Rules and Charter Innovation (A Paired Text Exercise)

It's an ordinary day when a pair of charter school boosters conclude that charters work best when mean old government doesn't make them follow a bunch of rules and stuff. It is an ordinary day when someone points out they're full of regular non-innovative baloney. It is a less ordinary day when the baloney is being called out by a piece in the house organ of the Thomas Fordham Institute.

So let's pretend for a moment that the question of regulations vs. charter innovation is a real question. David Griffith, the Fordham Associate Director of Research, frames this as the old tension between autonomy and accountability, which makes more sense than talking about charter school innovation, because after a few decades of charter proliferation, the amount of innovation they have produced is somewhere between jack and squat. Despite being billed as "laboratories of innovation," charter schools haven't come up with much of anything that public schools were not already well aware of. 

But the "study" of the relationship between innovation and regulation comes from two guys who are not exactly unbiased. Jay Greene was previously of the University of Arkansas, where he was occasionally willing to hit reformsters with uncomfortable truths; nowadays he's at the Heritage Foundation, where his job is to push preferred policies. Joining him is Corey DeAngelis, the education dudebro logging many miles across the country as he lobbies hard for Bety DeVos's American Federation for Children. I'm old enough to remember when someone could have a civil conversation with DeAngelis on line, but these days "attack dog" and "unleasher of troll pack" seems to be part of his job description. Ian Kingsbury is also in on this; he previously worked for cyber school giant Stride (formerly K12) and the Empire Center; these days he's a senior fellow at the Education Freedom Institute ("Protecting and promoting school choice"). DeAngelis is the EFI executive director, and Greene is the Managing Senior Fellow. 

In short, this is a trio of people whose profession is pushing school choice.

A caveat here--the article is in Educational Research and Evaluation, part of the family of Taylor and Francis journals, and if I want to read the whole article, it'll cost me $50. That is far outside the Institute's budget of $0.00, so I'll be working strictly second hand here.

To "study" the relationship between regulations and innovation, they had to come up with a way to quantify innovatiness, so this is what they did. They considered five factors: the pedagogical approaches used to teach that academic content; the types of students they sought to serve; whether they delivered that education in person, virtually, or with a mixed approach; and whether they had a specialized theme, such as technology, art, or the environment. The judged 1,261 charter schools by cruising their websites and seeing how they stacked up on those five dimensions. That gave each school an innovation rating.

Having manufactured the innovation rating, they stacked those up beside state ratings from the National Association of Charter School Authorizers (NACSA), which the researchers see as based on how heavily regulated charters are in the state. 

Aha! they declared. The more regulation, the less innovatiness in charter schools. For charter fans, it's simple--more options means they can move more product, and while I get their point, it is also true that we would have far more innovation in the food industry without all those government regulations about poison and stuff.

Griffith makes a similar observation. Their technique of quantifying "innovation" gives the charter points for being unusual, and that's problematic:

From a purely normative perspective, an obvious problem with the authors’ approach is that it is content neutral. So, for example, a school that was grounded in Satan Worship would count as highly innovative (provided it didn’t start a movement), as would one that imparted no knowledge whatsoever (as seems to be the case for many virtual schools).

And he doesn't think "innovation" means what they think it means either, noting that many of their "innovations" aren't particularly new but instead include "longstanding programs such as Core Knowledge (est. 1986), Waldorf (1919), and Montessori (1907), not to mention “single-sex” education (Harvard, circa 1636) and “project-based” learning (the Pleistocene)." (That is Griffith's snark there, not mine).

So do they really mean "programmatic diversity"? Griffith says no, because their system really measures

how similar a particular state’s charter sector is to the national charter sector (rather than how many different types of schools a state’s charter sector includes). Which simply isn’t the same thing as diversity or innovation, no matter how much the authors may want it to be.

And some of that variation, he points out, can simply be a factor of location or the student population being served. New Jersey will not have the kind of rural-serving charters that Idaho might have, for reasons having nothing to do with regulation.

In short, Griffith finds their whole design junk.

All of which makes it hard to swallow the authors’ claim in a recent National Review article that “we know heavy charter regulation has this negative effect on diversity and innovation in the charter sector because we actually measured it in our new peer-reviewed study.”

No, we don’t. No, they didn’t. And the mere fact that a study is “peer reviewed” doesn’t mean it should be taken seriously.

All of which I agree with wholeheartedly. And it's a special day when I don't have to dismantle a reformster "study" because a Fordham guy gets there first. 

