In an era in which even Jeb Bush has stopped saying the name out loud, no group has cheered harder for the Common Core than the Center for American Progress (theoretically left-leaning holding pen for interregnum Clinton staffers). No argument is too dumb, no data set too ridiculous. If that dog won't hunt, CAP ties a rope around its neck and drags it.
So it's no surprise that CAP is back with yet another Pubic Policy Polling poll announced with the breathless headline "NEW POLL: WHEN NEW YORKERS SEE SPECIFIC COMMON CORE STANDARDS, THEY SUPPORT THE COMMON CORE." Partnering up on this raft of ridiculousness is High Achievement New York, a coalition of business groups like the Business Council of New York State and reformster groups like StudentsFirstNY.
The poll, found here in its entirety, is as fine an example of scrambled thinking used to fuel PR as you'll find anywhere. In the world of polling, there are two types of polls-- a poll that seeks to find out what people are really thinking, and a poll that tries to make it look like people are thinking what I want them to think. This would be the second type of poll.
There are twenty-two questions that cover basically three areas.
Math and ELA Standards
This is the basis for the headline, and it would make an excellent exercise in critical thinking for sixth graders. Here's the format. The pollster says, "I'm going to read you a list of possible language arts standards for 4th grade students, and then ask if you support or oppose students learning that standards." Then five specific goals are read, such as "Demonstrate command of the conventions of standard English capitalization, punctuation and spelling when writing." The math portion follows the same technique.
And it turns out that people support these particular standards! Huzzah! So they really DO support the Core! They like it. They really like it!
This is artful use of a forest-tree fallacy. If you like this standard, you must love Common Core. If you like this tree in your yard, you must want to live in the forest. If you like tigers, you must love zoos. If you love cheese, you must like anchovy and pineapple pizza. If you like bears, you must want a bearskin rug. If you like blonde hair on men, you must want to marry Donald Trump.
Testing and Implementation
Have you heard? The Big Standardized Test has become kind of an issue in New York State. The pollsters would like to ask some questions about improving the whole standards and BS Testing situation.
This gets us into a different type of baloney. For instance, the first questions asks if you support limiting BS Test time to no more than 1% of class time (incidentally, a whopping 27% of respondents opposed this). This of course is a question that mis-states the issue, which is that even a 1% limit does not address the hours and hours and hours and hours spent on test prep. So this is like asking, "Should this guy wear nicer shoes while he's beating you with a stick?"
Next the poll reflects what New York Education High Boss Elia thinks is part of the problem-- should school districts communicate to parents, teachers and students the purpose of the BS Test? Respondents thought this was a swell idea-- 82% supported this. CAP paints that as a plus, but to me it suggests that 82% of New Yorkers don't think it has happened yet! 82% of New Yorkers are not saying, "No, that's okay, I'm good," but are rather saying, "Yeah, they should communicate this because I still don't know why we're giving the damn things."
The actual answer is, "Because the feds say we have to," which is no answer at all. But the feds don't know why we're giving the BS Tests, and neither do state authorities. We can go back to the standard list of excuses (to compare and rank students and schools, to inform instruction, to let parents know how things are going, etc) but those are all bunk.
Then we go to a flat-out stupid question. We will now measure support for
Eliminate all tests in school
Stupid. Stoooooooooo- pid. Almost nobody has suggested this, and it doesn't have anything to do with the issue at hand. But it serves the reformster purpose to conflate all tests from all sources for all purposes as if they are all pretty much the same business. I'm sure this is partly by design, to help with smoke and mirrors and ground cover for reformster ideas. But it also smacks of the usual reformster amateurism-- they really don't understand education well enough to understand the distinctions between different tests from different sources for different purposes.
Should we ensure that tests are grade and age appropriate? 84% say yes. What if a student is operating below "grade level" or her chronological age level? Never mind. The BS Tests have never been made age and grade appropriate anyway. Should we use multiple measures for school performance? Sigh. Yeah, instead of drinking my poison straight, I'd like you to mix a few spoonfuls of sugar with it. That'll make it all okay.
Give teachers more meaningful input for "crafting a tailored curriculum that's aligned to high standards"? Did you say "more"? I think you meant "some," but sure.
Finally, do you support creating a regular process to update the Common Core standards? Now that's an interesting question, since CCSS has never, ever had such a process in place. Remember the old days, when states were only allowed to add up to 15% to the standards and weren't allowed to touch so much as Common Core comma? It's not clear how a review and revise process could work on a national level now that so few states admit to having the Core in place, and if every state does its own review and revise, then the various standard sets will go off in every which way. But since "Common Core" means so many things now that it doesn't really mean anything, sure, why not? Let's have a review and revise process.
That's All, Folks
The remaining questions are demographic. Oddly enough, 48% of respondents were Dems, while only 27% were GOP (remainder Independent). Make of that what you will. And only 32% of respondents were parents. There are more detailed breakdowns by sub-group responses, but what is there to learn about how these groups respond to dumb questions?
It is one more lame and half-baked attempt to generate positive PR for the least-beloved brand in public policy. We can only hope that this Big Not News will be largely ignored in New York and the rest of the country as well, to fade away quietly. CAP is the energizer bunny of bad education policy; I'm sure there will be more Not News soon enough.
Tuesday, December 22, 2015
Monday, December 21, 2015
Free Market Bad for Students with Disabilities
Disabilities Studies Quarterly, a peer-reviewed quarterly journal, published a paper back in 2012 that makes some sobering points about how a free market approach to schools works out (or not) for students with disabilities. In fact, it has a few sobering things about how free market schools treat all students.
"The Effects of Market-based School Reform on Students with Disabilities" was authored by Curt Dudley-Marling and Diana Baker at Boston College.
It begins with a history of the intersections between neo-liberalism, free market theory, and education. It's a handy primer, all fully sourced and pretty interesting. But the meat of the paper is the question of how various free market approaches work (or don't ) for students with disabilities. It's worth remembering that we're back in 2012-- but the conclusions here are still worth noticing.
Vouchers
There's not a lot of data available about the effects of vouchers on students with disabilities, but the available data is not exactly encouraging. The authors cite a study from 2011 that shows while Milwaukee has a SWD population of about 20%. However, SWD were only 1.6% of the voucher population. That seems to have been typical.
Charter Schools
The charter school system creates a new dynamic between students and schools-- specifically, it create a new role for students, and the writers of this paper explain it as well as anyone I've ever read.
...however they are structured, charter schools must produce acceptable test scores or risk the revocation of their charters (Swanson, 2004). In this context, students are transformed into "commodities" (Apple, 2000; Hursh, 2007a; Wills, 2006) who bring more or less value to charter schools. Students with high test scores enhance the reputation and, hence, the marketability of charter schools. Students who do not score well on tests threaten charters' competitiveness—and, ultimately, their survival.
Students' value is also determined by their impact on school budgets. For-profit charters, for example, seek to turn a profit; therefore, students who cost more to educate have less value than students who require fewer resources. Even in the case of charters managed by nonprofits, costly-to-educate students will have a disproportionate impact on fixed budgets. Students deemed to be disruptive will be valued least of all in such a system because these students both cost more to educate and interfere with the education (i.e., test scores) of other students. In a system where the survival of schools—and the jobs of teachers—depend on ever higher test scores, students with low scores or, worse, students who threaten the scores of other students by consuming a disproportionate share of scarce resources, including teacher attention, will be unwelcome.
Emphasis mine. And it doesn't take deep insight to see that this commodification of students has implications beyond simply the treatment of students with special needs.
The report follows up with study after study after study providing examples of how this plays up. I note in particular that it takes us back to the days when New Orleans was only largely charter, and the success of that charter sector was used to sell the idea of expansion-- even though studies showed that charters were avoiding low-value students and posting suspension rates through the roof. Boston, Texas, Chicago- the list just rolls on and on. The study also documents some of the practices such as counseling SWD out or discontinuing IEPs for students who needed them.
One can certainly argue that in the three years since the study, charters have totally cleaned up their acts, but this seems unlikely, and it tells us just how much the charters has grown without developing any plan for teaching more "costly" students other than "make them go away somehow." In other words, charters who want to deny their past better be prepared to explain what they've learned about operating differently in the last three years. They should also be prepared for folks to look dubiously upon them, since they were telling us for years that they totally had a handle on this and it turns out that perhaps they were a bit truth-impaired when they made those claims-- so how would we know that they're telling the truth this time?
