Archives for the month of: January, 2014
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NC: Baker Mitchell Charter School Under Federal Investigation

By dianeravitch
January 10, 2014 //
7

Yesterday the North Carolina State Board of Education voted to grant additional charters to Baker Mitchell, who has collected over $16 million in last five years to run three charters.

Today, Lindsay Wagner of NC Policy Watch reports that Mitchell’s schools are under federal investigation.

Mitchell is on the board of the John Locke Foundation, a libertarian foundation that advocates for charters and is funded by Art Pope, the multi- millionaire state budget director. Bill Moyers recently featured Pope in a documentary about his role in the far-right takeover of the legislature.

Mitchell also serves on the State Charter Advisory Board.

Categories Charter Schools, North Carolina

Max Brantley: Charters and the Erosion of Brown v. Board

By dianeravitch
January 10, 2014 //
7

Max Brantley is a fearless columnist in Arkansas who dares to disagree with the Waltons in their home state. Yes, there are such reporters who are unafraid to speak truth to the monied power that owns their state.

In this column, Brantley describes the latest ploy by the charter industry: They are opening charters that implicitly will serve as havens for white families that do not want their children to attend majority-black schools in Arkansas.

Brantley writes:

Then there’s Quest, to be run by a Texas private organization faulted in a national study by a charter school-friendly research outfit at Stanford for its poor performance with lower-end students. Not that those kind of students are really anticipated in western Little Rock. There’ll be a lottery for admission if demand exceeds seats, but with a pittance budget for transportation it will be a miracle if it doesn’t reflect the higher incomes and lower black percentages of the neighborhood elementaries potential Quest parents now attend. They don’t want to go to majority black/poor nearby middle schools with lagging test scores. Some are improving, Forest Heights, particularly, and there are plans to make it an academic magnet, but it’s a risk the parents are reluctant to take. Too bad, because it’s project-oriented model sounds truly innovative.

Innovation? Look at Quest’s application. It’s full of meaningless education-speak gobbledygook. It promises to “feel like a private school,” but be free. I think you and I both know what “feels like a private school” means. The application also says bluntly that, since the Little Rock deseg case is over, neither they nor the state needworry one bit about whether the kids they draw from the Little Rock school district  will add to segregation there or create a segregated publicly financed school surrounded by the dregs of truly public education.

Sixty years after the controversial Brown v. Board of Education, the charter industry has found a way to render it moot. Remember, it’s all for the children. That is, for some children.

Categories Charter Schools, Education Reform, Privatization, Segregation , Racial Isolation and Integration

Peter Greene: The Worst Part of “Reform” Is….?

By dianeravitch
January 10, 2014 //
132

Peter Greene is a veteran teacher in Pennsylvania. He has a blog called “Curmudgucation.”

In this post, he explains that the worst part of the faux reform movement is standardization. Conformity.

And what makes teachers vulnerable to it is that they are groomed to conform and to teach conformity.

He writes:

If I had to put my finger on the one most troubling aspect of the wave of reformy stuff that is currently battering us, it would be this. The standardization. The premise that education is a big machine with interchangeable cogs. The one size fits all. The sameness.

It is troubling because conformity and standardization are seductively appealing to schools and teachers.

And, he explains:

Every single aspect of current reform, from TFA to charters to most especially CCSS and the testing program to which it is irrevocably tied to the programs being hawked by Pearson et al– every single aspect is aimed at one thing. Sameness. Standardization. A system in which individual differences, whether they’re the differences of students or teachers or schools, do not and can not matter.

This is not right. This is not how we human beings are meant to be in the world. It doesn’t even work (let me be the one gazillionth person to point out the irony that most of these reformers would have fought and failed against their own system if they had to come up through it). It’s a lie. It’s terrible preparation for our students, and it seeks to deny and stamp out the humanity of every teacher and student who passes through a school….

