Laurene Powell Jobs, widow if Steve Jobs, inherited several billions. She has now decided to make a big move into redesigning the American high school.
To advise her, she has hired a former aide to Arne Duncan and a former aide to Joel Klein.
She has impeccable reform credentials, that is, she approaches the problem with no knowledge or experience. Well, she is on the board of Teach for America, so she knows that experienced teachers are no good.
Will Fitzhugh, publisher of The Concord Review, which publishes outstanding history research pApers by high school students, says:
“At $50,000,000, Laurene Jobs is set to waste only half as much as
Mark Zuckerburg did, working with the usual reform suspects.”
Diane Ravitch's blog 
I recall reading that Steven Jobs, upon Obama’s 2008 election victory, informed the Obama administration that they must confront the teacher unions. So it’s no surprise that his wife is a “reformer”.
She doesn’t know anything. She thinks American teachers are no good. I wonder what she’d say if she learned that, once we break down our children by socioeconomic level, our children at every level either outperform similar children in other countries or are very close.
Once we get away from that overall average and compare by socioeconomic level—apples to apples—students in America’s public schools often outperform their counterparts in all the other OECD nations at almost every level.’
It’s not easy to find this link using Google. It has been buried by the corporate reformers. I couldn’t open the first link when I found it but the second link worked. I think I’m going to take several screen shots before the deformers get rid of these facts that prove their entire war against public education is a fraud.
http://nasspblogs.org/principaldifference/2014/02/pisa-its-still-poverty-not-stupid/
http://www.schoolfunding.info/news/policy/2011-01PISA.php3
This should be repeated ten thousand times a day through social media:
“Poor ranking on international test misleading about U.S. student performance, Stanford researcher finds”
>Based on their analysis, the co-authors found that average U.S. scores in reading and math on the PISA are low partly because a disproportionately greater share of U.S. students comes from disadvantaged social class groups, whose performance is relatively low in every country.
As part of the study, Carnoy and Rothstein calculated how international rankings on the most recent PISA might change if the United States had a social class composition similar to that of top-ranking nations: U.S. rankings would rise to sixth from 14th in reading and to 13th from 25th in math. The gap between U.S. students and those from the highest-achieving countries would be cut in half in reading and by at least a third in math.
“You can’t compare nations’ test scores without looking at the social class characteristics of students who take the test in different countries,” said Carnoy. “Nations with more lower social class students will have lower overall scores, because these students don’t perform as well academically, even in good schools. Policymakers should understand how our lower and higher social class students perform in comparison to similar students in other countries before recommending sweeping school reforms.”
>There is an achievement gap between more and less disadvantaged students in every country; surprisingly, that gap is smaller in the United States than in similar post-industrial countries, and not much larger than in the very highest scoring countries.
>Achievement of U.S. disadvantaged students has been rising rapidly over time, while achievement of disadvantaged students in countries to which the United States is frequently unfavorably compared – Canada, Finland and Korea, for example – has been falling rapidly.
>U.S. PISA scores are depressed partly because of a sampling flaw resulting in a disproportionate number of students from high-poverty schools among the test-takers. About 40 percent of the PISA sample in the United States was drawn from schools where half or more of the students are eligible for the free lunch program, though only 32 percent of students nationwide attend such schools.
http://news.stanford.edu/news/2013/january/test-scores-ranking-011513.html
This just in:
Wealthy person doesn’t believe inequality has anything to do with US social problems, blames schools instead.
wealthy people are allowed to be frauds and fools too.
One more ignorant, bored, billionaire wife, turned oligarch. Melinda Gates, Laura Arnold, Betsy DeVos and Laurene, abandon bridge and golf, in favor, of venture philanthropy, channeling the servants’ children into the human capital pipeline.
Their meddling in education makes me wish that these women would go back to having long, alcoholic lunches with their castrati male friends.
Truman Capote nor Dominick Dunne could have phrased it better than you did, Anne.
“… channeling the servants children into the human capital pipeline.
Yes, and hiring a serial failure (failed anti-trust prosecution of Microsoft, failed tenure at Bertelsman, failed/corrupt tenure at NYC DOE, failed tenure at Amplify) and serial school killer to do so…
Diane, what GREAT NEWS! I get discouraged when the lawyers for my local (LCPS) and state (VDOE) officials attempt to prevent them from having to answer questions on their clear violation of ESEA regulations (since it was done knowingly, that constitutes fraud by the way). But I can always count on you to pick me up as we have another intelligent, creative, innovative (and might I add female) reformer to continue carrying the torch!!!
