Petrilli: "Hey, Let's Do No Child Left Behind Again!"

Mike Petrilli, head honcho of the right-tilted Fordham Institute thinky tank, made it into the New York Times today to do some chicken littling about Learning Loss and suggest a bold solution. Don't have a NYT subscription? That's okay-- let me walk you through the highlights of this festival of Things We Can Stop Saying About Education Right Now, Please.

Let's start by invoking general Learning Loss panic. Petrilli points out that students "lost significant ground" during covid, and now NWEA says that students continue "backsliding" and "falling further behind." People, in Petrilli's view, are not panicking enough about "America's massive learning loss."

First, let's use some more precise language, please. In all discussions of learning loss, we are actually talking about scores on a Big Standardized Test of reading and math going down. We will never, ever know how much of the slippage in tests scores is the result of students going a year or two without practicing for the BS Test. But in the meantime, it would be great if we stopped talking about test scores as if they were infallible equivalents of learning and achievement.

Second, "learning loss" is a misnomer. I'm willing to bet that verrrrrrry tiny number of students in this country actually lost learning. I'm equally certain that the vast majority of students did not learn as much as they would have in a non-pandemic year, but that's not the same. 

Think of it this way. It's budget time, and the Mugwumps' proposed budget increases spending on widgets from $500 to $600. The Wombats say, "Let's only increase widget spending to $550." That gets us to the part where the Mugwump talking point is "The Wombats want to cut spending on widgets." When in fact everybody wants widget spending to go up.

That's where we are. During the pandemic, learning occurred--just not as much as might have been expected in a normal-ish year. And this looks most like a crisis if you think of test scores like stock prices and focus on data rather than individual human students. (Petrilli does not invoke the baloney about impact on future earnings, so we'll not go there right now.)

And, it should also be pointed out, it is where we were for a decade before covid even hit.

Having sounded the alarm, Petrilli bemoans the surfeit of leaders willing to make alarmy noises.

The country is in desperate need of leaders who will speak the truth about what’s happening in our K-12 schools, and are willing to make the hard choices to fix it. Simply put, we need to bring some tough love back to American education.

Tough love? Back? Petrilli doesn't really explain how the pandemic led to a loss of tough love in education. But that's the dog we're going to try to hunt with.

He cites Michael Bloomberg, who is ceaselessly alarmed about anything going on in public schools. Bloomberg wants a plan from Washington, a joint session of Congress, a Presidential address. 

Ah, says Petrilli--you know when politicians were on the same page about education, presumably flinging tough love around with wild abandon.

We're talking, of course, about the golden days of No Child Left Behind. 

Petrilli remembers it fondly, citing how we saw "significant progress" which of course means "test scores went up," which they did, at first, for a few years. Anyone who was in a classroom, especially a math or reading classroom, can tell you why. Within a couple of years, schools figured out what test prep would be most effective. Then they targeted students who were teetering on the line between High Enough Scores and Not High Enough Scores, especially the ones in special subgroups, and test prepped the hell out of those kids. At which point scores started stagnating because schools had done all they could do. 

The Average Yearly Progress requirements were set up as a bomb that would go off during the next administration. Again, if you were working in a school at the time, you remember that chart, showing a gentle upward glide for a bit before jutting upward to 2014, the magical year in which 100% of students were to score above average on the BS Test. Oh, Congress will fix that before it happens, we were told. They did not. By the early 20-teens, there were two types of school districts--those that were failing, and those that were cheating. 

Petrilli claims maybe success probably, saying NCLB "likely contributed" to graduation rates (no, schools just learned how to game those), college attainment rates (eh, maybe, but correlation is not causation) and "possibly" future real-life outcomes (absolutely not a shred of evidence--even reformster Jay Greene said as much).

"It’s true that No Child Left Behind was imperfect," says Petrilli. No. It stunk. But Petrilli has quite the tale here.

There were fierce debates over “teaching to the test” and “drill and kill” instruction; about closing low-performing schools versus trying to fix them; and about the link between student achievement and family poverty. But once the law’s shortcomings became apparent, policymakers responded by adopting common standards and improving standardized tests, so as to encourage higher-level teaching. They poured billions into school turnarounds, invested in stronger instructional materials and started grading schools on how much progress their kids made from year to year, rather than focusing on one snapshot in time — an approach that is markedly fairer to high-poverty campuses. Still, the bipartisan effort that was No Child Left Behind ultimately fell apart as our politics fractured.

That's quite the load. There was no debate about teaching to the test or drill and kill, because nobody was in favor of it except shrugging administrators who were staring at 2014. Petrilli also forgets that "teach to the test" ended up meaning "cut out any other classes--or recess--that does not appear on the test." Arts slashed. History and science cut (at least for those teetering students). Closing low-performing schools was, in fact, the quickest way for a district to free itself of the low scores; who knows how many districts were restructured to put predictably low 8th grade scores under the same roof as better scores from lower or higher grades. And yes, poverty affects scores, despite all the No Excusing in the world.

What came next did not address any of these issues, The Common Core was an amateur hour fiasco. Were standardized tests improved? Not really (as witnessed by the fact that states dumped the SBA and PARCC as quickly as they could)--but it made a lucrative contract for some test manufacturers. Including progress in scores is great--unless you're teaching kids who are already scoring at the top. School turnarounds have consistently failed (e.g. Tennessee's failed Achievement School District). 

