Earlier this week, I was interviewed on NPR’s “On Point.” In the second part of the hour, the show brought on some young woman whose name I can’t remember. They said she used to work for Michelle Rhee and that she worked (or used to work) for Rhee’s TNTP (the New Teacher Project). I recall that her big complaint was that I failed to find common ground with corporate reformers. She said she had interviewed 50 leading thinkers inside the Beltway, and they think there is too much testing. She seemed to believe this was far more decisive than, say, the injurious effects of No Child Left Behind and Race to the Top, or even the copious graphs in the appendix of my new book, which show that test scores and graduation rates in the U.S. are at a historic high point and the dropout rate is at a historic low point.
She then published a piece on Huffington Post, again making her case for “the middle of the road,” which is where she thinks “reformers” like Michelle Rhee are to be found.
Arthur Goldstein responded to her post with this hilarious and biting analysis. He begins by quoting my fellow Texan Jim Hightower, who famously said that “yellow stripes and dead armadillos are the only things you’ll find in the middle of the road.”
The author of the post (sorry but her name eludes me) on Huffington describes me, apparently, as “simplistic.” Goldstein disagrees.
Goldstein responds:
What really amazes me about this column is the complete and utter ignorance of the role of unions. Levin characterizes them as obstructionist, but I’ve watched as my union embraced mayoral control, and then supported it again after it was fairly well-established as an anti-democratic disaster. UFT had a hand in writing the state evaluation law and boasted that “objective” measures only made up 40% of a teacher rating. They must have forgotten that any teacher failing that 40% must be rated ineffective overall. UFT supported charters, and even co-located to start one. UFT supported a failed merit pay program. Of course, that’s not all that unique, since all such programs have failed. And UFT supports Common Core, which adds yet another layer of testing to the tangled web that appears to have eluded Ms. Levin.
If this is the best they can muster against Diane Ravitch, they’d better hope that absolutely no one reads her new book.
The public and parents were told that education reform would improve public schools, not replace public schools. After more than a decade of the same set of reforms with different labels, we have a right and duty ask reformers for results.
How has education reform benefitted the 95% of schools that are traditional public schools?
It hasn’t, where I live and what’s more, there is no evidence that is has benefitted traditional public schools anywhere in this state, yet we keep doubling down on it. That is a failure. Time to change course.
http://nyceducator.com/2013/09/diane-ravitch-yellow-stripes-and-dead.html Friday, September 20, 2013 Diane Ravitch, Yellow Stripes and Dead Armadillos
According to Jim Hightower, yellow stripes and dead armadillos are the only things you’ll find in the middle of the road. And yet Jessica Levin, happily bad-mouthing Diane Ravitch over at Huffington Post, paints corporate reformers as occupying some middle ground. Levin, ruminating on Ravitch’s book while showing little to no evidence she understands it, actually cites Michelle Rhee as one of these moderate voices. I’m reminded of another quote:
*When a true genius appears, you can know him by this sign: that all the dunces are in a confederacy against him.*
*~Jonathan Swift*
Ms. Levin appears to represent one of the first dunces to venture forth into the arena after having purported to read Ravitch’s book. Levin finds hitherto unsung nuance in reforminess:
*Ravitch claims all education reformers are bent on promoting privatization, vouchers, and for-profit schools. However, most of those I interviewed have little faith in market solutions to improve schools systemically. They won’t actively oppose vouchers because they refuse to tell poor parents what they wouldn’t tolerate hearing themselves: “Your kids must stay in this failing school while we spend a decade trying to fix it.” But many talked about vouchers and for-profits as distractions more than game changers. *
So let’s understand this. The corporate reformers oppose vouchers, but won’t *say* they do. The important thing is what they think, not what they do, and of course to move the kids from so-called failing schools. Whether or not they address the underlying issues that cause low test scores, like poverty, learning disabilities, or lack of English, is of no consequence. Whether the schools prove better, equal, or worse than the “failing” schools is also unimportant. Note also that Levin says nothing whatsoever to suggest these “moderates” oppose privatization or for-profit schools in any way whatsoever. Yet she has the audacity to refer to Ravitch as “simplistic.” Simplistic is a word I’d use for anyone uncritically viewing Levin’s piece.