Testing and Accountability
The study suggests that the standardization pushed by NCLB and its successor programs launched one-size-fits-all tests, which tend to drive one-size-fits-all curriculum, which is exactly the wrong thing for students with special needs.
The testing and accountability mandates of NCLB "define education as a commodity whose production can be quantified, standardized, and prescribed" (Lipman, 2007, p. 46).
And also this
This move toward standardization and one-size-fits-all curricula is potentially devastating for students with disabilities. Standardized curricula provide little space for teachers to make the necessary adaptations to address the specific needs of students with disabilities (Harvey-Koelpin, 2006)—as well as any student positioned outside the mythical norm (Dudley-Marling & Gurn, 2010). And when students with disabilities fail to achieve in the context of standardized curriculum, standardized assessment, and standardized instruction—all targeted to putatively "normal" students—failure is situated in the minds and bodies of students rather than in the schooling practices that produced failure in the first place (Dudley-Marling, 2004).
Yes yes yes. When we start with the assumption that our educational plan and program is perfect, and then a student fails to achieve, we can only conclude that the student is "defective."
Stating the Obvious
While the paper makes the point that free market schools (particularly as tied to the policies of two administrations) are bad for students with disabilities, it is clearly also true for students who don't have any kind of special label or diagnosis.
This paper may be a few years aged, but it lays out in clear language and supporting citations just how the reformster program creates a toxic dynamic in schools while creating an upside-down world in which students exist to serve the needs of the school-- and those who cannot serve the school well must be rejected. It's amazing the degree to which the last three years have gotten us used to this unhealthy mess; a quick trip in the wayback machine can remind us why the reformy mess must be cleaned up.
"The Effects of Market-based School Reform on Students with Disabilities" was authored by Curt Dudley-Marling and Diana Baker at Boston College.
It begins with a history of the intersections between neo-liberalism, free market theory, and education. It's a handy primer, all fully sourced and pretty interesting. But the meat of the paper is the question of how various free market approaches work (or don't ) for students with disabilities. It's worth remembering that we're back in 2012-- but the conclusions here are still worth noticing.
Vouchers
There's not a lot of data available about the effects of vouchers on students with disabilities, but the available data is not exactly encouraging. The authors cite a study from 2011 that shows while Milwaukee has a SWD population of about 20%. However, SWD were only 1.6% of the voucher population. That seems to have been typical.
Charter Schools
The charter school system creates a new dynamic between students and schools-- specifically, it create a new role for students, and the writers of this paper explain it as well as anyone I've ever read.
...however they are structured, charter schools must produce acceptable test scores or risk the revocation of their charters (Swanson, 2004). In this context, students are transformed into "commodities" (Apple, 2000; Hursh, 2007a; Wills, 2006) who bring more or less value to charter schools. Students with high test scores enhance the reputation and, hence, the marketability of charter schools. Students who do not score well on tests threaten charters' competitiveness—and, ultimately, their survival.
Students' value is also determined by their impact on school budgets. For-profit charters, for example, seek to turn a profit; therefore, students who cost more to educate have less value than students who require fewer resources. Even in the case of charters managed by nonprofits, costly-to-educate students will have a disproportionate impact on fixed budgets. Students deemed to be disruptive will be valued least of all in such a system because these students both cost more to educate and interfere with the education (i.e., test scores) of other students. In a system where the survival of schools—and the jobs of teachers—depend on ever higher test scores, students with low scores or, worse, students who threaten the scores of other students by consuming a disproportionate share of scarce resources, including teacher attention, will be unwelcome.
Emphasis mine. And it doesn't take deep insight to see that this commodification of students has implications beyond simply the treatment of students with special needs.
The report follows up with study after study after study providing examples of how this plays up. I note in particular that it takes us back to the days when New Orleans was only largely charter, and the success of that charter sector was used to sell the idea of expansion-- even though studies showed that charters were avoiding low-value students and posting suspension rates through the roof. Boston, Texas, Chicago- the list just rolls on and on. The study also documents some of the practices such as counseling SWD out or discontinuing IEPs for students who needed them.
One can certainly argue that in the three years since the study, charters have totally cleaned up their acts, but this seems unlikely, and it tells us just how much the charters has grown without developing any plan for teaching more "costly" students other than "make them go away somehow." In other words, charters who want to deny their past better be prepared to explain what they've learned about operating differently in the last three years. They should also be prepared for folks to look dubiously upon them, since they were telling us for years that they totally had a handle on this and it turns out that perhaps they were a bit truth-impaired when they made those claims-- so how would we know that they're telling the truth this time?
Testing and Accountability
The study suggests that the standardization pushed by NCLB and its successor programs launched one-size-fits-all tests, which tend to drive one-size-fits-all curriculum, which is exactly the wrong thing for students with special needs.
The testing and accountability mandates of NCLB "define education as a commodity whose production can be quantified, standardized, and prescribed" (Lipman, 2007, p. 46).
And also this
This move toward standardization and one-size-fits-all curricula is potentially devastating for students with disabilities. Standardized curricula provide little space for teachers to make the necessary adaptations to address the specific needs of students with disabilities (Harvey-Koelpin, 2006)—as well as any student positioned outside the mythical norm (Dudley-Marling & Gurn, 2010). And when students with disabilities fail to achieve in the context of standardized curriculum, standardized assessment, and standardized instruction—all targeted to putatively "normal" students—failure is situated in the minds and bodies of students rather than in the schooling practices that produced failure in the first place (Dudley-Marling, 2004).
Yes yes yes. When we start with the assumption that our educational plan and program is perfect, and then a student fails to achieve, we can only conclude that the student is "defective."
Stating the Obvious
While the paper makes the point that free market schools (particularly as tied to the policies of two administrations) are bad for students with disabilities, it is clearly also true for students who don't have any kind of special label or diagnosis.
This paper may be a few years aged, but it lays out in clear language and supporting citations just how the reformster program creates a toxic dynamic in schools while creating an upside-down world in which students exist to serve the needs of the school-- and those who cannot serve the school well must be rejected. It's amazing the degree to which the last three years have gotten us used to this unhealthy mess; a quick trip in the wayback machine can remind us why the reformy mess must be cleaned up.
Coleman to Catholics: Never Mind Common Core
In an exclusive interview with Catholic Education Daily, David Colman, architect of Common Core and head honcho at the College Board, offered some of the same old same old. But he also told Catholic schools that they could just nevermind the Common Core.
Do Catholics not love the Core?
Writer Adam Cassandra has put together a good overview of the odd and sometimes-difficult relationship between the Catholic school system and the Common Core-- or at least the Core's co-creator.
The Catholic system has been fairly direct about its resistance to the core, including a whole Catholic Is Our Core campaign. Their objections are familiar to the umpty-gazillion educators, parents and people on the street who have objections to the Common Core. For instance, Dr. Dan Guernsey and Dr. Denise Donohue of the Newman Society wrote a report last May called “Disconnect between Common Core’s Literary Approach and Catholic Education’s Pursuit of Truth.” That included this Fairly Excellent Quote:
In Catholic schools, we know we are not just producing workers and scholars, we are producing living, breathing, complex, contradictory, eternally destined, unrepeatable and immensely valuable human beings.
This is not new. Back in 2013, 130 prominent Catholic scholars signed a letter to all bishops, and it was not laudatory. As Valerie Strauss reported at the time:
It blasts the standards, saying they are “contrary to tradition and academic studies on reading and human formation,” and accuses Core proponents of seeking to “transform ‘literacy’ into a ‘critical’ skill set, at the expense of sustained and heartfelt encounters with great works of literature.”
The letter also used phrases such as "contrary to traditions and academic studies on reading and human formation" and "a recipe for standardized workforce preparation."
The Cardinal Newman society also published "10 Facts Every Catholic Should Know about the Common Core" which includes items such as "The Common Core is rushed, untested and experimental" and "The Common Core is (ultimately) about textbooks and curriculum."
The focus and concern seem to be on the Core as an agent of destruction against the liberal arts, which are a big deal for Catholics. Personally, I am not a huge Catholic school fan for a whole host of reasons, but this Guernsey quote in Cassandra's article is kind of awesome:
“We don’t open Catholic schools to get kids into college. We open Catholic schools to get them into heaven,” he said.
