Peter Greene explores why five percent has become the reformsters’ goal.
Not surprisingly, the originator of “the bottom five percent” is Mr. Reformster, Arne Duncan.
“It has a fine long history. All the way back in June 2009, we can find Arnie Duncan talking about the five percent in his address to the conference of the National Alliance of Public Charter Schools. The address, “Turning Around the Bottom Five Percent,” and it features the rhetorical sleight-of-hand that usually accompanies discussion of the five percent. Duncan leads with a description of chronically under-performing schools, noting the social and physical conditions of these schools are “horrific.” “They’re often unsafe, underfunded, poorly run, crumbling, and challenged in so many ways that the situation can feel hopeless.”
So now turning around or closing the bottom five percent is holy reformster writ.
Chris Barbic moved to the Achievement School District, took over the poorest five percent of schools and pledged to move them into the top 25%, but he failed and has resigned.
Greene gets it. There will always be a bottom five percent. Reform will never end.
He writes:
“Or the other big question mark in this whole system– the state will take those bottom five percent schools and do…. what? Turn them around and fix them? Is there any indication that the states or the privateers that they invariably hire to do the work– do any of them know the secret sauce for turning schools around? If they don’t, then what is the point of this exercise? If they do, why did we decide that only the bottom five percent would get the benefit of this miraculous brew of fairy dust and unicorn pee?
Any time you see “bottom five percent” crop up, beware. It’s one more time that reformsters are just making stuff up but trusting you’ll believe them because, look, numbers!”
Diane Ravitch's blog 
“Arne’s Paradox”
Arne’s Paradox: Bottom five
Percent of schools remain alive
Though five percent are closed each year
The bottom five percent are here!
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Paradox is right, SomeDam Poet.
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Nay. Arne just wants to keep eliminating the bottom 5% every year until everyone is above average. Reformy reasoning. Asymptomaticly, the 5% grow smaller and smaller each year. Then there was one. I don’t know what he’ll do then.
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This is the Bill Gates way after all. Gates pits his employees against each other and now he has seen the “light”?
http://www.onthecommons.org/magazine/what’s-good-bill-gates-turns-out-be-bad-public-schools
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It’s much more facile for politicians to blame educators for the effects of poverty than for them to blame themselves.
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WOW, Diane,
Just noticed that your readers are huge. Congratulations. Go Diane.
Based on a work at dianeravitch.net.
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If the bottom 5% of schools are physically and socially horrific, underfunded, etc., as Arne suggested, what happens if we address the social inequities of the schools’ environment, physical condition of the buildings, and fund them adequately based on student needs?
Would that help turn them around? Would giving students hope for their futures make a difference in the way they view their education, perhaps even giving them motivation to learn if they were treated like students in affluent areas? A possibility?
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Well said. Let’s fix the funding and facilities BEFORE we give the students away.
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Yes.
I find that the problem with this argument with educated folks with money (I am thinking of hedge funders I know) is they will quickly give examples of why the KIPP model works, for example. I guess it’s a classic example of “getting into the weeds.”
Until somebody just says, “no! We must quit circumventing democracy,” we won’t get back on track.
so what I’m getting out of this post is that “the bottom five percent” is the new buzz phrase for circumventing democracy; replacing: robust, changing trajectory, excellent teacher in every classroom etc etc.
Is that right? We haven’t completely given up on democracy regarding educating but in the current era of churn, we are headed that way.
So how do we get people to see that this is what is happening? Is the answer “avoid the weeds?”
True or false: Charters always undermine democracy.
(I hope someone will engage).
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Arne Duncan should be appalled by the bottom 5% because these are young, future voters that attend these neglected, underfunded schools in horrific condition. It is Duncan’s responsibility to address the inherent inequities. It is not his job to negate the students’ right to attend a true public school and void the parents’ right to have voice in the schools. Selling them off to a corporation that will continue the exploitative policies of Washington is another example of abrogation of duty that has typified his leadership.
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Ohio’s “lowest 5%” law is getting some much-needed scrutiny because they put it in so dishonestly:
State Supt. Dick Ross never told the state school board that he was helping with the secret improvement plan for the Youngstown schools that was rushed through the legislature and was just signed into law. And even as the board planned, took and discussed a trip to Youngstown to review how an existing improvement plan was working. Ross sat silently by while board members discussed the trip at several of their monthly meetings, never alerting the board that hired him and can fire him.
Board members were angry with Ross at last Tuesday’s board meeting, with Democrats on the board chastising him for never even mentioning that a plan was in the works, especially while they planned their May trip and talked about it afterward.
That new plan was amended to HB 70 in a mad dash late last month, blasting from introduction to passage by both Houses of the legislature in a single day without any opportunity for opponents – or even Youngstown’s mayor or school board – to testify about it.
The plan, which will also apply to any other district declared as “failing” and needing state intervention, was signed into law by Gov. John Kasich Thursday.”
Incredible, right? No debate, no discussion, 100% closed door discussions and trickery. Which lobbying group just drafted Ohio public education law? Do the people who actually send their kids to Ohio public schools and fund this entire operation have ANY say in this?
These are not the actions of people who are confident they have public support.
http://www.cleveland.com/metro/index.ssf/2015/07/state_supt_ross_kept_youngstow.html
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But stage intervention is a misnomer right? Because they turn it over to charters. ? The Achievement Authority idea was too communist-like to work. It collapsed under its own weight. But would handing things over to charters be . . . Fascism?? It isn’t democracy, I don’t think. Right?
What are we avoiding with all of this? Why is everyone so Afraid of Democratic ideals in education?
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State, not stage
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Big money influences the decisions of policy makers, and they have influenced many state leaders. That is one of the reasons they are turning the bottom performing schools over to charters. From my point of view, it is a lazy, feckless choice.
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This is called FALSE CHOICE and inappropriate.
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Many, many leaders have given up on the idea of communities coming together (across the state, but with LEAs at the helm) and we are in an era of churn and handing over community effort to private entity. I personally think private entities running community efforts like the organic and human pursuit of educating a populace is scary. I rather like the idea of universities with research and institutional history, and elected school boards and local officials putting heads and resources together to attend to that ongoing and living duty more than abdicating it or passing it off but asking the public to pay for it. Anyway. We have to think about this stuff. Our children are counting on us. And their children. And their children. And their children. Lest we forget.
How can we get people thinking this way?
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…because there will ALWAYS be a bottom 5 percent to punish, fire, close, test harder, push out and take over via charter. That continual bottom 5% is their lifeline to the ka-ching taxpayer dollars that never end and are bottomless.
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The “5 percent argument” is a sure sign of the widespread quantitative illiteracy in our political and pundit class. Of course there is always going to be a bottom 5 percent. If you haven’t understood that, you need some remedial Math. Sadly, American education policy is full of ignorant jargon, such as “all our teachers are/ should be excellent”, which is a self-contradictory. The “superstar teacher” meme has done a lot of damage. In any profession, by definition, most practitioners are average, a few are outstanding and a few are way below average. The idea that you can improve the overall performance by focusing only on the outliers at the top and bottom is ignorant. And the argument that everything would be fine if in future we hired only “excellent” teachers is totally confused. If only education policy makers were willing to educate themselves.
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