Levin further contends that reformy folk does not overemphasize testing. I’m not sure which astral plane Ms. Levin resides in, but in this one high-stakes tests determine whether or not schools stay open, and whether or not teachers remain employed. Levin praises Race to the Top, which enables this. She seems blissfully unaware there is no evidence whatsoever to suggest that there is any validity whatsoever to value-added ratings.
Even as Teach for America inductees actively steal the jobs of laid-off Chicago teachers, Levin musters the audacity to suggest that it does not endorse any radical agenda, and implies that Ravitch is delusional to suggest anything of the sort. Doubtless if scab labor took Levin’s job, or jobs or her friends and family, she’d beam with approval.
What really amazes me about this column is the complete and utter ignorance of the role of unions. Levin characterizes them as obstructionist, but I’ve watched as my union embraced mayoral control, and then supported it again after it was fairly well-established as an anti-democratic disaster. UFT had a hand in writing the state evaluation law and boasted that “objective” measures only made up 40% of a teacher rating. They must have forgotten that any teacher failing that 40% must be rated ineffective overall. UFT supported charters, and even co-located to start one. UFT supported a failed merit pay program. Of course, that’s not all that unique, since all such programs have failed. And UFT supports Common Core, which adds yet another layer of testing to the tangled web that appears to have eluded Ms. Levin.
If this is the best they can muster against Diane Ravitch, they’d better hope that absolutely no one reads her new book. [image: Bookmark and Share] Posted by NYC Educator at 4:02 PM Labels: abject nonsense, Diane Ravitch , merit pay , privatization, propaganda , teacher evaluation , value-added , VAM
Reformers don’t realize that the test is not an indicator of academic achievement. There is no middle road with children, we must do as Milwaukee Public Schools did, abandon letter grades for most and then figure out how to really determine how to define learning. It certainly isn’t the artificial test that can be changed by raising the bar every time kids get close to proficiency. Here’s the real solution http://savingstudents-caplee.blogspot.com/
“Reformers don’t realize that the test is not an indicator of academic achievement.”
Not only the deformers don’t realize it but the vast majority of teachers, administrators and parents don’t realize (and by realize I mean refuse to take part in something that is so harmful to students) that educational standards, standardized testing and the grading of students are completely, unabashedly, totally, entirely, wholly, thoroughly, fully, utterly, absolutely, perfectly, unreservedly, unconditionally, quite, altogether, downright INVALID. And the usage of any of the supposed results for anything is completely, unabashedly, totally, entirely, wholly, thoroughly, fully, utterly, absolutely, perfectly, unreservedly, unconditionally, quite, altogether, downright UNETHICAL.
CAN I SHOUT THAT OUT LOUD ENOUGH!!!!!
YeeeHaaa!! Come join the Quixotic Quest to rid the world of these outlandishly nefarious educational malpractices that are educational standards, standardized testing and the grading of students by reading and understanding what Wilson has to say in his never to have been refuted nor rebutted “Educational Standards and the Problem of Error” found at:
http://epaa.asu.edu/ojs/article/view/577/700
Brief outline of Wilson’s “Educational Standards and the Problem of Error” and some comments of mine. (updated 6/24/13 per Wilson email)
1. A quality cannot be quantified. Quantity is a sub-category of quality. It is illogical to judge/assess a whole category by only a part (sub-category) of the whole. The assessment is, by definition, lacking in the sense that “assessments are always of multidimensional qualities. To quantify them as one dimensional quantities (numbers or grades) is to perpetuate a fundamental logical error” (per Wilson). The teaching and learning process falls in the logical realm of aesthetics/qualities of human interactions. In attempting to quantify educational standards and standardized testing we are lacking much information about said interactions.
2. A major epistemological mistake is that we attach, with great importance, the “score” of the student, not only onto the student but also, by extension, the teacher, school and district. Any description of a testing event is only a description of an interaction, that of the student and the testing device at a given time and place. The only correct logical thing that we can attempt to do is to describe that interaction (how accurately or not is a whole other story). That description cannot, by logical thought, be “assigned/attached” to the student as it cannot be a description of the student but the interaction. And this error is probably one of the most egregious “errors” that occur with standardized testing (and even the “grading” of students by a teacher).
