Since I am not allied with the corporate reformers, I don’t put much credence in test scores. But the reformers love Big Data and seem to believe that everyone and everything can be measured. They use phrases like “you measure what you treasure” and “you can control only what can be measured.”
I happen to think such thoughts are anti-humanistic and technocratic to an extreme, but then I am not in the mainstream of reform ideology. The sooner we forget Big Data, in my view, the sooner we will understand the human beings we confront.
Jared Polis, who thinks I am “an evil woman,” loves Race to the Top and Colorado’s SB 191, which makes test scores count for 50% of a teacher’s evaluation. He believes in Big Data.
He may need my help.
Gary Rubinstein reviewed Polis’ charter schools and found that they experienced very low growth. In reformer talk, they are bad schools. In other words, Polis might want to read my book and find a different vocabulary, a new way of thinking about what it means to create a good school. If he sticks with the corporate reformer mentality, he is a failure. Bad idea.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Perhaps he would like to come to my second grade musical next week, “New York, New York.” We open with “East side, west side. . .all around the town; the kids sang ring around rosie” (and we learned about the history of the children’s game in reference). The children love it. We have seven scenes with child-made scenery and heart-felt singing. A small group is singing “Autumn in New York” (with some word changes).
You can’t measure that.
And it is what shapes our children—-these memories, learning about the city by creating our own city modeled after NYC (such that when they go there or hear about it they will connect with this experience). I know it sticks with the children because I once taught first graders in KCMO, and then returned to their school when they were in sixth grade and they remembered the songs I had taught them. I understand they also need to learn their math and writing (I emphasize that when I can too), but my point is that a complete education includes programs like the one we are working on.
So, what, do we get a decibel counter and measure the applause?
No way.
Stealing childhood from children is wrong.
To the owner of this blog, I admire your eternal optimism. However, it might be best to not hold your breath until Congressman Jared Polis takes your advice.
“You can’t teach an old dogma new tricks.” [Dorothy Parker]
🙂
Jared Polis, curb your dogma.
I honor and respect advice from all quarters.
What about “evil” quarters? I mean, here you sound all congenial and open-minded. BJ with that tweet you sounded quite righteous and judgmental. Will the real Jared Polis please stand up? Do you respectfully disagree with the policy preferences of Diane Ravitch, or is she “evil”?
Which is it?
I’m glad Gary rose to the occasion. Bravo!
Typical charter CEO who is incompetent but has a job for life. He lets the money flow upward while he rips off his workers and the community.
“Polis might want to read my book and find a different vocabulary, a new way of thinking about what it means to create a good school. If he sticks with the corporate reformer mentality, he is a failure. Bad idea.”
I love that you said this!
Thank you for your post defending the efforts of New America School. New America School (NAS) serves almost entirely NEP (non-English-proficient) and LEP (limited English proficiency) students, many of whom are several grade levels behind when they enter NAS. Nearly all of their students are drop-outs or have major gaps in their education.
Given that the tests are only available in English, the NAS students have a significant disadvantage.
A primary metric the school uses to demonstrate success is measuring the acquisition of the English language. Many NAS students are 19 or 20 years old, and only have a 6th grade or 8th grade education prior to entering NAS. Sadly in Colorado students “age out” of public education at age 21, and few students can accomplish 4 or 5 years of learning in 1 or 2 years. But even if they don’t earn a diploma, the students gain functional English language literacy.
This analysis is a good example of why test scores should not be the only criteria used to evaluate schools or teachers. NAS teachers are hard working and dedicated and have literally transformed lives. To be clear, I support transparency on aggregate test scores, and Mr. Rubinstein is welcome to use that information to make whatever charts he wishes to show that a school is good, bad, or otherwise but it is important to educate the reform community about the importance of alternative education and serving all kids.
Rubinstein mentions that “Colorado is one of the states that has been most aggressive about tying standardized test scores to teacher evaluations and to school rankings. ” but NAS does not use standardized test scores to evaluate teachers, nor has any kind of “ranking” hurt the school’s effort to fulfill its mission “to empower new immigrants, English language learners, and academically under-served students with the educational tools and support they need to maximize their potential, succeed and live the American dream.”
More information at http://www.newamericaschool.org
And a good video about New America School:
Congressman Polis, I appreciate the mission of your schools. I teach emerging English speakers myself in a comprehensive public high school, though, and in Massachusetts schools are penalized brutally for their ELL and FLEP “score supressor” students.
Districts with immigrant populations have mostly been taken over by the state, by now, based on the fundamentally flawed doctrine of accountability for test score growth.
The education position presented on your website is very mistaken, though. How will unleashing “entrepreneurship” in public education somehow serve these students? You aren’t looking to make a profit off them somehow, are you? Then why should you expect any other real educator to be motivated by profit?
And, are you willing to put the “teeth” of accountability into your own students’ necks? The most dangerous and destructive combination of all is the conjunction of entrepreneurs in control of coercive accountability doctrines. It’s worse than regulatory capture in any ordinary commercial venture, because the children are so vulnerable, and the harm to them is so great.
No excuses, Jared.
The districts weren’t serving many of these students. As a social entrepreneur, I started a new public school to serve them. New America School is a non-profit and works closely with several school districts. So yes, it took entrepreneurship. There is a difference between social entrepreneurship and private sector entrepreneurship.
I also use the SIOP materials to inform my teaching, and I also recommend them. I’ve worked years in alternative programs, and I recommend those, too. But I recommend applying them in district schools, where students have access to my college preparatory chemistry course at the same time. We need more services for them, not punitive, dead-end test prep.
“There is a difference between social entrepreneurship and private sector entrepreneurship.”
That’s a good distinction, but why confound social innovation with profit seeking in the first place? Then, the profiteers sneak right in under the flag of a few Potempkin Village set-ups. If you understand that, you might decide to join the people who are building a broad political to rein in the profit-seeking.
Too bad it was the private-sector-type entrepreneurship that got unleashed on American children, by force of law, right in their classrooms where you’d think they were safe.
I think “reformers” might have originally believed your own hype (for a while). They imagined they’d sort things out, take charge like competent businessmen, and have (union-free) projects up by 2014 that showed their success in test scores.
Unfortunately, when that turned out not to be the case, they doubled down on the propaganda and bullying.
“Social entrepreneurship” in the context of so-called education reform?
That’s an Orwellian term if I ever heard one. Sort of like “benign malignancy.”
The owner of this blog and others have commented recently on a semantic shift among some of the leaders of the charterite/privatizer movement.
I think we have a good example in this thread.
The ‘non-answer’ is the new ‘answer’ to legitimate questions.
This is a very old and discredited tactic.
“There are only two mistakes one can make along the road to truth; not going all the way, and not starting.” [Buddha]
It’s way past time to start.
😦
The hypocrisy lies here. Polis says that, in spite of the rabid enforcement of coercive accountability that hounds struggling students and their teachers in district schools, they don’t bother his charter with it at all.
“NAS does not use standardized test scores to evaluate teachers, nor has any kind of “ranking” hurt the school’s effort to fulfill its mission “to empower new immigrants…”
So, why should we let it hurt the mission of the real public schools? He explains that, “The districts weren’t serving many of these students.” But how can we, when the accountability dogma attacks them in our districts, and shuts their public schools?
Rep. Polis, most charter laws require a contract between the charter its authorizer. What measures have you and your authorizer agreed on to determine what progress your students are making, and what your school will be held accountable for?
Where are the trolls to tell us how liberally biased NBC is?