I knew Mike Petrilli well, back when I was a trustee of the Thomas B. Fordham Foundation and Institute in D.C. But after I became disillusioned with testing and school choice, I didn’t see much of him anymore. We occasionally trade emails. I have a certain residual fondness for him. But I nonetheless think he is wrong and hold out hope that he will one day realize it.
But he is not ready.
He sent me this note recently:
Joanne gets it exactly right. Ready to concede a few points?
—-
Mediocre U.S. scores: Don’t blame poverty
// Joanne Jacobs — Thinking and Linking by Joanne Jacobs
When U.S. students post mediocre scores on international tests, poverty is “the elephant in the room,” says American Federation of Teachers president Randi Weingarten. Others point to a “poverty crisis” rather than an “education crisis.”
The elephant is not in the room, write Michael Petrilli and Brandon Wright in Education Next. U.S. schools do as well — or poorly — educating low-income students as other countries. Furthermore, U.S. children aren’t more likely to be poor: Those sky-high child poverty rates really are measuring inequality rather than absolute poverty.
Overall, the U.S. rates 28th in math proficiency for advantaged students among the 34 countries in the Program for International Student Assessment (PISA). Disadvantaged U.S. students rank 20th compared to similar students in other PISA countries.
Our advantaged students may do better than poor kids here, but they don’t outperform similar students in developed countries.
While income inequality is high in the U.S., absolute poverty is not especially high, Petrilli and Wright argue. Including all forms of income, including welfare benefits, the U.S. poverty rate is lower than Britain’s, the same as Germany’s and “barely higher than Finland’s.”
Poverty drags down performance here — and everywhere, they conclude. The U.S. is not an outlier.
My response:
Except that the international scores predict nothing about the future. We were dead last in 1964. By now, we should be a Third World country. Except we are the biggest economy in the world with the most powerful military. How did all those dumb 15-year-olds manage that?
This is something I find hard to understand about the “reformers.” Why do they want the world to believe that we have the worst education system in the developed world? Why are they always eager to discredit our country? Who do they think created the goods and services, the technology and culture that has changed the world? It wasn’t just graduates of Andover, Exeter, and Deerfield Academy, or Lakeside and Sidwell Friends. It wasn’t graduates of charter schools. I remember the disgusting commercials that StudentsFirst produced and ran during the 2012 Olympics, portraying an American athlete as an overweight man in a tutu falling down; this was supposed to represent our flabby, effete, faltering education system. It struck me as crass anti-Americanism, as well as a few other ugly attributes.
The worst thing about our country is our tolerance for poverty, extreme income inequality, extreme wealth inequality, and segregation. The reformers scoff at such concerns and twist into pretzels trying to deny what is obvious. They are right that our education system must change, but not in the direction they seek. Our education system needs drastic change to get away from the soul-deadening conformity imposed by corporate reform. The status quo is stultifying, boring, and harmful to children and teachers.
How can I say more clearly that I don’t think the international test scores mean anything about the future? If destroying the joy of learning and the passion of discovery is the price of raising test scores, it is too high a price to pay.
Mike, please read Yong Zhao’s “Why China Has the Best and the Worst School System in the World?” Please watch the spectacular speech that he gave to the annual meeting of the Network for Public Education last April in Chicago. Please read Ted Dintersmith and Tony Wagner’s new book, “Most Likely to Succeed.” Open your mind. Create the world you want your children to live in, not a world where parents like you have to find private alternatives to escape what you and your rightwing friends are doing to our public schools.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
The teacher in you…will continue to support the student/learner. I know that he will get to a better place on this issue.