So what does David Coleman, who has mocked, dismissed and generally pooh-poohed people who object to the Core as being too narrow, inappropriately written, and poorly considered-- what does David Coleman have to say to these Catholics who are expressing the same concerns.
No Core? No Biggie!
Coleman has no mockery, dismissal, or poohing of the Catholic pooh.
First of all, it turns out that you don't actually really need Common Core after all.
“As president of The College Board it is my conviction that a child excellently trained in traditional liberal arts will do superbly on relevant sections of the SAT and other aspects of Advanced Placement work, ”Coleman said. “Rest assured.”
Well. This would be the same David Coleman who announced his intention to bring the SAT in line with the Common Core. So if you can do "superbly" on the SAT with a liberal arts education, and the SAT is aligned with the Common Core, the by the Transitive Property of Reformy Baloney, the Common Core are pretty much the same thing as a liberal arts education. And I'm pretty sure that nobody-- not even David Coleman nor Bill Gates-- has tried to make that argument. So somewhere in that little logic puzzle is something that is Not So.
It's in the Colemanian weasel words, as usual. The liberal arts will help you with "do superbly on relevant sections of the SAT..." says Coleman, which is kind of like handing a life jacket to a person about to cross the Sahara Desert on foot and saying, "Take this. It will help you in all the places where you have to swim across a lake."
But Cassandra has even more reality-impaired quotes from Coleman.
“The vulgar implementation of anything can have a reductive and destructive effect,” said Coleman. “My desire to celebrate, and name and specify some of the beauties and distinctive values of a religious education are precisely to avoid a leveling quality where you forget that there are special gifts that can be lost without attention.”
I would like "the vulgar implementation of anything can have a reductive and destructive effect" on a t-shirt. It is certainly the most elegant version ever of "the standards are awesome, but the implementation was botched" that I've ever seen. But Coleman can peg the needle on the baloney-meter even higher, as with this statement:
I just want to tell you how emphatically I’m trying to agree with your premise, which is a stultifying sameness is not the intention here.
Got that? Coleman's work-- his idea about what an educated person should be and his work to impose that vision on every public school student in America, both through Common Core and an SAT redesign-- that's not aimed at imposing a one-size-fits-all standard at all. Which is either a spectacularly bald-faced lie, or proof that Coleman doesn't understand what he's done at all. Pick whichever one you judge more likely from a guy who studied at Oxford.
This expressed love for religious schooling is not new for Coleman. Cassandra points us at a 2014 piece in the National Review in which Coleman sticks up for evangelical Christian Wheaton College, implying in his conclusion that religious schools, with their careful reading and quiet contemplation, do a better job of educating students than "secular colleges." (Actually, what he literally suggests is that the religious school students would write better papers).
Has David "Nobody gives a shit what you think or feel" Coleman acquired a soft spot for religion, or does he just need to keep doing his marketing for the Core and the New! Improved! SAT. Whatever the case, the National Catholic Education Association has asked Coleman to deliver the keynote address at its annual convention next March (you will be unsurprised to note that NCEA got a big Gates Core-implementation grant in 2013).
In the meantime, Coleman wants the rest of us in public schools to note that are paths to excellence beyond the Core, somehow.
I consider these remarks I’m making about the distinctive and potentially widely valuable benefits of religious training and religious education are less a challenge, frankly, towards religious schools than a challenge to all other schools — that they have much to learn from things that I think the best of religious schools do very well today.
Amen, Brother Coleman. Amen.
Do Catholics not love the Core?
Writer Adam Cassandra has put together a good overview of the odd and sometimes-difficult relationship between the Catholic school system and the Common Core-- or at least the Core's co-creator.
The Catholic system has been fairly direct about its resistance to the core, including a whole Catholic Is Our Core campaign. Their objections are familiar to the umpty-gazillion educators, parents and people on the street who have objections to the Common Core. For instance, Dr. Dan Guernsey and Dr. Denise Donohue of the Newman Society wrote a report last May called “Disconnect between Common Core’s Literary Approach and Catholic Education’s Pursuit of Truth.” That included this Fairly Excellent Quote:
In Catholic schools, we know we are not just producing workers and scholars, we are producing living, breathing, complex, contradictory, eternally destined, unrepeatable and immensely valuable human beings.
This is not new. Back in 2013, 130 prominent Catholic scholars signed a letter to all bishops, and it was not laudatory. As Valerie Strauss reported at the time:
It blasts the standards, saying they are “contrary to tradition and academic studies on reading and human formation,” and accuses Core proponents of seeking to “transform ‘literacy’ into a ‘critical’ skill set, at the expense of sustained and heartfelt encounters with great works of literature.”
The letter also used phrases such as "contrary to traditions and academic studies on reading and human formation" and "a recipe for standardized workforce preparation."
The Cardinal Newman society also published "10 Facts Every Catholic Should Know about the Common Core" which includes items such as "The Common Core is rushed, untested and experimental" and "The Common Core is (ultimately) about textbooks and curriculum."
The focus and concern seem to be on the Core as an agent of destruction against the liberal arts, which are a big deal for Catholics. Personally, I am not a huge Catholic school fan for a whole host of reasons, but this Guernsey quote in Cassandra's article is kind of awesome:
“We don’t open Catholic schools to get kids into college. We open Catholic schools to get them into heaven,” he said.
So what does David Coleman, who has mocked, dismissed and generally pooh-poohed people who object to the Core as being too narrow, inappropriately written, and poorly considered-- what does David Coleman have to say to these Catholics who are expressing the same concerns.
No Core? No Biggie!
Coleman has no mockery, dismissal, or poohing of the Catholic pooh.
First of all, it turns out that you don't actually really need Common Core after all.
“As president of The College Board it is my conviction that a child excellently trained in traditional liberal arts will do superbly on relevant sections of the SAT and other aspects of Advanced Placement work, ”Coleman said. “Rest assured.”
Well. This would be the same David Coleman who announced his intention to bring the SAT in line with the Common Core. So if you can do "superbly" on the SAT with a liberal arts education, and the SAT is aligned with the Common Core, the by the Transitive Property of Reformy Baloney, the Common Core are pretty much the same thing as a liberal arts education. And I'm pretty sure that nobody-- not even David Coleman nor Bill Gates-- has tried to make that argument. So somewhere in that little logic puzzle is something that is Not So.
It's in the Colemanian weasel words, as usual. The liberal arts will help you with "do superbly on relevant sections of the SAT..." says Coleman, which is kind of like handing a life jacket to a person about to cross the Sahara Desert on foot and saying, "Take this. It will help you in all the places where you have to swim across a lake."
But Cassandra has even more reality-impaired quotes from Coleman.
“The vulgar implementation of anything can have a reductive and destructive effect,” said Coleman. “My desire to celebrate, and name and specify some of the beauties and distinctive values of a religious education are precisely to avoid a leveling quality where you forget that there are special gifts that can be lost without attention.”
I would like "the vulgar implementation of anything can have a reductive and destructive effect" on a t-shirt. It is certainly the most elegant version ever of "the standards are awesome, but the implementation was botched" that I've ever seen. But Coleman can peg the needle on the baloney-meter even higher, as with this statement:
I just want to tell you how emphatically I’m trying to agree with your premise, which is a stultifying sameness is not the intention here.
Got that? Coleman's work-- his idea about what an educated person should be and his work to impose that vision on every public school student in America, both through Common Core and an SAT redesign-- that's not aimed at imposing a one-size-fits-all standard at all. Which is either a spectacularly bald-faced lie, or proof that Coleman doesn't understand what he's done at all. Pick whichever one you judge more likely from a guy who studied at Oxford.
This expressed love for religious schooling is not new for Coleman. Cassandra points us at a 2014 piece in the National Review in which Coleman sticks up for evangelical Christian Wheaton College, implying in his conclusion that religious schools, with their careful reading and quiet contemplation, do a better job of educating students than "secular colleges." (Actually, what he literally suggests is that the religious school students would write better papers).
Has David "Nobody gives a shit what you think or feel" Coleman acquired a soft spot for religion, or does he just need to keep doing his marketing for the Core and the New! Improved! SAT. Whatever the case, the National Catholic Education Association has asked Coleman to deliver the keynote address at its annual convention next March (you will be unsurprised to note that NCEA got a big Gates Core-implementation grant in 2013).