But he's right that Trump's election and appointment of Betsy DeVos hurt the reformster alliance (despite the fact that DeVos had long been part of the club). But then, so was the increasing split between the social justice wing of reform and the free marketeer AEI-Fordham wing. 

But look-- NCLB and the sequel, Race to the Top, were just bad. They started from bad premises: 1) US education is failing because 2) teachers either don't care or don't know what they're doing. They rest on a foundation of using a mediocre BS Test as an unquestioned proxy for student learning and teacher effectiveness, creating a perfect stage on which to conduct a national field test of Campbell's Law (when you make a measure a proxy for the real thing, you encourage people to mess with the measure instead of the real thing, and it gets worse if the measure isn't very good). And none of the "policymakers" who championed this mess ever came up with a single solitary idea of how to Fix Things that actually worked on either a local or macro scale.

The pandemic did not help anything in education. But it did lead to some flaming prose, like Petrilli's assertion that "here we are, with decades of academic progress washed away and achievement trends still moving in the wrong direction." This kind of overheated rhetoric is nothing new from the folks who gave us The Pandemic Erased Two Decades of Progress in Math and Reading as a headline. But what does it even mean? Washed away to where? Did knowledge dribble out of students' heads? Did the learning of the past several years retroactively vanish with former students waking up across America feeling a little bit dumber somehow? Did teachers forget everything they knew about how to teach students, so they have to start over? Or do we just mean "test scores are down"?

Petrilli breaks this down to some other issues. His first point starts out fine-- there's an attendance problem right now. But he tries to set that beside an alleged nationwide move to lower standards. I'm not sure what basis there is for that assertion. He points to the "no zeros" rule used in some schools, but that rule existed in many places (like my old district) for ages. Maybe it's letting slackers slide through in other places, but my own experience with no zeros policy is that it merely kept students working who would otherwise have given up--kind of the opposite of encouraging slacking. 

But then he's slicing NCLB-style baloney again:

Virtually all schools and districts have enjoyed a vacation from accountability. Almost nobody is worried about state officials shutting their campuses because of low performance, or forcing district schools to replace their principals or teachers.

You say that like it's a bad thing, Mike. 

Embedded here are many of the same bad assumptions that have driven ed reform for decades. Teachers and schools have no motivation to do their jobs unless they have some kind of threat of punishment hanging over their heads. This isn't just bad education policy--it's bad management. As management whiz W. Edwards Deming pointed out often, fear should be driven out of the workplace. But NCLB and RttT were always all stick, no carrot, always starting out with the worst possible assumptions about the people who had chosen education as their life's work (assumptions made largely by people who had never actually worked in a school). 

And even if you don't dig Deming, there's another thing to consider--none of the stuff Petrilli misses actually worked (which was Deming's point). He points out that the kind of thing being done in Houston right now has become rare, to which I say "Good," because Houston is a nightmare and it will end just like all the other similar attempts--no actual success, but lots of disruption and dismay and upheaval of children's education.

Petrilli will now argue for NCLB 3.0. We need "action at scale," but we can't ignore "the support and assistance schools require." Holding schools accountable wasn't enough because-- wait for it-- if NCLB failed it was because schools lacked the expertise and know-how to do it right. And now Petrilli almost--but not quite--gets it.

“Teaching to the test” and other problems with No Child Left Behind stemmed from schools resorting to misguided practices to meet requirements. Under pressure to boost scores, but without the training to know what to do, some educators engaged in endless practice testing, and stopped instruction in any subject that was unlikely to be on the state assessment. In a few places, educators even resorted to outright cheating. They likely felt they had no choice, because they hadn’t been given the tools to succeed.

Nope. Close but no cigar. No, the reason all those things happened was because, as NCLB 1.0 and 2.0 were designed, those things were the tools to "succeed." Because "success" was defined as "get maximum number of kids to score well on a poorly-designed multiple-choice math and reading test." Granted, when most of us think about "success" in education, we have a whole list of other things in mind--but none of those things were valued by NCLB or RttT.

But we're rolling up to the finish now. 

But after a decade of building capacity, offering helping hands and adding funds, it’s time once again to couple skill-building with will-building.

That is a great line. But what capacity-building? More seats in unregulated charters and voucher-accepting schools? Which helping hands? And exactly whose will needs to be built? Parents? Children? Teachers? Policymakers? I'm seriously asking, because I think a hell of a lot of will was involved in slogging through the last couple of years. 

Petrilli calls on schools to spend their "federal largesse" to "catch their kids up"--and I think the call to accelerate education is one of the most infuriating calls of the last few years. Sure-- because all along teachers have known how to educate children faster but they just haven't bothered to do it, but hey, now that we have certified lower test scores, teachers will all bust the super-secret Faster Learning plans out of their file cabinets. 

Petrillii says we don't actually need to bring back NCLB, though he seems to have been talking about nothing else-- just let's get out those big sticks and get back to (threats of) "tough interventions for persistent underperformance," because that has totally worked in the past. No, wait. It hasn't actually worked ever. 

Kids, too, should know that it’s time to hit the books again. We need to rethink our lax grading policies, make clear to parents that their children need to be at school and bring back high school graduation exams and the like to ensure that students buckle down.

