The Louisiana State Supreme Court ruled that it was unconstitutional to fund vouchers using money dedicated to public schools. The court split 6-1. The decision removes funding not only for vouchers but for “course choice,” which was supposed to fund courses offered by entrepreneurs–many of them online– outside the public schools.
Archives for the month of: May, 2013
I did not go to the annual meeting of the American Educational Research Association in San Francisco, so was not aware of what is described in this post. Jennifer Jennings says that Arne Duncan was booed when he spoke, and she apologized to Secretary Duncan for the behavior of her fellow researchers.
Why was Secretary Duncan booed, and should AERA (or anyone else) apologize for the booing?
Booing is the behavior of the powerless. Educators are angry–and Jennings knows this–because of the top-down, authoritarian way in which Duncan has imposed policies that are bad for children, ruinous for teachers, and harmful to the quality of education. Jennings also knows that Duncan holds all the power. Educators may write blogs, opinion pieces, books, and research studies, and they will be completely ignored by Duncan. To say the least, he is uninterested in dialogue and unwilling to change his hardened belief that his policies are successful, no matter what anyone says.
In New York City, our mayor proudly announced that the public should hold him accountable for improving the public schools. After he spent $100 million or so to win a new term, someone in the press asked Mayor Bloomberg how the public could hold him accountable. He answered: “They can boo me at parades.”
How can we hold Secretary Duncan accountable?
He is silent as teachers and principals are fired based on test scores. He is silent as beloved schools are closed because of test scores. He is silent as cities turn their public schools over to entrepreneurs. He is silent as for-profit businesses take over public school districts and as for-profit charters proliferate. He is silent as more and more states adopt vouchers to send public money to religious schools. He is actively abetting the misuse of testing. He is actively supporting the forces of privatization.
We know now he will not change course. The only question is whether public education will survive Arne Duncan.
I condemn his misguided and harmful policies, not the researchers who used the only means of protest available to them. What he is doing to our children, our teachers, and our schools is far more offensive than booing. Will Arne Duncan ever apologize to the children, parents, and educators of America for what he has done and continues to do?
Edward F. Berger is a strong voice for sanity in the desert of Arizona education politics.
He attended a community meeting with a gubernatorial candidate.
The condition of public education after 20 years of failed policies is frightening.
“The politician, who has been involved in the demise of public education for well over a decade, is not naïve, he is not misinformed, he is, in fact, part of the insanity that has taken over the state and is openly destroying public education so that now private religious and charter schools have access to our public tax dollars. He stands before this hopeful group and omits what he knows, that these are dollars diverted from district schools, the very schools this assembly is concerned about. (Even though charter schools are classified as public schools, they should not be. They do not have elected boards, are not effectively monitored, provide partial curriculum, and too many are profit-driven).”
The politician leaves out many important facts that bear on the future of education: “He never mentions the hundreds of millions of education dollars that are lost and unaccounted for. Or that whole financial systems and even buildings are being replicated at great cost to taxpayers. These are dollars that are taken away from the delivery of services to children. He knows that charter operators are their own bosses, making financial and other decisions that, more often than not, put money into their own pockets and those of their family and friends. He is well aware that charter operators can use the dollars allocated for the education of each child to buy buildings for themselves, or lease space to replicate the schools the taxpayers have already built. He knows that too many of the Schools of Choice determine their own curriculum which is too often biased and fact-adverse. He knows that many charters are subcontracted to profit-driven entities. He knows that trained and experienced teachers are not required in charter schools, contrary to a significant body of evidence demonstrating the increased impact of professional, experienced teachers on learning and human development. He knows the history about how accountability for charter schools was undermined when the legislature circumvented the State Board of Education to create a State Board for Charter Schools whose base purpose is to eliminate reporting standards that led to accountability. As Schools of Choice are running rampant, existing district schools are losing students, funding, and their infrastructure is degrading.”
Mike Petrilli of the conservative Thomas B. Fordham Institute just posted his first blog exchange with Deborah Meier. Mike argues that the key to closing the opportunity gap between rich and poor children is to close the vocabulary gap. He cites the work of E.D. Hirsch to support his contention.