Not sure where HER innovation is. Sounds like the usual vague assurances and criticisms without any concrete knowledge. She’ll just farm it out to people who have “credentials.” We know how these grants usually go. I congratulate the many consultants who will hoover up this free money.
You know Virginia, I just put the trash out on the curb the other night with the lid tightly secured, and we definitely had no hurricane winds.
How DID you manage to escape?
Dr. Ravitch,
This is an example of a dehumanizing comment. Virginia is not thought of as a human being, but trash to be put in a dump or burned in an oven.
TE, I read all the comments, well over 300,000 of them. Virginia is pretty good at hurling insults at others. I would prefer no insults, but I stick to the First Amendment unless people become scatological or insult me. I have my standards for behavior and civility. Not everyone lives up to them, and some people skirt the line. But I avoid deleting comments unless they cross my personal line.
Dr. Ravitch,
If calling poster Virginia trash and the folks repeatedly calling me an Ayn Rand rug sniffer and a Koch sucker does not cross your personal line, may I ask what does? Are the lines the same for orthodox and heterodox posters on your blog?
TE,
The insults have gone in many directions, none originate with me. I tolerate a lot in the name of free speech. You have been civil.
Thank you, Diane. I appreciate the compliment. Is that your first ever for me? Btw, a copy of your book “Reign of Error: How ineffective teachers take future income from disadvantaged kids for their own paychecks” just arrived from Amazon. Not sure I got the title right but looking forward to reading it in between my depositions, appeals and trials. TE had Rendo’s sentiment about right but I agree with you, Diane, on the 1st amendment rights.
Does Amazon give you a good royalty or are they part of the evil entrepreneur class keeping the middle class down?
Virginia,
Amazon doesn’t give me royalties.
CORRECTION To virginiasgp who wrote:
“Reign of Error: How ineffective teachers take future income from disadvantaged kids for their own paychecks”
The correct title is “Reign of Error: The Hoax of the Privatization Movement and the Danger to America’s Public Schools.”
Now back to virginiasgp allegation that ineffective teachers are taking the future income from disadvantaged kids for their own paychecks—I THINK that is only correct if we apply it to TFA and the 1% to 3% of teachers who are ineffective and they stay when they know they should leave.
But of course we should all fall into line and agree with virginiasgp that we should punish 100% of the teachers and fire 20% of them every year to ferret out the 1% – 3% that are allegedly ineffective but probably just burned out from all the stress heaped on them by the 1% and people like virginiasgp.
Oh, and of course reward TFA recruits who make it through their second year before they quit and abandon the disadvantaged children who need them most and leave education as teachers forever to move into high paid jobs where they get to work toward the total destruction of public education.
I wonder how virginiasgp justifies corporate Charters that hold onto the most disadvantaged children who are the most difficult to teach JUST long enough to get paid for those children for the entire school year before the abandoning those children and throwing them into the streets or back to a public school where there is no money left to teach them if there is a public school left. In New Orleans once the corporate Charters get rid of these children there is only the streets.
And how about the hundreds of millions of dollars tax payers paid to support the education of all children that vanished due to fraud in the corporate Charters?
How long do they have to keep those children before getting rid of them—is it twenty days out of the 180 days of a full school year?
“New report estimates $54 million in charter school fraud in New York state in 2014”
http://www.nea.org/home/61224.htm
“Charter Schools Are Mired in Fraud and Failure”
http://www.alternet.org/charter-schools-are-mired-fraud-and-failure
“Charter School Scandals”
http://charterschoolscandals.blogspot.com/
Charter school bankruptcy opens some ‘closed’ books
CEO borrowed $1.2 million just weeks before he closed schools
http://jacksonville.com/news/metro/2015-07-01/story/charter-school-bankruptcy-opens-some-closed-books
New report: charter school fraud could be costing CA taxpayers $81 million
http://educationvotes.nea.org/2015/03/24/new-report-charter-school-fraud-could-be-costing-ca-taxpayers-81-million/
October Charter School Investigations-Takes of Fraud, Mismanagement, and Mis-Education
http://www.progressive.org/news/2014/10/187895/october-charter-school-investigations%E2%80%94tales-fraud-mismanagement-and-mis
Charter schools misspend millions of Ohio tax dollars as efforts to police them are privatized
http://www.ohio.com/news/local/charter-schools-misspend-millions-of-ohio-tax-dollars-as-efforts-to-police-them-are-privatized-1.596318
It feels great to have provoked such an otherwise thoughtless and mindless commentator as Virginiasgp, but in the long term, I really think that my comment is perhaps not the most productive for the greater cause. I therefore recant. I retract my statement for the record, right here and now.
