Matthew Di Carlo of the Shanker Institute says that the reformers cannot succeed, despite their best intentions, because they over promise what they can accomplish. Whether it is a promise of closing the achievement gap in short order, turning around 1,000 schools a year for five years, college for all, or making every single child proficient by the year 2014, they set goals that might–if all goes well–be achieved in decades, but cannot be achieved in a few years. They say “we can’t wait,” as if their sense of urgency will surely cause obstacles to crumble. But the obstacles are real, and genuine change requires time, patience, will, and the collaboration with teachers that reformers think they can bypass.
Hubris has its limits.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
I am sure that lying with data and fudging the truth about charters and schools of innovation will be part of the way they continue to act as if they are winning…but we know better.
“. . . schools of innovation. . . ”
If one considers Skinnerian hyper discipline training to be “innovation” of the teaching and learning processes then I’ve got some great priced ocean front property over at the Lake of the Ozarks in Central Missouri. Call now!! Operators are standing by!!
The urgency, of course, wrapped up in all their rhetoric, is to defund public schools, close most public schools (except the ones left over for the leftover kids the charters don’t want), to open charters, to put public taxes into private pockets, to grab real estate, to further try to deprofessionalize teaching and lower salaries, to union bust, to pension bust. Period. End.
The reformers don’t even believe their own PR or BS anymore. Its all a chant, a battle cry, in the name of the children. We’re waking up from our sleep. We KNOW what they want, and we aim to stop them.
reformers have put all their eggs in one basket, as the farmers used to say, and have not set realistic goals or realistic methods in achieving those goals that could be achieved in short enough time. Testing, as you have pointed out, is not the answer, nor is expecting school administrators to fire teachers based off those test scores.
They have, in the past, actually crippled schools with their funding limits and rules. Small schools, such as the one I graduated from, are woefully underfunded and the teachers woefully underpaid. And the way their funding is decided? size.
Sure, in theory, fewer students would need fewer amenities, but like all theoretical inferences, they fall short when put into practical use. less funding means a lesser education. A lesser education means less options for rural (and inner city) students simply because of the lack of foresight by those who control the purse strings.
It always seems that the first subjects to get cut when administrators are doing budget cuts are the arts. As someone who is steeped in the arts, I am a writer and musician, I know how vital these truly are to education. In fact, it is recorded that those students who participate in music are more likely to have higher math grades, as are those who are in visual arts. It has also been recorded that a child who is not allowed to participate in music and art is more likely to have lower tests score-all around- than those who are in the arts.
The teachers have nothing to really do with the success or failure of students. Funding dies. And I believe as long as non-educators are in control of education, we will always pay the price for their ignorance and lack of true concern. As long as it is seen in the light that tests are uber-important, though all a test does is show how well a student takes tests, then we will always fall short in our attempts to play “catch-up” with those nations who are ahead of us in education.
Sadly, it is corporations, not real world teachers who are playing “education god”, just as it is non-doctors and non-scientists who are playing “medical and science god” and they are the root of the problem, not the solution. Common core? Originally the most common core in education was simply reading, writing, and arithmetic. around these revolved the extras: Physical education, the arts, and science. Now? it is algebra for Kindergarteners, constant testing for all, and the idiocy of trying to gage the overall with simple, but inaccurate data.
We are falling further behind with every new addition to an already faulty scale. But I do not look to see politicians or the corporate sponsors to realize just how much damage they have truly done until it is too late.
As an elementary literacy teacher in the 80s, I appreciated that vocal music teachers exposed learners to so much vocabulary via lyrics. I’ll guess that current music teachers even provide context as they introduce new songs–but shh, we won’t tell or Common Corenuts will ban that.
For decades “Vaporware” has been the key device for driving product introductions. Reformers are just using this technology sales approach in education.
(“Vaporware” is software that you claim you’re going to build but which hasn’t been built yet. It has the advantage that you can claim anything you want for it – nobody will be any smarter until after they’ve bought.)
Except, when you buy a piece of software and it’s imperfect you’re not terribly bothered.
When education reform wastes your child’s critical years for education, it’s a very serious problem.
And so, let me bring out an old technology joke and apply it here. “What’s the difference between a used car salesman and a corporate ed reformer? A used car salesman knows when he’s lying.”