In his article, he refers to me as one of the people who say that nothing can be done until we fix poverty. To be sure I don’t misquote him, as he misquotes me, here is the relevant paragraph:
“Still, the message that comes through in Professors Reardon’s and Carter’s work—and from others on the left, including Diane Ravitch and Richard Rothstein—is that there’s not much schools can do about these gaps. They are visible before kids even enter kindergarten; they don’t grow much, if at all, while children are in the K-12 system; and they are fundamentally related to our country’s economic and political system. We’ll never make much progress until we get serious about redistributing income, or reviving labor unions, or raising the minimum wage, etc.”
Actually, I have never said that. I do believe that the dramatic income inequality in this country burdens children, nearly a quarter of whom live in poverty. I do think it is a national scandal that our nation has a higher proportion of children in poverty (about 23%) than any other advanced nation.
But I have never said that schools can do nothing to improve the education of poor children until we redistribute income or raise the minimum wage, etc. I have said and written on many occasions that we must improve schools and improve the lives of children at the same time.
There are many things that schools can do to help poor kids succeed in school. Start with reducing class size. If we were serious about helping poor kids, they would be in classes no larger than 12-15, just like the classes at Exeter and Deerfield Academy and Spence. Why do the richest kids get what the poorest kids need, while the neediest kids get stuffed into classes of 35-40 and do not get the individual attention they need? Would Petrilli agree?
Poor kids need schools that have a rich program in the arts and physical education, as well as other essential subjects, like foreign languages, history, and the sciences. They need beautiful facilities and playing fields, laboratories and libraries. Instead, they are invariably crammed into worn buildings that have few of those facilities, buildings that rich parents would never permit their children to attend.
Poor kids need teachers who have excellent and deep preparation to teach, with the training to help children with disabilities and English language learners. Instead they get the newest teachers, who have little or no preparation for the work they are expected to do. This cheats poor kids.
To suggest that poverty doesn’t matter is simply wishful thinking. Poor children miss more days of school because they are likelier than their advantaged peers to get sick, and likelier not to get the medical care they need. They are less likely to see a dentist or have their vision tested. They are subject to many burdens imposed by poverty, and those burdens affect their school performance. Being sick and hungry interferes with one’s school work. Being homeless interferes with one’s school work.
Yes, schools matter a lot. They can change lives. Yes, teachers make a difference. They change the lives of children every day.
But poverty matters too. Anyone who is serious about changing the lives of children in this nation will insist that poor kids have equality of educational opportunity. Not harsh discipline; not threats and punishments tied to test scores. Not a Race to the Top.
Just equality of educational opportunity.
That is a good starting point.
A new report from the state auditor general shows how charters and cyber charters are overpaid, while the public system–which most children attend–get the short end of the stick.
“PA cybercharters avg cost of $10,145 was $3,500 more than national average of $6,500.
“PA charters spent avg $13,411 per student, about $3K more than national average of $10K.
“Fixing PA’s Charter School Formula Could Save $365 Million a Year in Taxpayer Money.”
In this video of 23 minutes, you will get a synopsis of why value-added modeling doesn’t work.
The video is a preview of a collection of research papers that will be available online in a few months, and published in 2014 by Teachers College Press in 2014.
The more we learn about the real consequences of VAM, the more we understand that it has perverse consequences.
We know already that it puts too much emphasis on test scores, and we saw what that produced in Atlanta, DC, El Paso, and other districts.
We know it narrows the curriculum, as only the tested subjects count.
We know it encourages teaching to the test.
We know that it is unstable and unreliable.
We know that good teachers may get low ratings because they teach kids who have high needs.
We know that the composition of the class has a greater effect on the teacher’s rating than the teacher’s “quality.”
We know that the test scores are affected by many factors, not just what the teacher does.
When the papers are available, I will post a link.
I usually agree with Matt Di Carlo. He is one smart guy.
But not always.
That’s okay. Friends can disagree and still be friends (I proved that by blogging with Deborah Meier for five years).
I think that value-added methods of using test scores to rate teacher quality are “junk science.”
Now, granted, I am but a historian, not a social scientist, but I do read lots of social science. I noted that the National Academy of Education and AERA held a briefing on Capitol Hill and issued a joint statement warning about the pitfalls of VAM. Here is a salient point from their report: “With respect to value-added measures of student achievement tied to individual teachers, current research suggests that high-stakes, individual-level decisions, or comparisons across highly dissimilar schools or student populations, should be avoided.”
