Archives for the month of: July, 2012
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Report Says K12 Online Charters Lag Behind Real Schools

By dianeravitch
July 18, 2012 //
21

The National Education Policy Center in Boulder, Colorado, released a report today about the performance of the for-profit online corporation K12. This is the biggest of the online operators, which has been criticized repeatedly for poor academic performance yet continues to expand. Just recently, Ohio and Pennsylvania added more for-profit virtual charters, as North Carolina rejected them and New Jersey deferred making a decision.

The new NEPC report found that students who enroll in these virtual schools do worse in academics than those who attend a brick-and-mortar school.

The authors of the report urged states to slow down in their headlong rush to open more such “schools.”

Here are the major findings, as reported in the press release:

New Report Shows Students Who Attend K12 Inc. Cyber Schools Falling Behind

Students at K12 Inc., Nation’s Largest Virtual School Company,
Are Lagging in Reading, Math and Graduation Rates; Researchers Say Evidence of Success Needed BEFORE Further Expansion

Few Dollars Dedicated to Instructional Salaries and Special Ed, Despite Lower Overhead Costs

WASHINGTON — A new report released today by the National Education Policy Center (NEPC) at the University of Colorado shows that students at K12 Inc., the nation’s largest virtual school company, are falling further behind in reading and math scores than students in brick-and- mortar schools. These virtual schools students are also less likely to remain at their schools for the full year, and the schools have low graduation rates. “Our in-depth look into K12 Inc. raises enormous red flags,” said NEPC Director Kevin Welner.

The report’s findings will be presented in Washington today to a national meeting of the American Association of School Administrators (AASA), where the report’s lead author, Dr. Gary Miron, is scheduled to debate Dr. Susan Patrick, president and CEO of the International Association for K–12 Online Learning. The report is titled, Understanding and Improving Full- Time Virtual Schools.

“Our findings are clear,” said Miron, an NEPC fellow, “Children who enroll in a K12 Inc. cyberschool, who receive full-time instruction in front of a computer instead of in a classroom with a live teacher and other students, are more likely to fall behind in reading and math. These children are also more likely to move between schools or leave school altogether – and the cyberschool is less likely to meet federal education standards.”

K12 Inc. schools generally operate on less public revenue, but they have considerable cost savings, says Miron. They devote minimal or no resources to facilities, operations, and transportation. These schools also have more students per teacher and pay less for teacher salaries and benefits than brick-and-mortar schools.

“Computer-assisted learning has tremendous potential,” said Miron. “But at present, our research shows that virtual schools such as those operated by K12 Inc. are not working effectively. States should not grow full-time virtual schools until they have evidence of success. Most immediately, we need to better understand why the performance of these schools suffers and how it can be improved.”

Earliier this week, New Jersey education officials postponed granting approval to a K12 Inc. full- time virtual schools for one year. In many states, however, policy is headed in exactly the opposite direction. In Michigan, for example, legislators decided earlier this year to lift the cap on full-time virtual schools, even though the state was in the second year of a pilot study to see whether these schools work and what could be done to ensure they work better. That pilot study had provided no findings to support such a scale-up.

Student performance results from the current study are clearly in line with the existing body of evidence, which includes state evaluations and audits of virtual schools in five states as well as a more rigorous study of student learning in Pennsylvania virtual charter schools conducted by the Center for Research on Education Outcomes (CREDO) at Stanford University. CREDO’s study found virtual-school students ended up with learning gains that were “significantly worse” than students in traditional charters and public schools.

New Report Shows K12 Inc. Cyber School Students Falling Behind/ 3

Miron and co-author Jessica L. Urschel, a doctoral student at Western Michigan University, analyzed federal and state data sets for revenue, expenditures, and student performance. In terms of student demographics and school performance data, the researchers studied all of K12’s 48 full-time virtual schools. In terms of revenues and expenditures, they used a federal data set that includes seven K12 Inc. schools from five different states (Arizona, Arkansas, Idaho, Ohio and Pennsylvania), although these seven schools accounted for almost 60 percent of all of K12 Inc.’s enrollment from 2008-09, which is the most recent year of available finance data.

In terms of the number of students enrolled, K12 Inc. is the largest private education management organization (EMO) and the largest private operator of virtual schools in the United States. It had contracts to operate 48 full-time virtual schools in 2011-12. In addition to these contracts, K12 Inc. provides services and support to dozens of other schools that have more limited online offerings.