This just blew me away:
It’s powerful refutation of the myth of
“a failed public education system”, and the
consequent need for “corporate reform,” and
that unions are to blame:
“Watch the US Get More Educated in 20 Seconds”
http://www.vox.com/2014/9/21/6755489/watch-the-us-get-more-educated-in-20-seconds
See how the geography of college degrees
has changed over the years.
You get to see an animated map covering
higher education trends over the last 42 years:
(1970 – 2012, to be precise… no data for the
last two years)
—the red & light red (pink) areas show the
smallest percentages of the population with
Bachelor’s and Master’s degrees (i.e.
least educated):
—the light and dark green who the areas
with the highest percentages of Bachelor’s
and Master’s degrees, where they are
commonplace, (i.e the most educated)
Basically, the trend—which is dramatically
illustrated in the animation over time—
shows that Bachelor’s & Master’s
degrees have become more and more
commonplace everywhere in the U.S.
except for the deep South & the Carolinas — those
states with no teacher unions (just “associations”
with no collective bargaining, and little or
no job protections/tenure, and a proliferation
of segregated charter schools, etc.)
The states with the strongest teacher unions—
such the Northeast — the “Amtrak corridor”—are
solid dark green. The rest of the states that are
not the Carolinas & Deep South, are also
trending to at least light green, or some dark green.
Hmmm….
Also, in 1970, most of the country is red or light
red—only 1-in-10 have college degrees. It was in
the 1970’s that the teacher union power took off,
by the way. (UTLA was formed in 1970 after a
brutal strike.) The ascendancy and the growth
in power of unions accompanied (caused?) the
expansion of university education to where in
most parts of the country, achieving at least
a Bachelors (or even a Master’s) is now
commonplace.
“Vaporware” — a product invented by Mark Twain’s Duke and Dauphin.
“Fatal
FLaws”Reformers’ fatal flaw?
That’s hard, they have so many
But “Flouting Federal law”
Is just as good as any
Looks like Matt Di Carlo missed some of the claims made by Bill de Blasio and Carmen Fariña regarding their expectations for universal pre-K in New York City. The chancellor thinks it is a genuine, realistic goal to have 100% of the kids who are entering the program this year be proficient in reading by grade 2!
http://www.nydailynews.com/new-york/education/schools-chancellor-carmen-fari-ambitious-goals-year-article-1.1922715
The reformers have a big edge when it comes to conditions on the ground, not at 35,000 feet. They fully understand how bad things are at many district schools serving neighborhoods where poor people of color are warehoused, and how familiar those families are with the refrains about all we need for their schools to get better is more time and just a tiny little bit of extra money. Some of their parents and even grandparents heard the same things!
As the saying goes, your kid only gets one shot at kindergarten. Barring some massive and unforeseen leap toward integration which would ensure that no child has to go to an apartheid school overloaded with poor, at-risk children, charters and choice will always have a strong, genuine, grassroots appeal to a large number of parents.
Tim, as we have seen in Ohio, Michigan, New Orleans, Chicago, Texas, and elsewhere, charter schools do not match the performance of public schools, and they don’t want kids with low scores or kids with disabilities or ELLs. Lies and propaganda will take you just so far. Then people begin to get it.
I expect there is a substantial number of parents for whom these things — low numbers of students with low scores, low numbers of students with learning disabilities, low numbers of ELLs — are actually selling points when it comes to choosing a school.
Indeed, Flerp, there is a large premium attached to housing that lies inside the ironclad, inviolable, fiercely protected zone lines of a school with low/nonexistent numbers of “at risk” children–schools like PS 321, PS 29, PS 234, PS 199, PS 6, etc.
The parents who send their kids to these schools are some of the bluest Democrats you can find–people who are keenly aware of issues like segregation and inequity. However, they tend to drop those concerns like a hot rock when it threatens to affect their own kids’ schools. See the formation of the “PS 199 Local” group in response to waitlists created from “out of zone” families, or the creation of PS 133, which brought “diversity” to District 15 but pruned from PS 321’s zone the handful of blocks that might still be considered middle class.
People who aren’t zoned for a good public school in New York City know exactly where they stand, and it isn’t a surprise that they are applying to charters in droves. Perhaps states like Michigan, Ohio, Florida, etc. should learn from New York’s laws and authorization process.