However, Virginiasgp and TE (And yes, TE, to his credit is always civil), please remember that the utility of my post has pointed out a “moral of the story”, which is this:
Virginiasgp’s remarks to Diane and others have at times been resplendent with sarcasm and biting, insulting verbiage, and no, he uses no curse words or makes any threats. He once referred to my my title as “making it a part of my surname”, which is ridiculous, but it did have an admittedly funny tone, even as he meant for it to reduce my credibility.
Of course, Virginiasgp is a experienced Nationally Board Certified teacher who has taught for 22 years and who has 18 credits in educational building and district level leadership. He knows what it really means to teach and learn, and has SO MUCH experience in this field.
Oops.
There goes that darn sarcasm again. Is it like an opiate?
But what we have learned here, de facto, is that what is good for the Rendo is good for the Virginiasgp, and if Virginiasgp attacks the host with condescending sarcasm, then Virginiasgp can be expected to be likewise treated . . . . Perhaps and thankfully not by that host, but by someone like me.
Virginiasgp, maybe you can or cannot expect others to assume your philosophy of education, but you should definitely expect others to treat you as you have treated others . . . or others’ allies. Didn’t they teach that to you in the armed forces? Are you bitter because you put in six hard years and came out with no pension to your name? You complained in a past post that you actually ended up paying for uniformed men and women’s pensions, men and women who remained in the military for longer than you. Are you pissed off at teachers because their small salaries and pensions cost the public too much? Do you have a bone to pick?
Where are you working now? And why not just tell us your real name instead of hiding behind the matronly apron strings of anonymity? You would not make any enemies, as you seem to have so many allies on your side, including Steve Jobs’s widow. Ask her, with all her tax sheltered hundreds of millions and her overseas factories in China that use child labor, to contribute to even a small pension in proportion to your six years that I think you deserve in turn for serving our country. But you don’t see how you vote and advocate for people who are against your own interests.
Poor Virginiasgp. All that anonymity has made him drunk with power.
Sarcasm is sarcasm . . . Just ask Samuel Langhorn Clemmens.
And TE, please don’t have a heart attack . . . You’re a big boy.
virginiagsp, I try to answer you reasonably, but I can see why people insult you. Kind deeds return to you – and so does rudeness and lies.
It is possible – as President Dwight D. Eisenhower believed — to support entrepreneurship while understanding that no one in this country succeeds in opening a new business without the support of the government and social structure of this country. Therefore, it is reasonable to have a progressive tax rate which does not limit entrepreneurship but allows other Americans to have the benefits that all those people running successful businesses had because this country had high tax rates in the 1950s — up to 70% but it was MARGINAL. But then again, you probably despise Eisenhower since he stands for everything you hate about America.
Since you believe so much in “entrepreneurship”, perhaps you can advise people who believe only in the free market to leave every western democracy and make their way to “free market” country with no government to enforce any regulations at all!
Apologies to you, TE, who I oppose, but who has never raised a voice, an eyebrow, or spoken an acid laced word. You are like a silent deadly virus that is undetectable, seemingly innocuous, feels okay in tone, and yields disaster in content and affect. But you are who you are, and I respect your right to be who you are.
If only you were not so . . . um-m-m-m . . . TE-ish.
If poor Virginiasgp felt put off, then I apologize as well. I may have to boil myself in Chlorox after reading one of his posts, but Virginiasgp is owed an apology.
PUBLIC words expressed carry great weight and importance.
