Lillian Lowery stepped down as state superintendent in Maryland. Republican Governor Larry Hogan has now named six of the 11 members of the state board and will influence the choice of the next superintendent. His last two appointees were Andy Smarick and Chester Finn Jr., both conservatives and supporters of charter schools and the Common Core.
The article speculates that the Governor and state board might select Finn as state superintendent.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
OMG, I’d sooner see Finn appointed roads commissioner or some other job where he can’t mismanage the education of children.
I share your sentiments, but if they insist on hiring a rheephormster, let it be a charter member of the education establishment because—
The worst possible position for any voluble “thought leader” and beneficiary of the “new civil rights movement of our time” is to be responsible for producing the promised results.
He knows all the tricks and gimmicks and catchy slogans so he can’t be accused of not having the requisite “qualifications.” Failure, as painful as it will be for so many, will severely undercut rheephormista pretensions. It will make more evident that self-styled “education reform” is simply expensive failure writ large.
Just a thought…
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Ah, Chester Finn.
Chester Finn calls himself an “education expert.” And he’s been doing it for quite some time. But to be an “expert” means that a person has, uses and readily displays “special skill or knowledge derived from training or experience.” Finn, however, admits that he was a terrible teacher during his very brief stint at it. The “knowledge” that Finn has in education that can be honestly imparted to others is more than a little bit specious.
Finn has shamelessly peddled the false claim made in A Nation at Risk, the education polemic that announced “a rising tide of mediocrity threatens our very future as a nation and a people.” The Sandia Report (Journal of Educational Research, May/June, 1993), published in the wake of A Nation at Risk, concluded that:
* “..on nearly every measure we found steady or slightly improving trends.”
* “youth today [the 1980s] are choosing natural science and engineering degrees at a higher rate than their peers of the 1960s.”
* “business leaders surveyed are generally satisfied with the skill levels of their employees, and the problems that do exist do not appear to point to the k-12 education system as a root cause.”
* “The student performance data clearly indicate that today’s youth are achieving levels of education at least as high as any previous generation.”
Finn paid little attention.
Worse, Finn has spread the nonsense that “we downplay excellence at great cost, not only to our economic competitiveness but also perhaps to reform of the education system itself.” Huh? Say what?
The U.S. already IS internationally competitive. The World Economic Forum ranks nations each year on competitiveness. The U.S. is usually in the top five (if not 1 or 2). When it drops, the WEF doesn’t cite education, but stupid economic decisions and policies.
For example, when the U.S. dropped from 2nd to 4th in 2010-11, four factors were cited by the WEF for the decline: (1) weak corporate auditing and reporting standards, (2) suspect corporate ethics, (3) big deficits (brought on by Wall Street’s financial implosion) and (4) unsustainable levels of debt.
In 2011-12, major factors cited by the WEF are a “business community” and business leaders who are “critical toward public and private institutions,” a lack of trust in politicians and the political process with a lack of transparency in policy-making, and “a lack of macroeconomic stability” caused by decades of fiscal deficits, especially deficits and debt accrued over the last decade that “are likely to weigh heavily on the country’s future growth.” The WEF did NOT cite public schools as being problematic to innovation and competitiveness.
The U.S. is now back to #3 in the WEF competitiveness rankings precisely because it has brought deficits and debt under control and made financial transactions more transparent and subject to regulatory oversight.
But people like Chester Finn and his corporate-”reform” allies don’t care. They just keep making things up as they go. Finn writes that “Local control in a democratic system is only as good as the means whereby it is exercised, ultimately by thoroughly informed voters.”
Sadly and perversely, Finn has done his level best to misinform, to distort facts, and to muddy rather than to clarify discussions on public schooling in the nation.
Citizens might be able to trust Finn as dogcatcher-in-chief, but not as a state schools superintendent.
Finally old Checkers would have the chance to put all of his crackpot theories to the test of the real world.
Of course if they failed miserably, like nearly all of his theories over the last few decades, it wouldn’t change his ideology. He clings to his free market religion like a snapping turtle and will not let them go no matter how many times they are proved worthless.
Witness ‘merit pay’, as Diane has so eloquently demonstrated as useless, and the whole ‘standards will save us!’ movement.
