Jersey Jazzman recently engaged in a lively exchange with Dmitri Mehlhorn, a leading advocate for charter schools.
There are six installments. In the first one, JJ explains who DM is and explains the reason for the exchange:
Dmitri Mehlhorn is a venture capitalist and school “reform” advocate. He was the COO of StudentsFirst, Michelle Rhee’s education “reform” lobbying group, and he maintains a regular presence in both traditional and social media as an advocate for charter school proliferation, the revocation of teacher tenure as it is currently constituted, and other similar “reform” policies.
I have had several Twitter back-and-forths with Mehlhorn, and I’ve found them extremely unsatisfying. To be clear, that’s not his fault, nor is it mine: it’s the inherent limitations of 140 characters that have kept us from having a substantive debate.
The funny thing is that I enjoy our exchanges. I think Mehlhorn is a sincere advocate for policies he believes will genuinely help America’s students. I also believe, however, that he’s wrong about nearly everything when it comes to education — particularly when it comes to charter schools.
At Dmitri’s suggestion, we are going to have a dialog about charters here on my blog. I promised him that I would let his words stand here free of any editing on my part [I have added a few links in the text, but that’s all], and that I would make my opposing case in separate posts.
I don’t know how long our exchange will go, but I will respond to what Mehlhorn wrote below in a couple of days. I hope he’ll reply back; this dialog about charter schools could be very helpful in clarifying one of the key issues in education “reform.”
This is a worthy and informative discussion of charters. Please read all six pieces.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
This is a brilliant post from Jersey Jazzman. It should be read by both Hillary and Bernie to give them perspective that, I believe, they both lack. Jazzman’s conclusions are evidence based as he gives one of the most forceful arguments for strong, equitable public schools.
The only comment I would add is that democratic public education teaches citizenship, which is a service to our country, as an informed electorate is necessary in a democracy. Neighborhood schools are often community anchors. In some cases, the goal of charters is to destabilize an area near the CBD so that developers can make a land grab. This is one reason charters target urban areas rather than suburban communities. In addition to the profit made by charters themselves , there are potential real estate profits to be made by destroying an urban community. There are many forces at work promoting charters that have nothing to do with what benefits students most.
Mr. Melhorn:
If charters are such a great idea then please open one without public monies, such as Catholic, Lutheran, other religious and non-sectarian private schools. By your metrics of standardized test scores you should be able to make quite a financial killing.
Or is it that you choose to not throw your and your investors money away knowing that you couldn’t make it sustainable and profitable at the same time. If the charter sector is great as you imply why do charters need to suck off the government and philanthropic teats???
Mr. Melhorn:
Unfortunately the main metric that you use, standardized test scores, are COMPLETELY INVALID so any inferences, conclusions drawn, and any policy decisions based on these educational malpractices are, as Noel Wilson puts it “vain and illusory”. Or as I more crudely say “it’s all a bunch of mental masturbation”.
If, Mr. Melhorn you would like to learn why educational standards and standardized testing are COMPLETELY INVALID please read and understand Noel Wilson’s never refuted nor rebutted “Educational Standards and the Problem of Error”. I will be more than happy to help you through this seminal treatise, the most important educational writing of the last 50 years. The teacher in me implores you to open and expand your mind and thinking. Feel free to contact me at dswacker@centurytel.net
Mr. Melhorn:
When one starts with a falsehood one ends with falsehoods, hence the “vain and illusory” and “mental masturbation” descriptors. And so as to not have to await moderation (due to having two links in a post) I am posting a summary and some of my comments for you of Wilson’s work (again feel free to contact me about this masterpiece of rationo-logical thought:
“Educational Standards and the Problem of Error” found at: http://epaa.asu.edu/ojs/article/view/577/700
Brief outline of Wilson’s “Educational Standards and the Problem of Error” and some comments of mine. (updated per Wilson email)
1. A description of a quality can only be partially quantified. Quantity is almost always a very small aspect of quality. It is illogical to judge/assess a whole category only by a part of the whole. The assessment is, by definition, lacking in the sense that “assessments are always of multidimensional qualities. To quantify them as unidimensional quantities (numbers or grades) is to perpetuate a fundamental logical error” (per Wilson). The teaching and learning process falls in the logical realm of aesthetics/qualities of human interactions. In attempting to quantify educational standards and standardized testing the descriptive information about said interactions is inadequate, insufficient and inferior to the point of invalidity and unacceptability.
2. A major epistemological mistake is that we attach, with great importance, the “score” of the student, not only onto the student but also, by extension, the teacher, school and district. Any description of a testing event is only a description of an interaction, that of the student and the testing device at a given time and place. The only correct logical thing that we can attempt to do is to describe that interaction (how accurately or not is a whole other story). That description cannot, by logical thought, be “assigned/attached” to the student as it cannot be a description of the student but the interaction. And this error is probably one of the most egregious “errors” that occur with standardized testing (and even the “grading” of students by a teacher).