But here’s a thought. What if we set up a system where every learner had a personal education professional who saw the student on a daily basis, face to face, and who got to know him well enough to chart a course that factored in the content area, the strengths and weaknesses of the learner, the strengths and weaknesses of the education professional, the individual learner’s personal goals, and the unique qualities and history of the place where they were working. It would have to be a very robust and resilient system to accommodate all the zillions of individual differences, but we could achieve that robust resilience by empowering the educational professionals to make any and all adjustments that were necessary to accommodate all the factors listed above.

Or we could just require everybody to cover all the same material at the same time in the same way while ignoring all of the individual factors involved with the live human beings in the room. We could standardize everything. We could make everything the same.

I’m going to vote for the first choice. It has the virtue of reflecting reality, plus it has the virtue of using a system that we already had in place. We just have to put teachers and schools back to where they ought to be.

 

Categories Accountability, Corporate Reformers, Education Industry, Pearson

NC Approves 26 New Charters, $$$$$ Boon for Founders

By dianeravitch
January 9, 2014 //
22

Lindsay Wagner of NC Policy Watch reports that the State Board of Education in North Carolina approved 26 new charter schools today, with little discussion.

The most controversial decision was this one:

Among those approved today is South Brunswick Charter School, a fourth charter school to be run by Baker A. Mitchell, Jr.

Over the past several months, Brunswick County school district officials have called out Mitchell for profiting heavily off of taxpayer-funded charter schools that offer no new or innovative educational experiences outside of what traditional public schools already offer. Mitchell also serves on the Charter School Advisory Board, which is tasked with reviewing and recommending charter school applications.

In an impact statement, which the State Board ignored, the local superintendent of schools Dr. Edward Pruden said the charter would offer nothing that is not already available in the public schools.

When South Brunswick Charter School opens this fall, the local public school district could lose more than $2.5 million to start, and double that as the school expands, according to Pruden’s impact statement.

Pruden also explained that the funds redirected to South Brunswick Charter School will not result in the provision of the same level of services to those students as his public school system currently provides. Some examples of those services include transportation and disability support services.

“Brunswick County Schools provide services to all who enter, regardless of social and emotional need or cognitive ability. Reduction of funding impacts programs and services to support additional programs such as school nursing, social workers, counseling, and psychological support,” explained the impact statement.

The founder of the new charter school is profiting handsomely from his existing charters:

South Brunswick Charter School will be operated by the Roger Bacon Academy and will rent property from Coastal Conservancy, LLC. Baker A. Mitchell Jr.—who happens to sit on the Charter School Advisory Board—owns both of those entities.

Mitchell, who currently operates three other public charter schools in the state, paid himself nearly $1.8 million in 2012 for what he characterized as “management fees” to the IRS for running Charter Day School. He has reportedly collected in the neighborhood of $16 million over a five-year period in management fees alone, according to Pruden’s impact statement [boldface added by me].

All of that money, of course, is taxpayer funds. But Mitchell doesn’t have to explain how, for example, he used $630,696 of taxpayer dollars for staff development, as reported on his 2012 Form 990.

The chair of the State Board rejected Pruden’s concern about conflict of interest and told him that the problems should be resolved locally, which of course is a big fat joke.

At least the State Treasurer found it in her heart to worry about what these new charters would do to the local public schools, but she voted for the charters anyway:

North Carolina State Treasurer Janet Cowell expressed concern for local school districts as she voted to approve the 26 new charter schools.

“There is a tipping point for LEAs,” cautioned Cowell, explaining that in school districts where there are high concentrations of charter schools, students’ educational experiences in traditional public schools could be compromised as funds are siphoned away from those budgets and into the coffers of charters.

No problem. North Carolina is monetizing its taxpayer dollars and finding ways for clever entrepreneurs to get rich.

 

Categories Charter Schools, Education Industry, North Carolina, Privatization

John Thompson: Is Market-Based Reform “Working”?

By dianeravitch
January 9, 2014 //
9

In mid-December, Matt di Carlo of the Shanker Institute reviewed the year’s production of research about charters, teacher incentives, and other aspects of the market-based approach to schooling, that is, the use of incentives and sanctions to produce higher test scores.