It’s funny how you only have a choice of a bad public school or bad/”good” charters – if you have a good public school, you either don’t want to give others that choice or you can’t have it if you’re outside the zone lines.
You are correct, FLERP! There are many parents who do not want their children learning with those other kinds of kids.
That is indeed a selling point. However, is it an ethical one that our society should encourage?
“That is indeed a selling point. However, is it an ethical one that our society should encourage?”
I don’t know. I send my daughter to a choice school that uses a selective admissions policy and has much lower numbers of ELL, LD, and free-lunch-eligible students than the district average. Is it unethical of me to send her there? Should I have been discouraged from doing so? Maybe. If I sent my kids to the most exclusive prep schools in the country, and I told people that I believed every child deserved the same education that my children were getting, would I be acting ethically then? Maybe it’s easier to act ethically as long as you’re able to pay whatever things cost and willing to say the right things.
FLERP, knowing that your daughter goes to a charter school with a selective admissions policy and few numbers of ELL, LD and poor students explains many of your comments. Thank you.
It’s not a charter school, Diane. It’s a district-wide public middle school. So hopefully many of my comments remain inexplicable.
FLERP, I thought you called it a charter school.
I called it a “choice school,” i.e., as opposed to a zoned school.
I see you kinda addressed the question from a parent’s POV by telling me what you do with your daughter and you even touched upon the argument of “wanting what the rich have access to because it isn’t fair to be stuck in a poor district school” but what about what is the ethical position for society to hold for all children (my actual question), especially if you happen to be one of those kind of kids you addressed above?
Is it that you really “don’t know” or was it some kind of Socratic dialogue you were holding with yourself there to prove to me that it is an ethical position for society to have?
Sorry, confused by your response.
I truly do not know whether the choice I made was ethical or unethical. Do you think it was unethical?
FLERP!,
Correct me if I am wrong, but isn’t it only “public” and private schools in NYC that can use a qualified admission system? Charter schools are prohibited from using that sort of admission system.
I would not judge you unethical for doing what you see best for your daughter any more than I would judge Dr. Ravtich unethical for sending her child to an elite private school. We all tend to do the best we can given the choices we face.
The Morrigan,
What are your actionable strategies and specific goals for reducing hypersegregation in zoned district schools?
FLERP!,
No, I do not. I might have made the same choice myself. TE has a point. Parents do have an inner drive to seek out any angle they can to better help their children. But my question wasn’t about what parents do or shouldn’t do. It was about what government/society should and shouldn’t do.
I personally do not think society should foster nor facilitate that form of soft prejudice from parents. I think we should work at fixing the problems we have, not creating new problems nor exacerbating existing problems.
Tim,
I do not have “actionable strategies” any more than you do. I think there is a place for charters, but the implied argument of “you do it, too” sounds childish to me and argumentatively, it misses the point entirely.
“But my question wasn’t about what parents do or shouldn’t do. It was about what government/society should and shouldn’t do.”
I understand that. That’s why one of the counter-questions I posed was “Should I have been discouraged from [sending my daughter to this school]”? It seems your answer would be yes. As a factual matter, I should note that I was, in fact, highly discouraged from sending my daughter to the school she now attends. The number of hoops we had to jump through and the stress of the whole process was very discouraging, almost discouraging enough to make me move to another city.
FLERP!,
Would you have moved from the city if your child did not get into the qualified admission public school? This is an important question for city policymakers as they try to maintain something resembling a middle class in cities.
We had applied to a bunch of schools. If she hadn’t gotten into any of them, and I was left with the zoned school, yes, I would have moved to Westchester. The great thing is, we get to do it all over again in 2 years for high school, and then the year after that we get to do it all over again for middle school for my son. This is one of the reasons people move to the suburbs before their kids even reach school-age. To lock in to a good school district and not have to worry about it anymore.
FLERP!,
To what degree do you think families stay in the city because they are not restricted to traditional zoned schools?
Perhaps New York was able to avoid the depopulation seen in some cities in part by having flexible education options.
I think the reversal of NYC’s “depopulation” trend was probably driven more by a generally strong local economy, dramatic reductions in crime, and immigration than by education options. The district-choice schools do function as a kind of lifeboat for a certain type of family that might not otherwise stay in the city, but I don’t know that they have much significance in terms of overall population.