In the meantime, Coleman wants the rest of us in public schools to note that are paths to excellence beyond the Core, somehow.
I consider these remarks I’m making about the distinctive and potentially widely valuable benefits of religious training and religious education are less a challenge, frankly, towards religious schools than a challenge to all other schools — that they have much to learn from things that I think the best of religious schools do very well today.
Amen, Brother Coleman. Amen.
Sunday, December 20, 2015
ICYMI: December 20
This week was a full assortment of rehearsals for a local performance of The Messiah, and this weekend is the first time my entire family has gathered in one place for a long time, so if I've seemed a little distant and busy, dear reader, that's why. But I do have a whole stack of things for you to check out today while my family is opening presents and we're singing the Messiah matinee.
The New Preschool Is Crushing Kids
The genre of "here's how ugly and awful early childhood ed has become under the test-and-punish era of education" articles is crowded, but everybody needs to be reminded that this is happening and that it sucks. They need to be reminded repeatedly until we put an end to it. Here's one more stark and painful example.
For Profit Charter Schools Are Fading and Failing
Jessica Huseman misses a few of the finer points (particularly the ways in which non-profits mirror for-profits), but on balance this is a good analysis of why the For Profit charter industry is turning out to be (surprise) a failed experiment.
Worst and Dumbest: The Sequel
Florida's remarkably idiotic plan to give teachers a bonus for their high school SAT scores is back-- and this time it wants to be permanent. A good study in how a bill that nobody thinks is smart can still end up becoming a law.
Stand for Children Louisiana Is an Evil and Malicious Corporate Front Group for Evil People and Organizations
Crazy Crawfish tells us what he really thinks. Because while some reformsters are folks with a different perspective or different understandings of how schools can best serve students, some are just scruples-free rotters trying to get their hands on money and power.
Ethical ELA
I'm always amazed how, no matter how much I've read and explored, there are still chunks of the interwebs that I've never stumbled into. This is an entire website dedicated to discussing issues of how to ethically teach all the various aspects of language. Worth a look.
This week the Edublog Awards were unveiled and this post of mine about music won an award for being one of the most influential posts of the year. Like most of these sorts of awardy things, it's a nice selection of sites and posts with which you may not be familiar. In particular I was struck by this post:
What Being Gay Has Taught Me About White Privilege
You may or may not agree with everything that the blogger at Crawling out of the Classroom has to say, but her level of honesty and openness is impressive.
Creativity Is the Key to Happiness
If you're not familiar with the concept of "flow," this is a simple and accessible look at it and the idea that creativity is the key to a happy life.
The New Preschool Is Crushing Kids
The genre of "here's how ugly and awful early childhood ed has become under the test-and-punish era of education" articles is crowded, but everybody needs to be reminded that this is happening and that it sucks. They need to be reminded repeatedly until we put an end to it. Here's one more stark and painful example.
For Profit Charter Schools Are Fading and Failing
Jessica Huseman misses a few of the finer points (particularly the ways in which non-profits mirror for-profits), but on balance this is a good analysis of why the For Profit charter industry is turning out to be (surprise) a failed experiment.
Worst and Dumbest: The Sequel
Florida's remarkably idiotic plan to give teachers a bonus for their high school SAT scores is back-- and this time it wants to be permanent. A good study in how a bill that nobody thinks is smart can still end up becoming a law.
Stand for Children Louisiana Is an Evil and Malicious Corporate Front Group for Evil People and Organizations
Crazy Crawfish tells us what he really thinks. Because while some reformsters are folks with a different perspective or different understandings of how schools can best serve students, some are just scruples-free rotters trying to get their hands on money and power.
Ethical ELA
I'm always amazed how, no matter how much I've read and explored, there are still chunks of the interwebs that I've never stumbled into. This is an entire website dedicated to discussing issues of how to ethically teach all the various aspects of language. Worth a look.
This week the Edublog Awards were unveiled and this post of mine about music won an award for being one of the most influential posts of the year. Like most of these sorts of awardy things, it's a nice selection of sites and posts with which you may not be familiar. In particular I was struck by this post:
What Being Gay Has Taught Me About White Privilege
You may or may not agree with everything that the blogger at Crawling out of the Classroom has to say, but her level of honesty and openness is impressive.
Creativity Is the Key to Happiness
If you're not familiar with the concept of "flow," this is a simple and accessible look at it and the idea that creativity is the key to a happy life.
Saturday, December 19, 2015
Avoid the SAT
This story has been circulating pretty steadily, but if you teach juniors (or have one in your home) you need to be paying attention, because all indications are that when the new SAT rolls out in a few months, high school juniors should avoid it
The most recent sign that the College Board doesn't really know what the heck they're doing is the announcement that PSAT scores will not be out till January, a good month later than the usual unveiling. And really, we have only the College Board's assurance that they will meet the new January due date-- just as we had their assurance that scores would be out in December.
The PSAT score return is critical because it's the first chance for juniors to see how they line up with the upcoming New! Improved! SAT. Now they'll be waiting for that.
This is not the first we've heard that the New! Improved! SAT should be avoided like a bad haircut.
Way back in April, Dan Edmonds (Noodle) was in Forbes giving three reasons to avoid the revamped SAT. His reasons were
1) Lack of test prep options. Nobody has had a chance to get prepped and ready to get students prepped and ready.
2) Late results. College Board has said they won't release March test results until after the May tests. This may make sense from a "let's see what we've got here" test-norming standpoint, but still-- late is late.
3) The New! Improved! SAT is trying to look like the ACT. If you're going to take a test like the ACT, why not take the ACT?
Test prep experts have been speaking out against taking that New! Improved! SAT. Back in March, Adam Ingersoll of the Compass Group was encouraging students not to be guinea pigs for the College Board. At the same time, that advice was being echoed by Anthony Green, one of the top test prep gurus in the US, who said he's advising all of his clients to skip the new test.
"I'm recommending that none of my students take the first three rounds of the new SAT (March, May, and June of 2016)," Green said. "Why let students be guinea pigs for the College Board's marketing machine?"
Tell us what you really think, Anthony.
The "new SAT" is basically a poorly disguised marketing gimmick that's trying to:
A) Make the SAT much more like the ACT. If you look at the changes being made, you'll find that all of them are an attempt to make the test's format and material more similar to the ACT.
B) Get rid of the essay (it's now optional) and bring the grading scale back to the old, familiar 1600 that everyone knows and loves (or hates). In essence, they're admitting that the current version of the test was a mistake.
C) Attempt to make people forget that this test is an inherently unfair mechanism designed to gauge student income levels
Are test prep specialists just pissed that David Coleman's New! Improved! SAT is supposed to be test prep impervious, or maybe the test prep is being given away free by Khan Academy-- the PR is a little fuzzy on this point. Coleman has repeatedly insisted that the test now measures what high schools students really do to prepare for college-- but it's important to understand that Coleman thinks this is true because this is the same David Coleman who foisted the Common Core on US public education. He insisted that the Core would prepare students for college, and now he wants the SAT to measure what they learned under the Core.
Coleman was also hired to save the SAT, which is currently Number Two behind the ACT folks. This is the second SAT redesign in a decade (the last one gave us the SAT essay which nobody on earth thinks is an actual measure of anything).
I've looked at the marketing and the samples, and I feel comfortable saying that every failure of true educational assessment that we've seen on the Big Standardized Tests is right there in the New! Improved! SAT. This test is a crapfest-- and not just a crapfest, but an untested, unproven crapfest from a company that just rolled out the first part of its new suite of tests and now can't get the results back to students on time.
And while personalities may not be fair to factor in, and the company certainly has more hands on deck than Coleman's, David Coleman has so far in his educational leadership career (which at this point isn't even a decade old) has show far more more hubris than ability to learn, adapt, and grow. It's also worth remembering that along with no experience or knowledge of the education world, Coleman also has no experience or knowledge of the sales and marketing world. Finding powerful and connected backers won't do any good if the actual product crashes and burns and chases the customers away in droves. (Not that he hasn't tried to work around that-- watch your local state to see people fighting to make PSAT and SAT tests mandatory for all students, or part of the evaluation process).
