A reader sent this email to me:
At the 6:43 mark of this latest Fordham podcast, Mike Petrilli says:
http://edexcellence.net/commentary/podcasts/opening-minds-about-closing-schools
“If this [opt-out] thing goes national, the whole education reform
movement is in serious trouble.”
Amen!
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Reading “Their Mission” and reviewing their website’s list of policy priorities –
A Reform-Driven System
Quality Choices
Standards-Based Reforms
might explain their concerns.
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Listen to it when you are relaxed and don’t want to blow a gasket! You can even make a contribution should you wish to – like Fox news trying to emulate PBS.
I took a look at Petrilli’s bio, and was unable to find any mention of a background in education. Perhaps someone else can find what I overlooked. I did think the following interesting.
“Mike Petrilli is an award-winning writer and president of the Thomas B. Fordham Institute, one of the country’s most influential education-policy think tanks. Petrilli is also a research fellow at Stanford University’s Hoover Institution, and Executive Editor of Education Next.”
Perhaps knowledge of and experience in and with education is not a prerequisite for directing an “influential education policy think tank.” That might explain their miss(guided)ion and policies.
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Petrelli is clueless. he says
Listen, how about this, 2 years from now when we see the Common Core test scores have come out now all over the country. Keep in mind, New York was 2 years ahead of everybody else. Are we going to see this go national, are we going to see this happen everywhere, or is there something unique about New York that is causing this problem?
The test scores that enable state-by state comparisons are on the way much sooner thatPetrelli’s mental timeline.
He seems to have no idea about the multiple threats to the Common Core+TESTS agenda.
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Unrelatedly, today’s “Room for Debate” in the NYTimes is a great impersonation of a “Point-Counterpoint” from the Onion.
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I almost see Dan Aykroyd and Jane Curtin. And those names will be on the test.
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Yep lot’s of nothing in that “dialogue”. For example:
From the supposed anti-testing spokesperson:
“It is much easier to correctly identify a problem than to come up with a workable solution.”
Agreed, unfortunately Welner goes on to falsely identify “one” supposed problem using the edudeformers meme as a starting point, so he hasn’t “correctly identified the problem”:
When No Child Left Behind was signed into law in 2002, the United States did indeed have a problem — one that was identified, at least partially, by President George W. Bush’s condemnation of the “soft bigotry of low expectations.”(SBLE
Ay, ay, ay, ay, ay! And:
“The evidence shows testing has done more harm than good, with scores being pursued at the expense of deeper, broader learning. . . .
It is long past time to confront the “soft bigotry of low expectations” in a meaningful way.”
No evidence cited as showing “testing has done more harm than good”, citing again the wrongly identified “problem”-SBLE!
But then again, he has no K12 experience. How’d he get chosen to be a “professor of education” is beyond me:
Kevin Welner, Director
NEPC director Kevin G. Welner is a professor at the University of Colorado at Boulder School of Education. He has authored or edited seven books and more than 70 articles and book chapters concerning education policy and law. These publications include The Obama Education Blueprint: Researchers examine the evidence (2010, co-edited with William Mathis); Think tank research quality: Lessons for policymakers, the media, and the public (2010, with Pat Hinchey, Alex Molnar and Don Weitzman); NeoVouchers: The emergence of tuition tax credits for private schooling (2008); Legal rights, local wrongs: When community control collides with educational equity (2001); and Education policy and law: Current issues (with Wendy Chi, 2008). He has received the AERA’s Early Career Award and its Palmer O. Johnson Award, the Rockefeller Foundation’s Bellagio Residency, and the NAEd/Spencer Post-Doctoral Fellowship. He received his B.A. in Biological Sciences from UCSB and his J.D. and Ph.D. from UCLA.
Another inexperienced policy wonk who is in over his head on K12 educational malpractices.
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Hurray, except that so much is retained in drafts for the reauthorization of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act.
I tripped on this report, February 2015, on opt-out policies in various states. It is not definitive or complete, but the source is credible: The Education Commission of the States.
