Gary Rubinstein has been watching Tennessee’s “Achievement School District” since it started. The original promise was that the ASD would gather the lowest performing schools in the state–from the bottom 5%–and lift them to the top 25% in the state in five years. They are nowhere near that goal.
The state data was recently released, and it showed that five of the six schools in the first cohort are still in the bottom 5%. The sixth school is in the bottom 7%.
This matters a lot because several states are now planning to create similar districts, based on the model of Tennessee’s ASD. The planning is underway in Georgia, North Carolina, and Nevada. There may be more.
The basic idea is that the state takes control of low-performing schools away from local districts,then hands them over to charter operators. The charters work their magic, and the schools are supposed to be transformed. But after four years, it hasn’t happened in Tennessee. Since Tennessee canceled its state tests this year due to technical problems, there won’t be a fifth year score.
When Chalkbeat reported this story recently, it said:
“The lowest 5 percent is still dominated by schools in Memphis and Nashville. Of the 84 worst-performing schools in Tennessee, nearly all are operated through Shelby County Schools, the ASD and Metro Nashville Public Schools. Chattanooga has six, Knoxville four, and Jackson two. Districts in Sevier and Fayette counties, which are primarily rural, have schools that are on a state list for the first time. As has been the case in the past, the bottom 5 percent schools are almost exclusively in low-income communities of color….
Rubinstein says this story never got the attention it deserved, and he is right. Other states would be foolish to copy this failed experiment.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Why didn’t they let a charter like Success Academy come in and just make all the low-performing kids disappear? That seems to work like a charm if you want to fake a “success”? The stupidity of those cities not to realize that you can’t let ALL the children attend charter schools! You need to kick out all the unworthy children because they 1. hurt test scores and 2. hurt the profits. If only one of the “high-performing” charter CEOs had explained to them that they needed to figure out how to shed most of the kids and get the charter oversight agencies to agree with you that half of the students — or probably more — just are unworthy of an education, period.
“The lowest 5 percent is still dominated by schools in Memphis and Nashville. Of the 84 worst-performing schools in Tennessee. . . ”
When your basic assumptions about what constitutes a “bad” or “worst performing” school are based on COMPLETELY INVALID standardized test scores, well you’re just pissing into the wind.
When o when will folks wake up and understand the utter insanity that has overcome American public education in the form of educational standards and standardized testing???? Falsehoods are guaranteed to beget falsehoods and those falsehoods end up harming many students (and by extension teachers and communities).
Duane, as soon as all of public education is privatized, I have no doubt that the folks in power will decide the standardized testing is irrelevant. After all, the all charter national school system will have just as many low-scoring students as we have now. But since it would be unfair to call the CEO making nice profits from educating the lowest performing kids a “failure”, the reformers will suddenly recognize that the tests are meaningless.
Standardized testing is only meaningful if a CEO can make a big profit by claiming it is meaningful.
Many private colleges used to believe SAT scores were “meaningful” until it turned out they couldn’t recruit enough rich kids with decent scores to keep their average SAT scores high. Suddenly those standardized test scores ceased to have any meaning! And more and more colleges are test optional.
On the other hand, given that reformers are now labeling public schools as failures based on standardized tests, it is important to note that charter schools are just as much so-called failures using those metrics.
The only charter schools that aren’t failures — as judged by standardized test scores — are the ones who use reprehensible means to rid themselves of the low-scoring children who would make them failures. That is also important to point out.
“Standardized testing is only meaningful if a CEO can make a big profit by claiming it is meaningful.”
Some politicians and businessmen might be just cynical, as you say, but I think most aren’t. The way they may think is that “well, testing and test based assessments make sense to me”. And that’s all they need. In their world, believing in something which doesn’t affect them directly is enough to support it. They are not scientists.
So the main pushers of tests could very well know the truth around testing (that they measure nothing), but I think the vast majority of the policymakers and philanthropists are just simply ignorant and sheep.
And as far as I’m concerned there is no excuse for being “just simply ignorant and sheep” nor for teachers and adminimals to be GAGA when they know that the malpractices harm many children. I will call any of them out at any time. It’s one of the few things I can do.
Well, one of these ignorant sheep is Obama.
I agree about Obama and it looks like Hillary Clinton will be following directly in his footsteps.
I am not sure what is worse: being purposely deceptive, or being too lazy and ignorant to actually know whether what you keep insisting is true really is.
I doubt it is a coincidence that the billionaires who give money to charter schools are also lobbying for HIGHER class sizes because “money doesn’t help” public schools. Budgets are decimated in public schools but billionaires subsidize the charters that cherry-pick inexpensive kids by donating tens of millions.
Politicians know EXACTLY where their bread is buttered. If Eli Broad wants Hillary Clinton to believe something, I am sure she would never waste her time looking at any evidence that contradicts what such a brilliant, honest, and truthful man like that says to her. The fact that he gives her millions has nothing to do with how much she values his opinion, I’m sure.
So with all that putative urgency, five years was not enough.
Rheephorm never has enough time to work its magic. The reflexive response of those all in for corporate education reform is well captured by a NJ Comm. of Ed—
[start]
What’s astonishing is to read defenders of “reform” finding silver linings or straws to grasp at. Some claim that Cami has plenty of supporters, others say that success is around the corner. Just be patient. Christie’s state commissioner says, “Christie, through a spokesman, declined to comment. According to Christie’s education commissioner:
“It will take time to see the type of progress we all want,” he said. “Whatever we’re doing, we need to double down.”
[end]
Link: https://dianeravitch.net/2015/03/04/lyndsey-layton-governor-christie-fails-in-newark/
They want unlimited time for themselves, unlimited patience from us, and all the $tudent $ucce$$ that can be had.