This is from someone who studies poverty. Apparently this “absolute poverty” idea is all the rage in some circles:
“This week has turned out to be the week of low-hanging fruit for me. On Monday, we had a misleading Cato post that falsely claimed that the US poor are as well off as the poor in Sweden and Denmark. In fact, the poorest Swedes and poorest Danes have 48% and 63% more income than the poorest Americans, and that’s not even counting their free health care and child care. Now, the National Review has decided to walk into the same trap as Cato, claiming that child poverty in the US is not worse than child poverty in other developed countries, so long as you count it in absolute terms.”
http://www.demos.org/blog/11/5/15/americas-exceptional-child-poverty
Yeah, this “relative poverty” stuff is garbage. I have students who don’t get enough to eat. I have students who wear the same clothes every day because they can’t afford more. I have students who are homeless. Nothing relative in that. That’s poor, regardless of where one lives in the world.
TOW,
But they have shoes! Wherever they live, the have toilets and running water! Their houses have roofs! Luxury!
I Absolute poverty factors-in “non-monetary income.” (Google that one)
Thank you, Dr. Ravitch, for this wonderful, compassionate response. There is even another issue of concern for me about this reform movement to privatize public schools. It’s a quote in a book written by American humorist, Garrison Keillor. Mr. Keillor wrote, “When you wage war on the public schools, you’re attacking the mortar that holds the community together. You’re not a conservative, you’re a vandal.” The neighborhood elementary and middle school, and the community high school all serve as an anchor of the community’s values and hopes, bringing everyone together in a larger family. The charter schools that come and go, the vouchers that pull children out of their neighborhood schools, all chip away at “the mortar that holds the community together.” Because of the tireless efforts of educators such as yourself and so many others, I truly believe we are about to see a turnabout revolt in the movement to privatize public education. It happened in Colorado this week. The tide is turning.
Petrili and the Fordham Institute, long enemies of public education, are dead wrong, while Ravitch and Weingarten are right. The US child poverty rate is far higher than in any country in Western Europe. Fixing our problem will cost more money that Petrili, Finn and the other pseudo-reformers will admit. They would rather see the money diverted to private schools and private pockets. – Edd Doerr (arlinc.org)
Reformers will use whatever spin and talking points they think are useful in swaying public opinion. Petrilli is more insidious than the typical Reformer because he is often quoted in mainstream media articles about education as an objective voice…even though he is no more objective than Rhee or Duncan or Gates.
Fordham quotes are ubiquitous. They make up in quantity what they lack in quality. It’s been ordained in the media that Fordham’s financial backers may never be mentioned.
To hell with standardized test scores.
Give us back our schools. Let’s fight together to equalize funding.
Please, please, please. The mind numbing boredom and rigidity that now rules the classroom is going to LOWER scores anyway. Don’t you understand that is why anyone applying logic cannot help but think that failure IS the reformer’s goal?
These policies PRODUCE FAILURE.
My children– once young, curious readers,
don’t ever pick up books anymore.
This is a direct result of “close reading” and the mind numbingly horrible materials that infiltrate our classrooms as teachers try to satisfy these “standards”.
It is truly tragic.
“To hell with standardized test scores.”
Now that’s the attitude!!
(except that hell might be too good a place for them)
If these allegedly intelligent men can’t understand the influence of impoverished environments on cognitive development they are either ignorant of their own white privilege or they’re emotional deadbeats.
neither…. they are criminals, willing to kill off the souls of children for profit and for the plutocrat agenda of keeping us in our places as cogs in the machine…. how many angels fit on the head of a pin? how many of us would fit on the capstone of the pyramid that is capitalism and governance? no room for my kids and yours — they need to be educated enough to do the jobs and dumb enough to be willing, unthinking consumers, easily distractable by ‘entertainment’
I wonder how many of those low-scoring Americans were like my son Michael. In the 1970s when he was a child, school was still “low-key” for many children. My son didn’t especially like school but “played” a lot with Legos, “stuff, ” telescopes and computers. His standardized test scores were always average (around the 50th percentile).Today he is a leading engineer with a Ph.D. from Stanford. I’m certain he could compete well with the best educated people in any country. But as a fourth grader, he didn’t look good.