Click to access 11768.pdf
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The ECS is funded by Pearson and Gates. The ECS opt out guide is a clear attempt to gain control of the opt out message and co-opt it. I have written about this on my blog extensively and in a comment later in this thread. A more credible source comes from the people at our website at http://www.unitedoptout.com. Just my take 🙂 Keep opting out everyone. The power of the people is dangerous indeed. See there partners/funders here: http://www.ecs.org/html/aboutECS/documents/AnnualReport2013.pdf
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If the reform movement depends on bad tests or standardized tests it is not much in the way of reform. If all they can offer is tracking (applying) been there done that. Perhaps reformers should study history. They would learn they are busy reinventing the wheel and spending my money (and wasting the billionaires’ club money) to do it.
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You said it! What kind of reform is only standardized tests? Testing does not improve programs. The real “reform” is about exploiting our students and squeezing tax dollars from public schools to privatize and profit. It is mission accomplished when they can turn public held property into private equity.
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“The spectacular crash of Corinthian Colleges after years of systematically deceiving thousands of students into enrolling into low-quality, high-cost education programs has once again raised questions about how the for-profit college industry staved off stronger rules governing the $1.4 billion per year in federal loans that helped keep Corinthian afloat.
Some hints emerged today in the giant chain’s filing for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection in Delaware. It shows that Corinthian made secret payments to an array of political consultants, think tanks, and political dark money groups.”
You’ll recognize a lot of the names.
https://firstlook.org/theintercept/2015/05/04/bankruptcy-filing-shows-corinthian-colleges-secretly-funded-d-c-think-tanks-dark-money-election-efforts/
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Running schools exactly like a business.
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Only if you mean “ruining schools”, but certainly not in a sustainable business fashion.
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In ILL-Annoy, the business model can be known as “Raunering” schools!
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Chiara, Thanks for the link which says
“Payments are listed for current and previous board members to Corinthian, including former Defense Secretary Leon Panetta,
Urban League President Marc Morial, and
Sharon Robinson, president and chief executive officer of the non-profit American Association of Colleges for Teacher Education. Payments are also listed directly to the Panetta Institute and Morial’s National Urban League.”
Some added notes from me. Sharon Robinson was a Trustee of Corithinan, paid a bundle for overseeing the fraud and corruption and she is still CEO of the American Association of Colleges for Teacher Education.
How can educators belong to an organization where the CEO also oversees and gets perks from a corrupt for-profit?
Note also that Panetta is the ultimate inside man in DC and has a major advisory role in Hillary Clinton’s campaign.
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Corruption in for-profit education is dangerously systemic and will be the next Wal St. bubble if these fraudsters aren’t stopped. I’ve been following Corinthian College for several years because they were success story promoted by the Parthenon Group Management Company as an example of a profitable enterprise to peddle investments to potential education investors. The Parthenon Group is a business management company hired by several districts in TN to make recommendations for school districts. They function like the infamous Boston Consulting Group. The Knox County Schools Broadie superintendent paid them thousands for their “expert” recommendations.
For those who really like getting into the weeds of education financial speculation this was my presentation to Knox County Board of Ed on 3-10-14 about Parthenon & their fraudulent claims to potential investors involving Corinthian.
“Parthenon’s education group is made up of “entrepreneurial” consultants, mostly newly minted MBAs. It’s ironic that they would recommend disincentivize teachers in obtaining advanced degrees when 10 of them have MBA’s. Teachers are our children’s models for pursuing more education, not less.
In 2009 & 2012 The Parthenon education group made 2 presentations entitled INVESTING IN EDUCATION. WHERE ARE THE OPPORTUNITIES & HOW CAN YOU CAPTURE THEM? and PARTHENON PERSPECTIVES : BALANCING OPPORTUNITIES & RISK, respectively.
The target of these OTHER reports are businesspersons or business entities that want to start up a new for-profit school systems. Parthenon is selling potential profiteers happy fairy tales of “creative destruction.”
Parthenon’s vision for their investors is what they envision for public education, including Knox Co Schools- that is, to kick public schools to the curb and take over via charters. The old public ed system will, like public utilities, be killed. And then–they’ll already be positioned to take over.
Business types don’t like to be reminded of other unsuccessful “creative destructions” For example, how the death of public utilities spawned Enron.
The long-term goal presented here is not to keep the public school system –it’s to grow for-profit schools to be much larger than the public system, then reduce public schools enrollment to those “less profitable” students.