I have actionable strategies, The Morrigan. I would start with court challenges to Milliken v. Bradley, reforming absurdly anti-democratic home-rule and zoning laws (including “historic” districts in New York City) to enable the construction of affordable housing, and establishing a system of financial incentives/penalties for schools that are/aren’t serving their fair share of at-risk kids.
(My level of faith in this hunch varies quite a bit, but I am hopeful that at some point in the near future, a 100% non-at-risk district in the NYC area will voluntarily integrate to some degree with an adjoining district or districts with 100% at-risk kids.)
And I’m not missing the point. For years it was totally acceptable (still is) for enormous numbers of people to leave behind concentrations of at-risk kids in a relatively small number of schools, whether it was through a move to the burbs or a better part of town, or by escaping the public schools altogether. It can’t be said too many times: the hyper-segregation was entrenched long before charter schools came along.
It doesn’t make any sense to excuse the true source of the problem while focusing on some tiny segment (6% of NYC kids are in charters) of the already left-behind families getting to exercise a limited form of the choice everyone else takes for granted. Especially given the ugly and ongoing pattern of segregation with our “neighborhood” schools, and especially since there’s no evidence to suggest that the presence of charters harms kids who don’t attend them–they’d be in an apartheid school either way.
If things are as bad as people claim in traditional public schools, where the majority of children are still educated, it seems as though sending your child to a ‘better’ school will only help you in the short term. If the majority of our children are not properly educated because (a. lousy teachers, b. lousy parents, c.not capable of learning d. all of the above e. another reason I haven’t heard yet) it will be a problem for all our children eventually.
So while I understand people doing what they feel they have to do for their children, if it really as terrible as they claim, a “good” school for your own child will not fix our (supposed) broken society.
Unfortunately, that isn’t how free market reforms work in the US. If they started with the premise that choice would improve public schools then they’ll simply say there isn’t enough choice. In fact, that is what they’re saying in my state.
That’s the spin Christie’s state-appointed superintendent for Newark, Cami Anderson, used in her September press comments. She says the problem is that only 1 of 4 schools is desirable when the Real Problem is that She Closed Schools. School choice in Newark Public Schools is “Cami’s choice not parents’ choice.” She still has not released the secret sauce algorithm of how students were assigned to schools.
It’s almost hilarious (in a nauseating kind of way) when a state superintendent is running around saying that only 1 in 4 schools is “desirable” as if that somehow supports her. If it is indeed true that only one of four schools is desirable, who’s responsible for those other three? Someone needs to get Ms. Anderson a mirror.
I also think the national people who promote this should admit a couple of obvious truths.
Most of this is state law, and public schools are local. If you’re promoting “charter schools” nationally, you have no earthly idea how that national policy push will play out in any given state. There’s now a big swathe of the country where “charter schools” look nothing like what I read about in, say, Boston, Massachusetts or New York City and that was inevitable and foreseeable.
It’ll be harder and harder to portray states like Michigan as some “bad charter” outlier that we can all ignore when what’s happening in Michigan is also happening in Ohio and Pennsylvania and Florida, and it is.
Also a good read in which Di Carlo’s piece is referenced:
http://www.salon.com/2014/09/19/ego_money_and_false_promises_michelle_rhees_big_secret_and_the_collapse_of_education_reform/
“Hubris has its limits”. Yes, in Greek tragedy, the gods impose those limits. In this world, it must be the electorate, acting as the proxy of the gods and exerting human agency rather than divine intervention, who will dispose ofbthe hubris laden ‘deformers’.
It’s obvious that the so-called reformers cannot meet the promises they’ve made (if they ever intended to) but they have been very successful in destabilizing, and in some places, destroying, the public schools.
In their eyes, that counts as success.
This is a different take, from 538. It doesn’t ask “which schools are better, public or charter, in a given area?”
Instead it asks “are ed reforms improving public schools?”, which, you may recall, was how ed reform was originally sold. It’s based on test scores, but that’s the measure we have all apparently adopted.
A NET gain measure for public schools in an area, over time.