OK: Walters Itching For National Stage

Oklahoma's Education Dudebro-in-Chief Ryan Walters was always a bad choice for the office, wearing out the patience of even his fellow GOP officials with his theorcratic bluster and anti-teacher grandstanding even as he displays little interest in doing his actual job. There has been suspicion all along that Walters just sees his current job as a stepping stone, a chance to audition for the national stage. And this week, not even a full year in office behind him, he's been offering further proof.

This week news broke that the Oklahoma Education Department is looking to hire a PR firm to provide print and digital op-eds to national outlets, provide national bookings, coordinate national events and appearances for executive staff, write speeches and handle some communications. That includes a minimum of three op-eds, two speeches and 10 media bookings per month. The department already has its own comms people, so this would apparently involve a whole new batch of work, aimed, one guesses, at raising Walters' national profile.

Or, as Oklahoma Watch reported:

“Why would an Oklahoma elected official need a paid staff person to arrange national media appearances in order to do their job in the state of Oklahoma?” said Erin Brewer, communications chair for Oklahoma Parent Legislative Advocacy Coalition, a grassroots education advocacy group. “It sounds like campaigning to me.”

Meanwhile, Walters had Big News to announce on Wednesday--from his car, as usual, because, as frequent Walters critic Clay Horning put it, "the guy won’t be caught dead at his state department of public education office."

I received a call from President Trump this week, and I'm proud to announce that I'm going to join his team for reelect. I fully and totally endorse President Trump.

It's not a huge surprise. Walters has been going full MAGA for a while now. His brief announcement played all the hits:

President Trump will be able to end radical indoctrination in our schools. This woke ideology will be driven out of our schools. The cancer that is the teachers’ union will be driven out of our schools and parents will be put in charge of their kids education. We will move from teaching kids to hate this country. We will teach kids the basics to understand how to be successful and to love this country and what makes America great.

Also, Trump's going to dismantle the Department of Education. Just like he did the last time, I guess. 

Does Walters smell a US Secretary of Education post in his future? He'd probably be best to skip trying for governor, since he underperformed the other big GOP candidates in the last election. He certainly has the rhetorical bona fides to serve as a successor to Betsy DeVos, which is more than enough reason to vote against Trump in 2024 (if you needed one more reason). 

He's got three more years in his current office, which is probably enough time to build himself a national platform so that he doesn't need to worry about actually doing the job that Oklahomans elected him to do. Which is too bad for Oklahoma and also too bad for the rest of us. Here's hoping that Oklahoma keeps him and ends his fifteen minutes of MAGA fame. 

M4L School Board Candidate Is A Big Fat Liar

A Moms for Liberty backed school board candidate for Downington Area School Board in Pennsylvania turns out to have a George Santos-sized fabulist streak.

Maddie Hanna of the Philadelphia Inquirer reported on this story, which is now out from behind a paywall, and as always, she did a hell of a job. I'm just going to whet your appetite--go read the whole thing.

This guy

Back in 2021 the district started getting formal-sounding challenges to books in its library from the Society of College Medicine Violations Department. Except there's no such society, and so there's no such department. 

It has come to our attention that a ‘Red Flagged’ book has appeared on your DEI Reading List. We recommend this being removed immediately, and sensitivity counseling/training administered to whomever recommended/allowed this book to a school population.

The e-mails even referenced things like "tier-1" and "tier-2" violations. 

But this is all made-up baloney from Christopher Bressi, who has (well, had, because Hanna's reporting seems to have prompted some erasures) a whole web of interlocking made-up BS websites. This goes with a host of jobs that he may or may not have actually had in IT and consulting and higher ed. And he also tried to get himself some juice in right wing reading restriction circles. As Hanna reports:

In a “No Left Turn in Education” group, Bressi — using the name Christopher Bre — shared an email from the Society for College Medicine notifying Downingtown of “Red Flag” violations, and referred to “pressure from the Society of College Medicine” that he suggested was having an impact.

But district administrators had already disregarded the messages. “There is no Society of College Medicine, let alone a violations department,” Justin Brown, Downingtown’s director of diversity, equity and inclusion, wrote in an email to school board members. “This is simply someone trying to troll the district.”

This guy is a hoot. Hanna also found him, through Bressi LLC, operating a Space Tourism website. On LinkedIn she found his group “Global Education Executives (No Politics in School) Global Academic Network!”

Bressi referred to that LinkedIn group while addressing the Downingtown board in March 2022, opposing a contract with the American School Counselor Association that he said would promote “divisive ideologies.”