The New! Improved! SAT has the potential to be a disaster of epic proportions, and that might be an occasion for schadenfreude if not for one thing-- a whole host of eleventh graders are counting on those scores to help them get into college. Yes, we can talk about how screwed up that whole business is, but in the meantime it's the world our students have to live in, and in that world, this spring, the ACT is their best shot.
This will be a real wrenching change for some folks. In many schools, taking the PSAT and SAT is just something you do, and students believe these issue forth from the same immutable government authorities as vaccine requirements and rules about how many courses one must complete to graduate. But as always, folks need to understand that the College Board is a company that makes a living selling a particular product, just like Ford Motor Company and Coca-Cola. That means it's caveat emptor time, and this time around, the smart emptors should avoid the SAT, and those of us who teach juniors have a responsibility to say so.
You don't have to take the SAT-- and this year at least, you shouldn't.
The most recent sign that the College Board doesn't really know what the heck they're doing is the announcement that PSAT scores will not be out till January, a good month later than the usual unveiling. And really, we have only the College Board's assurance that they will meet the new January due date-- just as we had their assurance that scores would be out in December.
The PSAT score return is critical because it's the first chance for juniors to see how they line up with the upcoming New! Improved! SAT. Now they'll be waiting for that.
This is not the first we've heard that the New! Improved! SAT should be avoided like a bad haircut.
Way back in April, Dan Edmonds (Noodle) was in Forbes giving three reasons to avoid the revamped SAT. His reasons were
1) Lack of test prep options. Nobody has had a chance to get prepped and ready to get students prepped and ready.
2) Late results. College Board has said they won't release March test results until after the May tests. This may make sense from a "let's see what we've got here" test-norming standpoint, but still-- late is late.
3) The New! Improved! SAT is trying to look like the ACT. If you're going to take a test like the ACT, why not take the ACT?
Test prep experts have been speaking out against taking that New! Improved! SAT. Back in March, Adam Ingersoll of the Compass Group was encouraging students not to be guinea pigs for the College Board. At the same time, that advice was being echoed by Anthony Green, one of the top test prep gurus in the US, who said he's advising all of his clients to skip the new test.
"I'm recommending that none of my students take the first three rounds of the new SAT (March, May, and June of 2016)," Green said. "Why let students be guinea pigs for the College Board's marketing machine?"
Tell us what you really think, Anthony.
The "new SAT" is basically a poorly disguised marketing gimmick that's trying to:
A) Make the SAT much more like the ACT. If you look at the changes being made, you'll find that all of them are an attempt to make the test's format and material more similar to the ACT.
B) Get rid of the essay (it's now optional) and bring the grading scale back to the old, familiar 1600 that everyone knows and loves (or hates). In essence, they're admitting that the current version of the test was a mistake.
C) Attempt to make people forget that this test is an inherently unfair mechanism designed to gauge student income levels
Are test prep specialists just pissed that David Coleman's New! Improved! SAT is supposed to be test prep impervious, or maybe the test prep is being given away free by Khan Academy-- the PR is a little fuzzy on this point. Coleman has repeatedly insisted that the test now measures what high schools students really do to prepare for college-- but it's important to understand that Coleman thinks this is true because this is the same David Coleman who foisted the Common Core on US public education. He insisted that the Core would prepare students for college, and now he wants the SAT to measure what they learned under the Core.
Coleman was also hired to save the SAT, which is currently Number Two behind the ACT folks. This is the second SAT redesign in a decade (the last one gave us the SAT essay which nobody on earth thinks is an actual measure of anything).
I've looked at the marketing and the samples, and I feel comfortable saying that every failure of true educational assessment that we've seen on the Big Standardized Tests is right there in the New! Improved! SAT. This test is a crapfest-- and not just a crapfest, but an untested, unproven crapfest from a company that just rolled out the first part of its new suite of tests and now can't get the results back to students on time.
And while personalities may not be fair to factor in, and the company certainly has more hands on deck than Coleman's, David Coleman has so far in his educational leadership career (which at this point isn't even a decade old) has show far more more hubris than ability to learn, adapt, and grow. It's also worth remembering that along with no experience or knowledge of the education world, Coleman also has no experience or knowledge of the sales and marketing world. Finding powerful and connected backers won't do any good if the actual product crashes and burns and chases the customers away in droves. (Not that he hasn't tried to work around that-- watch your local state to see people fighting to make PSAT and SAT tests mandatory for all students, or part of the evaluation process).
The New! Improved! SAT has the potential to be a disaster of epic proportions, and that might be an occasion for schadenfreude if not for one thing-- a whole host of eleventh graders are counting on those scores to help them get into college. Yes, we can talk about how screwed up that whole business is, but in the meantime it's the world our students have to live in, and in that world, this spring, the ACT is their best shot.
This will be a real wrenching change for some folks. In many schools, taking the PSAT and SAT is just something you do, and students believe these issue forth from the same immutable government authorities as vaccine requirements and rules about how many courses one must complete to graduate. But as always, folks need to understand that the College Board is a company that makes a living selling a particular product, just like Ford Motor Company and Coca-Cola. That means it's caveat emptor time, and this time around, the smart emptors should avoid the SAT, and those of us who teach juniors have a responsibility to say so.
You don't have to take the SAT-- and this year at least, you shouldn't.
Friday, December 18, 2015
The Federal Family Fixing Plan
It's the kind of document that only a federal bureaucracy could create, and you still have a little over two weeks to comment on it. Meet the DRAFT POLICY STATEMENT ON FAMILY ENGAGEMENT FROM THE EARLY YEARS TO THE EARLY GRADES.
It's a policy so bureaucraticky that it took two departments-- Education plus Health and Human Services-- to come up with it. Like all good government documents, it ranges from dull to obvious to dumb to terrifying. And it wants to address, in particular, pre-K. Also pre-pre-pre-K. Its stated purpose is to formulate some policies "on systematically engaging families in their children’s development, learning, and wellness, across early childhood and elementary education settings."
Announcing the Problem
I tell my students never to open a piece of writing with a Bulletin from Captain Obvious (The Sun Also Rises is a book that people have read), but this opus leaps right in with "Families are children’s first and most important teachers, advocates, and nurturers." That's not a problem, but the kind of governmental attitude that gives some folks fits starts to show up just one paragraph later with this sentence:
Both Departments recognize the critical role of family engagement in children’s success in the early and elementary education systems.
Does it? Why, that's mighty good of it, like a guy who says, "Lady, I think you look perfectly okay," or a white guy telling a brown guy, "Hey, I've decided it's perfectly okay for you to be here." Still can't see it? Then look at the definition of "family engagement."
We refer to “family engagement” as the systematic inclusion of families as partners in children’s development, learning, and wellness.
Congratulations, families! The government is going to "include" you as partners. It is the government's table. You're invited to have a seat at it, but it's their table. Consider how different this is than the feds saying, for instance, "We hope that families will allow us to serve as their partners as they do the important work of raising their children."
Can you imagine calling a parent in to a conference and opening with, "I'd like to invite you to help me raise and educate your child properly." If you can't, you are not prepared to be a government bureaucrat.
Gallery of the Obvious
We kick things off with some over views. First, there's an overview of the research ranging from the ridiculously obvious ("warm, responsive and sensitive parenting promotes social-emotional competence and academic success") to the poorly reasoned (we know there's a connection between reading to children and later vocabulary and success, but we get confused about correlation and causation) to blindingly obvious information that we often ignore in our other policies (growing up in poverty and unstable families makes learning hard).
We recap policies like Head Start and IDEA and ESEA that recognize some of this engagement stuff. Because bureaucracies have no sense of irony, we will not note that the USED has done its best to completely trash IDEA.
We will also fuzzy up the language by mixing up engagement with families and engagement within families.
Then we'll reach a conclusion that despite the obvious importance of family and stuff, "family engagement is not equally valued or implemented across the early childhood and elementary systems." Because passive voice is a great way to avoid explaining exactly what you're talking about/ Who is not valuing family engagement? That would probably be useful to know if we're going to fix the problem, but it remains a mystery.
The Obstacles
The feds have some theories about why the valuing and implementing isn't happening.
* The perception that engaging with the family is just sort of extra, and that the mission is to work on the child. Somehow these unnamed persons miss that a small child's life is "intertwined" with lives of the family. Are those unnamed person clueless dopes?