Key findings include:

  •   Math scores for K12 Inc.’s students are 14 to 36 percent lower than scores for other students in the states in which the company operates schools. Across grades 3- 11, the scores were between 2 and 11 percentage points below the state average in reading.
  •   The on-time graduation rate for students the K12 Inc. schools is 49.1 percent, compared with a rate of 79.4 percent for the states in which the company operates schools.
  •   Only 27.7 percent of K12 Inc.’s schools reported meeting Adequate Yearly Progress (AYP) standards in 2010-11, compared to 52% for brick-and-mortar schools in the nation as a whole.
  •   Student attrition is exceptionally high in K12 Inc. and other virtual schools. Many families appear to approach the virtual schools as a temporary service: Data in K12 Inc.’s own school performance report indicate that 31% of parents intend to keep their students enrolled for a year or less, and more than half intend to keep their students enrolled for two years or less. K12 Inc. also noted in this report that 23% of its current students were enrolled for less than a year and 67% had been enrolled for fewer than two years.

• K12 Inc.’s schools spend more on overall instructional costs than comparison schools – including the cost of computer hardware and software, but noticeably less on teachers’ salaries and benefits.

New Report Shows K12 Inc. Cyber School Students Falling Behind/ 4

  • K12 Inc. spends little or nothing on facilities and maintenance, transportation, and food service.
  • K12 Inc. enrolls students with disabilities at rates moderately below public school averages, although this enrollment has been increasing, but the company spends half as much per pupil as charter schools overall spend on special education instruction and a third of what districts spend on special education instruction.Among the take-aways from all this is that K12 Inc.’s cyberschools reduce costs by having more students per teacher and by reducing overall spending on teachers’ salaries and benefits, particularly for special education instruction. “Part of K12’s problem seems to be that it skimps on special education spending and employs few instructors, despite having lower overhead than brick-and-mortar schools,” said the NEPC’s Welner, who is a professor of education policy at the University of Colorado. 
Categories Accountability, Charter Schools, Education Reform, For-Profit, National Education Policy Center, New Jersey, On-Line Education, Pennsylvania

Good News from Florida

By dianeravitch
July 18, 2012 //
10

During the current era of educational madness, we celebrate every bit of good news.

In Florida, which is under the control of a Tea Party zealot who is under the control of former Governor Jeb Bush whose brain is fixated on defunding public education and testing everything that moves, there is a glimmer of good news.

The state board of education upheld the decision of the Miami-Dade school board to deny an application from three virtual charter schools, which were connected to for-profit behemoth K12.

For now, this profit center is off the radar. But only for now.

At the same meeting of the state board, there was a robust discussion about how to fund merit pay. When the legislature decided it was a great idea, they didn’t appropriate any money to pay for it and told the districts to pay for it themselves, even as their budgets were shrinking. Nowhere in the discussion, at least as reported in the newspaper article, does any board member question the basic idea behind merit pay: Will teachers work harder? If they do, does that mean there will be more teaching to the test? With FCAT in disrepute and so many local boards passing resolutions against it, is this a good idea? Do rising scores mean better education?

Let’s be content to take one small victory at a time.

Categories Education Reform

Pearson Wields Undue Power in Britain Too

By dianeravitch
July 18, 2012 //
6

A recent article in the Guardian explores how the publishing giant Pearson commands the education world in Britain.

Pearson not only sells textbooks and testing, but also owns Britain’s biggest national examination system, which is operated for profit.

But that’s not all.

Pearson is now promoting itself as a policy studies outfit and think tank, studying the problems of British education and offering solutions. In whose interest, one wonders.

And of course it is developing a model school with a computer-based curriculum called the “Always Learning Gateway,” covering 11 subject areas. It is being tried out for free but will eventually be offered for profit.

Pearson is preparing a report on which the English examination system is promoting high standards and positioning Britain to be a global leader.

“Alasdair Smith, national secretary of the Anti Academies Alliance, which is critical of corporate influence in education, says: “This stuff frightens the life out of me. My concern is that business dictates the nature of education, and especially the aims of education, when it should be one voice among others.”

“Ball says private influence does not stop at Pearson. He mentions McKinsey, the management consultant that has published two widely cited international reports on successful education systems, as evidence of companies’ incursion into policymaking. Sir Michael Barber, Tony Blair’s former education standards guru, was an author of both McKinsey reports. He now works for Pearson.

“Last month, it was reported that ministers want to “outsource” some policymaking to companies, consultants and thinktanks in a bid to scale down the civil service.”

The British government, it seems, is outsourcing education policy to the nation’s largest vendor of education products and services.

Categories Education Reform, For-Profit, International, On-Line Education, Pearson, Testing

Experience Matters

By dianeravitch
July 18, 2012 //
4

In my forty years or so of studying the history of American education, I have learned about fads that came and went, disappeared and returned, over the course of the past century, each time treated as an innovation. It demonstrates to me the value of studying the history of education, so as to be aware of why ideas and methods work or don’t work, and to protect children against the latest passing enthusiasm. It strikes me that people who are teaching must find it very distracting to see the mandates come rolling out of the state department of education, or now the federal government, to do what they know is wrong or what is distracting, or to do something that violates their sense of professionalism. Yes, change is important, and yes, change can mean progress. But not always. The wise educator can tell the difference.