Also, get those kids off our lawns. And while you're making sure parents know their kids should be in school, maybe talk to all the reform crowd that has been working hard to build distrust of public schools and deepen disrespect of educators.

And the big finish:

Education matters. Achievement matters. We need leaders who are willing to say so, and educators who are willing to act like these simple propositions are true.

This seems straightforward enough, though if you replace "achievement matters" with "standardized test scores matter," which is what he really means, it doesn't sound quite as compelling. And it's insulting as hell to suggest that the ranks of educators are filled with people who are unwilling to act as if education matters. 

Well, the piece is completely on brand for the New York Times, and it certainly echoes the refrain of that certain brand of reformster whose response to their own policy failures has been, "Well, get in there and fail harder." No Child Left Behind failed, and it not only failed but left some of its worst policy ideas embedded in the new status quo, continuing to do damage to public education right through today. 

The pandemic did many things, and one thing it did was panic the testing industry, which faced an existential threat that everyone might realize that school without the BS Test, or NWEA's lovely test-prep tests, might actually be okay. It's no wonder that they feel a special nostalgia for the days when the entire weight of the government reinforced their importance. So here we are, painting low reading and math tests scores as an educational crisis whose only solution is to get more fear, more threats, and especially more testing back into schools. 

I'm sorry if this assessment of some reformsters, their policies, and their motives seems harsh, but, you know-- tough love.

Anti-Union Unions Still Recruiting

If there's anything true about teachers in unions, it's that some folks wish they weren't. And right now, yet another group is trying to sell the idea. But looking at some of the players in this anti-teacher-union space seems like a fine way to celebrate Labor day. 

In some states, the tactic has been to simply strip unions of power so that A) they can't really do anything and B) teachers leave them because they can't really do anything.

But in other states, the tactic has to try to sell teachers directly on the idea of getting out. We've seen a variety of these outfits. 

Leave your evil union!

Early entry into the field included Free To Teach, an operation of Americans for fair Treatment, a shell group for Pennsylvania's right wing Commonwealth Foundation. 

There's the Freedom Foundation, which once bragged that it "has a proven plan for bankrupting and defeating government unions through education, litigation, legislation and community activation ... we won’t be satisfied with anything short of total victory against the government union thugs." Freedom Foundation was founded by the Bradley Foundation, the Koch Foundation, and the Searle Freedom Trust. 

Then there's the Speak Out For Teachers outfit, brought to us by the Center for Union Facts, an anti-union group that was part of the constellation of dark money groups run by Richard Berman, who has long been a down and dirty fighter against unions. (They appear to have gone dark themselves a couple years ago)

There's For Kids and Country, the enterprise of former teacher Rebecca Friedrichs, who was the face of a big anti-teacher-union lawsuit almost a decade ago and has since launched a career as a talking head on the Fox-Breitbart circuit. They have a whole guide on how to talk a teacher into leaving the union. 

Or you could have My Pay My Say, the "don't you want to quit the union" initiative of the Mackinac Center for Public Policy, a right wing pressure group based in Michigan and so, as you might expect funded with a bunch of DeVos money as well as Walton, Koch and dark money.

The Janus decision, which invented the right of teachers to be free riders in unions, collecting benefits but paying no dues, gave rise to plenty of these groups. They will argue teachers should drop union dues because then they would get more money (spoiler alert: none of these groups or their backers have ever advocated for higher teacher salaries). 

And we're going to skip over the various state-level versions of these groups.

There are also anti-union teachers who make arguments like "I could negotiate a better contract for myself if I weren't tied to this union," and they are just so cute. Nobody tell them about Santa, either. The anti-union outfits love to cheer these folks on, and they might even get to leave teaching for a cushy thinky tank gig. 

But when these groups are not trying to coax teacher away from the union, their purposes are more clear.

The teachers unions (well, all unions, but the teachers have the biggest ones these days) give a whole bunch of money to Democratic politicians, so, the reasoning goes, defund the unions and defund the Democrats. Plus, as a bonus, depower the unions and then teachers don't get all uppity about decent contracts and working conditions and just generally getting in the way of The People In Charge. 

Some of this is just realpolitik gamesmanship, but there are anti-union folks who feel pretty mouth-frothy about this. The narrative for some is that public schools are a scam, a way to funnel money to teachers who in turn funnel it to Democrats and liberals. (In return these "teachers" get a pretend job in which they don't actually try to educate anyone.) You'll hear language about how union leaders are "corrupt," and that Venn diagram shows some overlap with diagram of people who think elections are rigged because those elections allow people to vote who shouldn't have a say. If you're of the opinion that society is supposed to have tiers, then teachers unions represent an attempt to exercise power by people who shouldn't have any, people who refuse to know their place.

Another wing of these anti-union efforts are the anti-union unions, groups that are set up to provide a alternative organization for people who don't want to go it alone. We've had teacher collectives a decade or so ago that were created for the purpose of supporting Common Core and high stakes testing ("See? Teachers think this stuff is great!") like Educators 4 Excellence et al. 

But nowadays the big names are about giving teachers an alternative to AFT and NEA.

There's the Christian Educators Association. 

I've written about them before--here are some of the highlights. 