Schools Matter has published critiques by John Thompson of di Carlo’s review. Di Carlo is known for his scrupulous nonpartisanship; although part of the AFT, he does not take the union’s side. He writes as a researcher with no skin in the game.

In part 1, Thompson asks

“Where is the Matt DiCarlo of corporate reform? Where is a reformer who is will break ranks, for instance, on Washington D.C.’s IMPACT? There are plenty of individual reformers who have open minds. Are there any who are allowed to be like DiCarlo and acknowledge the strengths of evidence on the teachers’ side?”

Thompson is hard on di Carlo for standing back and above the fray:

Matt DiCarlo voices agreement with Gates that teachers and students should continue to be lab rats for Gates’ theories before rejecting them. If DiCarlo doesn’t believe that the jury is in and that twenty years of “reform” has failed, that’s fine. Decent people can agree to disagree.

But, I’m growing more frustrated with DiCarlo’s timidity in the face of corporate reformers singing from the same hymnal. He doesn’t challenge their assumptions and he keeps letting them define the issues. Moreover, I’m getting upset at the way he equates the arguments of test-driven reformers and teachers who resist them. It was the Billionaires Boys Club that came into school reform, denied that they had the burden of proof to show that their hypotheses would do more good than harm, and employed scorched earth politics against teachers and unions. Now, educators are criticized when we raise our voices in protest.

Above all, I am perplexed by DiCarlo’s refusal to push back on policy papers that employ sophisticated quantitative methods, but make no effort to ground their models in reality. 

Thompson adds:

The Billionaires Boys Club has tried to replace the traditional peer review process, social science and education history with Big Data. In doing so, they are trying to drive the clash of ideas from public schools.

The accountability hawks’ utilitarianism, bordering on anti-intellectualism, helps explain why high-stakes testing has failed. They imposed a radical and risky experiment without bothering to study the evidence on teaching and learning. Old Blood and Guts Bill Gates, however, says we need to endure another decade of his bubble-in experiments to see if they work. Yeah. His guts; Our blood.

In part 2 of Thompson’s critique of market-based reforms, he reviews many of the research studies on value-added measurement, showing that many of them contain warnings about the inaccuracy of VAM (one says that 68% of the ratings produce false positives and false negatives, a heck of a way to fire a teacher).

He concludes:

I would add another point which applies to nearly every aspect of market-based reforms. In schooling, the feces rolls downhill. The venom dumped on adults flows down onto children. When principals are subject to not-ready-for-prime-time accountability schemes, the #1 priority often will be to make sure the patient doesn’t die on their operating table. The search for scapegoats takes off. That is why the blame game is the prime legacy of market-driven reforms.

Part 3 of Thompson’s critique analyzes “the pitfalls that were discovered after value-added systems were implemented.” Value-added studies consistently find that teachers in high-poverty schools get less VAM than those in low-poverty schools. Is it the teachers at fault or the model or the assumptions behind the model?

Thompson concludes:

The idea that value-added evaluations could address the teacher quality equity issues in high-challenge schools is based on three assumptions. Firstly, that overworked inner city principals (who in my experience always worked over 80 hours a week, but who went weeks or months at a time without being able to allow classroom instruction to enter their consciousness, much less their “to do” list) are so craven as to allow this situation to persist, and that principals could have confidence that qualified replacements for bad teachers would apply for jobs. The answer, it is assumed, is to dump far more work on those overwhelmed principals.The second assumption is that even though it is not hard to document bad performance and fire bad teachers, that collective bargaining agreements play a significant role in protecting those teachers. In the case of the problem documented by Xu, Ozek, Hansen, and Sass, one must assume that, when a termination approaches, that mild-mannered union officials (even in Right to Work states) step into a phone book, shed their moderate, collaborative demeanor, and emerge as supermen and save the jobs of the “lemons.”