I’m not sure why Rendo and company felt I was “put off”. In fact, I thanked Diane for complimenting me (“Virginia is pretty good at hurling insults”). You will never hear me complain about somebody’s free speech. I volunteered to protect that whatever form it takes. We are all big boys and girls. Well, that is unless some progressive can accuse somebody of “hate speech” and then get special laws applied to them and the accused. But that’s a whole different story.
Ok, last time. All the opt-out activists need to get your story straight. Am I 1) an egotistical troll who just wants name recognition or 2) how did Rendo put it…. one who hides behind the matronly apron of anonymity (“why not just tell us your real name instead of hiding behind the matronly apron strings of anonymity”). Forgive me for pointing this out for the umpteenth time, but I am not exactly anonymous on here. Not only do folks know my name, but my address, phone and email as well as I’ve put it on the many legal filings in Virginia. You can ask these guys, who I am making famous on Diane’s blog, if I have remained “anonymous”. And I don’t bring my employer into the discussion because I don’t represent them in this debate. It’s unprofessional to make any ties to a non-political company.
Not bitter on the military’s pension system at all. It fits their purpose. The model is setup to have lots of folks serve 4-8 years and then leave. A pension that only vests after 20 years is part of that model. I was merely pointing out that despite DoD putting 32%+ of a member’s salary toward the pension, it’s actually much higher than that once you consider only a fraction will accrue that pension. The same with teachers. Despite lower attrition, teachers earn more than the 18-20% contribution made by their districts each year… if they remain until retirement. I knew the rules going in. I made my decision. I do feel bad for the ones who left at 15-17 years because they couldn’t stand it any longer, though.
Actually, reading this thread made me laugh harder than I have in a long while. Kudos to all. Wouldn’t have thought I would like Diane but she is very funny. Duane can be funny but often gets tedious. Others, not so much.
Btw, I have to compliment you as well. You get in a few insults while you are “apologizing” (thoughtless and mindless commentator). That’s a nice touch. And I was saddened to learn that you changed your name back to “Robert Rendo Nationally Board Certified Teacher”. That must make for an awfully tedious signature. Could you do me a favor though? Next time you toggle your name back and forth, can you try “Robert Rendo National Board Certified Teacher”? (maybe even “Board-certified”) And can you ask that Board to teach its certified teachers proper grammar?
Lloyd, I don’t support fraud by anyone. There should be transparency in charters and clawbacks when contracts are not fulfilled. Speaking of fraud, I think we have lots of officials in Virginia who are familiar with that. You see, the Secretary of Education Ann Holton (wife of Senator Tim Kaine) oversaw two Virginia state superintendents (Wright and Staples) who signed “Assurances” for Virginia’s ESEA application they knew were false. $40M/yr based on false assurances. That’s fraud if I ever saw it. But apparently, those officials are now terrified of being deposed by a pro se petitioner in a FOIA case. One would think a pro se petitioner offers no challenge to professional attorneys including those from the Virginia AG office. But as it turns out, the VDOE attorney has been emailing my LCPS Superintendent for years on the use of SGPs. They didn’t really like them a couple of years ago but definitely knew the rules of ESEA. That makes one’s claim of feigned ignorance on ESEA rules much, much harder. Stay tuned, this is going to be fun. First stop after the depositions are complete? Why, that will be the US Attorney’s office with transcripts in hand.
NYC public school parent, why don’t you think TE is a parent? If someone doesn’t agree with you, must you attack their identity? And yes, you are wrong about Eisenhower and taxes. Not surprised as most everyone on here is wrong about 80% of their statements. But what is even more surprising is you that you state in large letters that the 70% tax rate was “MARGINAL”. That implies you think current taxes are not “marginal”. Can’t tell you how many times folks have told me the rich make charitable deductions to lower their “tax rate” (as if dropping below $334K lowers tax rate on all their earnings by 8% or so). These folks fundamentally misunderstand taxes and why everyone should learn the concepts of calculus. NYC parent, taxes are now, and have been for decades, all marginal rates. The higher rates apply to only the portion over the threshold for that higher rate. See folks, I’ve just taught a few more K’s of Diane’s readers how US tax policy works!
Lastly, Diane, I combined this post to reduce your effort. But you might be interested in Amazon’s royalty plan. Yes, you do receive royalties from Amazon even if there is a middleman. Maybe if we didn’t have those evil middlemen (i.e. publishers) folks in the 1% like Diane or struggling writers in the bottom 20% who publish books could keep even more of their hard-earned revenues.