The Christian Educators Association is not a new player (you may have heard the name before--we'll get to that shortly). They were founded as the National Educators Fellowship in 1953 by Dr. Clyde Narramore, an author of over 100 books, most focusing on psychology. He even had a syndicated radio show with his wife Ruth. His shtick was psychology steeped in Christian belief, and he eventually launched and led the Rosemead School of Psychology which has since been folded into Biola University, a private evangelical Christian university in La Mirada, California. Biola was founded as the Bible Institute of Los Angeles by the president of the Union Oil Company of California, based on the model of the Moody Bible Institute, later broadening their programs (including an education department).

In 1984 they changed the name to Christian Educators Association International, and in 1991, then-leader Forrest Turpen continued restructuring the group to be "an alternative to teachers' unions, at a time when unions were embracing values more and more hostile to the Biblical worldview." I was teaching then; I'm not sure what exactly they were upset about (Outcome based education?) Turpen led the group from 1983 till 2003, expanded membership, and went after the secular unions. As always, the mission was unequivocally evangelical; when he died, friends noted his "dogged determination to see the gospel proclaimed to the children of this nation."

CEAI became increasingly aggressive. Under new leader (and former Ohio public school teacher) Finn Laursen, CEAI launched the Daniel Project to provide schools with modern day Daniels:

Christ-centered teachers are nominated, selected and funded to participate in Daniel Weekends to help them rekindle their passion, calling and courage to transform their schools with God’s love and truth.

Totally cool because, as Laursen explains here, the founders totally wanted religion in schools. He also makes the claim that in the past, the US schools were first in math and literacy and "the envy of the world" (not actually true), but then in the sixties the Supreme Court took prayer out of school. And as another CEAI writer puts it, "By not honoring God in our schools, We have allowed unbelief to be sown into the lives of our children. And when a nation sows unbelief it reaps a harvest Of brokenness, division and moral decay."

In 2013, CEAI joined in a lawsuit being brought by a photogenic California teacher to challenge California's fair share rule that says non-members must still pay the union a share of dues to cover some costs of the union activities from which they benefit. The teacher was Rebecca Friedrichs, who was a CEAI member, and the case was rightly seen as an attack on unionism, especially because Friedrichs was willing to get in front of any camera to talk about how bad the union was.

CEAI got a new chief in 2017--David Schmus, who has a BA in Political Science from Pepperdine and a MA in Biblical Studies and Theology, as well as a CTEL/CLAD Cross-Cultural Language teaching certificate, from Biola University, where he taught for 13 years and was a computer tech for 6. Schmus was in charge when the Janus verdict came down to cheer that "Our teachers...are now free."

In 2022 they went through a rebrand aimed at trying "to reach the next generation of Ambassadors for Christ in our schools." The "leave your union" message, though still there, has been toned down considerably. There continues to be some question about how many actual members they have--maybe not even 10,000.

Association of American Educators

AAE was founded in California in 1994 by Gary Beckner who was a community college instructor and textbook author who also liked to fish and sing, but mostly he was an insurance salesman with a BS in marketing. He appears to have been religious, but there's little on line to indicate what exactly moved him to create AAE. He got a handful of former Teachers of the Year to start it with him. In 1997 he told David Kirkpatrick:

Many teachers who contact us are aware of some of the independent groups...but express dissatisfaction that these groups sometimes don't seem much different than the NEA—especially regarding reform issues such as school choice, tenure, standards, or competency testing. They also express concern that these organizations shy away from taking stands on controversial issues such as multiculturalism, Goals 2000 funding, OBE [outcome-based education], etc.

On their webpage touting the new(er) Pennsylvania branch, AAE says

AAE is committed to a teaching profession that is student oriented, well respected, and personally fulfilling. AAE is dedicated to restoring the true teacher voice to policy debates and implementation.

AAE remains on the reformiy side of many issues. Their blog includes pieces about how school choice is great, and Lucy Culkins is terrible. Their Advisory Board includes right-tilted reformsters such as Jay Greene (Heritage Foundation), Mike Petrilli (Fordham Institute), and Rick Hess (American Enterprise Institute), plus some charter school folks. 

The Center for Media and Democracy found that AAE scored a hefty grant from the right wing Bradley Foundation; in their grant proposal, they said "AAE thinks it is well-positioned to help further weaken the unions and their political goals."

Three years ago, AAE became quite visible in Wisconsin in the middle of the blustery public discourse about Act 10, during which (Kristi) Lacroix herself and the group’s small number of members were helpful. AAE and Lacroix have admirably struggled, in the face of severe challenges, to increase that number and decrease the unions’ hold on teachers’ money, and thus their power. Therefore, staff recommends a $200,000 investment in AAEF for the Wisconsin activities.

Ultimately, says CMD, Bradley pumped $1.7 million into AAE. 

AAE talks about a lot of things that other unions talk about, like dealing with covid, self care, increasing teacher diversity. They offer a sort of stripped down version of liability and certificate protection. Collectiove bargaining and workplace clout? Not so much. But folks like the Bradleys love to see unions with less money and power, and AAE certainly helps with that.

Union busting never goes out of style

I have been the president of a local teachers union (and through a strike, no less). I have also been that local member who got ahold of state leadership to give them hell. I will be the last person to tell you that PSEA and NEA should be trusted and followed every time without question. Unions are imperfect organizations, sometimes infuriatingly so. Always have been.

But they're still necessary.