The third assumption is that the federal government should treat teachers differently from any other employees, coerce states into repudiating good faith contracts, turn the evaluation process, which traditionally evaluates what employees do or don’t do, on its head and incorporate the opinions of a few billionaires into law. It assumes that the dismissal of bad teachers would not correlate with the dismissal of “ineffective” teachers. The corollary assumption is that stripping teachers of their rights is the way to make the profession more attractive to new talent.

Even if such bizarre assumptions proved to be true, I question whether such a policy, which is collective punishment of teachers who committed to schools where it is harder to meet test score growth targets, should be considered appropriate in a constitutional democracy. 

Another installment is forthcoming. Stand by for more analysis of the perils of VAM by John Thompson!
Categories Accountability, Research, Teacher Evaluations

What Makes a Classic Joyful?

By dianeravitch
January 9, 2014 //
31

Here is a personal note.

I went to a Broadway play Wednesday at matinee. While driving in the car a few weeks ago, I heard someone on the radio raving about Shakespeare’s Twelfth Night, and she couldn’t contain her enthusiasm. I impetuously ordered tickets. When the bill came, I wondered if I had made a mistake. Why was I seeing this play? I had seen it before at least twice. Why see it again?

The woman on the radio warned that theater-goers should arrive at least half an hour to watch the performers dress on stage. We got there at exactly 1:30 and enjoyed every minute of it, watching skilled dressers change actors into men and women of the sixteenth century, in some cases, hand-stitching the outfit on the actor. By the way, the entire cast consisted of male actors, as they did in Shakespeare’s time. This added to the irony of a man pretending to be a woman pretending to be a man.

Then came the play, and it was a delight and a revelation. It was staged as if it were in Shakespeare’s time. The music, the singing, the clothing, the scenery, the great candlelabra–lit as we watched–everything was just right. A program note said that every piece of clothing was hand made, hand stitched, made as it had been hundreds of years ago.

The setting, the staging, the bantering with audience members seated in stalls on the stage made it feel that we had been transported back in time to the original production.

And the acting was wonderful. The audience roared with laughter. When the play was over, the actors got round after round of standing ovations.

As I watched the play, I felt I had never seen it before. It was magnificent. I understood every word (well, almost every word). The actors performed with wit, humor, and intelligence.

And I was reminded why Shakespeare is the greatest writer in the English language. His plays are contemporary, even when they are performed in the style and fashion of his day.

If you are anywhere near New York City, give yourself a great treat and get tickets for this delightful, memorable production. It is playing in repertory with Richard III, and I can’t wait to see it.

Categories Education Reform

Cuomo Supports Failed Ideas of Corporate Reformers

By dianeravitch
January 9, 2014 //
57

Governor Andrew Cuomo of New York put himself squarely in the camp of corporate reform with a proposal for merit pay based on value-added metrics.

He proposes to pay a bonus of $20,000 to teachers who are rated “highly effective” on the state’s controversial and unproven value-added evaluation program.

The fact that merit pay failed in New York City, where schools were offered a bonus for raising test scores, is of no consequence to Governor Cuomo. But, to be fair, maybe he doesn’t know that.

The fact that merit pay failed in Nashville, where teachers were offered individual bonuses of $15,000 to raise test scores is of no consequence to Governor Cuomo. But, to be fair, maybe he doesn’t know that.

The fact that merit pay has been tried for a century and has never worked anywhere is of no consequence to Governor Cuomo. But to be fair, maybe he doesn’t know that (I suggest that he read Reign of Error, chapter 12).

The good news is that Mayor Bill de Blasio disagreed with Governor Cuomo, even though he needs the Governor’s support to pass his millionaire’s tax to fund his pre-K program.

De Blasio said that he favored paying extra to teachers in work in struggling schools and to teachers in math and science, but that he doesn’t believe in merit pay.

The Murdoch-owned New York Post says that de Blasio is echoing the teachers’ union line, but in fact he is reflecting what research has proven again and again: Paying teachers to produce higher test scores does not work. And even if it did produce higher test scores, it would fail because it would mean that the scores were produced by test prep, rote learning, and incentives, while sacrificing the qualities that constitute a sound education.

