According to Eclectablog, John Covington will leave Governor Rick Snyder’s controversial Educational Achievement Authority for another job. The story was reported by the Detroit News.
Covington, a graduate of the unaccredited Broad Superintendents Academy, previously led the Kansas City district, which lost accreditation after his abrupt departure.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Well at least the deformers recycle their trash.
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TAGO . . .
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Talk about a “lemon dance.” These reformist hedgeucators change jobs as often as most people change their socks.
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I suppose when you are not experienced or an expert in a particular field, you must keep moving from gig to gig, just like the former NOLA, Philly, Chicago, Bridgeport shyster, Paul Vallas.
Castles made of sand fall into the sea eventually. I think that’s from a Hendrix song.
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The Michigan Department of Education (MDE) has been an accomplice to Covington’s failure as the Chancellor of Incompetence and Indulgence of the Education Achievement Authority. The MDE has not held this renegade sham of a school district accountable to IDEA Part B written complaints filed over the past two school years. Students are still waiting for compensatory education and services. Rick Snyder has spent almost four years driving failed education policy in MI. MI has the highest percentage of for-profit, privatized, corporatized charters (2/3rd) and growing scandals. Michigan should be renamed the Education Scandalized State. Good riddance to soon to be ex-Chancellor Covington. Hopefully this will seal the deal with MI Senators on the “no” side of codifying the EAA into devastating state law. Hopefully this will be Snyder’s Waterloo and we can say goodbye and good riddance to him in November.
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They won’t say it if he’s being asked to leave. There’s no transparency in the EAA. It may as well be a completely private entity.
I just hope they scrap the cheap, online learning gambit they pushed on that city.
Why are we testing online learning in the schools that are in the worst shape? Why don’t ed reformers sell this product in suburban districts of they love it so much and it’s so awesome? They can test it there. Let us know how it comes out.
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Hey, do you think the Sec of Ed will jump in this issue? He weighs in on California court cases, he campaigns for politically-connected ed reformers in DC, why is he never around when an ed reform scheme fails?
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He is not allowed to diss his posse.
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This is not good news. This is just another dance of the lemons. Or as Paul Vallas put it:
“I go in, fix the system, I move on to something else.”*
Link: http://www.nbcchicago.com/blogs/ward-room/Paul-Vallas–213999671.html
*English-to-English translation: I sneak in, put the fix in, move on to other prey.
😎
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It is good news. This was the plan in Detroit. You’ll have to get past the breathless marketing language, hype, and sales pitch:
“EAA Buzz. Equally impressive were the schools managed by the Education Achievement Authority (EAA). On each visit there was clear evidence of strong pedagogical vision, a powerful learning platform and great teaching in every classroom.
The core EAA innovation is a mastery-based student-centered learning system. Instructional units are the building blocks of the system. Each unit includes approximately three standards-based learning targets. For each unit, the Buzz learning platform—developed with Agilix—includes a variety of learning resources, application opportunities, and assessments.
Mary Esselman is the academic driver behind the innovation. I met this pedagogical tinkerer in Kansas City three years ago where she developed and piloted Buzz. When her boss John Covington took on the EAA challenge, they brought Buzz and student- centered learning to Detroit along with a couple great principals.”
They brought this online learning program with them from Kansas City. If they had been able to spin it as at all positive – they haven’t been able to, the EAA is referred to as “embattled” in Michigan- the entire ed reform marketing crew would have been shoving this into every low and middle income school in the country.
They’re replacing teachers with screens.
http://gettingsmart.com/2013/04/whats-all-the-buzz-about-detroit/
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More on “Buzz”:
“The EAA school day puts children in front of computers working on the core of its curriculum, the “Buzz.” While the EAA began without sufficient computers for students, it also has come to light the Buzz was an empty concept.
There was no content, instead the teachers were asked to fill the online educational program with concepts for students to learn, policies and practices for fellow teachers to follow. Lipton said in a Michigan Radio interview that she talked with a Mumford student who called the Buzz, “a joke” and “not challenging.”
http://michigancitizen.com/tests-show-snyders-eaa-a-failure/
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This is a site with correspondence on the EAA between the various actors. A state representative got the documents.
To understand the EAA, it helps to have a business background. Detroit Public Schools are underfunded. They get about 7k per student and they have a lot of high-need students.
The EAA is grounded in a particular business model. That model says that one can mitigate the effects of underfunding by “scaling up” quickly and then taking advantage of economies of scale. Online learning would be key to that in this case.
They needed to show success quickly, and then lobby the MI legislature to expand their reach so they could add more and more students quickly ($$) and survive the initial start-up period. After that, the theory is (in the private sector) they would reach a certain revenue level and be able to survive on 7k a student, because they would have many more students and the system would be more efficient. They made what are in my opinion crazy claims, that they would be able to put “95%” of revenue “into classrooms” and that Detroit Public Schools were only putting “55% of revenue into classrooms”. I love the specificity of these numbers 🙂
It didn’t work like that. They lost a quarter of the initial students, got a ton of bad press, and the MI legislature slowed down expansion, denying them the fast growth they needed to survive.
http://insidetheeaa.com/
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…but the Rhee-formy privatizers and Gates with his ‘puters loves this crap right? …and it doesn’t work. …..but someone, somewhere, MADE money on this, not lost profits, and the city’s taxpayers are left holding the bag.
Yet, somewhere, someone else Rhee-formy is pushing for this end game. When will everyone wake the eff up?
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Back when I started teaching in a high school, in 1971, Mastery Learning, Covington’s big deal, was new. A math teacher was trying it out. It sounds so seductive: “master each step before one goes on.”
Why has it gained such a bad reputation since? Or has it?
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Mastery learning cannot exist under the current system. However, under a system that takes kids from where they are and has demonstrated proficiencies it can still work.
I met w Dr. Covington in Kansas City and we agreed on many issues, however it is unlikely the Detroit would allow him to implement anything creative. Nor do I know the whole story of his efforts
My new book, Brainstorming Common Core: Salvaging the Fiasco of Reform will be out in a few months, look for it
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As another high school teacher, Harlan, I would say it’s because mastery learning is a game to students as they get older. They begin to understand that it isn’t about learning but simply “beating the level.” And there’s no guarantee of learning retention. They simply did well enough to move on.
As an AP teacher, I see students who often aren’t trying to write good AP essays. They’re simply trying to beat the rubric. When I grade the essays, I can identify this “game.” An online platform really can’t do that.
It’s seductive for administrators and teachers, I guess, because they can say that kids are learning by advancing through the steps. Parents are satisfied. KIds realize that if they just keep moving the teacher stays off their case. But the truth is that it’s lazy and doesn’t guarantee quality. It’s check the box learning.
And that leads me back to my AP essay point. Students can claim they met a requirement. They may have done it quantitatively or superficially but not thoroughly and thoughtfully. A good teacher can distinguish the difference. But an online mastery program like Buzz will simply check the box.
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And how is it “mastery” if all the kids are doing is answering multiple guess questions? What has that student learned? My son “took” an online geography course last year so that he could take electives in Band, German, and debate. The multiple guess was the entire “mastery” of this class. He had to do a bunch of assignments, but the only way to pass the class was to pass a multiple guess test that was minute details from the reading he had to do. He HATED it. He said he didn’t learn anything except to NEVER take an online class again!
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