Be very careful about claims of schools that miraculously “turned around” in a matter of months or even in a couple of years. The usual formula is: fire everybody, hire a new staff, and the students become brilliant.
But then Gary Rubinstein investigates, and the miracle dissolves under his careful analysis.
Here is one. Gary writes that Joel Klein in his new book boasts of the amazing turnaround that happened when he shuttered Paul Robeson High School and opened P-Tech. Only a year and a half later, President Obama praised P-Tech in his State of the Union address.
But the high school scores were released a few days ago, P-Tech was one of the city’s lowest performing schools. Gary wrote, “This could be the most un-miraculous miracle school I’ve ever investigated.”
Another school in the news is Boys and Girls High School, also in Brooklyn. The media has been demanding that it be closed down because of low test scores. But its scores are much higher than those of the celebrated P-Tech!
Gary wonders whether reformers will start demanding that P-Tech be shut down.
As I tried to comment on Gary’s blog:
Rashid Davis – the P-Tech principal boasted that how at his previous school (BETA) they took kids that started from behind and ended up passing “Honors Calculus.” When pressed – “do you mean AP BC Calc?” he replied yes.
Looking at the data, BETA did indeed have 200 AP exams taken the previous year. Sounds good, but a closer look reveals that only 2 of the exams were passing (3 or higher out of 5).
Looks like registering kids for classes they’re ill prepared for was a good strategy to parley BETA into P-Tech.
Forget the fact that preparing kids to fail in this way is cruel and should be criminal.
I remember my first chairman back in the day joked “all math classes prior to calculus should be named pre-calc because it looks better to fail pre-calc than to fail algebra.”
Looks like we’ve got the same shell game going again.
I don’t have any problem with vocational or career training, I’m a graduate of a program like that and my middle son is in one, but the hype scares me.
It feels faddish, like no one will show any restraint and it will end up being another “magic bullet!” where we have this bust and boom cycle, and then the whole concept will end up discredited.
I just heard it discussed on CNN and they’re already going crazy with it. They’re all on there advocating that everyone be trained for work in high school.
I just wish I had some faith that someone would rein in the mad rush to “irrational exuberance” and not insist on jamming everything into these narrative frames. I get why politicians do it. They have to show successes. I don’t really understand why other adults insist on also doing it.
They can’t resist over-selling all of these things. All that means is public support will peak and then drop, when the reality on the ground is less wonderful than how it was portrayed. Vocational ed is valuable for a lot of people, but not all people. There’s no reason to hype or over-sell it. It has value, and people already recognize that. We’ve had a strong program where I live for the last 40 years.
I wonder how Klein would respond? Farina? BDB? So, which school will be closed? Any on willing to wager?
I read the exchange and they say they give more (and more difficult) tests to their students than the school they are being compared to.
More students do poorly because more students take more difficult tests.
P-Tech’s outcomes are even worse than Gary’s post acknowledges. According to the data P-Tech performs worse than
-96% of their peer schools on science Regents
-86% of their peer schools on the US History Regents
-100% of their peer schools on the Global History Regents and
-100% of their peer schools on the English Regents.
P-Tech has tried to obfuscate the facts by claiming to give 9th graders the 11th grade math test. Even if that were true it would not explain their even worse outcomes in Global History and US History and English where there is only a single exam in each subject.
Another unanswered question – with more tech infrastructure moving to the cloud will there be any jobs (specifically in their neighborhoods, you know, the ones we are trying to uplift). My guess is no
gonna jump down “turn around” pick a bail of cotton
gonna jump down “turn around” pick a bail of hay
Also, as a supporter of vocational ed, they might want to find someone who actually went that route before they start the national sales pitch.
I’m not sure Joel Klein, government lawyer turned government contractor CEO, is the best spokesperson for this. Surely they can find someone in DC who actually followed this path. Maybe they can advertise nationally 🙂
A true miracle would be for the so-called reformers to stop lying about absolutely everything.
Michael Fiorillo: it would take more than a miracle…
😱
It seems to be part of the very DNA of the self-styled “education reform” movement to not only ‘over-sell’ (see comments by Chiara above) but outright lie about so much of what they do and say.
For example: 100% charter graduation rates [just don’t mention the 30%/40%/50% attrition rate of the cohort from the 9th to the 12th grade]; taking one’s students from the 13th to the 90th percentile [with absolutely no documentation, no corroboration and ‘forgetting’ to mention that said rheephormista was teaching in tandem with another teacher]; and making a 2% increase in grad rates a 12% increase by leaving out the rate suppressors [easy Deasy!].