Bottom line: Merit pay doesn’t work. If only there were some relationship between research and experience on one hand, and what policymakers believe on the other.

Categories Merit pay, New York

How Embarrassing for the Friedman Foundation

By dianeravitch
January 9, 2014 //
70

The Friedman Foundation, named for free-market economist Milton Friedman and his wife Rose, is the nation’s most fervent advocate of vouchers.

It commissioned a national poll to ascertain the depth of support for vouchers, and much to its surprise (and, no doubt, embarrassment), the public prefers smaller class sizes far more than vouchers.

Furthermore, the least favored option among those presented in the poll was vouchers for low-income families. To the extent that the public favors vouchers, it is for everyone, not just for the poor.

The public’s least favorite way to “reform” school was longer school days, according to this poll.

But the big problem for the Friedman Foundation is that the public prefers to improve public schools by reducing class sizes, not by adopting vouchers.

Categories Class size, Education Reform, Vouchers

Reactionary Legislature in NC Set for Big Charter Expansion

By dianeravitch
January 9, 2014 //
8

The governor and legislature in North Carolina are determined to privatize as many public dollars as possible.

They have approved vouchers for religious schools, private schools, and even home schools.

But their main privatization strategy is charter schools.

They are set to expand the number in the state, thus creating a consumer mentality and simultaneously draining funds from the public schools.

A news report says that:

The next two weeks will determine how rapidly North Carolina’s charter-school movement expands, at a time when supporters say the schools are giving families more choices and critics say they’re harming traditional public schools.

On Thursday, the State Board of Education will vote on whether to give final approval to 26 charter schools – four in Wake County, one in Durham, one in Harnett County and 11 in the Charlotte area – that want to open this fall. It would mark the state’s largest single-year expansion of charter schools since the program was in its infancy in the late 1990s.

Next week, the state Office of Charter Schools will recommend which of the 71 charter schools that have applied to open in 2015 should go forward for further review. Those applicants includes eight in Wake County, eight in Durham and 31 in Charlotte and surrounding areas.

North Carolina could have more than 200 charter schools open in 2015 – double the number that existed until a state limit was lifted in 2011. With the help of a sympathetic state legislature, charters are poised to become a larger part of the public-school landscape.

Many of these schools will be run by for-profit managers. Based on past experience, these managers will hire low-wage teachers who are mostly uncertified and will make a tidy fortune.
North Carolina adopted the ALEC model legislation and created a state charter board with the power to override the decisions of local communities. And the legislators can’t do enough to ensure the profitability of charters.

Last year, state legislators approved several changes to help charters, including lowering the number of certified teachers they must have and allowing them to expand by one grade level each year without seeking state approval.

The General Assembly also created the Charter Schools Advisory Board to make recommendations to the State Board of Education on charter school applications and renewals. The new board consists of members who, according to last year’s state law, “shall have demonstrated an understanding of and a commitment to charter schools as a strategy for strengthening public education.”

On Jan. 13, the advisory board will begin the process of reviewing the 2015 charter schools that the Office of Charter Schools has determined to have submitted complete applications. The board could accept the recommendations or opt also to review the applications that were rejected as incomplete.

The advisory board will make its recommendations on new schools to the State Board of Education by the summer.

The charters harm the public schools, taking away money needed for their programs.

Durham school officials say they’re losing more than $14 million a year because of students attending charter schools. Durham students are going to not only the 10 charter schools in the county, but also to schools in other nearby counties.

Heidi Carter, chairwoman of the Durham school board, said charter schools are also making it hard to plan for the future.

“It’s difficult to factor what our space needs will be,” she said. “It’s difficult to accurately predict what the elementary school population will be in the district in the next five years.”

Carter said she worries that there’s no longer a formal process to raise concerns about charters to the State Board.

“I doubt all their passionate pleas will go very far with this state board,” said Terry Stoops, director of education studies at the John Locke Foundation, a conservative think tank that supports charter schools.

Some applicants have ties to well-known political figures in the state. For instance, the chairman of the board of Providence Charter High School in Rockingham County is 6th District congressional candidate Phil Berger Jr., the son of Senate Republican Leader Phil Berger. The school is seeking final approval this week.