When we look at the educational achievements of a country, perhaps we need to look at the accomplishments of the adults and not the children. Also, is it possible that the American tradition of doing the hard academic work at the college level, as opposed to the elementary level, is responsible for our spectacular achievement as a country? After all, some of the Asian countries have noted that our previous system of a “talent meritocracy” is superior to their “testing meritocracy.” Experts have noted academic “burn-out” for people who were pushed too hard at a young age.
As an educator and parent, my advice for the United States is to get back to our previous commitment to help each child to develop his potential within a joyful and relaxed classroom. Children are born wanting to learn and the teacher’s job is to keep that love of learning alive. Our challenge is how to make certain this happens for ALL children and not just the advantaged ones.
As an aside, is there anyone out there who trusts these tests? As someone who taught for many years, I can say without equivocation: most are not valid.
If I may correct your last thought, Linda: “As someone who taught for many years, I can say without equivocation: THEY are not valid.”
Hi señor Swacker:
How are you?
May I add positively the last four words ..: THEY are absolutely INVALID.” May
What a great observation that kids may do the heavy academics in college. Why is that not ok?
I can’t shake the terror in all this that what’s being bashed and rejected is typical human development .
Are we really going to throw away children who bloom in their teens or 20s? Or 5th grade for that matter….
I think we already are.
I think we are indeed on the way to closing the achievement gap. By destroying the once perfectly functional public schools.
What a civil rights victory that will be.
.
The authors of this study say: “As long as the focus remains on distinctions within the United States, then the comfortable can remain comforted by the distance between suburbia and the inner city. But once the focus shifts to countries abroad and fair, apples-to-apples comparisons are made, it becomes manifest that nearly all of our young people—from privileged and not-so-privileged backgrounds—are not faring well.
This is a study by economists Eric Hanushek, Paul Peterson, and Luger Woessman with NAEP scores statistically equated with PISA scores. Their discussion for the popular press is only highlighting MATH scores from 8th graders although they gathered data on a couple of other subjects.
I could not find the original paper for a further look at the difference between this journalistic spin on the research and the “assumptions” “inferential leaps” etc. that allow the authors to claim that they have done an “apples-to-apples” comparison to generate ratings of countries.
I’d like to know how they compare poverty rates, for example, especially since there have been major cutbacks in “welfare” programs in the US and these programs are not the same in each of the state, nor easily equated internationally.
Hanushek, incidently, did one of the first VAM evaluations in 1971 and has never looked back in finding ways to make US education look terrible. Mike Petrelli is just part of the same spin machine intent on making private education the norm, provided it is tax subsidized.
If I remember correctly, the Hannushek study looked at education level by the parents and not other measures of poverty like income or FRL.
If anyone has the interest, there is a plethora of research exposing the flawed methodologies employed by PISA, most notably by Iris Rotberg, recognized researcher at George Washington University. Moreover, the time has come for even those most determined to denigrate American education at every opportunity to recognize our schools cannot continue to absorb new responsibilities every year without sooner or later reaching a tipping point. Start the conversation using https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KKV8vrygcp0
“our schools cannot continue to absorb new responsibilities every year without sooner or later reaching a tipping point. ”
I agree. I’m voting for the next politician who comes along who has a plan to improve AT MOST 3 things in existing public schools.
If it’s something really big, like Common Core, they only get one thing. They have to pick a priority, properly fund it and try to do it WELL.
They need discipline. Desperately.
Thanks to the owner of this blog for this and the previous posting—and thanks also to the commenters on both threads—that touch on the rheephorm ‘poverty excuse’ argument used as a bludgeon against teachers.
Strictly my way of looking at things, but it seems that the snappy clichés and spin doctor formulations that emanate from the self-styled “education reform” movement are often simply distorted projections of the rheephormsters themselves. The resulting double talk is the result of filtering their thoughts and feelings through the prism of their double thinking and double standards.