Edmund Gordon, one of our nation’s most eminent psychologists, recently led a commission to study assessment practices. He concluded that the overemphasis and misuse of standardized testing to hold students, teachers, and schools accountable is not only ineffective but “immoral.”
I would say that “immoral” is an even stronger condemnation than “junk science.”
Campbell’s Law suggests that the use of high-stakes testing degrades education. Threatening to fire teachers if their students’ scores don’t go up does not produce better education. It produces worse education. It promotes narrowing of the curriculum. It promotes cheating. It encourages teachers and schools to avoid the neediest students.
Teaching is so much more than test scores. To think that teachers may be defined significantly by the rise or fall of the test scores of their students requires a belief in the intrinsic value of standardized tests that I do not share. We may learn something from wide assessments with no-stakes, like NAEP. But using these flawed instruments to fire teachers and close schools is–in my judgment–wrong. They were not designed for those purposes. And the first rule of psychometrics is that tests should be used only for the purpose for which they were designed.
All things considered, the term “junk science” seems appropriate, as does Dr. Gordon’s phrase: ineffective and immoral.
One reason parents flee public schools, if they can afford it, is to escape the dead hand of testing that now strangles learning. The sooner we can put testing in its place as a diagnostic tool for teachers to assess what they have taught (not as a Pearson-designed 14-hour ordeal), the sooner we will restore the rightful purposes of education and the dignity of the teaching profession.
My, how things change in only one year.
Last year, Governor Jindal rushed through his legislation to strip teachers of tenure, base 40% of their evaluation on test scores, make all teachers at-will employees, subject to dismissal with one bad rating, and everything else that Jindal and White could dream up to make it hard on teachers.
When challenged in court, the law was declared unconstitutional because it covered too many subjects.
So the governor returned to the Legislature seeking to revive his punitive evaluation system. The Legislature voted unanimously to delay its punitive effects, despite the protestations of Jindal and White. They wanted to start the firings ASAP. The legislators said wait.
Maybe they started wondering who would want to teach in the state’s schools.
Or they noticed Jindal’s sagging poll numbers.
Carol Corbett Burris has been one of the leaders of the battle against the Néw York State educator evaluation system, which was developed after the state won a Race to the Top grant of $700 million. Burris helped created the principals’ rebellion against test-based evaluations of teachers and principals.
She also was recently selected by her peers as New York’s Principal of the Year. She is principal of South Side High School in Rockville Center.
Here Carol explains why she is disappointed by Teachers College’s decision to honor the Chancellor of the Board of Regents, whose policies Carol and her colleagues oppose.
I quoted TC’s press release earlier today, in which it saluted Merryl Tisch for her leadership in tying teacher evaluation to test scores. It applauded more for her support for judging education schools by the test scores of the students of their graduates. To ice the cake, the press release heralded Tisch’s willingness to permit museums and other non-traditional institutions to grant masters’ degrees. Odd that TC would like that.
But I mention the press release because I have heard that the press office is revising it to remove any reference to the state’s zealous devotion to standardized testing. It may have disappeared by now.
Carol Burris writes:
“As a proud TC grad, I am saddened. It appears to be one more more betrayal of the progressive ideals on which the college was founded. The fact that the press release hails her work in evaluating teachers by test scores (opposed by most TC scholars) and data that ties schools of education to public school results, confounds me. What does TC stand for? I guess in the future we can expect TC student teachers to be placed in Scarsdale so that the school gets good ratings. Which of the following statements make her worthy of the award?
–M Tisch saying that if educators are not prepared for CCSS they are –”living under a rock”
http://www.edweek.org/ew/articles/2013/03/27/26newyork_ep.h32.html
–M Tisch saying in NYT that now that teachers are evaluated under APPR, the public will not dislike them so much
–M Tisch donates 1 million, along with Bill Gates and charter schools, to fund the Fellows who have pushed the corporate agenda and test score evaluation policies.
http://www.cityandstateny.com/cash-flow/
I feel most sorry for the idealistic young teachers who worked hard for their degrees. They understand what is happening.”
The teacher who wrote this post reequired anonymity, for obvious reasons:
I am writing to tell you about a situation at my school — Shea High in Pawtucket, RI.
At the start of last year, both Shea and Tolman High (the only two non-charter public high schools in Pawtucket) were told that they had failed to make AYP as per NCLB and would have to undergo transformation. Note that since RI has accepted RttT, last year was the last possible year that this could have happened.
