporting. 

Polikoff also wants high-quality interventions that are "supported or directly provided" by the state; his list includes the current reform darling, tutoring. And third, he wants to target those who need the interventions most, which he seems to already know means low-income communities and communities of color. And all of this state-run takeover "should be designed in collaboration with community leaders, not merely imposed." Sure. You know one reason this sort of thing is always targeted for low-income communities and communities of color? Because rich white folks in wealthy communities will tell the state to get stuffed and take a hike.

All of this leads us back to the old refrain:

Simply put, we can’t undo the negative effects of this national crisis on our children with 13,000 districts working independently. We must not allow our dysfunctional educational systems to block the serious response that our children need.

So here we are. The pandemic is, as Patty Levesque of Jebucation's Excel In Ed called it, an opportunity. It's ed reform's Katrina 2.0, another opportunity to cash in on a natural-born, human-exacerbated disaster. It "proves" that public education is in a shambles (though some reformsters believe it has always been a shambles) and that the old system of local control and locally-elected boards needs to be removed. 

It's not a simple situation to navigate. Katrina was a real hurricane that caused real devastation, and the pandemic has taken a real bite out of education in the US. The problems, the disaster--that's real. But when  folks shift away from "what are the actual problems, who's dealing with them, and how can we help" and start in with "this is awful and here's how the same policies that we've always pursued would be a good fit," that's the time to take a hard look at what's really going on.

Take the fabled Learning Loss. I have no doubt that learning loss, the missed opportunities to push a child's education further forward this year--that's a thing. But Learning Loss as in "these test scores prove that the pub lic education system is hopelessly broken and we must make the best of the opportunity to implement our favorite corporate ed reform"--that's some bullshit right there.

That's one other reason to fear the 2021 Big Standardized Test. I have no doubt there are some test-loving folks out there who sincerely believe that we need to take students' academic temperature to diagnose what medicine is needed. They're wrong, but they're sincere. But other folks are waiting to run the playbook that Polikoff reads from here. Look at these test scores! It's a disaster! Public education has failed! We must put the state in charge, and they must put these various private education-flavored businesses to work, and local control can't be allowed to flourish, though of course we'll work closely with community leaders, you betcha. 

We're already seeing the pandemic-fueled attack on public ed from the right--parents need vouchers so they can deal with all this. The neoliberals wave is coming--only entrepreneurial thought leaders can rescue the broken system. 

2021 is not going to be a fun year for public education.