For example, the “soft bigotry of low expectations” is a most apt description of the reflexive contempt they have for public schools and their staffs and students and parents and associated communities. They bandy around the word “choice” when Chiara has rightly pointed out that it is really part of a truncated phrase: “choice but no voice.” They frequently claim that charters “do more with less” but turn right around and say that whatever amount of taxpayer monies they are receiving is not enough—enough, of course, being $tudent $ucce$$ sufficient to satiate their dreams of ROI by monetizing children [piff paff with that ‘profit/non-profit’ distinction].
Amanda Ripley quite succinctly regurgitates the rheephorm “poverty excuse” argument in her book, THE SMART KIDS IN THE WORLD (2013, p. 164):
[start]
What did it mean, then, that respected U.S. education leaders and professors in teacher colleges were indoctrinating young teachers with the mindset that poverty trumped everything else? What did it mean if teachers were led to believe that they could only be expected to do so much, and that poverty was usually destiny?
[end]
This is, quite simply, a projection of the rheephorm mentality that brays “no excuses” at every turn in the road only to use every excuse in the book (and to invent new ones) to throw the expensive-to-educate & hard-to-educate students out the window like so much garbage. [Think Michael J Petrilli’s “non-strivers” and Rahm Emanuel’s “uneducables.”] Consider typical features of charters like screening out, counseling out, midyear dumps and the like—with the familiar “Your child isn’t a good fit here” and “Your child might be a better fit elsewhere” scripted lines spoken to many parents whose children are deemed unfit for those rheephorm Centres of Educational Excellence.
Those that use poverty as an excuse for inaction are the rheephormsters themselves. What do real public school teachers do? I speak from personal experience. They did the opposite of the rheephormistas: those difficulties, many of them (in practical terms) intractable, stirred them into action. They did more than just provide classroom materials otherwise lacking: they bought lunch for the hungry, got clothes for those in tatters, confronted abusive parents, and made sure medical & dental services were available to the young and needy. I stop here. I am sure others could add many more. And not to forget that this often ruffled the feathers, or worse, of admins and school district officials.
In other words, they “comforted the afflicted and afflicted the comfortable.” And that, in a nutshell, is why rheephorm is overwhelmingly anti-union: without even the slender and often ignored job protections they now have, it would be a lot easier on the education establishment—especially its rheephorm branches—if teachers could simply be prevented, by terror and/or firing, from advocating and providing for their students.
Especially for so many students for whom poverty isn’t an excuse but an ever-present reality.
Again, thanks to one and all for the postings and the comments.
😎
And thanks to you, not so Krazy TA
“That’s Petrilli” (slight changes to song made popular by Dean Martin)
When a test hits your eye like a big PISA pie
That’s Petrilli
When the world seems to shine like you’ve had too much wine
That’s Petrilli
Bells will ring ting-a-ling-a-ling, ting-a-ling-a-ling
And you’ll sing “Vita bella”
Hearts will play tippy-tippy-tay, tippy-tippy-tay
Like a gay tarantella
When the tests make you drool just like a pasta fazool
That’s Petrilli
When you dance down the street with a cloud at your feet
You’re in denial
When you walk in a dream but you know you’re not dreaming signore
Scuzza me, but you see, back in old Napoli
That’s Petrilli
I agree, Diane, except for two things:
(1) the billionaires and their cheerleaders who are pushing this dystopia on our youngsters are both Democrats and Republucans;
(2) it is probably a question of relative inequality rather than absolute inequality. Even if your family has a fridge, a car and a TV, which makes your family relatively wealthy in absolute global terms, nonetheless if you know you are in the bottom stratum or two in your nation, it rankles and you are alienated.
Thanks for pointing out that the reformers fall across the spectrum. Last I checked, Cuomo, Gates, Emmanuel, et al, identified as Democrats.
The elephant in the room is that Mr. Petrilli and ALL the charter folks are free to educate ALL of the at-risk students they believe are the victim of low expectations. Just STOP MAKING THOSE KIDS MISERABLE AND LOSING HALF OF THEM. Okay?