Republican political consultant Chris Sinclair would be the vice president of the boards for Capital City Charter High School and Central Wake Charter High School, both proposed for Wake County in 2015. Sinclair said he agreed to be part of both schools because they’re targeted at at-risk teenagers.

The John Locke Foundation and the Civitas Foundation are both associated with Art Pope, the multimillionaire ideologue who is not only state budget director but mastermind of the far-right takeover of the legislature. His money helped to defeat moderate Republicans and guaranteed control by politicians hostile to the public sector.

Francis DeLuca, president of the Civitas Institute, a conservative think tank in Raleigh, has agreed to be on the board of the proposed James Madison Academy, which wants to open in 2015 in Wake County. One of the school’s goals would be to “emphasize building strong moral character.”

“I believe in charter schools, and I want to give parents more choices,” DeLuca said.


Categories Charter Schools, Education Reform, North Carolina

Gary Rubinstein: An Open Letter to the New Leaders of TFA

By dianeravitch
January 9, 2014 //
15

Gary Rubinstein was one of the original members of Teach for America. He has been involved in TFA from the outset. However, he became a critical friend of TFA when he attended the corporate-funded 20th anniversary celebration, bringing together the leaders of the “reform movement” who were attacking the nation’s public schools and their teachers, closing public schools, and promoting charters. He saw a very different organization from the one he had joined two decades earlier. It had morphed into an arm of big business.

In this important post, he patiently explains to the new leaders of Teach for America why he strongly disagrees with the organization–beginning with their boasting about their results–and explains why they are on the wrong track.

He begins this way:

On February 12, 2013, founder and long time CEO of TFA, Wendy Kopp, stepped down. Two new co-CEOs were appointed, Elisa Villanueva-Beard and Matt Kramer. Elisa was a 1998 corps member and Matt had never taught. Both were working as very high administrative positions in TFA before this recent promotion.

I was pretty surprised by this announcement. I did not expect Wendy to ever not be the CEO of Teach For America. I was also puzzled that neither of the new co-CEOs were required to relocate to be near the national headquarters in New York City.

Over the past four months they have co-written three blog posts on the ‘Pass The Chalk’ site which had points of view that I definitely object to. The first was about a bogus study ‘proving’ that certain TFA teachers teach significantly more than their non-TFA counterparts (I analyzed that report here). The second was about a bogus interpretation of the recent NAEP gains ‘proving’ that corporate reform strategies are working (I wrote about NAEP ‘gains’ here). The third was about their support for the common core (Me and others have written a bunch about the problems with the common core).

Gary then writes an open letter to Matt and Elisa. It is a very strong letter, written by someone who understands Teach for America and knows its potential and its weaknesses. Gary has remained in teaching for many years and understands the challenges of teaching as Matt and Elisa do not.

Here are a few snippets: read the whole thing:

Based on what I’ve seen in this first year of your appointment, I am not encouraged that the issues I have with TFA are improving in any way. In your language and your writings I see the same kind of unsophisticated logic that I see in the rhetoric of people like Michelle Rhee and Steve Perry. Things about the ‘status quo’ and about the power of ‘raised expectations.’ As someone opposed to the kinds of strategies that Rhee and Perry promote, I know that my resistance has nothing to do with a desire to preserve the status quo, nor do I think that very many teachers have unreasonably low expectations for their students.

I have no particular attachment to the ‘status quo.’ But I’ve done a lot of research about what is now called ‘reform’ and I fight against it because I believe that it will, if permitted to gain momentum, make education in this country much worse. My prediction is that teachers will flee the profession even faster than they already do under the stress of the new brand of ‘accountability.’ And I’ve seen this start already in California where there are fewer teacher candidates to fill the vacancies. This will exacerbate if market-driven reform is not curbed. I think college students would be crazy to pursue teaching in this current anti-teacher climate. I’d wager that you are already seeing the effects of this, even among TFA corps members. A few years ago, the statistic was that 60% of TFA corps members taught for a third year. Recently I saw an article celebrating that South Carolina, I think, had about 40% stay for a third year. I believe that this is not going to be abnormal and you will see fewer TFAers stay beyond their two years. Teaching was already a pretty stressful job before the standardized test mania infected our schools. Now, for many, it is unbearable.