Bressi informed the board that “the largest educational management group on LinkedIn” had “recommended collectively that K-12 schools adopt a no-politics-in-the-classroom pledge” — advising the district to “follow suit.”

You can read his website here (for now) and check out an interview he did as a candidate on a conservative website (don't miss the comments) or this site where you can...take a course about him? He's got a long list of alleged academic credentials. What appears to be his LinkedIn page lists his current job as Executive Director of Higher Education - Global ACI. Hanna tracked that to Aspect Consulting, an IT consulting group. A former colleague says he's inflating a bit and simply functions as a go-between to connect educational institutions with software consultants.

This guy is running for school board in Downington. Elections are next Tuesday; may many people get a chance to see what a shady piece of work he is before then. Read the whole story, and if you're in Downington, spread it.  And if you’re somewhere with Moms for Liberty endorsing school board candidates, take it as a lesson.

[Update: He lost]

The History Christian Nationalists Want

Recently Oklahoma's education Dudebro-in-Chief Ryan Walters went on another tear, this time warning textbook publishers that they'd better not try to sell any wokified textbooks in Oklahoma. "If you can't teach math without talking about transgenderism, go to California, go to New York," he told Fox News Digital. He even sent out a letter, just so they'd know. "Listen, we will be checking for these things now. Do not give us textbooks that have critical race theory in them."

Walters said lots of things. Maybe he's auditioning for a media spot. Maybe he wants to be governor. Maybe he's just a tool. But he says all sorts of things like "In Oklahoma, our kids are going to know the basics. We want them to master it. We want them to do exceptionally well academically. We're not here for any kind of Joe Biden's socialist Marxist training ground."

But somewhere in this conversation, Walters lays out a succinct summary of our nation's history as he believes it should be taught.

So as you go through, you talk about the times that America has led the free world, that we have continued to be that light. We've done more for individual liberty than any other country in the history of the world. And those belief systems that were there in place, it allowed us to do it. You've got to talk about our Judeo-Christian values. The founders were very clear that that was a crucial part of our success. Then you go through and you evaluate. Are these times we lived up to our core principles? You've got to be honest with kids about our history. So you talk about all of it, but you evaluate it through the prism of our founding principles. Is this a time we lived up to those principles?

Most of the elements of the christianist nationalist version of US history are here. American exceptionalism-- the light that led the free world, the very most ever done for individual liberty. A nation founded on Judeo-Christian values. 

With that as a foundation, it's safe to note some of the lapses, all of which are framed as an aberration, a lapse from our foundation and certainly not part of it (take that, you 1619 project-reading CRTers). In the CN view, every good thing that ever happened is because of our God-aligned nature, and every bad thing is in spite of it, quite possibly because Wrong People were allowed to get their hands on some power. 

There are plenty of implications for this view of history. One of the biggest is that these folks simply don't believe in democracy, because democracy allows too many of the Wrong People to get their hands on power. As Katherin Stewart puts it in her must-read The Power Worshippers--

It [Christian nationalism] asserts that legitimate government rests not on the consent of the governed but adherence to the doctrines of a specific religious, ethnic, and cultural heritage.

Or, as she quotes Gary North, a radical free-market libertarian christianist who developed the Ron Paul Curriculum,

Let us be blunt about it: we must use the doctrine of religious liberty to gain independence for Christian schools until we train up a generation of people who know that there is no religious neutrality, no neutral law, no neutral education, and no neutral civil government. Then we will get busy in constructing a Bible-based social, political, and religious order which finally denies the religious liberty of the enemies of God.

The idea of individualism is also important in the CN view of US history. There's no systemic anything--just the work of either good or bad, Right or Wrong individuals. And if everything is about the individual, then your problems are strictly your problems; your failures are all on you, not on society or community (the village has no responsibility to raise your child). That emphasis on the individual runs all through the Hillsdale 1776 curriculum, both original flavor and the Jordan Adams stealth version. 

The rejection of systemic views of society and history matters. It goes along with the view that we pretty much fixed racism in the 1960s (even we got a little too socialist in the process). From which we can conclude that all attempts to talk racism now are just attempts to grab power with made-up grievances. 

To take another angle-- the underlying idea of the Classical Education that is so popular with the CN crowd is that there is One Objective Truth. Back in classical times, great thinkers understood this Truth, but the 20th century brought a bunch of relativistic thought and the evil notion that there are different, subjective truths. But our Founding Fathers knew the Truth and encoded it into the Constitution and our founding principles, and as long as we are led by people who follow that Truth, which is somehow both a Christian Truth and an American Truth, we are okay. People who don't follow that Truth are a threat to the integrity and fiber of our country; consequently, they have to be stopped. 