Despite high poverty, transience, ESL population, etc. the only AYP target that Shea had failed to meet was for graduation rate. It had remained stagnant at about 59% for three years, just barely failing to meet the target of 60%.
When the announcement was made last year that we were to undergo transformation, we were told that this would involve at the very least the removal of our principal (a fantastic, very bright, and driven man who had been principal for about ten years and whose leadership was one of the greatest reasons we had managed to make AYP in every other required category). As we had only failed to make AYP by a fraction of a percent, and we knew that a high transience rate contributed greatly to our low graduation rate, teachers and other stakeholders scrambled to locate students who had simply disappeared over the years.
At this point I should interject that under NCLB, RIDE [Rhode Island Department of Education] had been given some leeway in determining how many years a school had to make AYP before transformation was necessary. The decision to limit the number of years to three had been made AFTER our three year stagnation streak had begun. Think of that what you will.
I was one of those teachers scrambling to locate lost students in the hope of finding some who had actually graduated but had been labelled dropouts because the school system had lost track of them. Every student counted as we were only off by a fraction of a percent. I was able to find one, a boy from Ethiopia whose sister had taken an ESL class of mine. The family had moved from Rhode Island to North Dakota and he had graduated from high school there.
In the end, we were able to prove that our graduation rate had actually risen above 60% for one of the three years of stagnation. Unfortunately, RIDE refused to accept this new data, claiming that it was “too late” to take it into consideration (my first thought was to wonder if it would also have been considered “too late” to consider new data if we had been caught cheating, but I digress). Transformation would go ahead as planned. Our principal, Dr. Christopher Lord — an excellent, dedicated administrator with a great reputation in education circles around our small state — was out.
At a recent meeting with our transformation director, I learned that the baseline graduation rate used in our transformation plan was 67%. This seemed very strange to me, as our school was in transformation specifically because its graduation rate was below 60%. At first I had thought that the graduation rate for the third year of stagnation had been altered upwards due in part to the work teachers had done locating missing graduates, and I was livid.
When I asked at the meeting, our transformation director originally indicated that this was the case. However, after further research it seems that the transformation director (who was not in the system last year and could not have remembered the mad scramble for data I mentioned above) may not have fully understood my question.
After consulting several officials and reading the transformation document, I learned that the baseline was 67% because that was the most recent year data was available for — 2011, the year AFTER the three year stagnation. I also learned that the sudden “jump” in graduation rate was due to new methodologies being used downtown which resulted in a more accurate picture of who had actually graduated from high school.
I still have some serious issues with our transformation situation.
First, there is the fact that RIDE’s decision to limit the number of years schools had to raise their graduation rates to three years came sometime in the middle of our three year stagnation. I know that “fair” is a four-letter word, but something doesn’t smell right about this.
Second — why did Pawtucket decide to implement a new, more accurate system for determining graduation rate at the WORST possible time? One year earlier and we would have shown more than adequate growth and been off the hook; one year later and we would have had a much lower baseline graduation rate from which to determine a transformation target. Whoever made this call was either asleep at the wheel or not interested in seeing Shea and Tolman succeed at transformation.
Finally — given our baseline of 67% graduation rate, it was decided that our transformation target should be 78% by 2014-2015 and 80% by 2015-2016. To put this into context, the RI state average graduation rate is currently 77%, and this is almost sure to go down as we implement Gist’s plan to require all students to get a 2 or more on the NECAP in order to graduate. Even if the average graduation rate does NOT go down, it is possible that Shea — one of the poorest and most challenged high schools in the state — will raise its graduation rate to higher than the state average but still fail to hit its transformation target because it doesn’t beat the state average BY ENOUGH.
We have been told, over and over, that if we do not meet the transformation targets then it is likely that we will all be fired and only 50% of us will be hired back. I do not personally believe that Pawtucket or RIDE wants to do this, because if they had wanted to do it they could have done so last year when they chose instead to go with transformation. What I fear will come to pass is that Shea will fail (by design) to meet its transformation targets and teachers will be taken aside and told that Pawtucket and RIDE have agreed to do them a BIG FAVOR — they will be allowed to keep their jobs, but only if some MAJOR concessions are made.
Or maybe they will fire us all and agree to rehire 100% of teachers who will sign a new contract that the union hasn’t been consulted on. Of course these last thoughts are just idle ones, but they do concern me.
Diane Ravitch's blog 