You know what the most effective anti-union measure is? I saw it in action at a local business-- you treat your employees with such care and respect, and you make their working conditions so good and their pay and benefit so attractive that when the union tries to come in, the employees say, "What do we need you for?"

But in education, as in many fields, the desire is to figure out how the least you can get away with spending on the whole enterprise, and since teachers are the major expense at most districts, that means the pressure will always be to pay them the least, and give them the fewest benefits that you can and still manage to fill positions. And these days, most districts are actually offering less than that, as witness by the teacher exodus. 

On top of that, teachers need a minimal amount of protection just to do their jobs without constant fear of reprisal or obstruction. 

The point of joining a real teachers union is not to get rich or to be protected from being incompetent (a union does neither), but to get the elbow room to do your damn job. In Pennsylvania, the union has to do that for you whether you join it or some other pretend union, unless, of course, so many people ditch the union that its power is too diminished to help them. Which is, for some folks, the dream.

Happy Labor Day. 

ICYMI: Another Labor Day Edition (9/3)

Take a moment or two this weekend to remember that it's the labor movement that brought us the 40 hour work week and a host of other features that we now take for granted, Then hug your loved ones. Do that. And here's some reading to pass the time in between.

Pennsylvania's education funding should be rebuilt

A Tribune-Review editorial pointing out for the gazzillionth time that Pennsylvania's school funding system sucks. Maybe gazzillionth times a charm.

How I Got Censored by a Southern California School District

Many layers to this one. Wayne Au was invited to talk to a district, but then the administration got cold feet because he might use the word "gay." So could he just go ahead and give them total editorial control over his presentation. Here's how intimidation by the few plays out. From rethinking schools.

Arizona attorney general warns parents that school voucher program is ‘buyer-beware situation’

Use a voucher, give up your federal discrimination protections. Also, "My concern is that it has expanded so quickly and it has so few controls over it compared to public schools, and charter schools even, that it is open for abuse." From KTAR News.

Federal, state law permit disability discrimination in Wisconsin voucher schools

Yeah, that whole give up your rights thing is not just an Arizona feature of vouchers.

Houston Schools Feeling the Chaos of Mike Miles.

The indispensable Mercedes Schneider takes a look at the Houston takeover by educational amateur and tight-fisted micromanager Mike Miles. 

Can ‘Parents Matter’ actually improve K-12 education? Of course not

In Virginia, the Richmond Times-Dispatch has some blistering insights about Glenn Youngkin's all-purpose "Parents Matter" movement. 

It’s just difficult, if not impossible, to see how altering history standards, removing sexually explicit books and focusing on who gets to use what bathrooms are going to help any student or school improve academically. If you feel empowered thanks to a sudden rush of “parental rights,” good for you. But don’t think for a second that “Parents Matter” will lead to sound public policy or improved K-12 schools. It hasn’t. And it won’t.

It’s time to defend our public schools

In Oklahoma, Kyle Reynolds takes to The Oklahoman to defend the beleagured system.

Policymakers Err Time and Again about Classroom Teaching

I probably don't recommend Larry Cuban often enough here, but here's a great piece on the distinction between good teaching and successful teaching.

Keeping Banned Books on the Shelves

TuftsNow profiles a pair of former Tufts roommates who are now working for PEN America and the Library Foundation of Los Angeles, and spending as lot of time standing up for reading rights.

A PAC vilifying Central Bucks Dems is warning voters about sexually explicit images by mailing out explicit images

An extremist group in Bucks County has decided to combat the spread of sexually explicit images by spreading sexually explicit images. Also, lots of lies. Unfortunately, this is behind the paywall at the Philadelphia Inquirer, but if you can get to it, read it.

Fighting For Students’ And Teachers’ Rights In Central Bucks School District, With ACLU’s Witold Walczak

Central Bucks is the scene of some jaw-dropping retaliation against a teacher who stood up for students who couldn't get help from the district. Cyril Mychalejko of the Bucks County Beacon talks to the ACLU about what happened, and what's next (spoiler: federal investigation).

Roll-Back Advanced Placement

Thomas Ultican has some thoughts about Advanced Placement courses and why they should go away.

This Summer, I Became the Book-Banning Monster of Iowa

At the New York Times, a piece from Bridgette Exman, the Iowa school administrator who found herself in the news  for using ChatGPT to locate law-violating books. Turns out she's not a fan of the law at all. 

Teachers Say Those Ubiquitous, Every-Few-Months Tests Don’t Always Capture What’s Taught

EdWeek offers something for the Things That Come As No Surprise But At Least Now It's In Print file. Also the At Least Someone Finally Asked Actual Teachers file.

More than Half of Philadelphia’s Charter Schools Are Under-Enrolled

While Pennsylvania choice supporters are complaining that families need more choice, data show that a whole lot of the available choice isn't being used.

Never A Good Time For Vermilion Education And Hillsdale 1776 Curriculum In Pennridge, Or Any Bucks County School District

Pennridge schools (in Bucks County) have decided to inflict a whitewashed version of history on their students. Kevin Leven at Bucks County Beacon explains why it's a lousy idea. 

Documents detail Florida’s objections to African American Studies course

Why did Florida reject the AP African American studies course? Well, for one, it fails to present both sides of slavery. And some other great reasons.

Jacksonville Van Winkle

Gregory Sampson reflects on the Jacksonville murders and how Florida's anti-woke policies leave schools unequipped to respond to student concerns.

