Mike Deshotels is one of Louisiana’s tireless bloggers who demand old-fashioned things like honesty and integrity.
In this post, Mike says that the Oprah show on Steve Barr’s takeover of a New Orleans high school inadvertently reveals charter secrets of success.
Barr no longer runs Green Dot. He had some financial issues a few years back. Needless to say, Barr is not an educator. He is part of that new breed called edu-entrepreneur.
If one believes that test scores and graduation rates–no matter how they are obtained–are all that matters, then Barr has some strategies that work, but not so much for the students.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
the manipulation of statistical information is an old game for the so-called “reformers” and is not limited to the charter school segment of their efforts. When Rod Paige was winning an award for raising Houston high schools to a suppose 90%+ graduation rate, the real rate of those entering in 7th grade and graduating with their cohort was less than 50%. That’s because Paige was counting only including those who began 12th grade that year. Similarly, the dropout rate was being hidden because when a student dropped out, often for being retained several times in 9th grade (about which more in a moment), administrators would ask if the student might be getting a GED, and if the student even indicated a ‘maybe” the student was coded not as a dropout but as having transferred to an alternative education setting. Walt Haney of Boston College wrote about this BEFORE No Child Left Behind became law – and remember, it was based on the supposed “Texas Miracle” – but neither the mainstream press nor important figures in Congress, including then Ranking Member George Miller on the House Education Committee, seemed to want to pay any attention.
About that “Texas Miracle” – the idea that the approach under Bush as Governor Texas saw remarkable improvements in education as shown on its state tests. Well, those tests were being given in 10th grade. Students who would not do well were held back in 9th grade, sometimes more than once until they dropped out (see above) or else told that they had made so much progress in the year they were retained that they were being skipped directly to 11th grade – which of course meant they were not being tested. Independent indicators of Texas school performance, including NAEP and SAT scores, showed no improvement during this period of time.
And then there is the fact that what is reported are scaled scores, not raw scores. Somehow the press never seems to explain this. Simply by changing the conversion rate from raw to scaled, one can show an “improvement” that really has not happened. And sometimes this is done deliberately. When Virginia was setting up its Standards of Learning program under then Governor George Allen, when setting the cut scores for high school tests of American History, rather than following the procedures of a Modified Angoff Process to take the middle of the recommendations by experts, Virginia set the cut score HIGHER than ANY of the experts recommended. Naturally that first year the performance on the scaled scores was horrible – almost all of the high schools in high performing Fairfax County were being shown as unacceptable, even as many of the students in those same high schools were performing well on SATs, APs, getting admitted to competitive colleges and universities (where they were doing well). The following year the performance showed remarkable improvement – even though raw score performance was largely the same. What happened? Why the conversion scale was adjusted so that what had previously been considered a failing raw score was now acceptable.
What we have from the “reformers” is what Mark Twain Twain offered by in 1906 about our American insistence upon converting everything to numbers:
Teacher Ken,
I love revisiting the “Texas Miracle”. The story is so blatantly absurd and political. Rod Paige was appointed Secretary of Education as a result of statistical fraudulence. The entire NCLB legislation is built on a faux data house of cards. This story is worth repeating. With each retelling more of us can find reason to continue to speak out against what is happening to our children as a result.
Thank you.
Arne Duncan’s Chicago miracle, Michelle Rhee’s D.C. miracle, and Jeb’s Florida Miracle have a similar story! Duncan and Rhee fired people and established charter for no learning gains or even decreases in performance. Jeb showed big gains for 4th graders on the NAEP (by retaining the bottom 15% of 3rd graders in 3rd grade). Maybe I am being manipulative too but this is all they have going for them.
EXCELLENT LINK – BUT PLEASE ALERT Deshotels to inappropriate comments!
II sent Mike an email asking him to check for inappropriate comments.
Regarding the Oprah show, the “McEducation” folks are sloppy with their propaganda because they count on the majority of people not to think critically or skeptically, and to accept what they are being told.
My fear is that most viewers watch this superficially and assume that these are typical teachers and not unprofessional, edu-tourist temp workers.
Deshotels mentions credit recovery as a “charter secret.” Credit recovery, itself, is a scam on students. When I had transfered to a new school and teaching in the Freshman Academy, I had a student (3rd year freshman) stand up in my class and tell the other students “Don’t do any work in this class. When you fail, you’ll go to Mrs. ‘so-and-so’ room and get your credit after 3 weeks doing a computer program.”
In my 20 years in teaching high school, I saw credit recovery being completed correctly one time. The reason–an actual teacher was hired to come in part time to work with students. Every other time, it was a computer class that had nothing to do with the course the student was to receive a credit for.
When I think about this story, I wonder if it’s not time for us to think differently about the credit/Carnegie units/seat time idea that we have to decide if a student graduates and receive a diploma. Before anyone comes out and begins crucify me, I am NOT advocating for passing a test to determine if a student meets basic skills.
Yes, the public has swallowed the charter kool aid and they are hallucinating that their kids will do better in charters. A big mistake. These charters are not being monitored, does the DOE even have the funds to monitor these charters. At many schools, anything goes and they are staffed by highly unqualified staff. Whereas teachers at public schools have to be credentialed and highly qualified, this is not the case at charters. They can bring in any idiot off the street and make him/her an administrator and this is considered better than public schools. We have a disparate treatment case here against public schools that are held to a standard that charters aren’t even though they get public money. DOE knows what is going on, its going with the flow in these states and allowing private interests these choices. Maybe we need to take the case of public school abuse to the courts. The governmental agency mandated to monitor these things has been hijacked.
Barr got caught with his hand in the “Cookie Jar”, so to speak, when at Green Dot for $60,000. He got caught by the tax returns as you have no right to their internal documents because they are a private organization. No accountability. However, you have the right to the non profit tax records and any information they send to the district as district records are open except for employee and student records through privacy. Three weeks ago he was supposed to be in New Orleans and suddenly he is at Venice as a part of Deasy, Broad, Gates, Barr et al’s sneak attack there. Now they are busted on their illegal meeting and moves.