A reader answers an earlier post:

In my 16 years of experience, I have seen ideas come and go only to return again when some higher-up at the state DOE thinks that he or she has some kind of innovative approach despite the fact that we’ve tried that method before. Teachers with experience under their belts have an understanding of what works and what doesn’t work in their classrooms. I highly doubt that TFA has some miracle approach on how to teach that will revolutionize the profession.

“Value-added” is another one of those “buzzwords” that reformers like to infuse into the teaching environment. The mere fact that you used the term shows that there is an obvious “superman” mentality in the TFA concept (not just to quote that propaganda of a movie) wherein success is quantifiable in the same way that businesses measure success by profits. Students are not “products”–they’re people as are those who teach them. You cannot put a number on the complexity of teachers’ contributions to the students of our country.

Categories Education Reform, Teachers and Teaching

Will Business Own Education in Wisconsin?

By dianeravitch
July 17, 2012 //
8

Rebecca Kemble, a stringer for the Progressive, covered a legislative committee hearing in Madison, Wisconsin, where business groups lined up to complain that the schools were not meeting their needs. They complained that they could not find workers with the right set of skills. Despite high unemployment in the area, manufacturers say that they can’t find suitably trained workers. They had no data to back up what they said, just opinions.

The extraordinary thing that Kemble did was to look at the kind of engineering jobs that were going unfilled. As Kemble writes:

Some manufacturers also claim that they can’t fill high-skilled engineering positions, but they don’t mention the salaries, benefits, and terms of employment associated with those jobs. A search of mechanical engineering positions currently open in the Milwaukee metropolitan area requiring a minimum of a bachelor’s degree and five years of experience yielded the most results in the $30,000 – $50,000/year salary category. Some of those positions are offered on a contract or temporary basis, meaning no benefits.

Another alarming development:

Already this year Scott Walker has signed into law a measure that stacks the governing board of the Milwaukee Area Technical College with business owners, giving them control of program, curriculum, hiring, and firing decisions.

The manufacturers are working together with friendly legislators to develop “laws that use the public education system to orient, train, and track kids into the corporate working world at a young age. Rep. Farrow mentioned that he would like that tracking to begin in first grade. But Tim Sullivan, who appeared before the committee as Scott Walker’s recently appointed “Special Consultant for Business and Workforce Development,” has even more ambitious ideas: ‘In workforce development we say, you begin at birth and end at the grave.’”

There was constant teacher-bashing during the day-long session. One educator tried to remind the committee that the public schools have a duty to educate the citizenry. But they were hopelessly antagonistic to anything but workforce training to serve their own needs.

I bet they didn’t know that Wisconsin has the highest graduation rate of any state in the nation.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Categories Education Reform

Is This Accurate? Fact-checkers Needed.

By dianeravitch
July 17, 2012 //
25

I try to be careful in terms of what I write and what I repost from readers. If readers express their personal experiences and strong views, I have no problem with that, and I never repost anything that uses epithets or goes beyond the bounds of civility or fair disagreement. If I err, it is not knowingly.

I just received a comment about Tennessee’s evaluation system and its provenance. This was in response to my post today about “legal fraud.” I would appreciate readers’ responses, not opinions, but citations and facts:

TN bought TEAM/TAP, a teacher evaluation system from a Milken owned company called NIET. http://www.tapsystem.org/about/about.taf?page=nietbio_lmilken
The 1-5 scoring rubric met the requirement in Race to the Top to evaluate teachers with “objective” measures.The Milkens have been marketing TEAM/TAP since the mid 1990’s. If it is so effective, shouldn’t there be dozens of studies replicating its success? There are none. Peer-review constrains bad science and practices, and protects those from harm who are subjected to its application. It’s not an overstatement to say that, absent critical review, the TEAM evaluation can identify teaching quality about as well as rolling dice.

That the Milken family foundation has bypassed peer review and critical analysis and sold its “product” to the taxpayers is very curious. This use of our public funds deserves further scrutiny. Recall that co-founder Michael Milken is a convicted felon. Rudy Giuliani successfully prosecuted him for a massive fraud in 1989 that destroyed his company and cost the taxpayers millions in the ensuing cascade of savings and loan failures. Milken’s crimes were so egregious, president G.W. Bush refused to give him a presidential pardon. Caution and study here would seem wise. http://articles.latimes.com/2009/feb/03/business/fi-milken3

Outsourcing to contractors with a history of fraud has the potential to be a spectacular boondoggle. Our students will be the victims. Who will be held accountable?
Categories Education Reform, For-Profit, Teacher Evaluations

Steve Barr Returns to Run More Schools in LA

By dianeravitch
July 17, 2012 //
24

Steve Barr, who founded Green Dot charter schools but then left under a cloud, has returned to Los Angeles to partner with the school district.