* The local, state and federal authorities give too little guidance or requirements. Yup. When people screw up, it's because The Authorities didn't micro-manage them enough.
* Not enough resources. Well, now, there you may be onto something.
* The system is trying to do family engagement, but neglects to notice, understand or respect the culture and language of the family.
* "Teacher and provider workforce" (!!??) doesn't get trained properly in family engagement.
But The Authorities have figured out that something needs to be done-- and that something reveals yet another obstacle, because here's the federal idea of a solution:
”High-quality” early childhood programs should systematically include specific, measurable, and evidence-based family engagement strategies that are attuned to the needs and interests of a diverse array of primary caregivers, including but not limited to fathers/male caregivers, mothers/female caregivers, young parents, grandparents, foster parents and others.
No, I'm not talking about the list of caregivers-- that's perfectly fine. What exactly is a "specific, measurable and evidence-based" strategy for connecting in a working relationship with a family? The administration's data fetish has taken it to some ridiculous places before, and this might be even worse. Will we develop a Parent Pair-Bonding Stability Index? Will there be a standardized test to measure how well the parents and teachers like each other? Or will these data be generated by unicorns dancing through fields of shamrocks looking for the coordinates of El Dorado?
How To Do The Engagey Thing
The feds offer up their list of principles of effective family engagement practices. Let's get clued in.
First (like even before #1), you have to "establish a culture where families are seen as assets and partners in children's development, learning and wellness." Once again-- apparently it's our world, and families just live in it. Maybe we could see ourselves as the families' partners instead, which is definitely better than just assuming that of course Those People can't parent properly. But in the interests of balance, we have to note some families are not actually assets in their children's development. We all have stories of students who would have been better off raised by wolves: the student who was always tired because the trailer she lived in was always cold because Dad spent the utilities money on beer; the student whose mother was in prison after trying to run over that student with a car when the student was eight years old; the student whose parents shaved her head because she was defiant. So, yes, it's a mistake to assume that families aren't in the game when it comes to raising their kids, but it's also a mistake not to pay attention when they tell us through word and deed that they are not involved, interested or invested in their children. Point being, this little note tossed off by the document builds the whole structure on a foundation carved out of some huge and complicated assumptions. Just saying.
But assuming we somehow find such a culture, what are those principles?
Create continuity for children and families. I thought this might mean something useful like "don't staff the school with two-year TFA temps," but no, it means something far more alarming:
Implement a vision for family engagement that begins prenatally and continues across settings and throughout a child’s developmental and educational experiences.
So, yeah. As soon as you know you're pregnant, the government will be there to get a-workin' on your child. Um. Yikes.
Value equal partnership between families and professionals. Equal? So, the family is not the primary party responsible for raising this child? Yeah, this is going to go over super-well with conservative parent groups.
Develop goal-oriented relationships that are linked to development and learning. Oh, man. I'll try to summarize this in a minute but reading the bureaucracy-speak makes me feel all slimy. Basically, the relationship between families and professional staff takes time, but they should learn to work "jointly" on goals and strategies and learning. Like many paragraphs in the document, this one barely suggests that we are talking about helping a real live human being grow up.
Prioritize engagement around children's social-emotional and behavioral health. Damn. "Ensure constant monitoring and communication regarding children's social-emotional and behavioral health." Good lord, faceless bureaucrats-- do you even hear yourselves?? "Constant monitoring"??!! And then "ensure that children's social-emotional and behavioral needs are met" like somebody has the magical powers to do that.
Ensure that everything is culturally and linguistically "responsive." While this is an exceptionally valid point, it does not appear to make allowances for cultures that say that the family is responsible for the child and the government is responsible for backing the hell up.
Train staff people to engage with families. Gotta tell you-- if somebody doesn't know how to engage productively with other carbon-based life forms, I'm not sure you can train them to do it well. But certainly people who aren't born to the community in which they're teaching need to learn about that community. (Probably take more than five weeks, though)
Build families' capabilities and connections. Building connections sounds awesome. Robert Putnam's book Our Kids talks about how having connections is one of the privileges of wealth. Giving families ways to reach out, get help, and be heard-- that would be swell.
Embed family engagement within programs, school, and community stuff. And continuously learn and improve. That last one seems obvious and hardly worthy of saying out loud until you remember that NCLB and ESSA and certainly Common Core (not technically a federal program-- just a federally beloved program) have no such provisions. So hooray for federally recognizing a need for a program to learn and improve, I guess.
Implementing effective family engagement practices to promote positive child outcomes will require bold leadership and dedication from all institutions where children learn.
First, "positive child outcomes" is the kind of cold, soullessly vague language that makes people hate the bureaucrats. Second, it doesn't really require "bold leadership." Connecting and involving and helping parents is a marathon, not a sprint, and it benefits from solid, steady, stable work. What the Folks In Charge can do is give teachers (and staff) the space and resources to do their jobs.
Now, if you want organizations and schools to lead an incursion into people's homes, that may require leadership. Not so much "bold" leadership as "pushy, intrusive, dismissive of the people you're there to serve" leadership.
State-level Stuff
The plan goes on to delineate what state and local authorities should do.
On the state level, recommendations include investing and allocating resources and training to get programs all engagey. Plus establishing policies that help. Plus "communicate constant messages" aka drop some PR bombs on the issue.Because "messaging" is almost as important as actually doing something. Also, make sure that colleges and universities are training people to do this stuff.
Pretty pedestrian stuff. But then there's this recommendation.
Develop and integrate family engagement indicators into existing data systems
They offer a couple of suggestions of where such data might be found, like child care quality rating systems, higher education coursework, and family surveys, so, no-- they don't have any idea how to measure these things they say they want to measure.
And they would like states to set up an incentive to reward folks for doing this stuff that we don't know how to measure the effectiveness of, though it does look like they might be willing to go old school and measure inputs, whether those programs reap identifiable results or not.
Local Stuff
The plan has recommendations for local establishments as well. These run a bit more specific than the others, and come closer-but-no-cigar to crucial elements missing so far.
The devil, as always, is in the details. "Families as Decision Makers" is an encouraging heading, but it's followed by "Schools and programs should establish policies that ensure parents and families are prepared to participate in planning, decision-making and oversight groups." So families can have a seat at the table if they show us they're ready to do it the right way.
Some of the recommendations will be familiar as Things Many Districts Already Do, such as home visits. That also includes local versions of the same things featured elsewhere in the report. That includes the data fetish. Look-- here's a detail that's not scary at all.
Local schools and programs should track progress on family engagement goals, as detailed in family engagement plans.
So, you know-- the feds would like families to think of them as another family member. Maybe an older, wiser, brother. Honestly-- does anybody ever read these documents and think about how they look to civilians?
What's Missing
If we go waaaaaaaaaaayy back to the beginning, we find citations of evidence about the ways that poverty and family instability get in the way of student learning. But we have to go waaaaaaayyy back to the beginning because those facts are never acknowledged again.
There's no question that some families need help, and that the children growing up in those homes have more decks stacked against them than a drunk in crooked back-jack parlor. I sympathize, as I will bet almost every teacher does, with the point of view that says, "Well, we can't just stand back and do nothing and hope for the best." I certainly don't sympathize with the point of view that says, "Well, you know, there's no helping Those People."
But somehow, when I think of outreach and help and support and strengthening of families and community, my first thought is not, "Well, what these folks need is constant data monitoring from the moment they conceive." Nor do I sympathize with a stance that says, "I'm from the government and I'm here to offer to let you help me raise your child."
I'm not a mushy person, but I cannot read a report like this without being struck by the complete absence of warm, human language in addressing a human challenge. I don't know how you address these issues without using words like "love" and "respect" and "empathy" and "kindness," but I know you definitely can address them without resorting to "data."
Most importantly
Remember what I said waaaayyy back at the beginning-- this document is open to comment until January 4th. If reading all this just gave you a huge headache, zip on over there and comment. Who knows-- maybe Acting Pretend Secretary of Education John King might send it back to the drawing board. At least you will have helped generate some data.
It's a policy so bureaucraticky that it took two departments-- Education plus Health and Human Services-- to come up with it. Like all good government documents, it ranges from dull to obvious to dumb to terrifying. And it wants to address, in particular, pre-K. Also pre-pre-pre-K. Its stated purpose is to formulate some policies "on systematically engaging families in their children’s development, learning, and wellness, across early childhood and elementary education settings."