But over the last five years I’ve learned a sad reality. The leading lights of the self-proclaimed “education reform” movement don’t think of themselves in that way. There is a casual self-serving cynicism that is so deeply ingrained in them that they believe that whatever comes out of their mouths must be true because they said it. If anyone else mentions that they rely on “proof by assertion” they clutch their pearls, fall on the nearest fainting couch, and immediately set their edubully underlings to accuse such rabble of engaging in “ad hominem” attacks.
The term “self-correction” is not in their vocabulary.
Thank you for your comments.
😎
To leech off of a comment author Mary McCarthy made about her literary nemesis Lillian Hellman, “Everything they say is a lie, including the words “and” and “the.”
This happens a lot at charters schools in general at charters schools, since most charters have a high turn over rates of administrators and teaching staff. Worse yet is the foreign owned and US/Turkish Gulen inspired charter schools that regularly hire teaching and administrative staff within their charitable organization back home. These members receive bonuses and as well as pay for meeting certain easy to obtain goals. The goal is what matters. So if a staff member was to get caught doing something unethical, it is caulked up to a miscommunication / language barrier issue. Foreign education staff members on HB-1 visa, go home anyways, and never get fully interviewed by the Department of Education in regards to errors in data.
The trail of investigation cannot not be followed outside this country. Emails are highly discouraged as it provides documentation of knowingly encouraging deceptive practices. Sending work related personal emails as a charter school employee with get you fired.
When and if a charter school is caught there are the usual promises by the charter district that they will fix issues and problems. Charters are sure to learn later from there mistakes and learn how to avoid the next pit falls, and plan the next deception. It is so nice to have disposable employees. There is always a turn over in any staff member who voices concern as these employees are seen as non team members who do not support the charter school district business goals. It is not about the children, it is about making money off the ignorant charter school parent and tax payer.
I downloaded the data referenced in Gary Rubinstein’s article and taken on the whole they don’t really support his claims. He was correct in stating that it’s way to early to be making broad claims one way or the other about the school. You definitely shouldn’t be using the Geometry and Algebra II regents scores alone to evaluate the school. At this time the schools quality review is “proficient” while “Boys and Girls” is “developing”(i.e. bad). Pathways has significantly higher scores on the Math and English assessments. More nonsense from the anti-reform anti-student crowd.
More nonsense from someone with poor quantitative skills. Socartes, look at the data and you will see the school is doing worse than EVERY SINGLE ONE of its peer schools in Global History and English. Its also doing worse than about 90% of its peer schools in science and U.S.. History. It isn’t just Geometry and Algebra II that show P-Tech is underperforming. What could you possibly mean by “taken on the whole they don’t really support his claims?” Taken as a whole they provide a lot more support for his claims!
You and other posters are inordinately ‘patient’ with ignorant Socrates It matters not a wit that time and again you have demonstrated his ignorance and/or willful misreading of data and statistics. Yet, he continues to ply his trade, peddling his ignorance. I guess that I just have to hold my tongue, so to speak and let you continue to show the forum his true nature..
John A,
“. . . other posters are inordinately ‘patient’ with ignorant Socrates. . . ”
I’m still waiting for answers to a few requests of this “newly self-fancied Socrates”. I know the answers won’t be forthcoming, but someone has to do the dirty work of challenging their idiologies. Lots of nothing in that idiology they support as they can’t even answer my simple requests. Allow a couple of us the opportunity to have some fun in intellectually chewing them up and spitting them out (I certainly wouldn’t swallow that vapid nonsense). Those like this self-identified Socrates usually don’t stay for long.
hey, duane, et al, i gues that fun is where you find it. go for it. 🙂
Socrates, I thought you didn’t care about research. Suddenly, you’re looking up meaningless statistics when it suits your point of view. Again, only validate the research you agree with and discard the ones that don’t agree with your worldview.
No response to the scores posted by Data Geek?
I will add that I think test scores are not meaningful. Also, anti-reform and anti-student are not the same thing. Nice try.
For note: Gary Rubenstein is NOT on your side. He is an ex-TFA, but anti-reform and pro-student.
Do more research before making such a nonsensical claim like this.
Arne Duncan has a new piece on edu-star Khan Academy:
Also, in this issue! Billionaire Reed Hastings opines on what’s wrong with your kid’s school!
http://www.vanityfair.com/business/2014/12/salman-khan-arne-duncan
“Reformiracle”
Walk on water
Birth to virgin
Charter’s fodder
That’s for certain