In the television series called “The Wire,” there is an episode dedicated to “juking the stats.” Since it is a program about the police, criminals, and the drug trade, “juking the stats” means that the officials were able to manipulate crime data to show that crime was up–requiring more police–or down–showing their success in slowing a crime wave. Now we know that the corporate education reform movement has become expert at “juking the stats” to make public schools look bad so that the “reformers” can privatize them.
Many years ago, David Berliner and Bruce Biddle wrote a book called The Manufactured Crisis, describing how certain think tanks and government officials were manipulating data to make it appear to the public that the schools were in crisis. A gullible media, loving sensational stories about the “failure” of our schools, reported the “reformer” claims without bothering to check facts.
The corporate reformers of our day thrive on their own manufactured crisis. They seize upon any factoid to make schools and teachers look bad. They ignore the compelling facts that our schools are underfunded and overwhelmed with the problems of children in poverty. The corporate reformers’ solution to the problems they identify: More testing, more privatization. They think that students get smarter if they are tested more often, so more tests. They assume that privately managed schools must be superior to public schools, despite clear evidence that they do not produce better results and–unregulated and unsupervised–many are vulnerable to corruption, nepotism, self-dealing, and fraud.
In this article, Carol Burris shows how the college remediation rate has been shamelessly inflated by corporate reformers intent on advancing their agenda of privatization. Chief among those who have overstated the remediation rate is Secretary of Education Duncan, who said in Massachusetts that the college remediation rate was 40% when it was about half that number. As she demonstrates, one “reform” think tank announces the “crisis” of a 40% college remediation rate, and others soon repeat it until it becomes conventional wisdom. But it is not true. Like almost all the data trotted out by the reform crowd, it is inflated to promote their political agenda of privatization. Or they use their doctored stats to promote the Common Core, even though there is no evidence whatever that Common Core will make every student “college and career ready.” The campaign for Common Core increasingly looks like an advertising gambit that promises that your clothes will be cleaner than ever, your teeth will be whiter than ever, your weight will drop in a matter of days, if only you use this product.
When will the reformers target the root causes of low academic performance: poverty, segregation, and inequitable allocation of resources? Ever.
Please don’t forget, Diane et al, that Berliner was a star witness for the plaintiffs in the Vergara case, and did data manufacturing himself. The case was in part settled on the basis of his phony stats.
He was an expert witness for the defendants.
Once again you don’t know what in the heck you are talking about. Berliner is one of the leading experts on public education today. Of course his words were twisted.
Back to ignoring you. You twist and distort everything around here. I don’t even know why you are here except to derail and disrupt.
Unlike you, I have actually read his works.
Ellen Lubic,
David Berliner was a witness not for the plaintiffs but for the defendants, the California Teachers Association. He was asked if he thought there were ineffective teachers, and he said perhaps 1-3%. He never used the term “grossly ineffective.” The judge took Berliner’s “guesstimate” as definitive fact. This was a case of the judge twisting the witness’s words.
Berliner didn’t testify that “perhaps 1-3%” of teachers were “ineffective.” He testified that it would be reasonable to estimate that 1-3% of teachers “consistently have strong negative effects on student outcomes no matter what classroom and school compositions they deal with.”
FLERP: a distinction without a difference, as he subsequently said he was guessing and had no data.
It may be a distinction without a difference if the question is what Berliner was thinking when he gave that testimony. It’s a very big distinction with a very big difference when the question is what Berliner actually testified and whether the judge was “twisting” Berliner’s words, as you say he was.
Berliner got burned on the stand and he’s embarrassed, he tried to do some damage control, and he found a very sympathetic audience. I don’t think the judge’s opinion was any good, but Berliner said what he said. You can’t twist words that weren’t actually spoken in the first place.
Get those bad teachers Flerp, get them all. Hang ’em all. Then our schools will be fixed.
FLERP,
Berliner never used the term “grossly ineffective.” He testified for the defense, not the plaintiffs. Don’t twist my words.
I know he testified for the defendants, which is why I pointed that out to Ellen above. It’s true he never used the term “grossly ineffective.” He also never used the term” perhaps” or “guesstimate.” He testified that it would be reasonable to estimate that 1-3% of teachers “consistently have strong negative effects on student outcomes no matter what classroom and school compositions they deal with.”
Sorry, off-topic, but I saw this on another site and found it funny in a sad but true sort of way:
“How many public school teachers does it take to change a light bulb?
Seven. One to fill out the light-bulb requisition form (in quadruplicate); one to find a stamp in his desk drawer so the form can be sent to the district office; one to locate and fill out a copy of the revised light-bulb requisition form because, by the time the original form comes back three weeks later with a “Wrong form—use revised form” memo (but no revised form) paperclipped to it, the first teacher has quit and gone into real estate so she can afford to move out of her parents’ house; one to organize a bake sale to cover the difference between what the school board has authorized for light-bulb purchases and what a light bulb actually costs; one to go out on her lunch hour and buy a light bulb with her own money after the district office loses the requisition for the third time; one to hold the ladder and one to change the light bulb, because the custodian has been detailed to landscape the athletic field and won’t be available for building maintenance until summer.”
