Corporate education reform specializes in grandiose promises, hype, and spin. No reformer was bolder than Chris Barbic. Reflecting his self-confidence, he took over Tennessee’s Achievement School District and predicted he could raise the bottom 5% of the state’s schools into the top 25% in only five years.
After only four years, Barbic quit. He said that turning around neighborhood schools was harder than he expected. It is easier to have a choice school where the school chooses, although Barbic didn’t say that.
Gary Rubinstein was first to analyze the ASD data, and he found that after three years, the original six schools had not improved. Barbic’s ambitious goal was out of reach.
Rubinstein wrote:
“Four of the original six schools are still in the bottom 5% while the other two have now ‘catapulted’ to the bottom 6%. Perhaps this is one reason that Chris Barbic recently announced he is resigning at the end of the year.”
So what is the response in Tennessee?
Andy Spears writes that the ASD took over Neely’s Bend, a middle school that was improving and outperforming the ASD schools.
“Some in the Tennessee General Assembly have taken notice. More than twenty bills dealing with the ASD’s practices were filed in the 2015 legislative session. One of them passed. Ironically, that legislation would have prevented the ASD from taking over any school on the priority list that had scored a 4 or 5 on the state’s accountability indicator. Neely’s Bend’s 2015 score was a 5.
“Unlike other school districts, the ASD is not accountable to an elected School Board. The Superintendent reports directly to the Commissioner of Education. This lack of accountability is likely what prompted soon-to-be former ASD Superintendent Barbic to say, *I think it’s important to remind everyone that a lot of things we are doing are by choice. If we wanted to, we could take over all 85 schools (on the priority list) next year.*
“I think it’s safe to say that this communication strategy combined with the results at Neely’s Bend will cause the legislature to take another look at the runaway expansion of the ASD. It’s certainly not too late to both return Neely’s Bend to the community that loves it AND delay further expansion without new accountability provisions.”
Diane Ravitch's blog 
I guess how much fun it is to point out that the rephormers aren’t even succeeding by their own metrics, but please let’s not talk about “improvement” when the only basis is test scores. We really have no idea whether or not ASD schools are improving or not. In fact, I’d venture to say that in low-income districts, the more test scores improve, the more actual education is getting worse. We know that test scores “measure” student socio-economic status more than anything else. And we know that the best way to raise test scores for low-income kids is to intensely drill them on test-prep skills, enforced through “no excuses” behavioral control (well, either that or cream the students you want or just plain cheat, or some combination of all of the above). So if test scores were to go up, it would just mean that the ASD was succeeding in its relentless focus on test scores, at the expense of actual education.
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Dienne,
Quite correct overall in your analysis, especially the last sentence. But (oh, don’t we all love us some buts, and I ain’t talking about smoked pig butts) you had to know this was coming from me even though you put the “M” word in quotes. (I know you understand the difference so this is not directed at you Dienne but those many thousands of readers who may not have read this explanation before.)
“We know that test scores “measure” student socio-economic status more than anything else.”
NO, we don’t know that! Test scores “measure” nothing as they are results of an assessment (a crappy and totally invalid one at that) and are not, cannot ever be misconstrued as any type of measuring device whatsoever. The test scores correlate with SES and that is it.
But hey, we all already knew that last fact for ohhh, maybe at least the last 60-70 years, eh!
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Duane, I have to say I agree with your test-score nihilism more & more as spring test-score post-mortems roll in. 1.5%-6% variations in annual eye-blinks: meh. Even if one were to ascribe [unwarranted] significance to an eye-blink of an eye-blink [annual changes in rates of eye-blinking]– perhaps e.g. if one were a statistician collecting data-banks of eye-blinks– one’s antennae would gradually wilt as, year after year, the raw data pours in without a hint of nuanced analysis.
No valid control groups, nothing calculated with regard to changing school & classroom populations, nor transiting regional populations [LA], nor changing budgets/ class-sizes/ teacher-cert or lack thereof, nor even changes in tests used. Nada to satisfy even a committed statistician.
All one can conclude about the 3-yr change in test scores for the Tenn ASD is that it reflects more or less [perhaps a bit less] than the state trends. Which are based on annual eyeblinks.
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S&2F,
My Quixotic Quest is to get as many people to understand (and hopefully act upon said understanding) that the mental mathturbations (gracias SDP) that are educational standards and standardized testing are utterly absurd and insane wastes of time, energy and monies. Not only that but in the process so many innocents are harmed by those malpractices. Injustice abounds in those malpractices. The resultant evil is completely preventable only if folks open up they minds to break out of such culturally ingrained monstrosities.
We shall overcome! (and yes this is the true civil rights issue of our time, the injustices against many innocents through discrimination by mental abilities/capabilities.