This time, however, he is not targeting schools with low-income students, but middle-class schools, including one that he wants his children to attend.

It is puzzling why the district is ceding control of these schools to Mr. Barr, as they appear to be stable, high-performing schools.

To my knowledge, he is not an educator.

If I showed up in Los Angeles and offered to take control of some of its best schools, would LAUSD give them to me?

It is not clear if he gets a management fee, but I assume he will.

I don’t get it.

I have never entirely gotten over Steve Barr’s sneaky takeover of Locke High School. He persuaded half the staff to vote for him gaining control of the school, then fired most of them. That strikes me as a betrayal. But that’s just me.

Categories Education Reform

The Onion on TFA

By dianeravitch
July 17, 2012 //
20

A reader sent this link. It is hilarious.

Categories Education Reform

Stephen Krashen on the Common Core Standards

By dianeravitch
July 17, 2012 //
19

This letter by Stephen Krashen, professor emeritus of education and linguistics at the University of Southern California, will be posted today on the New York Times website. I just received it:

The common core movement seems to be common sense: Our schools should have similar standards, what students should know at each grade. The movement, however, is based on the false assumption that our schools are broken, that ineffective teaching is the problem and that rigorous standards and tests are necessary to improve things.
The mediocre performance of American students on international tests seems to show that our schools are doing poorly. But students from middle-class homes who attend well-funded schools rank among the best in world on these tests, which means that teaching is not the problem. The problem is poverty. Our overall scores are unspectacular because so many American children live in poverty (23 percent, ranking us 34th out of 35 “economically advanced countries”).
Poverty means inadequate nutrition and health care, and little access to books, all associated with lower school achievement. Addressing those needs will increase achievement and better the lives of millions of children.
How can we pay for this? Reduce testing. The common core demands an astonishing increase in testing, far more than needed and far more than the already excessive amount required by No Child Left Behind.
No Child Left Behind requires tests in math and reading at the end of the school year in grades 3 to 8 and once in high school. The common core will test more subjects and more grade levels, and adds tests given during the year. There may also be pretests in the fall.
The cost will be enormous. New York City plans to spend over  half a billion dollars on technology in schools, primarily so that students can take the electronically delivered national tests.
Research shows that increasing testing does not increase achievement. A better investment is protecting children from the effects of poverty, in feeding the animal, not just weighing it.
Categories Common Core, NCLB (No Child Left Behind), Poverty

Is This Any Way to Improve the Teaching Profession?

By dianeravitch
July 17, 2012 //
55

This is President Obama’s vision for reshaping the teaching profession. I certainly agree with the idea that entry into teacher education programs should be selective and rigorous, but almost everything else about the program is odious.

The administration proposes a competitive grant program that would do the following [my comments are in brackets]:

The proposed grant program calls for states and districts to undertake a comprehensive set of five reforms including:

  • Reforming colleges of education and making these schools more selective  [good idea, but today the biggest producers of teaching degrees are online “universities” that have no standards at all so it is hard to know how these  diploma mills might be affected, if at all]
  • Creating new career ladders for teachers to become more effective and ensure their earnings are tied more closely to performance [this is merit pay, the same policy that has failed over and over, tying teachers’ earning to the test scores of students and calling it “performance”]
  • Establishing more leadership roles and responsibilities for teachers, improving professional development, and providing autonomy to teachers in exchange for greater responsibility [no problem here, though I bet many teachers would like to have the autonomy to be freed of the high-stakes testing that NCLB and Race to the Top and Obama’s waivers from NCLB require]
  • Creating evaluation systems based on multiple measures rather than just on test scores [what a joke, just like the “multiple measures” now adopted in state after state where test scores are “only” 40-50% of the teacher’s evaluation but outweigh all the other measures]
  • Reshaping tenure to protect good teachers and promote accountability [in other words, no tenure at all, unless your students get higher test scores every year]
This is the same old test-based accountability of NCLB, with a new wrapper. Will the Obama administration ever look at the research? Might they look at the persistent failure of merit pay? Might they look at the National Research Council’s report on the meager results of test-based accountability? Must they continue to shove testing down everyone’s throat for the next four years?
Hey, I know Romney will be worse. But can’t Obama give us something positive to hope for in another term, some possibility of reforming his ruinous Race to the Top?
Categories Education Reform, Race to the Top, Teacher Tenure, Teachers and Teaching, Testing
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