Note the questions slide 5: “How well can you supplement the management teams” and ” what is your experience as an activist owner? Translation: This is about business people taking over schools, and running them.
In the meantime, they can only suck up public funding through very creative “non-traditional” (translation: deceptive) strategies. Also slide 5.
Hence their question: “Will you do non-traditional structures? (non-profits…MINORITY INTERESTS! Getting rich while pretending to be a nonprofit–can you say scam?
The one story of profitability & success is Corthinian Colleges. The more you read about Corinthian, the more slimy it is. Corithinain is currently under federal investigation in CA for fraud. Their stock price today is $1.55/ That’s a heck of an investment!! Their case here is so speculative and risky that you really would have to be insane or very ideological to do it. As an educator & a taxpayer I oppose hustlers like those in the Parthenon Group, who are eagerly inflating the next speculation bubble with breathless sales pitches
Now, slide 11 from the 2012 pp points out how growth in the ed industry depends on a guaranteed failure mechanism, like the CC & PARCC- the testing delivery system for generation after generation of public school turnover. :“if Common Core gets teeth the achievement gap will get bigger.” Standardized tests have by design a lowest 5% of test scores every year.
What kind of a person celebrates humiliating children to peddle investments? Only swindlers at Parthenon can “dispassionately” recommend increasing class sizes for Knox County’s voiceless poor and disabled children.
Leading up to the wall St crash of 2008 a lot of traders who sold their clients derivatives knew they were selling junk. These Parthenon profiteers are definitely selling time-bomb edu-investments- cash in & leave while OUR children & taxpayers pay the price. We should be skeptical and demand evidence at every turn from these hustlers. Take nothing on faith. Look under the hood.”
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It is symptomatic of malformers that they constantly confuse cause and effect.
The populace opting out doesn’t cause their program to fail.
Their program is failing — therefore people are opting out.
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Exactly.
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Excellent point. To Reformers, it is always someone else’s fault.
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“The Blame Game”
Everyone’s to blame
Except the ones who are
The finger-pointing game
Will really get you far
“Passing Bucks”
I guess I wasn’t clear
The buck stops there
Not here!
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Where The Bucks Stop —
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Jon Awbrey: much said in few words.
And regarding other comments on this thread re standardized testing: Linda Darling-Hammond said it well in her contribution to the 2004 book MANY CHILDREN LEFT BEHIND: HOW THE NO CHILD LEFT BEHIND ACT IS DAMAGING OUR CHILDREN AND OUR SCHOOLS (p. 9)—
“The biggest problem with the NCLB Act is that it mistakes measuring schools for fixing them.”*
*Substitute “corporate education reform movement” for “NCLB Act.”
Also with reference to standardized testing, I would include the chapter 22 title of Anthony Cody’s THE EDUCATOR AND THE OLIGARCH (2014, p. 143): “Bill Gates and the Cult of Measurement: Efficiency Without Excellence.”
😎
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Jon–Are you referring to the POTUS who did NOT put on his walking shoes?
Sigh–I am also reminded of the wonderful Dean Wormer (Animal House) comment, “It’s time for someone to put his foot down, and that foot is ME!!”
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“Efficient” is a very poor way to describe what Gates and others are doing.
Unless it refers to “Efficient at producing garbage”.
But efficiency is normally defined as “The ratio of the effective or useful output to the total input in any system.”
In the case of Gates and other deformers, the useful output is pretty much zilch.
Which means that so is efficiency.
There are many ironies associated with the “reform” movement but perhaps the biggest is the idea of “value added” when the models that supposedly “measure” it are themselves garbage and when the people pushing “value added” (Gates, Coleman, Duncan, Cuomo, etc) have no clue what real value is — to say nothing of what real education is.
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Yes, it’s always about the shoes …
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Reblogged this on David R. Taylor-Thoughts on Texas Education.
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Dear Mike,
Succinct. Clear. True. You ARE in serious trouble. “Ed”excellence is so past tense. Like the Helen Hunt/ David Spade SNL episode: Buh-bye.
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Yet, Ohio’s “balanced and fair” education journalists have Fordham on speed dial for comment, with no opposing view in sight..
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Please listen to the entire program. It is curious how these Reformers think the data supports their anti-public school agenda. I would love to know more about their “data” and its analysis…And they guy speaking can’t figure out why parents are irate about testing? He gives several reasons…and all of them are legitimate reasons. It’s not just ONE thing that pisses us off as parents and teachers, it is all of the above stated and more.