Virginia, that’s three comments for today.
Despit all his talent, I am so glad Laurene’s husband is out if the picture. Maybe she will eventually bow out.
Horror of horrors! I don’t know what else to say! Pat Clark
Cx
Out of the picture . . . .
A woman with a net worth of $19 billion giving only $50 million?
What a cheapskate.
That’s less than 1 dollar for every child in the public school system. They can’t even buy a candy bar with that.
Thanks a lot Laurene.
They sell candy at the 99 Cent Store and the Dollar Store. :o)
She’s not stupid. It is a LOT cheaper for her to donate 50 million rather than pay higher taxes that existed in the 50’s through the 70’s. The billionaire-boys/girls-club has done a masterful job of distraction. And, unfortunately, too many people are easily fooled.
Yes they are. Sparkly shiny syndrome is an epidemic in this country. Sleek. Sparkly. Shiny. Must be good!!
Maybe we should turn all of our children over to the Dollar Stores to teach. :o)
new adjective: “miserlaurenely”
‘The billionairess was quite miserlaurenely, only dropping a dime into the panhandler’s cup when he said he wanted to buy a cup of coffee”
Full page ad on this in the Wall Street Journal today (9-14-2015, A-9).
This to be a crowd-sourced competition with some Trump-like PR stunts.
The Ad begins with the claim that our “high schoolers don’t have the skills they need for success in college or career.” High school is outdated, frozen in time.
The call is for “rethinking”–
making “learning wilder, wider, inexhaustible.
Make it a challenge and a desire.
Something craveable and ownable.”
“Let’s create a place that builds brains and stirs hearts and treats our nation’s students like a most valuable national resource.
A place that explores a new kind of intelligence. a kind of thinking that’s challenging, creative, and endless relevant.
A place where the love of teaching and the love of learning collide.”
“Let’s invest in brainpower.
Let’s supercharge American ingenuity.”
Let’s build a Super School.”
Click to access rules_eligibility.pdf
The “skills gap” is back!
It’s their absolute favorite excuse for flat or falling wages.
We here in Washington have heard the gossip that former mayor Fenty has been hanging with Ms. Powell Jobs out in California. You might recall that Mr. Fenty brought Michelle Rhee to town. He was a one-term mayor for lots of reasons; Michelle Rhee was one of the big ones. Her legacy does not seem to be serving Washington public education well. And…according to The Washingtonian Mr. Fenty is back in town after his stay in silicon valley “ready to do business!” Uh oh.
Likes!
I got a great suggestion. Lets test the students to death to prove the public schools are a failure as well as the teachers. then, lets turn the whole system over to corrupt billionaires, that love kids of course, and let them do what ever they want with our hard earned tax money!
Look at the bright side- when the people she hired worked for the government you were paying them to put in her ideas.
Now she’s paying them to put in her ideas.
At least they cut out the public middleman and they now pay for policy directly.
Charter promoters talk a lot about how they have to convert “the middle class”- Eva Moskowitz actually gives speeches on it.
Anyway, I think this is the beginning of that effort. They’ll drop the grim, scolding language and start talking about “creativity” because obviously they can’t privatize US public schools without “the middle class” going along.
I wonder if people will reject it just because it’s so slick and the public seems fed up with sales jobs. The big appeal of Bernie Sanders is that he isn’t at all managed and marketed 🙂
Charter promoters (with a few exceptions) don’t really want to “privatize public schools”. They realized that there is no money or glory to be found in educating the at-risk children, except for the percentage of those who can learn quickly and easily and not cause any problems and whose parents will do all that is asked of them. Because eventually their high attrition rates are going to catch up with them — I’m shocked that Eva Moskowitz has gotten away with it so far but that’s more a condemnation of the SUNY Charter Institute which will someday be shamed publicly about their lack of real oversight and complete lack of curiosity as to where the huge number of at-risk students who leave Success Academy go.
The problem is that schools that use these practices, like Success Academy, can’t find enough compliant, studious, high-scoring children in poor neighborhoods. Those charters are more than happy to educate any at-risk kid who “fits”, but since there aren’t enough of them to expand, they are desperately — and I mean desperately — marketing to middle class parents. They don’t actually want to have to teach ALL the students and without public schools to send their unwanted and expensive kids (most of whom are poor), how can they pay themselves big salaries? They would have to spend that money on educating those kids! Can’t have that, right?