Dienne: ah, you take me back many years to my first job and some of the wonderfully wicked humor my co-workers used to get through the day…
Changed to fit present circumstances.
Q: How many education rheephormers does it take to change a light bulb?
A: One to hold the light bulb and nine to turn the ladder.
😎
Those college remediation rates were among the first things out of the trainer’s mouth at the K-2 CCSS training I attended in the spring. I think she said something about 70% of all college students take some kind of remediation.
Regrettably. That was a big misstep from a co-author of the “Manufactured Crisis.”
Edward Bernays, the the recognized founder of PR in the United States, wrote a seminal article titled “Engineering Consent” (1947) arguing that the Bill of Rights extended to the arts of persuasion. The ANNALS of the American Academy of Political and Social Science March 1947 vol. 250 no. 1 113-120.
One of the main by-products of all this systematic data mongering and manipulation is that efforts to replace that rhetoric and the shape better policy generates even more attention to stats, overwhelming efforts to reframe the discussion of public education.
This conspiracy runs so deep, it even dragged the sainted Michael Winerip into the muck:
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/10/24/education/24winerip.html
(74% of high school graduates attending CUNY community colleges require remediation in at least one subject; 23% require it in reading, writing, and math.)
I recommended remediation for you Tim. Call Arne
First find a teacher from the suburbs.
With due process rights, skip TFA
This is, indeed, a very serious mistake, but it is – even more – a concatenation of serious mistakes. First, the whole concept of “remediation” has become an income source, particularly for community colleges trapped with declining funds and poor placement rates in new jobs. Their easiest solution is to blame the students, and to “remedy” entry test errors with a drill-and-practice, often through cheap online remediation courses.
Second, it capitalizes on the inept assessments with which students enter, which focus on data recall rather than problem-solving skills more critical to jobs and effective job placement. That’s almost too obvious to explain.
Third, it ignores how many excellent, often very competitive colleges, are waiving all pre-requisite courses, and replacing them with mentored projects (ala Olin College in suburban Boston). That’s usually the case when they have tuition rates that do not leave them short of cash, and when they attend to student learning rather than seat time in high school classes for older kids.
Fourth, it ignores the many – often much more critical – metrics which define “learning readiness” like attendance, grades, recommendations and other entry and admissions data. Rather than “Build on Strength,” which is by far the strongest educational practice, it focuses on failure. And, ironically, it also exacerbates early dropout rates and student loan defaults.
Finally, it reminds me of a high school I once studied, where – for 20 years – the principal held back 25% of his 9th grade in order to get high “gain scores” in their 10th grade state test. He even convinced his school committee that the kids “were not ready” for high school responsibility. When I pointed to his mendacity, he changed schools, as did the Superintendent and Guidance Director. Their successors created a tutoring program staffed by high school seniors for credit and to show their college readiness, which cut grade retention from 25% to less than 5% in one year.
Don’t forget that grades and years-in-class have increasingly little relevance to anything but dollars-per-hour, that skills are gained by using them rather than some theory, and that the whole k-16 sequence was invented in the 19th century, way before cheap books and cheaper online data access.
Why doesn’t anyone ask how these colleges keep accepting so many incompetent students? Shouldn’t the administrations of these schools be investigated for having such poor admissions processes?
This reminds me of the foreclosure crisis in 2008, when the big banks all said they were victims of the “lyin’ cheatin'” homeowners for the collapse of housing market, when of course the truth was the banks allowed anyone with a pulse to get a loan. But by banging the drum constantly on a pliant and gullible press, the banks were never challenged on their practices and got bailouts instead.
This is the same game. The schools that are crying now admitted these students. So which is it? Are the school admission officers stupid? Or are they lying? That’s the real question that should be asked.
And why would schools admit poor students? Forcing kids through remedial classes = $$$$$$.
As usual M&S, another astute comment. TAGrO!
Tanks, Duane. And as usual you’ve shown me another acronym I can’t fathom. 🙂 What does “TAGrO” mean?
That’s A Great One!
(better than a TAGO on the TAGO scale, haven’t figured out a “worse” than TAGO yet)
It’s all about money, votes and power. All one has to do is look at Gov. Christie. When he first took office, he used state workers and teachers as scapegoats, took money away from districts, then gave it back 2 years later touting that he gave so much money to the schools. Politicians manipulate data and what our schools have become are data generators for the politicians to manipulate. Common core is big business.
This has always been my question when I hear the lament that college students are “so poorly prepared.”
I do have a theory: When the Baby Boomer generation created an increase in college populations, higher institutes of learning began to see increases in tuition revenue. When the population leveled off and even dipped in the succeeding generations, colleges began lowering the bar in order to keep up their enrollment. Follow the money.