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Reply to Flerp! & MathVale way up there at 4 & 5 PM: I’d add The Chicago Tribune Editorial Board commentary into that mix (comparison to Onion-esque & Ackroyd-Curtain reporting/debate). Yet another inane editorial today, “Backsliding on School Choice,” stating–for the zillionth time–“Over the past 5 years , the IL legislature has pushed a series of impressive reforms to improve schools. Teacher evaluations are now tied to student academic growth. It is easier to fire ineffective teachers…The state has adopted the more rigorous Common Core academic standards & the companion PARCC test.” (Which, they stated about a month ago {erroneously, of course}, better informed instructional planning.) Funny–then–a few weeks later, they reported on the “sit & stare” being employed for opt out students. As Jonathan Pelto says, “Wait, what??”
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Seems to me like States that make it “illegal” for opting out are WAY OVEREXTENDING their rights to the point of illegality. Are there any legal challenges to states “not allowing” opt out????
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“If this [opt-out] thing goes national, the whole education reform
movement is in serious trouble.” — Mike Petrilli
Really makes you wonder what Petrilli considers “national”.
Puerto Rico? Guam? US Virgin Islands?
And whether this guy has been asleep for the last year or something.
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or maybe living in a cave without any contact with the outside world
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Mike Petrilli’s quote caught my eye the other day as well. We are indeed dangerous. At United Opt Out National we believe in demanding everything for all children. All of us opting out all over the country – we are the people. This is a people’s movement – we have NO funding – this absolutely terrifies them that we can accomplish this with no funding. If we can accomplish this what else might we be able to do? This is why we at UOO refuse to settle for less. Do not fall for ploys which state that we could only possibly get a little. The state legislatures and the federal ESEA re-authorization only want to give us a little. We can demand it all. There is a reason that many are attempting to wrestle and gain control of the opt out narrative – they wish to control and manage this narrative because it is indeed dangerous to their livelihood – we have suddenly landed in their backyard just as they landed in ours. There is a reason that organizations and mainstream media refer to the ECS opt out guide (funded by Pearson and Gates) rather than the UOO guides written by the people for the people. Those trying to co-opt the opt out message all have funding – and this funding means that they have ties to political or corporate ideology – and therefore they will not demand all for all children because ultimately they need common core and the testing system to thrive in some shape or form in order to save their jobs, their corporations, their status and so that they may continue to push forward their agenda using children, teachers and our communities. We don’t need this test and punish system in any shape or form. We need children to be protected from poverty. We need teachers to be the professionals who are trusted and respected. We need our neighborhood schools to be fully funded and resourced so that all children can thrive. We need to reclaim our public schools – all of it – we have a chance to save the cornerstone of this democracy. Don’t settle for less. We don’t need less testing, better testing. We don’t need to keep ranking and sorting our children only to see the zipcodes once again. We need to give them everything they deserve. As Petrilli says, “If this [opt-out] thing goes national, the whole education reform
movement is in serious trouble.” Indeed it is. Keep pushing.
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Peggy forgot to include a link explaining in more detail the co-optation by the edudeformers:
http://www.pegwithpen.com/2015/03/regaining-our-humanity-and-co-optation.html
Thank you Peggy (and the rest) for your tireless social justice work!!
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Case in point:
No Juniors Show Up to Take SBAC at Seattle (Nathan Hale) High School
“The decision to refuse testing doesn’t just affect the individual student. It affects students across the state,” said State Superintendent Randy Dorn. “If you don’t like the federal law, don’t refuse to have your child take the tests; call your U.S. representative and senators and tell them to change the law.”
They HAVE been! No one has been listening to them!
Earlier this year, teachers at Nathan Hale passed a resolution against in the Common Core Standards test, but SPS Superintendent Larry Nyland threatened teachers with the loss of their teaching licenses if they didn’t administer the test, according to the Seattle Education blog.
http://www.king5.com/story/news/local/seattle/2015/04/23/sbac-standardized-testing-nathan-hale-high-school/26267407/
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Seattle Education Blog
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All of which repeats a previous post in this blog from 4/15/2015. Sorry.
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