10 Years Later: The Continuing Intentional Unraveling of America’s Public Schools

Nancy Bailey takes a look at the past decade of efforts to dismantle public education in this country. 

Wisconsin private schools object to their finances being made public

Now that they can hoover up lots of taxpayer money via vouchers, Wisconsin private schools would like to keep that money in a secret black box that no taxpayers can actually look into. 

Tax Funded LEGOS, “Hamilton” tickets, Skateboards, and Disney admissions – Money Well Spent?

Speaking of the question of how voucher dollars are spent, Sue Kingery Woltanski has some questions about Florida's allowable expenses.

Moms for Liberty Is Riding High. It Should Beware What Comes Next.

In Slate (sorry--it's a big week for paywalls), an Adam Laats piece. Laats is a historian who has followed the intersection of religious conservatism and education, and he says history tells us that Moms For Liberty are headed for some trouble.

The Christian home-schooler who made ‘parental rights’ a GOP rallying cry

A Washington Post piece looks at one of the rich guys behind the movement to dismantle and defund public education under the cover of "parents rights."

Objects in the Mirror May Be Closer Then They Appear

Nobody outdoes TC Weber at tracking the many mutual backscratching relationships behind Tennessee, even as those many scratchers are reaching in and out of other states. Lots to track in this episode.

Ron DeSantis Is Afraid of Questions From a 15-Year-Old

There's a politics wonk in New Hampshire, and he's fifteen years old. He's seen at least 35 Presidential candidates, but Ron DeSantis has turned out to be unlike any other. This piece from the Daily Beast is a real window on how DeSantis relates to A) young people and B) opponents.

Meet the Kiwibots, UMaine Dining’s new food delivery robots

Huh. What could possibly go wrong?

Elsewhere this week-- My piece from the Progressive print edition is now available on line, looking at some of the features of our new normal in education. 

And at Forbes, I looked at the pushback against the Texas move to put chaplains in schools. The pushback comes from actual professional chaplains. Also, let's talk about how the Big Standardized Test has hurt the teaching of reading and literature. 

You're invited to subscribe to my substack and get all of the usual posts straight to your email. It's reliable and absolutely free. 

Bloomberg: Just Pack Those Kids In There

Michael Bloomberg, the very prototype of the wealthy public ed dismantler, took to the pages of the Washington Post last week to complain about class size reduction mandates.

"Historic learning deficits!" he cries, which is a variety of baloney brands. Sure, students have lost a few steps thanks to the pandemic, but when we start throwing the words "deficit" and "historic" around, well-- history tells us that in the not-too-distant past a considerably smaller percentage of children attended or finished school. 

But he's bringing that up only so he can poo-poo elected officials who have created "a policy that will aid their re-election efforts without helping kids: mandating smaller classes."

Class size mandates, he says, are "a favorite policy of the teachers’ unions, not least because they often require districts to hire more unionized teachers." Just a political ploy, not an educational one.

Smaller classes would be worth the enormous new expenditures on staff and facilities if they produced the results that supporters tout — but, as experience and data show, they don’t.

Bloomberg is going to wave hands in the general direction of research that suggests that smaller class sizes don't raise test scores. We could also wave hands in the direction of a mountain of research detailing the benefits of class size. But the class size argument is mostly a silly argument to throw data at.

If you want to pull up some data to impress me, show me the data on how many parents say, "I want my kid in a class that's more crowded!" Yes, there's research that supposedly shows that parents will choose larger classes--but the choice given in those surveys is "Would you rather have a bad teacher and a small class, or a good teacher and a big class." Find me a parent who wouldn't choose "good teacher and small class."

Find me the parents demanding that Phillips Exeter get rid of those Harkness Tables and squeeze more students in. Heck, find me an account of that time that Michael Bloomberg complained to the folks at The Spence School that his daughter's tuition was being wasted because their school only had class sizes of 13-14 students in upper grades.

Or find me a teacher who says, "I can definitely do better work with more students in the class. "Nope. In fact, there's research out there that says teachers would give up salary to have a smaller class. It's not complicated. Every teacher understands that the fewer students there are, the more assignments can be handled, the more feedback can be given, the more attention individual students can get. 

The Super Sardinemaster teaching model is a reformster fave because it would be cheaper and easier for management. But it has never caught on anywhere because nobody actually wants it, at least not anybody directly connected to a classroom. 

Bloomberg is correct is saying that New York's mandate will have less effect on higher poverty schools because those schools already have better class sizes. His argument that the mandate will sap funding from higher-poverty schools--well, that's a nicer face on "My taxes might go up to fund this!" And his argument that this will drain staff from high poverty schools by making small class jobs in wealthy schools which will have drawing power for staff--well, that's another way to say that teaching in an overcrowded classroom is as unattractive as teaching in a high-poverty classroom, which could only be true if overcrowded classrooms are bad.

Bloomberg says spend the money in better ways, like tutoring or summer school (you know--where a student gets a class of a really small size). Don't hire more teachers-- do merit pay (which never works) or more pay for underserved areas (which helps...somehow). 