Announcing the Problem
I tell my students never to open a piece of writing with a Bulletin from Captain Obvious (The Sun Also Rises is a book that people have read), but this opus leaps right in with "Families are children’s first and most important teachers, advocates, and nurturers." That's not a problem, but the kind of governmental attitude that gives some folks fits starts to show up just one paragraph later with this sentence:
Both Departments recognize the critical role of family engagement in children’s success in the early and elementary education systems.
Does it? Why, that's mighty good of it, like a guy who says, "Lady, I think you look perfectly okay," or a white guy telling a brown guy, "Hey, I've decided it's perfectly okay for you to be here." Still can't see it? Then look at the definition of "family engagement."
We refer to “family engagement” as the systematic inclusion of families as partners in children’s development, learning, and wellness.
Congratulations, families! The government is going to "include" you as partners. It is the government's table. You're invited to have a seat at it, but it's their table. Consider how different this is than the feds saying, for instance, "We hope that families will allow us to serve as their partners as they do the important work of raising their children."
Can you imagine calling a parent in to a conference and opening with, "I'd like to invite you to help me raise and educate your child properly." If you can't, you are not prepared to be a government bureaucrat.
Gallery of the Obvious
We kick things off with some over views. First, there's an overview of the research ranging from the ridiculously obvious ("warm, responsive and sensitive parenting promotes social-emotional competence and academic success") to the poorly reasoned (we know there's a connection between reading to children and later vocabulary and success, but we get confused about correlation and causation) to blindingly obvious information that we often ignore in our other policies (growing up in poverty and unstable families makes learning hard).
We recap policies like Head Start and IDEA and ESEA that recognize some of this engagement stuff. Because bureaucracies have no sense of irony, we will not note that the USED has done its best to completely trash IDEA.
We will also fuzzy up the language by mixing up engagement with families and engagement within families.
Then we'll reach a conclusion that despite the obvious importance of family and stuff, "family engagement is not equally valued or implemented across the early childhood and elementary systems." Because passive voice is a great way to avoid explaining exactly what you're talking about/ Who is not valuing family engagement? That would probably be useful to know if we're going to fix the problem, but it remains a mystery.
The Obstacles
The feds have some theories about why the valuing and implementing isn't happening.
* The perception that engaging with the family is just sort of extra, and that the mission is to work on the child. Somehow these unnamed persons miss that a small child's life is "intertwined" with lives of the family. Are those unnamed person clueless dopes?
* The local, state and federal authorities give too little guidance or requirements. Yup. When people screw up, it's because The Authorities didn't micro-manage them enough.
* Not enough resources. Well, now, there you may be onto something.
* The system is trying to do family engagement, but neglects to notice, understand or respect the culture and language of the family.
* "Teacher and provider workforce" (!!??) doesn't get trained properly in family engagement.
But The Authorities have figured out that something needs to be done-- and that something reveals yet another obstacle, because here's the federal idea of a solution:
”High-quality” early childhood programs should systematically include specific, measurable, and evidence-based family engagement strategies that are attuned to the needs and interests of a diverse array of primary caregivers, including but not limited to fathers/male caregivers, mothers/female caregivers, young parents, grandparents, foster parents and others.
No, I'm not talking about the list of caregivers-- that's perfectly fine. What exactly is a "specific, measurable and evidence-based" strategy for connecting in a working relationship with a family? The administration's data fetish has taken it to some ridiculous places before, and this might be even worse. Will we develop a Parent Pair-Bonding Stability Index? Will there be a standardized test to measure how well the parents and teachers like each other? Or will these data be generated by unicorns dancing through fields of shamrocks looking for the coordinates of El Dorado?
How To Do The Engagey Thing
The feds offer up their list of principles of effective family engagement practices. Let's get clued in.
First (like even before #1), you have to "establish a culture where families are seen as assets and partners in children's development, learning and wellness." Once again-- apparently it's our world, and families just live in it. Maybe we could see ourselves as the families' partners instead, which is definitely better than just assuming that of course Those People can't parent properly. But in the interests of balance, we have to note some families are not actually assets in their children's development. We all have stories of students who would have been better off raised by wolves: the student who was always tired because the trailer she lived in was always cold because Dad spent the utilities money on beer; the student whose mother was in prison after trying to run over that student with a car when the student was eight years old; the student whose parents shaved her head because she was defiant. So, yes, it's a mistake to assume that families aren't in the game when it comes to raising their kids, but it's also a mistake not to pay attention when they tell us through word and deed that they are not involved, interested or invested in their children. Point being, this little note tossed off by the document builds the whole structure on a foundation carved out of some huge and complicated assumptions. Just saying.
But assuming we somehow find such a culture, what are those principles?
Create continuity for children and families. I thought this might mean something useful like "don't staff the school with two-year TFA temps," but no, it means something far more alarming:
Implement a vision for family engagement that begins prenatally and continues across settings and throughout a child’s developmental and educational experiences.
So, yeah. As soon as you know you're pregnant, the government will be there to get a-workin' on your child. Um. Yikes.
Value equal partnership between families and professionals. Equal? So, the family is not the primary party responsible for raising this child? Yeah, this is going to go over super-well with conservative parent groups.
Develop goal-oriented relationships that are linked to development and learning. Oh, man. I'll try to summarize this in a minute but reading the bureaucracy-speak makes me feel all slimy. Basically, the relationship between families and professional staff takes time, but they should learn to work "jointly" on goals and strategies and learning. Like many paragraphs in the document, this one barely suggests that we are talking about helping a real live human being grow up.
Prioritize engagement around children's social-emotional and behavioral health. Damn. "Ensure constant monitoring and communication regarding children's social-emotional and behavioral health." Good lord, faceless bureaucrats-- do you even hear yourselves?? "Constant monitoring"??!! And then "ensure that children's social-emotional and behavioral needs are met" like somebody has the magical powers to do that.
Ensure that everything is culturally and linguistically "responsive." While this is an exceptionally valid point, it does not appear to make allowances for cultures that say that the family is responsible for the child and the government is responsible for backing the hell up.
Train staff people to engage with families. Gotta tell you-- if somebody doesn't know how to engage productively with other carbon-based life forms, I'm not sure you can train them to do it well. But certainly people who aren't born to the community in which they're teaching need to learn about that community. (Probably take more than five weeks, though)
Build families' capabilities and connections. Building connections sounds awesome. Robert Putnam's book Our Kids talks about how having connections is one of the privileges of wealth. Giving families ways to reach out, get help, and be heard-- that would be swell.
Embed family engagement within programs, school, and community stuff. And continuously learn and improve. That last one seems obvious and hardly worthy of saying out loud until you remember that NCLB and ESSA and certainly Common Core (not technically a federal program-- just a federally beloved program) have no such provisions. So hooray for federally recognizing a need for a program to learn and improve, I guess.
Implementing effective family engagement practices to promote positive child outcomes will require bold leadership and dedication from all institutions where children learn.
First, "positive child outcomes" is the kind of cold, soullessly vague language that makes people hate the bureaucrats. Second, it doesn't really require "bold leadership." Connecting and involving and helping parents is a marathon, not a sprint, and it benefits from solid, steady, stable work. What the Folks In Charge can do is give teachers (and staff) the space and resources to do their jobs.
Now, if you want organizations and schools to lead an incursion into people's homes, that may require leadership. Not so much "bold" leadership as "pushy, intrusive, dismissive of the people you're there to serve" leadership.
State-level Stuff
The plan goes on to delineate what state and local authorities should do.
On the state level, recommendations include investing and allocating resources and training to get programs all engagey. Plus establishing policies that help. Plus "communicate constant messages" aka drop some PR bombs on the issue.Because "messaging" is almost as important as actually doing something. Also, make sure that colleges and universities are training people to do this stuff.
Pretty pedestrian stuff. But then there's this recommendation.
Develop and integrate family engagement indicators into existing data systems
They offer a couple of suggestions of where such data might be found, like child care quality rating systems, higher education coursework, and family surveys, so, no-- they don't have any idea how to measure these things they say they want to measure.
And they would like states to set up an incentive to reward folks for doing this stuff that we don't know how to measure the effectiveness of, though it does look like they might be willing to go old school and measure inputs, whether those programs reap identifiable results or not.