3. Wilson identifies four “frames of reference” each with distinct assumptions (epistemological basis) about the assessment process from which the “assessor” views the interactions of the teaching and learning process: the Judge (think college professor who “knows” the students capabilities and grades them accordingly), the General Frame-think standardized testing that claims to have a “scientific” basis, the Specific Frame-think of learning by objective like computer based learning, getting a correct answer before moving on to the next screen, and the Responsive Frame-think of an apprenticeship in a trade or a medical residency program where the learner interacts with the “teacher” with constant feedback. Each category has its own sources of error and more error in the process is caused when the assessor confuses and conflates the categories.
4. Wilson elucidates the notion of “error”: “Error is predicated on a notion of perfection; to allocate error is to imply what is without error; to know error it is necessary to determine what is true. And what is true is determined by what we define as true, theoretically by the assumptions of our epistemology, practically by the events and non-events, the discourses and silences, the world of surfaces and their interactions and interpretations; in short, the practices that permeate the field. . . Error is the uncertainty dimension of the statement; error is the band within which chaos reigns, in which anything can happen. Error comprises all of those eventful circumstances which make the assessment statement less than perfectly precise, the measure less than perfectly accurate, the rank order less than perfectly stable, the standard and its measurement less than absolute, and the communication of its truth less than impeccable.”
In other word all the logical errors involved in the process render any conclusions invalid.
5. The test makers/psychometricians, through all sorts of mathematical machinations attempt to “prove” that these tests (based on standards) are valid-errorless or supposedly at least with minimal error [they aren’t]. Wilson turns the concept of validity on its head and focuses on just how invalid the machinations and the test and results are. He is an advocate for the test taker not the test maker. In doing so he identifies thirteen sources of “error”, any one of which renders the test making/giving/disseminating of results invalid. As a basic logical premise is that once something is shown to be invalid it is just that, invalid, and no amount of “fudging” by the psychometricians/test makers can alleviate that invalidity.
6. Having shown the invalidity, and therefore the unreliability, of the whole process Wilson concludes, rightly so, that any result/information gleaned from the process is “vain and illusory”. In other words start with an invalidity, end with an invalidity (except by sheer chance every once in a while, like a blind and anosmic squirrel who finds the occasional acorn, a result may be “true”) or to put in more mundane terms crap in-crap out.
7. And so what does this all mean? I’ll let Wilson have the second to last word: “So what does a test measure in our world? It measures what the person with the power to pay for the test says it measures. And the person who sets the test will name the test what the person who pays for the test wants the test to be named.”
In other words it measures “’something’ and we can specify some of the ‘errors’ in that ‘something’ but still don’t know [precisely] what the ‘something’ is.” The whole process harms many students as the social rewards for some are not available to others who “don’t make the grade (sic)” Should American public education have the function of sorting and separating students so that some may receive greater benefits than others, especially considering that the sorting and separating devices, educational standards and standardized testing, are so flawed not only in concept but in execution?
My answer is NO!!!!!
One final note with Wilson channeling Foucault and his concept of subjectivization:
“So the mark [grade/test score] becomes part of the story about yourself and with sufficient repetitions becomes true: true because those who know, those in authority, say it is true; true because the society in which you live legitimates this authority; true because your cultural habitus makes it difficult for you to perceive, conceive and integrate those aspects of your experience that contradict the story; true because in acting out your story, which now includes the mark and its meaning, the social truth that created it is confirmed; true because if your mark is high you are consistently rewarded, so that your voice becomes a voice of authority in the power-knowledge discourses that reproduce the structure that helped to produce you; true because if your mark is low your voice becomes muted and confirms your lower position in the social hierarchy; true finally because that success or failure confirms that mark that implicitly predicted the now self evident consequences. And so the circle is complete.”