3. Wilson identifies four “frames of reference” each with distinct assumptions (epistemological basis) about the assessment process from which the “assessor” views the interactions of the teaching and learning process: the Judge (think college professor who “knows” the students capabilities and grades them accordingly), the General Frame-think standardized testing that claims to have a “scientific” basis, the Specific Frame-think of learning by objective like computer based learning, getting a correct answer before moving on to the next screen, and the Responsive Frame-think of an apprenticeship in a trade or a medical residency program where the learner interacts with the “teacher” with constant feedback. Each category has its own sources of error and more error in the process is caused when the assessor confuses and conflates the categories.
4. Wilson elucidates the notion of “error”: “Error is predicated on a notion of perfection; to allocate error is to imply what is without error; to know error it is necessary to determine what is true. And what is true is determined by what we define as true, theoretically by the assumptions of our epistemology, practically by the events and non-events, the discourses and silences, the world of surfaces and their interactions and interpretations; in short, the practices that permeate the field. . . Error is the uncertainty dimension of the statement; error is the band within which chaos reigns, in which anything can happen. Error comprises all of those eventful circumstances which make the assessment statement less than perfectly precise, the measure less than perfectly accurate, the rank order less than perfectly stable, the standard and its measurement less than absolute, and the communication of its truth less than impeccable.”
In other words all the logical errors involved in the process render any conclusions invalid.
5. The test makers/psychometricians, through all sorts of mathematical machinations attempt to “prove” that these tests (based on standards) are valid-errorless or supposedly at least with minimal error [they aren’t]. Wilson turns the concept of validity on its head and focuses on just how invalid the machinations and the test and results are. He is an advocate for the test taker not the test maker. In doing so he identifies thirteen sources of “error”, any one of which renders the test making/giving/disseminating of results invalid. And a basic logical premise is that once something is shown to be invalid it is just that, invalid, and no amount of “fudging” by the psychometricians/test makers can alleviate that invalidity.
6. Having shown the invalidity, and therefore the unreliability, of the whole process Wilson concludes, rightly so, that any result/information gleaned from the process is “vain and illusory”. In other words start with an invalidity, end with an invalidity (except by sheer chance every once in a while, like a blind and anosmic squirrel who finds the occasional acorn, a result may be “true”) or to put in more mundane terms crap in-crap out.
7. And so what does this all mean? I’ll let Wilson have the second to last word: “So what does a test measure in our world? It measures what the person with the power to pay for the test says it measures. And the person who sets the test will name the test what the person who pays for the test wants the test to be named.”
In other words it attempts to measure “’something’ and we can specify some of the ‘errors’ in that ‘something’ but still don’t know [precisely] what the ‘something’ is.” The whole process harms many students as the social rewards for some are not available to others who “don’t make the grade (sic)” Should American public education have the function of sorting and separating students so that some may receive greater benefits than others, especially considering that the sorting and separating devices, educational standards and standardized testing, are so flawed not only in concept but in execution?
My answer is NO!!!!!
One final note with Wilson channeling Foucault and his concept of subjectivization:
“So the mark [grade/test score] becomes part of the story about yourself and with sufficient repetitions becomes true: true because those who know, those in authority, say it is true; true because the society in which you live legitimates this authority; true because your cultural habitus makes it difficult for you to perceive, conceive and integrate those aspects of your experience that contradict the story; true because in acting out your story, which now includes the mark and its meaning, the social truth that created it is confirmed; true because if your mark is high you are consistently rewarded, so that your voice becomes a voice of authority in the power-knowledge discourses that reproduce the structure that helped to produce you; true because if your mark is low your voice becomes muted and confirms your lower position in the social hierarchy; true finally because that success or failure confirms that mark that implicitly predicted the now self-evident consequences. And so the circle is complete.”
In other words students “internalize” what those “marks” (grades/test scores) mean, and since the vast majority of the students have not developed the mental skills to counteract what the “authorities” say, they accept as “natural and normal” that “story/description” of them. Although paradoxical in a sense, the “I’m an “A” student” is almost as harmful as “I’m an ‘F’ student” in hindering students becoming independent, critical and free thinkers. And having independent, critical and free thinkers is a threat to the current socio-economic structure of society.
From Melhorn:
“If Jazzman and I, as proxies for the broader policy debate, agree that charters deliver better results, but cannot agree on whether they are “better enough,” how should our impasse be resolved?”
Those supposed better results are based on standardized test scores. Tis quite easy to resolve this supposed “impasse”. ^^^SEE ABOVE^^^
Since the main contention involves standardized test scores, which are filled with epistemological and ontological errors, falsehoods and psychometric fudges there is only one logical conclusion: Throw the whole argument aside as indeed even the argument is “vain and illusory”.
Again, Mr. Melhorn, I invite you to contact me so I can help you understand all those errors, falsehoods and fudges that render your and JJ’s “conversation” mute.
[…] Mehlhorn’s career path tracked closely with neoliberal party favorites like Buttigieg and Cory Booker. He studied at Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government, launched his career at McKinsey Associates, and became a leading advocate for school privatization as the chief operating officer of Michelle Rhee’s StudentsFirst. […]