Local Stuff
The plan has recommendations for local establishments as well. These run a bit more specific than the others, and come closer-but-no-cigar to crucial elements missing so far.
The devil, as always, is in the details. "Families as Decision Makers" is an encouraging heading, but it's followed by "Schools and programs should establish policies that ensure parents and families are prepared to participate in planning, decision-making and oversight groups." So families can have a seat at the table if they show us they're ready to do it the right way.
Some of the recommendations will be familiar as Things Many Districts Already Do, such as home visits. That also includes local versions of the same things featured elsewhere in the report. That includes the data fetish. Look-- here's a detail that's not scary at all.
Local schools and programs should track progress on family engagement goals, as detailed in family engagement plans.
So, you know-- the feds would like families to think of them as another family member. Maybe an older, wiser, brother. Honestly-- does anybody ever read these documents and think about how they look to civilians?
What's Missing
If we go waaaaaaaaaaayy back to the beginning, we find citations of evidence about the ways that poverty and family instability get in the way of student learning. But we have to go waaaaaaayyy back to the beginning because those facts are never acknowledged again.
There's no question that some families need help, and that the children growing up in those homes have more decks stacked against them than a drunk in crooked back-jack parlor. I sympathize, as I will bet almost every teacher does, with the point of view that says, "Well, we can't just stand back and do nothing and hope for the best." I certainly don't sympathize with the point of view that says, "Well, you know, there's no helping Those People."
But somehow, when I think of outreach and help and support and strengthening of families and community, my first thought is not, "Well, what these folks need is constant data monitoring from the moment they conceive." Nor do I sympathize with a stance that says, "I'm from the government and I'm here to offer to let you help me raise your child."
I'm not a mushy person, but I cannot read a report like this without being struck by the complete absence of warm, human language in addressing a human challenge. I don't know how you address these issues without using words like "love" and "respect" and "empathy" and "kindness," but I know you definitely can address them without resorting to "data."
Most importantly
Remember what I said waaaayyy back at the beginning-- this document is open to comment until January 4th. If reading all this just gave you a huge headache, zip on over there and comment. Who knows-- maybe Acting Pretend Secretary of Education John King might send it back to the drawing board. At least you will have helped generate some data.
Thursday, December 17, 2015
Gulen Charters In Trouble Again
The Gulen network of charters is perhaps the most transparent abuse of the charter school system in the US, and their troubled nature is on display again in the midwest.
A clout-heavy charter-school firm that operates four taxpayer-funded schools in Chicago is suspected of defrauding the government by funneling more than $5 million in federal grants to insiders and “away from the charter schools,” according to court records obtained by the Chicago Sun-Times.
The Sun-Times reports that the FBI is investigating "a scheme to defraud federal programs" running back to "at least 2007." The probe is being run out of the FBI's Cleveland office, which would not comment because the investigation is ongoing.
This particular scheme involved the Concept Charter School chain, and involved bringing in E-Rate funds and funneling them to private companies "affiliated with" Concept's chief information officer, including funneling that money through the Bank of Asya in Turkey, a bank alleged founded and operated by Gulen followers.
That information officer has since sort of, well, vanished from the US. But a computer consultant named Stephen Draviam, who worked for Concept until they cur him off and replaced him with other vendors who have "extensive ties" to the charter operators (read any story about Gulen schools and you'll run into the phrase "extensive ties" many times) has apparently talked to them. He may want to be careful about that. Another former Concept official named Mustafa Emanet broke ties with Concept and suddenly found himself arrested in Turkey for heroin possession. He lives in Ohio now.
The story that emerges here is the same one that emerged in the work of reporter James Pilcher of the Cincinatti Enquirer in October of 2014. Folks with Gulen ties open a charter school, staff it with foreign teachers on H-1B visas, and then begin strip-mining US taxpayers. Grant money, state funding, anything not tied down is sent back to The Movement. Even the teachers are expected to kick a percentage of their salary back to The Movement. The particular brand of fraud that the Sun-Times is writing about is grant fraud-- writing fake grants for tech grants for the schools while simply using vendors with "extensive connections" to just send those grant dollars to The Movement.
The stories are legion. Chicago Public Schools denied Concept two more charters, so Gulen-connected folks took some Illinois politicians on a trip and CPS was overruled by the state. You can find entire blogs devoted to Gule shenanigans, like this one or this one.
Concept is one of the top charter companies in the Great Lakes region-- and their purpose is to collect US tax dollars to send to Gulen's supporters.
So what's a Gulen? Fethullah Gulen is most often referred to as a "reclusive cleric," a displaced political figure from Turkey who is currently out of power, cooling his heels in the Poconos and supposedly waiting for his chance. You can read plenty about his thoughts on his website. The Turkish government would like to have him back-- they've issued a warrant for his arrest. The US has shown no inclination to send him home, but he's also under investigation by the FBI.
The ongoing Gulen network scandals are a reminder of just how big a tool for fraud and theft of US taxpayer money the charter movement can be. We tend to talk as if charter school fraud is "vacation home in Aruba" scale theft, when in fact the accusations against Gulen point out that we're actually talking "maintain a foreign government in exile" scale of money. The narrative about the Gulen movement using US charter schools to scam US taxpayer dollars to run an entire Turkish religious-political movement is both convincing and scary, and more importantly, it's a reminder of just how badly the charter movement can be turned against the interests of American children, taxpayers, and voters.
A clout-heavy charter-school firm that operates four taxpayer-funded schools in Chicago is suspected of defrauding the government by funneling more than $5 million in federal grants to insiders and “away from the charter schools,” according to court records obtained by the Chicago Sun-Times.
The Sun-Times reports that the FBI is investigating "a scheme to defraud federal programs" running back to "at least 2007." The probe is being run out of the FBI's Cleveland office, which would not comment because the investigation is ongoing.
This particular scheme involved the Concept Charter School chain, and involved bringing in E-Rate funds and funneling them to private companies "affiliated with" Concept's chief information officer, including funneling that money through the Bank of Asya in Turkey, a bank alleged founded and operated by Gulen followers.
That information officer has since sort of, well, vanished from the US. But a computer consultant named Stephen Draviam, who worked for Concept until they cur him off and replaced him with other vendors who have "extensive ties" to the charter operators (read any story about Gulen schools and you'll run into the phrase "extensive ties" many times) has apparently talked to them. He may want to be careful about that. Another former Concept official named Mustafa Emanet broke ties with Concept and suddenly found himself arrested in Turkey for heroin possession. He lives in Ohio now.
The story that emerges here is the same one that emerged in the work of reporter James Pilcher of the Cincinatti Enquirer in October of 2014. Folks with Gulen ties open a charter school, staff it with foreign teachers on H-1B visas, and then begin strip-mining US taxpayers. Grant money, state funding, anything not tied down is sent back to The Movement. Even the teachers are expected to kick a percentage of their salary back to The Movement. The particular brand of fraud that the Sun-Times is writing about is grant fraud-- writing fake grants for tech grants for the schools while simply using vendors with "extensive connections" to just send those grant dollars to The Movement.
The stories are legion. Chicago Public Schools denied Concept two more charters, so Gulen-connected folks took some Illinois politicians on a trip and CPS was overruled by the state. You can find entire blogs devoted to Gule shenanigans, like this one or this one.
Concept is one of the top charter companies in the Great Lakes region-- and their purpose is to collect US tax dollars to send to Gulen's supporters.
So what's a Gulen? Fethullah Gulen is most often referred to as a "reclusive cleric," a displaced political figure from Turkey who is currently out of power, cooling his heels in the Poconos and supposedly waiting for his chance. You can read plenty about his thoughts on his website. The Turkish government would like to have him back-- they've issued a warrant for his arrest. The US has shown no inclination to send him home, but he's also under investigation by the FBI.
The ongoing Gulen network scandals are a reminder of just how big a tool for fraud and theft of US taxpayer money the charter movement can be. We tend to talk as if charter school fraud is "vacation home in Aruba" scale theft, when in fact the accusations against Gulen point out that we're actually talking "maintain a foreign government in exile" scale of money. The narrative about the Gulen movement using US charter schools to scam US taxpayer dollars to run an entire Turkish religious-political movement is both convincing and scary, and more importantly, it's a reminder of just how badly the charter movement can be turned against the interests of American children, taxpayers, and voters.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)