People who claim that history is complicated, that our founders were complicated, that humans are complicated--those people are just trying to confuse the issue, to draw others away from understanding The Truth. 

So we counter that confusion with history like Walters'-- a history that is clear that our country is exceptional, its foundation fused with God's Objective Truth by men who were Good and Righteous. Some people have strayed from that path and tricked others into straying with them (just as today that evil axis of Biden, Democrats, unions and socialists are still trying). Extremism in the defense of God's given order (which includes keeping people in their proper place in the social order) is not only allowed, but is required.

You'll find some version of this everywhere you find christianist nationalists trying properly bring up the next generation to believe the Truth (it's only indoctrination when you try to lead people off the True Path--when you try to convince people to stay on that path, you're just standing up for what is Righteous and True). Where you find this, you'll find people who don't understand that when you mix religion and politics, you get politics. And you'll find some other people who understand that all too well, and who understand that religion-flavored politics can be an excellent path to power. 

Can We Trust "Evidence-Based"?

We love to talk about "evidence-based" practices in education. We've even enshrined it in the federal laws about education-- the Elementary and Secondary Education Act as currently modified as the Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA). The idea is that education is supposed to use techniques, materials, etc., that are evidence-based and not just whims-based or best-guess-based.

But what does "evidence-based" actually mean? Not nearly as much as you probably think it means.

There are four tiers of evidence, four flavors of evidence that something works. And they aren't all necessarily all that evidency.

Tier 1: This is "strong" evidence. It requires "studies that have had a positive, statistically significant impact on student outcomes without any negative findings from well-designed, well-implemented experimental or quasi-experimental studies examining the same interventions and outcomes." In short, it's what most think of as "actual evidence." 

Tier 2: "Moderate evidence." One federal definition of this is--well, it's exactly the same as Tier 1. The What Works Clearinghouse site (that federal internet spot that is supposed to be a collection of effective and "evidence-based" materials for education use) distinguishes it by saying that the research study might come "with reservations" which means there might be some issues with the studies being used to back it up (not well implemented, questions about subject selection, just generally "issues that require caution." What a layperson might call "shaky" or "questionable" evidence.

Tier 3: "Promising evidence." Instead of a statistically significant positive finding, we'll settle for some correlation with controls for selection bias. There's no requirement for minimum subjects or a particular setting. So, what a layperson would call "hardly any actual evidence at all, but if you squint hard you can make something out of this."

Tier 4: "Demonstrates a rationale" This one doesn't come up as often, probably because it boils down to "We have a good idea for a practice and our idea makes sense and we did a tiny little study that seemed to get a tiny positive effect but mostly we're going to have to create another study to really test this stuff." 

All of them require the absence of any evidence from other "high-quality causal studies," which means, I guess, that studies from tiers 2, 3 and 4 can just kind of duke it out amongst themselves. 

These distinctions are worth making. But I worry that entirely too many non-academic-research laypeople, including classroom teachers, hear the term "evidence-based practices" and think, "Oh, there's proof that this practice works," when that's not necessarily true at all. Evidence-based is not the same as proven effective, and teachers should not throw out the evidence of their own eyeballs and experience because a practice has been declared evidence-based.

PA: Senate Proposes Guide To School's Naughty Bits

SB 7, proposed in April and just last week passed by the Pennsylvania senate, is definitely not the worst Naughty Book bill passed. It is certainly an improvement over its previous iterations. Certainly better than I'd expect in a bill co-sponsored by Doug Mastriano. It's goal is to give parents "control" over what their kids read. I suspect one of its major effects will be to demonstrate the Law of Unintended Consequences.

Much of the debate about this bill is hyperbolic. It's not the worst bill ever passed on the topic, but it's still a bad bill.

It gets one thing very right--under this bill parents can have a book restricted for their own child, but not for everyone else's. So, cheers for that.

What it gets particularly wrong is that it requires an opt-in-- no books with any naughty bits unless you have a note from a parent, so right off the bat we have an issue for divorced parents and parents who do a lousy job of returning school paperwork. Opt-in has the ugly effect of making restrictions on a students' reading the default. 