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The Obama Administration promote Tennessee as the ed reform nirvana constantly. It’s almost amusing, because it’s always one of the same three- Tennessee, DC or New Orleans. They steer clear of the…. problematic ed reform “movement” states, like OH, MI, FL and PA.
“At multiple stops in Nashville Tuesday, President Barack Obama’s top education official showered Tennessee with praise for “controversial but common-sense decisions” he contends are having a profound effect on achievement.
In doing so, U.S. Education Secretary Arne Duncan lauded state officials for taking on what he coined a “courage gap” prevalent in public education today, pointing to reforms this state embraced despite fierce pushback.
“There’s so much this room and this state should be collectively proud of,” Duncan said during a panel discussion moderated by Tennessee Education Commissioner Kevin Huffman, an ally, at Brick Church College Prep, a Nashville middle school overseen by the state and operated by a charter school organization.
Duncan has routinely shown a fondness for Tennessee — one of the first two states to which his administration awarded federal Race to the Top funds when it unveiled the program in 2010, making it a model of Obama’s education agenda.”
http://www.tennessean.com/story/news/education/2014/05/20/us-education-secretary-arne-duncan-visits-nashville-today/9322449/
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If such decisions are so “common sense”, why doesn’t he make them for his own children?
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Duncan’s relentless promotion of Huffman gives one a real window into what it’s like in that administration. It’s 100% “movement” ed reform. It’s appalling how self-reinforcing the narrative is- the same people lauding one another, over and over and around and around. It’s capture. There is no “US Department of Education”- that organization is one and the same with this “movement”.
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Exactly right, Chiara.
Thus you see that people cycle in and out of “reform” groups and the US DOE.
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Wow, that’s so depressing, but thanks for the reality check. However I’ve decided to look at the silver lining. LA, DC, & Tenn are relatively recent areas of mass reform. The public is just now being showered with data proving the lie– still being digested.
Wasn’t FL the golden child just a couple of yrs ago? The bloom is starting to be off the rose among the FL population this yr. The voters in much-longer experiments in Ohio, Mich, & Pa [& maybe IN?] seems to be waking up to reality, armed w/many more yrs of data & starting to compare results w/expenditures, even initiating action here & there.
My sincere hope is that the experience of Ohio, Mich, & PA informs other states– that we don’t all have to endure 18 yrs+ of radical reform agenda for voters to get a clue.
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Senator Thelma Haprer a Memphis Democrat and astutely aware of how bad the ASD is for education tried to pass legislation in 2015 to shut down the ASD. They just about laughed her bill and the House bill off the floor. It is my opinion that probably too many campaign contributions would be in jeopardy if our legislators supported this legislation. She knew back in 2010, when she was one of just 3 brave and very insightful female Senators that voted against a bill that would allow us to apply for RTTT and would change how teachers are rated and to make legitimate all the promises made in the RTTT application, would be a disaster for public education. Sen. Harper voted against this action stating it would lead to the privatization of public education. How right she was then and how right she is now. It is my hope that she will try again in 2016 and that the people of Tennessee will stand behind her. We all know the ASD is to privatize public education. We all know it is a failure so why is our Governor continuing to move it forward? Maybe we should look to DC for the answer to that questions. Barbic a Broad Superintendent Academy graduate (class of 2011) was sent to Tennessee to implement the Broad philosophy of privatization and running schools like a for profit business. NOW is the time to shut down the ASD. But I am sure Haslam will have to go to his boss in DC for permission and there in lies the problem. Haslam answers to Obama not to the people of Tennessee. Our states have become nothing more than arms of the federal government.
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There’s a bunch of articles, which might be of interest.
http://www.commondreams.org/author/jim-horn
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Here’s the coverage of Common Core test results in Kansas:
“The numbers are in, and it’s not good for Kansas students. The latest test scores show Kansas teachers are not doing enough to get students ready for college.
The test scores show that most students in Kansas are not getting the education they need to be prepared for college.”
Bad, bad, bad. Deficient and not meeting standards, these loser third graders.
Poor Kansas public school kids, It’s not enough that they live in a state that decided to gut their public schools because the adults are too selfish and short-sighted to pay for them, they’re now subject to a fresh new wave of stern scolding about their scores on these stupid tests.
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it becomes evident that the purpose of the Common Core and the related testing was to set the passing mark so high that most kids would fail and that would provide ammunition for more and more privatization.
It was intended, as Jeb Bush once acknowledged, to send a wake up call to parents in the suburbs so they too would want charters and vouchers.
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I agree. Which explains why the “reformers” have been absolutely driven mad by opt out. Opt Ed is strongest in those suburbs and the parents have rejected those tests.
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