We KNOW for a fact that 49.5% of the students who started in Kindergarten at 52 NYC charter schools were gone — disappeared — by 5th grade. Half of them MIA. These were parents DESPERATE for their schools and it was the charter schools that failed them.
When Mr. Petrilli acknowledges the charters’ massive failure with the children with the MOST MOTIVATED parents, I will believe he truly believes half of what he writes.
When Mr. Petrilli demands that charters keep ALL students, and also demands to know exactly how many Kindergarten kids are missing at the “most successful” charter school kids, and what percentage of the children who remain were held back again and again, I will believe that he truly believes half of what he writes.
When Mr. Petrilli acknowledges that taking in an older child who must prove that he is already working at grade level is a reflection of very weak teaching and inability to bring any child up to standards if he isn’t already AT standards, I will believe that he truly believes half of what he writes.
It is embarrassing.
I’d like Petrilli to explain what happens to the rarest of Ohio birds, a charter school branded as good. Since the schools are associated with Fordham and Fordham is funded by the 0.2%, what happens when the spigot of money is turned off?
What PISA results was he talking about?
Stanford Report, January 15, 2013
Poor ranking on international test misleading about U.S. student performance, Stanford researcher finds
>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.
>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 SIXT from 14th in reading and to THIRTEENTH 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.
http://news.stanford.edu/news/2013/january/test-scores-ranking-011513.html
Just have to say, Diane, I LOVE this comment: “…the international scores predict nothing about the future. We were dead last in 1964. By now, we should be a Third World country. Except we are the biggest economy in the world with the most powerful military. How did all those dumb 15-year-olds manage that?”
Thanks, Doug.
According to BBC News posted October 14, 2015, Business Section, the latest PISA results showed that the highest performers for math and reading were in Shanghai (China). Shanghai is one of the richest cities in China and the sample of children tested is not representative of the demographics of the city because most of the children of the millions of migrant workers are no longer in school at age 15 when the test is administered. According to Iris Rotberg (Teachers College Record, May 19, 2014, Tenuous Findings, Tenuous Policies, “The test results, therefore, are far from represesntative of the popoulation of Sanghai, much less of China.” She adds that “Shanghai is just the tip of the iceberg”.
Good points.
One of the fundamentals of data analysis:
“When comparing groups, make sure the groups are comparable.”
[#4 of Gerald Bracey’s Principles of Data Interpretation, READING EDUCATIONAL RESEARCH: HOW TO AVOID GETTING STATISTICALLY SNOOKERED, 2006]
Thank you for the heads up.
😎
Probably, Petrilli is cherry-picking. It’s more or less common knowledge that the U.S. has uniquely high poverty, and his notion that income inequality is often confused with poverty is a fantasy; a straw man. Set that aside. Even if his total wealth from all income sources isn’t extremely low, the average poor person in the U.S. uniquely suffers from longer working hours, a higher retirement age, few or zero sick days, mass incarceration, a legacy of racism, a dysfunctional health care system, fewer government services, lower life expectancy, worse public transportation, fewer consumer protections and rent controls, and on and on. Petrilli would have us believe that none of this matters, and of course it doesn’t to him.
Important points for researchers but, points studiously avoided by oligarch minions.
Dear Dr. Ravitch:
I would love to repeat your wisdom. I hope that Mr. Petrilli will read and debate your wisdom with 24+ viewers in this forum if he truly earns Doctorate degree and he is a true “‘EDUCATIONAL”” researcher.
[start quote]
1) The status quo is stultifying, boring, and harmful to children and teachers.
2) the price of raising test scores is too high a price to pay for destroying the joy of learning and the passion of discovery in all young learners in K-12.
[end quote]
I profoundly admire your gentleness, kindness, and generosity in dealing with intentionally corrupted souls. May king
May King,
Mike Petrilli does not have a doctorate. He was in charge of innovation in the George W. Bush administration.
So that means his solution to problems is to blow them up?
