Gary’s latest post has a smart title: “For Whom the Bell Tolls; It Tolls for Rhee.”
Having received Race to the Top funding, and being part of the (not so) great “reform” movement, the District of Columbia enthusiastically endorsed every reformy idea that involved high-stakes testing, or test-based accountability. Of course, D.C. school leaders Michelle Rhee and her successor Kaya Henderson supported Common Core and joined the PARCC testing consortium (one of the few to remain in PARCC).
The scores were released yesterday. Gary has analyzed them and made some important discoveries. The scores overall were pretty awful, as you would expect from a test that was designed to fail most students. But, surprisingly, the much-abused D.C. public schools outscored the much-lauded D.C. charter schools. How could that happen? How embarrassing for the Walton Family Foundation, which has poured so much money into charterizing the D.C. schools, as well as to Eli Broad, who recently announced his intention to open more charters in D.C. to save more kids from the terrible public schools. And yet those “terrible” public schools got higher scores than the charter schools! Go figure.
Rhee used to say that she would turn D.C. into the best urban district in the nation. She used to scoff at the educators who preceded her, citing the fact that only 10% met the standards in math. Well, what percent do you think met the “proficiency” standard in math? 10%.
Gary writes:
So of course the ‘no excuses’ crowd begins making excuses. But rather than saying that the quality of the PARCC test could be an issue, they instead say things like, “We knew this was going to happen. We just need to adjust to the new more rigorous standards.” This may buy them a few years, but I have to wonder how long supposedly ‘data driven’ reformers can continue to ignore data that refute their agenda.
So two months into the school year, DCPS teachers are now in the know regarding targets they need to beat. Nothing has changed; except the faces. Still love DCPS and have fond memories as a student and teacher over the past 6 decades. One day…it might change. But certainly not under Shelley and her acolytes. As a matter of fact that stench she left behind – still lingers.
The “10% Test”: if you hold self-styled “education reformers” to their own metrics—the ones they mandate and impose on almost everyone else—then the entire enterprise [bidness lingo!] falls apart.
Double talk. Double think. Double standards.
Why the hypocrisy in word and deed? Because they don’t measure up in their own eyes.
So they project their self-loathing and self-contempt onto the rest of us.
What a sad and sorry bunch.
😡
Right on. Couldn’t have said it better.
I just realized something: the heavyweights of self-styled “education reform” don’t just love numbers—
When it comes to time aka the time needed to show practical results they are devotees of 10. *No, not the romantic comedy with Bo Derek.*
Bill Gates: [start] “It would be great if our education stuff worked, but that we won’t know for probably a decade.” [end] (see Valerie Strauss, WaPo, 9-27-2013)
Arne Duncan: [start] “Big change never happens overnight,” Duncan said. “I’m confident that over the next decade, if we stay committed to this change, we will see historic improvements.” [end] (see Emma Brown, WaPo, 10-28-2015)
I guess they figured out that the lesser single digits don’t work as well.
For example, from the CNN piece on Ms. Rhee [cited in Gary Rubinstein’s piece]:
[start]
Her plan is ambitious: To completely transform the District’s system within eight years for its 50,000 children. The plan focuses on top-down accountability, quantitative results like standardized test scores and, ultimately, working to close what she describes as “the achievement gap between wealthy white kids and poor minority kids.”
“I think it’s absolutely possible within an eight-year period,” she said.
[end]
Hint to the shills and trolls that visit this blog and brag about their math smarts: can’t fudge these figures. The CNN piece is dated 9-9-2008. Eight years from then to the end—less than a year to a rheeally tight deadline. And in practical terms—according to typically hysterical rheephorm metrics—less than nothing to show for all the time and effort and money put into its test-to-punish regimen.
But look at how rheephorm evasion and deflection and avoidance of responsibility adds up.
7 or 8 + 8 or 10 + however much more time is needed to see those much vaunted, always promised, and never realized “historic improvements.”
The deadline for meeting their vanity projects keeps receding further and further into the future.
But $tudent $ucce$$? That’s here and now, playahs!
Right from that edupreneur par excellence, Pitbull, to our ears:
“I want, I need, I like, to get – Money, money, money, money,
I want, I need, I like, to get – Money, money, money, I like”
[“Juice Box” on the album REBELUTION]
If nothing else, ya gotta admire his honesty…
😎
Except they never “stay committed” to anything. They jammed the Common Core in and then all went off chasing “blended learning”.
There’s never going to be any way to measure “results”. They pile reform on top of reform randomly. Ed reformers in Ohio can’t even provide consistent (if lower) funding. It’s absolute chaos. They cut public school funding across the board in June and raised charter school funding. The lawmakers got complaints from public school parents, so they’re restoring some of the public school funding, but only in the two counties with the most vocal parents.
They can’t compare anything to anything else in this mess this created, and if they are claiming they can, they’re lying.
My question for so-called reformers has always been, “Where does the incompetence end, and the malice begin?”
In the end, it doesn’t really matter, since the destruction is the same, whether brought about by a vicious psychopath like Michelle Rhee, an empty suit like Arne Duncan, or your garden-variety kiss-up/kick-down career opportunist and District apparatchik.
Intentional or not, the educational system being pushed by so-called reformers mirrors all other authoritarian regimes, which constantly issue contradictory mandates and rules, so that the hapless populace is constantly kept off balance, stressfully and hopelessly trying to remain in compliance, and always guilty of something.
Sounds “Rhee – alistic” to me.
Maybe she will “Rhee-sign”.
“I have to wonder how long supposedly ‘data driven’ reformers can continue to ignore data that refute their agenda.”
As long as their masters—Bill Gates, the Walton family, the Koch brothers, Eli Broad and those hedge fund billionaires—tell them to.
This summer the National Academy of Sciences released a report that agrees with Rubinstein’s analysis. They cited a study that showed growth in charter schools lagging growth in public schools every year. I summarized
This summer the National Academy of Sciences released a report that agrees with Rubinstein’s analysis. They cited a study that showed growth in charter schools lagging growth in public schools every year. I summarized here https://tultican.wordpress.com/2015/10/21/d-c-schools-a-portrait-of-corporate-education-reform-failure/
It is interesting to look at DC’s scores comparing national school lunch program eligibility.
In the fourth grade the “not eligible” have the highest scores in the Nation for both Math and Reading. The “eligible” have the lowest scores in the Nation for both Math and Reading!
In eighth grade the “eligible” still have the lowest scores in the Nation for Math and Reading. The ” not eligible” are closer to the National average for Math and Reading!
They will have a simple solution, they will just cancel the lunch program, that should solve that problem, right? These people are deaf, dumb, and blind. They must be removed from power like a cancer.