Students must be admitted to CUNY community colleges (see my post above) if they are residents of New York City and possess a high-school diploma or GED. The colleges don’t have a say in the matter.
First, I think most colleges have some admissions standards.
Second, if CUNY must accept all NYC high-school graduates or equivalents, then by definition there are no admissions standards for those students.
The community college where I adjunct used the 70% remediation figure for our students.
I think this might be a partial explanation:
“The first effect is an outsourcing of policy development. Much of the research, number crunching, and legislative wordsmithing that used to be done by Capitol Hill staffers working for the government is now being done by outside experts, many of them former Hill staffers, working for lobbying firms, think tanks, consultancies, trade associations, and PR outfits. This has strengthened the already-powerful hand of corporate interests in shaping legislation,”
This occurred to me during the financial crash when I kept hearing about the “skills gap”. It didn’t make any sense to me, because I live in a manufacturing area where the population doesn’t go up (or down) much: people generally stick around. We have a lot of skilled trades people, and they were all out of work. We had 16% unemployment at one point. Yet every time I would hear a politician or turn on media, I would hear this droning insistence that there were plenty of jobs, there was just no one who was “skilled” enough to fill them. It simply wasn’t true.
It’s a little frightening when you realize they have no idea what they’re talking about.
http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/magazine/junejulyaugust_2014/features/the_big_lobotomy050642.php?page=all
I was thinking about the cost angle for remediation courses as well. Last I heard those courses cost the same per credit hour, and count nothing towards graduation. The trainer from that riveting CCSS K-2 training I attended last spring seemed to think the CCSS would fix the remediation issues. Anyone think it will work?
I think it would be worthwhile to at least look and see if this is an area where colleges and universities are making up for lost revenue/funding.
I’m just amazed everyone swallowed this whole, considering the incentives.
Colleges were getting heat for higher costs and they were getting squeezed by cuts in federal and state funding. All of a sudden, we have a “remediation crisis”. I think that’s worth further investigation.
Not a chance in hell Sorrell.
My kids are so below the Core Standards, it will not make the least bit of difference.
When they import the good teachers from the suburbs, you will start to see results.
Careful, NJT, your sarcasm may go unnoticed-ha ha!
Watch out Duane. I got really sarcastic in another comment. Why are you up so early?
It’s also related to the purposeful defunding of public education resulting in a so called scandal with the only solution being privatization. All part of the “Culture Shock” program and plan of the neo-cons and neo-liberals, in book written by Naomi Klein.
In my college about 2/3rds of incoming students test into developmental classes. We are an open admissions community college so we have to accept all students. “They” have been telling students for a while now that everyone needs to go to college. No Child Left Behind has contributed to students with less ability to read and think critically. CCSS may help some, but I doubt it. Most of our students come from poor rural or urban districts in SW Michigan. We are not getting rich on developmental students, but I will argue now and forever that many of our students deserve a second chance for many reasons and that many of them will go on to be successful.
“The campaign for Common Core increasingly looks like an advertising gambit that promises that your clothes will be cleaner than ever, your teeth will be whiter than ever, your weight will drop in a matter of days, if only you use this product.”
This is a great statement.
And there are truth in advertising and labeling laws that every manufacturer or product hustler must follow. Laws are on the books to prevent deceptive advertising, false and/or misleading claims, unsubstantiated claims, etc. Many companies have been called to task over false, misleading, deceptive advertising and claims. I keep begging for someone to put the reformers’ feet to the fire. Common core is a copyrighted PRODUCT. Absent solid research, it should be illegal for anyone to claim that common core and any of the materials and programs that accompany it, WILL produce a certain outcome.
Sorry for the misplaced comma toward the end!
The link that principal Burris provided in her column has as its first sentence the following:
Haverhill, MA – December 10, 2013 – “With 38% of public college and university students
enrolled in non-credit remedial coursework during their first semester in college, the
Massachusetts Board of Higher Education has voted to encourage campus efforts to improve remedial math education, create new academic pathways for math instruction, and increase the number of students who are prepared to finish college and enter the workforce, the Department of Higher Education announced today.”
Click to access 2013-12-10MathPathways.pdf
From the above source, looks like Sec Duncan should have about 60% of those entering 2 year public community colleges, and about 22% of those entering four year public colleges, translating overall into about 38% of those entering a public college or university in x year, took a remedial course.
Figures are similar in Minnesota – about 38-40% of students entering a public college or university had to take a remedial course in reading, writing or math according to Getting Prepared 2014. Figures are much higher for those entering 2 year, lower for those entering a 4 year public colleges or university according to the Minnesota Office of Higher Education.
When private colleges and universities are included, as well as out of state institutions, the overall figure is 28%. That’s way too many.
We’re trying to help by encouraging more students, esp those from low income and limited English speaking backgrounds to take dual high school college credit courses while in high school.
Remediation is the rallying cry for Higher Ed for Higher Standards. Still hoping and praying the “non-state” schools steer clear from this whole common core mess. http://higheredforhigherstandards.org/