In other words students “internalize” what those “marks” (grades/test scores) mean, and since the vast majority of the students have not developed the mental skills to counteract what the “authorities” say, they accept as “natural and normal” that “story/description” of them. Although paradoxical in a sense, the “I’m an “A” student” is almost as harmful as “I’m an ‘F’ student” in hindering students becoming independent, critical and free thinkers. And having independent, critical and free thinkers is a threat to the current socio-economic structure of society.
Jessica Levin, the author of the HuffPost article, says that she worked in the Department of Education in the Clinton White House. She says,
“President Clinton (for whom I worked in his Department of Education) was the first high-profile elected Democrat to publically challenge his party’s educational orthodoxy by borrowing strategies from the right. Believing schools needed greater freedom to innovate, he funded the expansion of charter schools and promoted greater flexibility for all educators from federal prescriptions (which those in his own party often demanded) in exchange for more meaningful accountability for results.”
She does not mention that the Clintons have close ties with The Broad Foundation. In his book “The Art of Being Unreasonable”, Eli Broad says,
***
“While he was president, he invited me to stay at the White House. It had been a long day and I was tired, so I went to bed a bit early. At 11:30 PM, I woke up to a knock on the door. The president’s usher poked his head in and informed me that the president was in the solarium and wanted to chat. There wasn’t much I could say except, “Sure.”
***
They ended up talking until dawn.
http://www.flickr.com/photos/34577258@N02/3215180231/
(click the arrows for all the pictures)
Also don’t forget that the neo-liberal hand-holding with the GOP started with the Cllntons, from Walmart country, when they turned the party into right-wing “New Democrats.”
Hillary sat on the Walmart board and received monetary compensation for that, so she is no exception and is just as culpable as Bill for giving American workers today’s union-busting Democrats –who take money from labor unions yet undermine the very existence of unions at every turn.
This comment at Goldstein’s original post deserves to be shared:
Michael Fiorillo • 38 minutes ago −
One question keeps repeating in my mind when so-called reformers say anything: are they only lying to us, or are they lying to themselves, too?
I’ve noticed a tremendous amount of narcissism among these folks, among their elite – Michelle Rhee being a caricature of the type – and rank and file: the patronizing “I’m going to save these benighted children (until something better comes along)” thing: the insufferable sense of superiority (“The Best and Brightest”):” the opportunism.
And the lying.These people lie about everything: the influences on children’s success in school, the purposes of testing, what charter schools really are, the role of the unions … they misrepresent their motives, use dead, B-School, jargon-laced double talk (after all, Ms. Levin was the “Chief Knowledge Officer” at the Gates’-funded New Teacher Project), twist and dodge, manipulate data to suit their political ends.
They lie, and their mendacious behavior – all in service of profit and power – harms students, teachers and communities. Why, if we could have the higher-ups at Tweed given a perp walk tomorrow, close the Networks (whatever they are), and replace them all with experienced, competent educators, it would take years to undo the harm these people have caused.
So, the only question that Ms. Levin and her fellow portfolio managers need be asked is: “Are you just lying to us, or are you lying to yourself, too?”
“yellow stripes and dead armadillos are the only things you’ll find in the middle of the road.”
Fabulous!
I agree. It puts me in the mood to break out a little vintage Moly Ivans before I nodd off to sleep!
Molly Ivans!
Molly Ivins! … The first rule about holes is when you’re in one, stop diggin’!!
“yellow stripes and dead armadillos are the only things you’ll find in the middle of the road.”
Not according to Loudon Wainwright III:
Well darn I just typed this long thing about a music philosophy I learned from a professor but it didn’t post. In short:
The public school symphony needs help. Ravitch suggests some things to add more depth and integrity to the interpretation of the music.
The status quo interrupted the music with loud noise and now wants less richness and depth to approaching the music and instead wants more mediocrity.
Or something like that.
Thank goodness I am going to the symphony tonight. It is clearly where my head is.
Sounds like the same Jessica Levin who is the sister of Dave Levin, one of the founders of KIPP. Her bio says, “Most recently, she served as Chief Knowledge Officer for TNTP.” (The most sagacious job title I’ve ever heard.) TNTP was established by child mouth taper MIchelle Rhee & TFA founder Wendy Kopp (who also thanked Dave and Jessica in one of her books). No credibility here –and there should be a disclaimer.