And then they wonder how in the world their mandates and policies created the opt out movement.
😎
From the link to the new ed lobbying group:
“Very excited about this update: Ken Bubp and Chris Barbic are joining the combined efforts of the Laura and John Arnold Foundation and Hastings Fund.
These additions to the team will help us further support communities that are trying to empower families and educators.
Ken will be joining us in the role of Education Director, where he will manage a portfolio of city based and national investments.
Chris and I will share the same title, Senior Education Fellow, and will serve as general partners in the overall effort. With this partnership, we will be copying the structure of venture capital firms, with our aim to serve children rather than make profits.”
What does “copy the structure of venture capital firms” mean for people who live in these places that are being reformed? Laura and John Arnold will be picking winners and losers?
Why do we even employ elected officials? Obviously all these decisions have been made and the ed reform echo chamber are in agreement on what has to happen.
“While many might point to the success of Chris’ work at YES, I view his work at the ASD as the greatest embodiment of these traits. Yes, the jury is still out, but I strongly believe that in 10 years time we will look back at Chris’ work in Memphis and appreciate that he, his team, and the city’s non-profit partners built the foundation for sustainable and effective reform.”
“Data-based” my foot. They believe. Based on absolutely nothing other than their own estimation of their abilities and the fact that they all know one another because they play musical chairs with these jobs and appointments.
I must say it’s incredibly generous of the ed reform “movement” that they’re willing to allow public schools to continue to exist, even if they are an after-thought that are barely mentioned:
” Options like charter, magnet, private, online and homeschool curricula are not meant to undermine the nation’s public schools but to build them up through shared quality standards. There is room for all choices in K-12 schools and students benefit from the options.”
See? That’s a concession right there! They see a “role” for public schools! Sort of a safety net, unfashionable “last resort” that will be completely ignored by lawmakers.
http://blogs.edweek.org/edweek/education_futures/2016/04/3_reasons_america_needs_school_choice.html?cmp=eml-enl-eu-news3
Chiara: good catch.
😎
Of course. Without a last resort, how can a charter school claim to be a success? Wasn’t that the problem in Tennessee? Did they forget to have a public school dumping ground so there was a place for charters to dump their lowest performing kids? That would have immediately solved 2 problems:
1. With the bottom 30% of the kids dumped in the public school, every charter would have shown improvement.
2. Even if those charters failed to really do much, they would have still looked good compared to the public school where they sent all the lowest performing students (that also received less money).
How stupid of those Tennessee “reformers” not to realize that reform is only as good as the number of kids you can get away with dumping in your neighborhood public schools. And if you have enough billionaires to make sure your authorizing agencies look the other way, that number is ALOT.
Sigh!
Well, there you go. As NYC public school parent also said, the public schools will eventually remain a last resort dumping ground for those children who prove to be “too expensive” to teach, because they need more teaching resources (and money, don’t forget the money!) than the charters are willing to spend.
Leave a few public schools around, keep cutting their funding, and dump in them the more difficult special education students, behavior problems, English Language Learners, very poor children who have no support at home and are several grade-levels below their peers.
Cherry pick the easier kids. Hey, the charters will eventually wind up looking great, compared to what is left of the public schools!
{{Sigh}}
In NY State, with the strong approval of the SUNY Charter Institute, this is already happening! They have not once — not once! — ever questioned a charter school operator who claimed that she got so unlucky with all the kids at her school that it turned out over 20% of the lottery winners keep turning out to be violent 6 year olds! And that’s why the school needs to keep suspending them as they keep doing violent things and can’t seem to stop.
The SUNY Charter Institute knows for a fact that the charter school requires all parents to sign a contract and attend meetings as a condition of enrolling their child in the school. SUNY knows for a fact that these parents were some of the most motivated in the city, willing to do whatever was asked to get their child into a better school. But when a charter school operator tells them those parents have lots and lots of violent kids who need to be suspended, who are they going to believe? With no evidence but the word of their favorite charter operator. If she says 20% of the 5 year olds in some of her low-income schools are violent, it certainly is not the job of the SUNY Charter Institute to question it. And I’m sure the fact that those kids happen to be mostly minorities and rarely white has nothing to do with SUNY’s certainty that those kids would be so violent at age 5 and 6. Why the SUNY Charter Institute board members have never once questioned such an absurd and racist assertion is truly a mark of their own casual racism.
Well stated. Thank you!
The record of total, 100% reform FAILURE is remarkable. Don’t they have any ideas that actually work?
Well if you consider “ideas that actually work to fill their coffers” then yes they do!
Cross posted at http://www.opednews.com/Quicklink/The-Failure-of-the-Achieme-in-Best_Web_OpEds-Charter-School-Failure_Diane-Ravitch_Performing_Public-Schools-160502-780.html#comment594958
with this comment, whites embedded links at the article.
Like I say in all my comments, public schools are going down fast, and that means the end of the road to opportunity. This is because the charter schools fail to educate the neediest American children.
Moreover, if you want to be frightened …look who writes curriculum in a NC high schools, when public school curriculum is gone.
https://dianeravitch.net/2014/12/07/civics-lessons-financed-by-the-koch-brothers/
The oligarchs
Click to access eic-oct_11.pdf
that you all talk about here at OPED, have waged a 20 year assault on the INSTITUTION OF PUBLIC EDUCATION. Their weapons of mass deception have hidden the destruction and soon, it will be too late.
http://www.opednews.com/Quicklink/Weapons-of-Mass-Deception-in-Best_Web_OpEds-Deception_Education_Future_Ideas-160306-756.html
Fight for Public education in YOuR schools and support he real voices of education… THE TEACHERS!
This says it all…
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