About eight paragraphs in, we get a hint of what Bloomberg's real beef may be. This year, he sputters, the teachers' union sued to prevent Success Academy from occupying some unused classrooms in a public school building (charters are not subject to the class size mandate). This "outrageous attack" failed. But now I'm thinking that besides needing more teachers, the class size mandate would also require more classrooms, and charter schools would lose a lot of that cheap real estate they get to commandeer from public schools. And that would be a real pain for charter-loving Michael Bloomberg.

This "analysis" is silly. Smaller class sizes are a win for everyone except for people who want public education to stay as cheap as possible by providing the minimum necessary service, and for NYC charter investors who don't want to lose taxpayer funded real estate. Bloomberg can chicken little all day about Learning Loss, but he doesn't have a thing to offer as a solution, nor does it seem to be what he's really concerned about. 

Slow Down And Breathe

Parents offering advice to other parents can be tedious and even awful. I'm going to do it anyway.

My perspective on parenting is informed by the advantages of my spot in life's travels. I'm retired after a long teaching career. My older children are in their thirties, which means I've had plenty of time to reflect on how well I did (or didn't) do as a parent. And because I'm now parenting another pair of very young humans, I can be both the old fart sharing parenting advice and the parent of littles getting it.

Childhood whips by both faster and slower than it seems to at the time. Every day brings a new Last Time (except that, of course, you don't know it was the Last Time until later), and yet the milestones ahead can seem like Sir Lancelot's attack on the Swamp Castle--always racing toward you, yet seeming to never arrive. 

It's a too-natural response to try to race forward to meet the future, to try to grab what's coming quickly in fear that you might somehow miss it entirely. 

It's the impulse that leads to all those parental worries that "My child hasn't done [insert feared accomplishment here] yet." Shouldn't my child be speaking in complete sentences by now? Shouldn't she be reading complete Shakespeare plays by now? Shouldn't he be able to run a five-minute mile by now? Shouldn't my child be able to write a complete novel by now? 

Schools feel and feed this push. Common Core in particularly pushed learning goals into lower grades. The very structure of "grade levels" as essentially median achievement levels for grades insures that a huge number of parents will be led to believe that their child is "behind." 

This race to the finish shows up in other ways, like serious sports leagues for five year olds and sixth grade proms and third graders with boyfriends and girlfriends and a hundred extracurricular activities because you want to be sure your child doesn't miss out on something. Sign Pat up for t-ball and have a coaching session at home every day, because how else can we be sure that Pat will get into Harvard?

I'm not arguing that we should ignore what lies ahead and indulge in a sole focus on the present. If you have no goals or directions, you end up wandering in a lazy aimless circle, spinning halfhearted cookies in the parking lot of life.

But pushing ahead in a race to meet the future before it gets here too often means that you miss what is happening right now. Not only that, but by pushing things before their time, your child ends up jaded or uninterested in what might have turned out to be a great part of their life.

I suspect that many parents are extra anxious, that a pervasive fear (which I noticed years and years ago trickling down to students) seeps into so much, a fear that we live in a world of scarcity and that the gulf between haves and have-nots is so wide and impossible to cross that we bring great urgency to our hope that our children grow up to be haves. I'm just not convinced that forcing them to race ahead is particularly helpful. 

I believe that mostly people get to their place in the world in their own way and in their own time. As teachers and parents, we can support and aid that journey, and we can also impede, disrupt and exacerbate the difficulties that naturally occur in that journey. 

So my self-administered parenting advice is to slow down and breathe. I fretted terribly about my two older children, feared that my mistakes had created real problems for them, worried that they would pay a price for my bad choices, and now my least favorite memories of their lives so far are the times I fretted, feared and worried my way into another sub-optimal parenting moment. My best memories are when I slowed down and just enjoyed who they were. And now, lo and behold, they found places in the world and become really excellent versions of themselves in their own way and they own time. Which I should have expected, because I've seen versions of that same story--finding your own way to your own place--play out a zillion times in students.

Slow down and breathe. Tomorrow will get here when it gets here and you can't force it to come sooner, and in the meantime you can enjoy and support the child who is right here in front of you today. Doesn't mean you aren't working steadily and earnestly to grow and build and move with purpose into the future. But what is here now is also precious, and like the future, entirely temporary. 

Slow down. Breathe. They will get there in their own way and their own time, and you can't force it, but you can appreciate it, assist it, and enjoy it. 

MI: Parental Leave Is Vacation?

The United States is literally the worst industrialized nation in the world when it comes to parental leave, and some folks are determined to keep it that way.

As a society, we make an awful lot of noise about the value of family, and lord knows we have plenty of people making noise about how important babies are and how women who get pregnant should give birth no matter what.

But once the woman has given birth, well, she'd better brush the dust from her sandals and get the hell back to work. Especially if she wants to have the money to deal with her new expenses. 

In Michigan, Governor Gretchen Whitmer has proposed a paid family leave.

Paid leave “helps workers be there for their families,” she said, giving them “breathing room to get better when you're sick, to bond with your baby or care for a family member.

A little bundle of vacation,
or a Chamber of Commerce member?

The pushback came from the usual places. The Michigan Chamber of Commerce said this would just mean more taxes. We'd also love to build population (aka available meat widgets for employment) says the Chamber, but our "economic competitiveness" rests on being open and ready for business, which we can't do if Ethel isn't here because she's home doing some infant care thing, and then costing us money to do it. Also, think of the small businesses (which are somehow more compelling than small human beings). Also, the "Michiganders living paycheck-to-paycheck" and we really care about them, although we can't think of anything that would help them survive on those paychecks that we cut for them. Nope. We are concerned about their struggle with their meager pay, but we can't think of a single solution to that problem.