“Boston and New York, other previous winners among the NAEP districts, also show mixed results. Both saw mostly stagnant or negative growth between 2009 and 2013 on fourth-grade math and reading overall and for black, Hispanic and free- and reduced-lunch-eligible students. Their results were stronger, however, for eighth-grade students in both districts.”
http://fivethirtyeight.com/features/the-most-important-award-in-public-education-struggles-to-find-winners/
I pay no attention to the Broad award. It is meaningless.
Well, I figured 🙂
I only brought it up because it’s not an “ed” site, so they took it from the angle of “are these reforms improving public schools?” which it seems to me hardly ever gets asked. The net gain.
I see tons of comparisons of charter to public schools, but ed reform was never sold like that to the general public. Instead we were told “these reforms will improve public schools”. It’s only since I’ve been reading your site and others like it that I discovered we were actually “reinventing” and “creating new systems of governance” and forming “portfolios” and focused like a laser on “choice”.
The pitch for ed reform was “improve public schools” and so that’s what 538 looked at. I think that’s probably how most people outside of ed circles view it, because that’s what we were told this was about by politicians and others.
NYC won theBroad award in 2007, and a few weeks later the NAEP scores came out, showing no gains for the NYC schools.
I remember that….my High School for 3 years had a banner in the lobby congratulating us on the Broad prize….I initially thought it was something for the school until I realized it was a city “thing”
Ya think these guys care about limits?
They have magic elixirs to sell, and in education, (unlike medicine) evidence is not required, and lying is acceptable.
http://www.opednews.com/articles/Magic-Elixir-No-Evidence-by-Susan-Lee-Schwartz-130312-433.html
It is easy to Bamboozle the people endlessly with the media completely in their pockets, and the government ranter-in-chief /Duncan, selling the snake-oil.
http://www.opednews.com/articles/BAMBOOZLE-THEM-where-tea-by-Susan-Lee-Schwartz-110524-511.html
What bothers me too are the business buzzwords flying around in public schools like the flying monkeys in TWOZ: We now have “Norms” in grade-level meetings, and and are required to fill out “surveys” after each meeting to “drive” future meetings. We are being observed, analyzed and “corrected” to ensure a corporate-style uniformity. We were forced into “groups” at our last grade level meeting. These groups were predetermined. Can we say micromanaging? I feel like I’m walking on eggshells and terrified I’m going to crush some. I have 17 years teaching, and every day I think about leaving it behind. I will only miss my students. Perhaps the powers that be truly believe that what they plan will “fix” what’s wrong with education, but it won’t. In time, however, they will have their obedient workers who won’t question anything, and that is what’s most alarming.
Yes, I see this happening too. Reform may not succeed at improving kids’ education, but it may well strip our the public education sector of any vestiges of workplace democracy that remain. The dictatorship model, practiced in corporations, seems destined to take over schools. My fellow Americans, do you realize that many of you spend most of your lives in freedom-hating workplace dictatorships, and that those values are permeating your souls and our culture? “Democracy” is becoming a bad word here in America. In the salad days of labor, the dream was to spread democracy to the undemocratic workplace. Now the tide has turned and the undemocratic workplace is spreading into every corner of our nation.
Today was oral argument on the White Hat case. I was hoping they’d reach the real estate issues, and it looks like they did.
The judge who asked the best questions at today’s hearing was O’Neill. He ran on “no money from nobody” and, amazingly, won. He took zero campaign donations. None. He has an unusual background, for a judge:
“Prior to becoming a justice, Justice O’Neill served on the Eleventh District Court of Appeals from 1997 until 2007. He was most recently a registered nurse at Hillcrest Hospital, an affiliate of the Cleveland Clinic Foundation. He is also a former army officer, Vietnam veteran, and was both a newspaper and television reporter.”
“The case illustrates a larger issue: Ohio charter schools were created more than 15 years ago as independent public agencies. But as so many for-profit companies now own the real estate, furniture and computers, the questions are raised: Are charter schools still public? Are they independent? Or are they now privately run, for-profit businesses?