Unfortunately, all of Success Academy’s public relations efforts have harmed their “brand”. Because they are a test prep factory first and foremost and they believe in making kids feel “misery” if they don’t shape up. That’s just not appealing to most middle class families who see these tests and are turned off by the fact that Eva Moskowitz believes your child is as good as their test score! Who wants that?
Maybe new charter operators, without the Success Academy brand, can come in and do the marketing to affluent parents that they want to do. Certainly the best way to market is to first make sure their schools get less and less money until they are so underfunded that any charter school seems like a better choice.
I suspect that Laurene Powell will be like BASIS Charter School and happily educate any kid who can do the grade level and advanced work in their high school, rich or poor. The fact that their “re-designed” high schools don’t do a darn thing for the kids in failing public schools who can’t do the work in these newly designed high schools will not bother her one bit. She will probably say her school is open to all, by lottery, and if kids “choose” to go elsewhere because they can’t do the work, well that’s their choice! See, no need to worry.
Reminds me of a charter school system in Chicago: NOBLE. Why are their scores so “good”? They dismiss students who don’t fit their “culture” and who don’t make the mark.
A sign of the failure of education reporters: In all the articles about the California test results in charter schools or publics, I honestly have no idea if the charters with lesser results are actually doing a good job or not. Maybe California charters are actually committed to keeping all their at-risk students and aren’t making their parents jump through hoops before their kids are even allowed to enroll. The reporters tell you “results” without any information as to whether the struggling students are encouraged to stay (because the school is really committed to teaching them) or encouraged to leave (because the school is really committed to improving their “results”. And we saw this happen with public schools in NYC under Bloomberg, where failing high schools were split up into smaller schools that appeared to do be doing better but really were not.
The pro-charter organization Democracy Builders tried to get some attention about the outrageous practice of comparing the charter schools that didn’t backfill and “lost” (by accident, I’m sure) low-performing students who weren’t replaced, with the charter schools that did backfill. They showed that a 90% proficiency rate after high attrition wasn’t any better than a 50% proficiency rate with backfill – the number of kids who were proficient was the same. It was met with silence. And Democracy Builders seemed unwilling, as all charters do, to focus on attrition alone. Instead, their focus is backfill, but as we all know, when it comes to charters, backfill isn’t just accepting the random kid who wins the lottery. NY 1 just reported on a child who won the lottery for a 2nd grade Success Academy spot but was “tested” and told she could only enroll in 1st grade. (She didn’t take the spot.) So whether those California charter schools use those kind of abhorrent practices to “discourage” unwanted older students or not would tell me much more about whether they are doing a good job of teaching kids than what % of students were “proficient”.
I agree with NYC public school parent. I can’t tell either. All schools (public or charter) should have their VAMs reported, by subgroup, so we can determine if they are effective and for which subgroups they are effective.
Why don’t we all work together and pass a law to this effect? What say you Diane and the opt-out activists?
Virginia,
As the American Statistical ssociation warned, VAM is not good to evaluate individual teachers, only systems or districts.
virginiagsp, why would you use a DISCREDITED measure? I’m curious how you would compare the “improvement” of a child in a charter school class of 24 well-behaved students whose parents support their learning and where all students with behavior and academic problems were made miserable until they left, with the “improvement” of the kids who left that charter and were sent to a public school in classes of 34 of which half were the charter school rejects? With the public school having far fewer resources than the charter school with millions and millions of dollars of donations in which to buy specially prepared test prep material?
How about THIS reform, virginiagsp: Every school with unusually good results — public or charter – is checked to see what portion of the class from each grade goes missing each year and where it goes. It’s SIMPLE! If a charter school has 80%+ proficiency rates, or a public school has 80% + proficiency rates, let’s make sure that ALL students are being educated. Deal? I’m just calling your bluff, but maybe you will surprise me. How about “no excuses” when it comes to attrition rates and whining that the falling public high school next door loses lots of kids to attrition so we are allowed to lose 40% or more of our kids without any questions being asked. Deal?
In general VAM models do include the number of students in a class.