I'm paraphrasing.

Also, the Michigan GOP has some public words to offer, including tweeting, "Aspiring tyrants never tire of grand plans of telling YOU how to live!!!" Which doesn't actually make sense. I mean, if Ethel doesn't want to take maternity leave, she can always just go back to work right away. Maybe the "telling you how to live" part refers to putting taxpayer money where politician's mouths have been.

But according to The Messenger, the GOP has another plan-- a messaging memo for GOP House members recommends that GOP lawmakers refer to the family leave as a vacation. 

A vacation.

Because as every parent knows, there's nothing so restful as those first few weeks with an infant. Restfully feeding every couple of hours. Restfully catching occasional naps to make up for not sleeping at night. Or maybe you luck out and you get to spend most of the time simply bonding with the new miraculous human life that you just brought into the world. Yes, I can see it now. Thousands of couples saying, "You know, I'd really like a vacation next summer. Let's try to get pregnant." 

Nor does the idea that caring for an ailing family member is some kind of vacation-- 

Never mind. These are not serious people. But I'm bringing all this up in an education blog because if this is the response and attitude of the politicians who are all about family and birth treat the issue of family leave, how could we possibly expect them to be serious about educating those young humans. How do they even say that baloney about how public schools put the interests of adults ahead of the interests of children when they have made it clear that the interests of children rank far below the interests of business owners. 

I can only hope that these people try to run with this talking point and tell all those Michigan parents that they were on some kind of vacation when their children were born, that they're called on it, and that this baloney keeps them from regaining any power in Lansing.

Questions for Voucher Supporters

In Pennsylvania, the GOP is still pursuing the voucher program that Governor Shapiro just vetoed. Their dismay over his veto is understandable-- it's a version of the long-pitched voucher program that was tooled to meet his requirements. So the GOP can be forgiven for feeling as if they're victims of a bait and switch from someone who said "This is what I want," and then, presented with that, said, "No, not that."

So the full court press is on. And it has the same problem as other voucher bills. I'm going to skip over the philosophical issues, like the fundamental question of whether we should have education as a shared responsibility and public good or as a market-based good, or the basic efficiency of running multiple education systems. Those are important questions, but the various players already have their position staked out, and sometimes I fear that discussions of broad philosophical issues let us skip past some major practical matters.

So I want to ask some questions that address practical concerns that should be concerns even for conservative supporters of vouchers, and which have to be addressed one way or another in order to create a voucher system.

Here's a basic set of questions that every voucher advocate should be asked.

1) What regulations you support to keep private schools from denying voucher students? 

What good does it do to give a family a voucher if the school they choose will not admit the student? Most recent voucher bills include a "hands off" clause that says the state will not be allowed to interfere in how the school operates, but if the private schools can pick and choose which students to admit, what good is a voucher to a student who is not a desirable "get" for a private school?  If this is about putting kids above "special interests," why put the special interests of the school operators ahead of the needs or desires of the students?

2) Do you support allowing private schools to discriminate on the basis of religion?

In most voucher states, vouchers are used for private religious schools, including those that discriminate against LGBTQ students or families and others that require a family be born-again Christians. It's not an answer to say, "Well, why would non-religious people want to attend such a school?" They might. The religious school might have an attractive location or academic program. Should be schools be allowed to discriminate against them, and should the taxpayers foot the bill in such cases?

3) What kind of oversight and accountability do you support?

It's not going to help if students escape a failing public school and end up in a failing private school. Voucher programs tend to lead to "pop-up" schools created simply to take advantage of the voucher program, and these "sub-prime" schools tend to be not good. Of course families can "vote with their feet," but by the time they are exiting the school, damage has already been done.

4) What kind of taxpayer accountability and oversight do you support?

Taxpayers have a right to know how their dollars are spent. How will you insure that voucher dollars are transparently and accountably spent? In particular, who will protect or represent the interests of taxpayers without children, who will foot the bill but have no say in how the money is spent?

5) Do you support regulating or mitigating private school tuition costs? 

Cost is another barrier to choice that vouchers don't fully address. Vouchers will not cover the cost of the more expensive private schools (especially if costs like uniforms and transportation are factored in). In several voucher states, private schools have increased their tuition costs specifically because of vouchers. Families could of course borrow money to attend private schools still financially out of their reach, but we've seen how that can work out on the college level. Should a voucher system be one that provides choice to families with a certain amount of wealth?

6) Where do you see voucher levels long term?

In ten years, will voucher amounts be the same as the current proposed level? Do you anticipate raising the dollar value of the voucher over the years, or will the real value of the voucher shrink? 

7) What about the students left behind?

For a variety of reasons (many of which are suggested above), only a small percentage of the students at the failing public schools will be able to use vouchers to "escape." What solutions do you propose for the other students who are left behind at those schools? 

8) How will you manage the impact of the voucher program on taxpayers?

In several states, the cost of the voucher program to the state treasury has ballooned hundreds of millions of dollars above original projections. Do you anticipate avoiding that scenario here? 

You can't install a voucher system without answering these questions, whether you do so openly and publicly or just quietly in the office. But every one of them has big implications for taxpayers and parents.