Either blowing them up, or just denying they exist, like Bush did on climate change.
Petrilli doesn’t like the fact that poverty impacts test scores, so he just denies that it does.
Simple solution.
You “blow up” as in Iraq?
“You mean”
It should be written 24+ MILLION of viewers.
Fordham’s solution for their backers’ self-identified “problem- failing schools”, put taxpayer money in the pockets of profiteers. What’s Fordham’s solution to make students, taxpayers, and communities, whole, after the failures of virtual schools and charter schools? Fully developed integrity is more than, just closing the barn door, with legislation, after the fact.
A former Fordham trustee said, in an interview, there’s a shortage of good ideas in the U.S. to absorb the amount of philanthropic money. How is his current international philanthropy going to show integrity by making our nation, whole, after his involvement with education deform?
I’m kind of gobsmacked by the Hanushek, et al analysis.
First, the claims about our PISA scores broken out by the poverty levels in communities is about the PISA exam, in which we participate. Why would they “cross walk” the NAEP and PISA when we have been participating in PISA for ages?
Second, using parental education level. This is a related but totally different analysis. Parental education level is predictive of economic gain but not entirely the same. For that matter, the purpose of examining the PISA outcomes by the poverty characteristics of communities is because it takes into account the peer effects of being in schools with extremely high levels of poverty and it allows us to break out our community educational attainment in comparison with international peers that have real central control. Hanushek et al are making an argument about aggregates of individual families rather than about communities.
Their analysis is interesting in its own right (although I cannot wrap my head around the purpose of “cross walking” NAEP and PISA when we TAKE PISA), but it is not remotely a counter argument on poverty.
I noticed that Petrilli removed his degree from his bio. Too late, we already know, he has a BS in Political Science.
“Political Science BS” is actually redundant.
Thank you, Diane, for never backing down and always continuing to articulate the argument. The “reformers” sound so reasonable! I just saw Error Lewis, an otherwise excellent journalist, intreview Myrell Tisch (sp?) on NY1– you would have thought that she was an angel sent down from heaven to save all the little children!–from what, exactly, I don’t know.
Then I saw a snippet of Bud Mishken’s upcoming interview with none other than Campbell Brown herself– clearly another savior! To listen to either speak is stomach churning, to say the least! The uninformed would simply drink in their lovely sounding rhetoric, never sensing “the serpent beneath the rose” that Lady Macbeth encouraged her husband to resemble, to great effect.
Merryl Tisch often says that the greatest beneficiaries of Common Core and high-stakes testing are African-American and Hispanic children. Without testing, they won’t succeed. So she thinks. I tried to explain to her that standardized testing is normed on a bell curve, and the children who have the least opportunity overpopulate the bottom of the bell curve. They are not helped by repeated administrations of standardized tests.
…any more than Meryl Tisch is helped by repeated explanations of reality.
You know what Einstein supposedly said about doing the same thing over and over and expecting a different result.
Personally, I’d prefer to hit myself in the head with a hammer over trying to convince Meryl Tisch that the sky is actually blue.
Why not save your own noggin and hit her over the head to teach her the sky is blue. Since the destruction derby reformers are into no excuses, shame and corporal punishment, I think using the hammer on her would fit their agenda.
The publication, Mother Jones, explained that urban students take 266% more tests than their suburban counterparts. As a minority student pointed out to the Mother Jones reporter, the chronic use of computers for testing, limited minority student access to technology. If Tisch’s intent was to thwart minority student success, she can feel pride. If her intent was to provide a market for Silicon Valley’s equipment and software, she can feel pride. And, if she views the children of the 99% as chattel, in a “human capital pipeline”, she can feel pride for her support of the notion, which has always been the view of the unproductive wealthy, of which, she is one.
Leave it to the oligarch minions to make the claim that the American poor, aren’t poor enough.
Linda,
I think the logic goes like this: people who are poor in America have shoes; in really poor countries, they don’t have shoes. They may have a TV. Luxury!