In Florida individual student statistics include prior scores, related courses a student is enrolled in, disability status, English language learner status, gifted status, attendance, mobility (number of transitional), and difference in modal age in grade (proxy for retention in grade).
Class level characteristics are class size and homogeneity of student entering test scores.
teachingeconomist you are obviously not an elementary school teacher and I don’t think you are a parent or you would realize that a child is not a data point. Do you know that reading is developmental? I have seen it so many times — a child just “gets it” and it can happen in K, 1st, 2nd grade or during the summer. All the teachers that kept the child feeling confident during that time, and made them feel okay about not “getting it” in K and 1st deserve credit. Just think, those teachers could have instead made that same child feel “misery” for their lack of progress and taken away all self-confidence and in the long term, that child would have suffered. But that will never be measured in your system.
If you ONLY look at the data points of the students who remain in the school instead of looking at attrition and what happened to every student who ever won a lottery spot (whether they enrolled or not), your data is completely worthless. Of course the data of the students who remain in a school that gets rid of the kids who don’t perform will be good!
That’s why no scientific drug trials look at how well a drug works without including every person who is in that trial from the beginning. If half the patients in the trial have dropped out because they are experiencing terrible side effects or some other reason, scientists (at least the ones who aren’t on drug company payrolls) don’t ignore that to focus only on the “improvement” of the patients who remained in the trial until the end. And then claim 100% efficacy for all patients! Wouldn’t you be scared to know that was how the drug your doctor prescribed was “tested”? Only the patients who did well in trials were tested and the ones with bad side effects just left so weren’t included in that “data”?
If you don’t look at who enrolls in the school (and whether certain kids are discouraged from enrolling) and who remains in the school, all the data in the world about the students who remain after high attrition is pretty worthless.
NYC Parent,
My post was very narrow, responding to your concern about the difficulty of comparing students in different size classrooms. My statement is a factual one and it is true if I am an elementary school teacher and it is true if I am not an elementary school teacher. My statement is true if I have children and true if I do not have children.
You are, of course, free to believe whatever you convenient about me or the world.
It is apparent that these enormous contributions, donations, grants are supplied by big money people who follow others in their strata. Power follows power. There is no other explanation that makes sense to me. We need a Stephen Colbert, an Anderson Cooper, an Angelina Jolie, a Louis CK, etc to grab the headlines. Or someone in the billionaires club to step out and step up. Where are you Warren Buffet?
“Where are you Warren Buffet?”
I wouldn’t expect too much from The Oracle of Capitalism: he’s busy planning to turn over part of his estate to the Gates Foundation.
A major reason many high schools are lackluster is what happens to kids BEFORE high school. This is something reformers don’t understand. They are blind to the critical INVISIBLE foundations that must be laid to achieve the dazzling feats they want to see from teenagers. To them, a capable teenage mind is sui generis –there are no preparations needed –a blank bright mind is fine. But it’s hard to do dazzling things with students who can’t multiply, or don’t know N, S, E and W. It’s hard to elicit academic acrobatics from teens who have never ever completed one homework assignment (and whose parents were fine with that). If Ms. Powell skims the brainiest and best prepared 14 year olds from academically-oriented families, her new schools will dazzle. If she uses ordinary 14 year olds, her schools will be ordinary.
It’s more than that, in my opinion. Even in wealthy private schools, the bottom quarter or third or half (depending on the school) is only doing this kind of curriculum by being propped up by tutors who oversee homework and even then the students aren’t really grasping the concepts — but they do enough to get their B+ or B. They couldn’t pass a standardized algebra II math test but fortunately, they don’t have to! They don’t even have to take SATs anymore and can attend one of the so-called elite private schools that are SAT optional and are happy to accept any private school student with decent grades whose families can pay the full tuition price and more. There they can major in a non-STEM subject and take their 2 required rocks for jocks class and graduate with a respectable degree and go on to take their rightful place in the working world.
The question isn’t why aren’t these expensively educated private school kids learning advanced math (the ones who come in from publics are on average far, far better students). The question is why are we spending resources demanding that teachers turn every child into an engineer (or a literary critic). Not even private schools – with all their money and ability to choose students — are able to do this.
“She has impeccable reform credentials, that is, she approaches the problem with no knowledge or experience.”
Ah, Diane! You do snark so well – blew my coffee out my nose!
LOL!
Aggggh!!!