The law would require the opt-in form to have a very specific and somewhat sensationalized list of things that could be in the naughty books that you're green lighting for your child. The definition of "sexually explicit content" is rather vague:

Materials that contain visual or visually implied depictions of sexual conduct or simulations of sexual conduct. Materials that contain explicit AND EXCESSIVE written descriptions of sexual conduct. Materials that contain visual depictions of nudity accessible to minors in kindergarten through grade eight.

Some of this is doing heavy lifting. What would a "visually implied depiction of sexual conduct" be, exactly? And does the existence and restriction of an "excessive" depiction of sexual conduct imply that there is a "just enough" depiction of sexual conduct that would be okay? Even "visual depiction of nudity" is a fuzzy term--how unclothed must one be to qualify as nude? 

But "sexually explicit content" is basically anything that shows "sexual conduct," and that has a definition of its own:

Acts of masturbation, sexual intercourse, sexual bestiality or physical contact with a person's clothed or unclothed genitals, pubic area, buttocks or, if the person is a female, breast.

And yes, as usual, the bill could be used to restrict access to many classic of literature and also the Bible.

The part of the bill requiring an alternative assignment for students who don't opt in sounds like a good idea. I've done the same thing in my class. But practically speaking, it's not particularly practical. Will the school be required to follow the students around and make sure that they don't get a peek at their classmates' copy of Slaughterhouse Five while in lunch? The end result of this is to harness the power of peer pressure in favor of the forbidden fruit. "All my friends are reading Song of Solomon" is way more compelling than "My teacher assigned Song of Solomon." (This, I suspect, is something the "ban this book for all students" crowd understands.)

The most unfortunate part of this bill is that the Venn Diagram of "students who really need to get some information about sex stuff" and "students whose parents forbid them to get information about sex stuff" has far too much overlap. As State Senator Amanda Capelletti put it “We all like to believe that every child grows up in a family that loves and values them for exactly who they are. We know that unfortunately, is not true. The kids who need books that explore gender identity and sexual orientation, are the most likely ones whose parents are denying them and their communities the right to learn from these books."

The gigantic time-sucking nuisance part of the bill is this one:

The opt-in form must include a list of book titles and materials scheduled to be used as part of curriculum and class discussion or available within the school that meet the definition of sexually explicit content.

Yes, the school must send home a list of every book in the school building that has any naughty parts in it. Presumably this will be a summer special contract for some teachers, who will kick the hunt off with professional development addressing what qualifies as "implied" depictions of sex, how much sexual content is excessive (as opposed to an okay amount), and what constitutes nudity. 

Then they will append this list to the opt-in form, making it the largest piece of paperwork any school ever sent home. 

So every district in PA will be creating and circulating a list of all its books with naughty parts. That's going to be a great tool for the people who want to descend on the district to demand an actual book ban. They'll be waving this list in meetings and declaring that if a work is on the list, it shouldn't be in the school. 

But if you've ever taught in a secondary school setting, I'll bet you can think of some other people who will find a use for the list. Yes, I predict the List Of All The Dirty Books In Our District will be popular among students interested in getting their rebellion on. It will die down pretty quickly once they discover that the Naughty Books aren't nearly as titillating as they expected. This plan reads like a bizarre new way to compete with the internet-- it's so easy to find naughty content on the internet, so let's make an index to make it easier to find in our school. 

This is not the worst bill of this type to ever appear, but it's still a silly bill, a bill that is far more useful as a political gesture than as an actual tool for schools and educators. 

A Little Monday Shakespeare

This clip popped up today, and it's just a masterful bit of Shakespeare delivered impromptu by Dane Judi Dench on the Graham Norton show. 

 

I recommend closed captioning, but also, here's the text of the sonnet

Sonnet 29: When, in disgrace with fortune and men’s eyes 

When, in disgrace with fortune and men’s eyes,
I all alone beweep my outcast state,
And trouble deaf heaven with my bootless cries,
And look upon myself and curse my fate,
Wishing me like to one more rich in hope,
Featured like him, like him with friends possessed,
Desiring this man’s art and that man’s scope,
With what I most enjoy contented least;
Yet in these thoughts myself almost despising,
Haply I think on thee, and then my state,
(Like to the lark at break of day arising
From sullen earth) sings hymns at heaven’s gate;
For thy sweet love remembered such wealth brings
That then I scorn to change my state with kings.

Maybe I'm just feeling particularly close to that one today, but Dench got to me a little bit.

And as a bonus, here's the Schwarzenegger clip referenced in the above clip. I taught Hamlet every year, and for many years showed the Olivier version, then followed it up with this clip, because part of the advantage of being educated and well read is that you get more jokes.