In the Supreme Court case, White Hat argues that the school boards signed contracts that allowed the company to spend, at its discretion, more than 96 percent of taxpayer funding.”
http://www.ohio.com/news/local/ohio-charter-school-companies-amass-tax-free-real-estate-portfolios-supreme-court-to-consider-white-hat-case-1.524417
http://www.supremecourt.ohio.gov/PIO/oralArguments/14/0923/0923.asp#OA132050
Thanks. The Lifeskills Academies are the worst of Brennan’s empire, in my opinion, although they get very little attention in the larger charter-sphere in Ohio. They’re for high school dropouts and at-risk kids. The state just basically shoved those kids over to White Hat and said “see ya! good luck!”
Miraculously, all the other schools scores went up and so did the graduation rate, which might happen when you jettison all the ultra-low scorers and chronic truants.
I think “they are winning” because they have basically BOUGHT anyone and any institution in order to control “checks and balances” in their favor whether it be media, Supreme Court, politicians now that campaign finance is to the highest bidder…. “Ed Reformers” are basically saying anything they want to and making shallow attempts to make is “appear” plausible not because they fear the consequences because they don’t (they have everyone they need paid off). There is one glitch in their “system” and maybe they are starting to realize it… the sheer numbers of people who see through what they are doing and the possibility that all “ed reform” backed MONEY won’t matter when future candidates for various political positions actually represent the ever-growing people (who finally are starting to see through the nonsense). There have been a few telling elections on school boards where “ed reform candidate” has tons of money vs non “ed reform” who has virtually no money but the latter wins! This gives me hope.
Artsegal==I now understand that you are “artsy” “gal” not Art Segal.
THEY are NOT winning. Everything they do is a failure. You can’t fail your way to success no matter how much money you waste to do it.
I agree that Common Core is destined to fail. It IS Vaporware (great term, Doug Garnett). Its promises (“college and career ready”, “better thinkers”) made everyone swoon and buy-in, but it cannot deliver because it’s based on a flawed model of how the mind develops. No smart person has every been created by relentless close reading of random texts. The conventional Common Core curriculum that’s starting to crystalize is a grotesque –a handful of exercises from David Coleman’s strong Andover liberal arts education isolated and incubated into hypertrophic monstrosities.
Ponderosa, agreed. Whoever thought that students in kindergarten and first grade would be subjected to the New Criticism and close reading of texts rather that learning to read for the joy of reading?
I dunno, Diane, if failure is your goal, failure is the perfect way to reach it, isn’t it? The “reformers” don’t really want to create “excellent” schools or “close the achievement gap” or all those other noble things they proclaim every day – they want to privatize public schools (and all other public goods for that matter). In that light, the more they fail, the more they succeed.
That is true, Dienne. The reformers don’t want to create excellent schools or close the achievement gap, as you say, they want to destroy the public education. I do believe, however, that if the public realizes this, the word “reformer” becomes a synonym for the 1% who seek to destroy public education and monetize the community’s schools. And their failure looks like what it is: failure.
Dr. Ravitch,
Do you think Joe Nathan wants to destroy public education?
TE, you are gazing in the wrong direction. Keep your eyes on the largest fish, who are playing the long game, not on the minute guppies. What happens to the guppies is of no concern to the big fish.
John a,
Joe Nathan is the largest reform fish that occasionally posts here. If the statement had been that SOME reformers don’t want to create excellent schools, you would be quite right to point out that Joe could be one of the reforms who does want to create excellent schools.
TE, I am certainly attempting to understand “the long game”; that is the game played my those who do not really live in our world. Sure, some reformers want to see kids do well academically; a point well taken. For those who control investment banking, the issue is return on investment, not academic achievement. The way to capital retur/growth is to build permanent structures and then bring in tuition. Whether Ell or Special needs kids are admitted and become ongoing students, whether ‘problematic kids are retained, whether there is ‘creaming’ or ‘skimming’ from the public school population is of no concern to the investment banking community and, I think, to the vast majority of the people who operate private/charter schools. TE, i don’t think there are any figures/statistics on this :). Admittedly, I fall back on my own political-economic/ideological position. I guess, we shall see, what we what we shall see over the next generation of k-12 students.