If only Gerald Bracey were still here to comment on this!
“Of course if they failed miserably, like nearly all of his theories over the last few decades, it wouldn’t change his idiology.”
One minor change in your sentence, Chris, and it is now correct.
Bu the way, if you’d like to see the new face of dumb, then read this Daily Beast article by Jonathan Alter, who seems to take a stupid pill just prior to writing any of his columns on education:
http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2015/09/01/why-liberals-should-to-learn-to-love-charter-schools.html
I see you’re testing to see if our SVI* vaccine is effective, eh democracy.
The lead-in sentence:
“Charter schools may not solve all of America’s education problems, but in cities like New Orleans, they’re still doing a lot of good.”
And:
“New Orleans is a good example of where charters, which now educate 95 percent of New Orleans public school students, are working.”
And:
“One of the secrets of their success is that so many of them use Doug Lemov’s essential book, Teach Like a Champion, to help educate new teachers.”
And this exquisite piece of stupidity:
“One finding in particular has stuck in the public consciousness—that charter public schools (and yes, charters are public schools, despite propaganda from unions and their supporters suggesting otherwise) perform no better overall than traditional public schools. This is accurate, but not especially relevant, because many small, inexperienced groups that lack the know-how to run schools have opened charters in recent years.”
And finally a quick jab at the owner of “a site to discuss better education for all”
“They’ve swallowed cherry-picked statistics from former Assistant Secretary of Education Diane Ravitch and her acolytes, which misrepresent the significant advances taking place in hundreds of those once-awful schools.”
*Somnambulance Vacunousness and Inanity
Wow, talk about “swallowing cherry-picked statistics!” LOL
Señor Swacker: at least we’ve been promoted from “Ravitchbots” to “acolytes.”
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And howzabout the admissions [cited by you] that charter schools 1), “perform no better overall than traditional public schools. This is accurate, but not especially relevant, because many small, inexperienced groups that lack the know-how to run schools have opened charters in recent years” & 2), “Charter schools may not solve all of America’s education problems, but in cities like New Orleans, they’re still doing a lot of good.”
He just made whopping admissions [not the only ones either] of failure with a hearty serving of excuses du jour.
Notice how he “forgets” to mention how much $$$ of various kinds poured in NOLA for the charters—you know, that pesky “input” question brought up by those of us for a “better education for all”?
I have brought this up before, but Gerald Bracey’s observation (under his Principles of Data Interpretation) is oh so relevant when discussing the NOLA charter miracle: “When comparing groups, make sure the groups are comparable.”
So much of what is pre- and post-Katrina makes not just comparing groups, but many other things, difficult or impossible to do—
Unless one eagerly suspends logic, decency, consistency and fairness in the interests of $tudent $ucce$$.
I urge everyone to read the linked piece above.
Thank you for your comments.
😎
P.S. I almost forgot. NOLA. John McDonough HS. Black. Parents. Students. Community. Choice but no voice.
How did Jonathan Alter forget that? Oops, I almost forgot that he took the medicine that democracy mentioned.
So that’s how the rheephorm “thought leaders” do their stinking…
Thinking. Darn Microsoft auto-CORRECTION.
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But not to fear, oh Sir Alter, the following link should help save what’s left of your grey matter—
Link: https://dianeravitch.net/2014/10/23/the-miracle-that-wasnt-steve-barrs-failure-in-new-orleans/
“Those rooting for charters to fail certainly aren’t the African-American parents who in cities across the country enter charter school lotteries in disproportionate numbers.”
Does he just mean where they have no other choice?
A friend in Brooklyn told me his children attend charters but wish they could attend public schools.
Also, I don’t think any liberal has ever rooted for charters to fail. . .I think most just didn’t root for public schools to fail, which is the sentiment that made room for charters to begin with.
Circle talk. His article is circle talk.