I do not believe in ‘low expectations.’ I also know that ‘high expectations’ is a very weak silver bullet. Expert teachers know how to set their expectations at an appropriate level to maximize student learning…

You recently penned a blog post in support of the controversial common core standards. Of course Randi Weingarten is one of the biggest common core cheerleaders in the country so it is not like you came out in favor of school closings, for instance. But still, it was interesting to me that you would take a side on this. What does it mean to be ‘for’ the common core? Does it mean that you wholeheartedly believe in the 7th grade math standard which states:

CCSS.Math.Content.7.NS.A.2a Understand that multiplication is extended from fractions to rational numbers by requiring that operations continue to satisfy the properties of operations, particularly the distributive property, leading to products such as (–1)(–1) = 1 and the rules for multiplying signed numbers. Interpret products of rational numbers by describing real-world contexts.

(Note: If you don’t know what they’re talking about, don’t worry. Most people don’t know that math majors in abstract algebra, during junior year of college, learn that rather than justifying that a negative times a negative is a positive, informally any number of ways, you learn that since -1 * 0 = 0, which means -1 * (-1+1) = 0 (since -1+1=0, additive inverse property) and then, by the distributive property (which says a * (b+c) = ab + ac) (-1) * (-1) + (-1)*1 = 0, but since 1 is the multiplicative identity, (-1)*(-1) – 1=0, but then if you add 1 to both sides, you get (-1)*(-1)=1, Q.E.D.)

Or do you just mean that you approve of school being more than just memorizing a bunch of shallow facts, but having opportunity for deep thought-provoking learning opportunities? If that’s what you mean, is is really necessary to spend billions of dollars on new textbooks and new ‘common core aligned’ assessments for this? Isn’t this the first thing we learned at the TFA institute (not you, Matt, but I’m sure you get the idea still), that we need to get kids to the higher levels of ‘Bloom’s Taxonomy’? Elisa, when you taught in Arizona did you not try to teach to a deep level because the common core had not been invented yet along with new assessments which would make sure you were accountable for getting your students to achieve that type of deep mastery of those standards?

One of my favorite sections of this long letter is where Gary suggests that TFA should adopt a value-added approach to its own organization and be prepared to shut down regions where there is high attrition of TFA recruits:

If you are so enamored with the strategies of Rhee, Daly, Huffman, White, and Anderson, why don’t you use them, yourself, in helping TFA maximize its own ‘value added’? This would be pretty easy to implement. First you would publish an annual A-F report card on the different TFA regions. One of the best metrics would be the ‘quit rate’ — the percent of corps members that quit before completing the two year commitment. Though the national average for all the regions is somewhere around 10%, there are some regions that have much higher quit rates. I believe that Kansas City and Detroit are two regions where around 25% of the corps members don’t complete their commitment. Regions like that would get an ‘F’ and after two ‘F’s or something, they would get shut down using the market-driven reform strategies. Then, for recruiters you could track the test scores of the students of the corps members that each recruiter recruits. Some recruiters will fare worse than others on this metric and those recruiters would be labeled ‘ineffective’ and fired. The various staff at the institutes could also be rated by tracking the test scores of the students of the corps members they trained. Basically, you would want to change the culture of TFA management to one which assumes that all TFA employees are lazy and don’t care about doing a good job and can only be motivated by the fear of being fired. If you admire the TFA leaders mentioned above so much, it would be hypocritical to not use their methods with your own employees.

Be sure to follow Gary Rubinstein. He is one of the wisest and smartest of all teacher-bloggers, and his views are always firmly rooted in evidence, which he supplies.

Categories Common Core, Education Reform, Teach for America, Teacher Evaluations
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