Of coure the two of you have hit the proverbial ‘nail on the head”: Regardless of what we know, it matters not whether the ed reformers are “successful” in the traditional meaning of the word or not. Reallocating public funds to the private sector over a relatively long period of time will seriously injure the American public schools, weakening them, like Dutch Elm Disease affects trees, Once this heavy investment of public funds has been made , private charter schools will be viewed as permanent entities: buildings and infrastructure. Whether the Common Core and standardized testing is successful and academic achievement inches upward, remains the same, or declines, is not the real issue, regardless of what the educational reformers publicly aver. The cryptic aim is to build permanent alternative institutions by weakening or destroying public schools and teachers unions. Who will benefit from this major reallocation of funding? Those who invested in privatizing schools. School become capital investments a in any other business.
As was said of the magnificent old great baseball player, ‘Shoeless’ Joe Jackson (Diane will remember this saying 🙂 ): “Say it ain’t so, Joe”. Sadly, it is so.
“if failure is your goal, failure is the perfect way to reach it, isn’t it? ”
Dienne, You are so right
“Reformed Failure”
One man’s failure is another’s success
Closing schools is opening chests
Of golden coins and public jewels
For which the Charter Baron drools
@ john a:
See my comment (below)….the corporate “reformers” seem to be doing quite well…..
FATAL FLAWS of FAILED REFORM
1A) Top down reform
1B) Ignorant and arrogant “top”
1C) Ignored and insulted the “down”
2) Punishment, coersion, threats, condescension, and insults will never be the cornerstone of successful educational reform
3) Can’t legislate brain development
4) Can’t legislate the negative impacts of generational poverty
5) Applied business model to system that has too many uncontrollable variables
6) Really bad ELA standards (subjective and abstract skills)
7) Developmentally inappropriate math standrads
8) Horrific standardized tests designed to trick students into failing
9) No intention of succeeding
Let me say at the outset that I am not a Common Core advocate, Quite the opposite. It’s based an a faulty premise (“economic competitiveness”), based on dubious practices (more high stakes testing, “valued-added” teacher evaluations), and backed heartily by the vile U.S. Chamber of Commerce, which promotes crony capitalism, tax cheating, and supply-side economic policies that redistribute public treasury dollars to private bank accounts and not to “the general welfare.”
However, Matt DiCarlo says corporate “reform” is “doomed to stall out in the long run, not because their ideas are all bad” but because “they too often make promises that they cannot keep.”
Maybe ALL of their ideas aren’t bad, but certainly ALL of the foundational ones are. And if not delivering up to the promises, the hype, is what DiCarlo thinks will be the undoing of corporate “reform,” then how does he explain the longevity and growth of the ACT and SAT and AP courses? Because they don’t deliver – and the research proves it – and yet they’re well-embedded in public education (and tied to the Common Core, by the way). If not “making promises” that can be kept is the criterion, then why does the Republican Party, and much of Wall Street, still endorse “trickle-down” economics? And, as The Hill reported, “Support is growing for former secretary of State Condoleezza Rice to take over as NFL commissioner.” Condoleezza Rice….
Diane says, about corporate “reformers,” that “THEY are NOT winning. Everything they do is a failure.”
So how does she explain the explosion in STEM programs in schools across the country? STEM, like the Common Core, is based on the myth that there’s a “crisis” – in science and math education in particular, and in public education in general. STEM and Common Core and the ACT, SAT, and AP are all inextricably linked. And, as the New York Times reported last year, “the number of test takers has grown.”
Students are increasingly not satisfied with taking only one test (or one AP class); “many more choosing to work toward impressive scores on both tests,” and “12 states now require, and pay for, all public high school juniors to take” the ACT test. And there are lots of schools that now give the PSAT and PLAN, “the ACT version, to see which yields a better score and thus which to prep for.” And prepping they are. Their parents and teachers and guidance counselors – not to mention administrators – are urging them on. Meanwhile, in 2007, “almost 50 percent of Harvard seniors (58 percent of the men, 43 percent of the women) took jobs on Wall Street,” and “a full 70 percent of Harvard’s senior class submits résumés to Wall Street and consulting firms, and “among Harvard seniors who had secured employment last spring, a mere 3.5 percent were headed to government and politics, 5 percent to health-related fields, and 8.8 percent to any form of public service.”
So, if not delivering on promises is the measuring stick, the corporate “reformers” are doing just dandy. They don’t deliver but they still prosper. And if what corporate “reformers” have achieved thus far is described as “failure,” then I’ll wager they’re laughing all the way to the bank.