I don’t think liberals are rooting for charters to fail at all. Most of the hostility and lies are coming the charter supporters, and some of that animosity is coming from the neoliberals like Obama and Cuomo that are big name Democrats. Teachers are tired of the lies, distortions, obfuscations, attacks, false associations and innuendos from wealthy backers of charter schools and the press. They are tired of seeing the wealthy buying influence from politicians that act more like hit men for the mob than leaders. They are tired of seeing laws partial to charter expansion when there is little to no evidence it is in the best interests of students. Teachers are tired of seeing budgets cut for their students while charters squander taxpayer funds. They are tired of endless phony testing with rigged cut scores that are all part of the political ping pong game education has become. Frankly, teachers are ” mad as hell, and they’re not going to take it anymore.”
Good to now know Lillian Lowery is a graduate of The Broad Superintendents Academy Class of 2004…
http://www.broadcenter.org/academy/newsroom/full/a-promising-sign-for-maryland-school-reform
As I sometimes asked, how might one boil a frog in such a way so as to have the frog be at ease being a complicit participant in its own demise? In promoting injustice and inequality against itself?
Eli Broad seems to somehow know how to do it.
So-called reformers, virtually none of whom have substantial classroom experience, almost always fail, even at achieving their debased standards of higher test scores, which are usually achieved via cheating and manipulation.
Finn will also fail, guaranteed… and it’s also guaranteed that he’ll blame the teachers for his incompetence, and get media play doing so…
Philosophical thought: corporate education reform creates microcosms centered on reparations. Yes?
I don’t know if it is reparations, but the funding for charters is totally subtractive to the budgets of public schools. With corrupt governors able to toy with the reimbursement formulas, we have seen how Chester County in Pennsylvania has no money to educate those left in the public schools. This is unacceptable.
not reparations but perhaps fraudulence and dissemination.
Reparation
noun
1. the making of amends for wrong or injury done:
reparation for an injustice.
but they clearly see it as reparations, I think(the ones pushing for it).
These comments have a racist tinge to my thinking. Am I misunderstanding? I certainly hope so.
Which comments, Chris? Mine?
I just didn’t thing reparations sounded right in that usage and thought Involvedmom didn’t say what she wanted to. And after her clarification I’m still not sure what she means by using reparations.
Not your comments Duane. The whole ‘reparations’ accusation is suspect and has a dogwhistle feel to me.
Chris in Florida–
I read lots of posts about how black children are the ones who suffer most from reforms and yet reformers claim charters and TFA and so forth change the trajectory of poor, minority students. Since reformers won’t and don’t and didn’t trust the public school system already in place to help poor minorities, I believe they rationalize wrecking the system by calling it sort of a Robinhood gesture (albeit they really end up giving back to the rich).
There is nothing to indicate I am a racist by asking a question based on connecting what I read and you saying so is ad hominem in that is focuses on me and not my question (which often happens on this blog, actually—the ad hominem bit). I sometimes find those comments entertaining but for discussion they just kill it. On the one hand it’s all about black and Hispanic children but if we mention that in any other way other than “shame on them”(reformers) we are racist???? I think many reformers think they are picking up the slack where public schools have not. There is nothing racist about me stating that and one should not assume that by stating that observation that I think it’s OK. Nor should I be faulted for trying to center a discussion question on it.
I also still don’t get why the other day a commenter said I was condescending for thinking Obama doesn’t care about education. ??? At the time, I couldn’t see that he does (still trying to learn).
Racist? Condescending? ???!
What I know: ‘reparations’ is a dogwhistle word used by the Tea Party and other racist conservative organizations every single day to disparage people of color asking for fiar treatment.
When people use the word ‘they’ without context it can be attributed to the longstanding tradition of othering people of color, such as “those people . . . they”
There is a conservative jihad on now to name Black Lives Matter as a hate group and the word reparations is used quite frequently in refernece to that meme.
I do not know what your inclinations or positions are because you do not always make them clear. You threw out a topic for discussion without context or explanation. I responded. The burden is on you to explain what you meant. Your defensiveness is interesting.
No surprise that Lowery would jump ship before “common core sh” hits the fan! The tests results from last school year’s first round of PARCC won’t be pretty. This is classic corporate “ed reform”… leave so you don’t take the heat for the results of your failed policies. Then another “Broadie” can take the helm claiming to save the day.
Reblogged this on David R. Taylor-Thoughts on Education.
Please read about the new board appointees in MD http://educationalchemy.com/2015/09/01/maryland-meet-your-state-board-of-education/