This article is a slightly revised version of the one I posted yesterday afternoon. I wrote the original on my cell phone (as I wrote most posts) while sitting outside a fisher let on Southold, New York. You can always tell the difference between a post written on the cellphone and one written on the computer. The latter has quotes in italics. The former has quotes inside quote marks, “like this.”
I posted it today on Huffington Post because that is where Peter Cunningham posted his lame defense of Campbell Brown.
Read and leave comments, if you are so inclined.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
You keep assuming the EduRaiders have similar goals. They do not. They know what they are doing and to what end. If they had the same goals they would be happy to learn how to achieve them from people who have experience in that direction. But they are not listening, they have their eyes on a different prize.
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Peter Cunningham expressed “faux” outrage at using the word “telegenic” because he didn’t want to acknowledge that Campbell Brown was wrong.
He took his lessons from the Karl Rove playbook, which is pretty much the reformers’ bible. Attack, attack, attack. Appropriate since they obviously believe most of Rove’s political philosophy when it comes to education. Worthy kids and the unworthy who should disappear.
Parents are concerned with tests that seem to be poorly written and have no value? Attack “suburban moms” (always women, of course) for not caring about their own kids as much as they do housing values. (Talk about projecting your own materialism on other people!)
Scholars who have studied the issue and school educators who have LIVED the issue objecting to know-nothing comments by non-educators who don’t bother to educate themselves about the issues? Attack them for being “meanies”.
Peter Cunningham is an embarrassment to himself. He values loyalty to the people who pay his salary over the lives of the real children his pronouncements are harming.
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NYC Public School Parent,
Whom do you trust on education issues?
A public relations professional who is paid to have certain views and a journalist;
Or a historian of education and a veteran principal?
Choose carefully.
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I hope it is clear from my post that I certainly don’t trust Peter Cunningham.
Even if I knew nothing about him, his first statement, in which he had the chutzpah to claim that you and Carol Burris “want us all to believe there is nothing wrong with public education in America and therefore, there is no real need for improvement” was about as dishonest a statement as I have ever seen.
It is astonishing that someone who is pulling a big salary by kowtowing to billionaires could have the chutzpah to characterize two women who have spend decades working on ways to improve public education in that way is truly astonishing.
The fact that Peter Cunningham was a trusted aide in the Obama administration merely reinforces my belief that Obama has done more damage to public education than any Republican President before him could ever have hoped to accomplish.
The fact that Peter Cunningham is being financially rewarded for his good work undermining public education speaks volumes as to his ethics and overwhelming desire to please the people who pay him.
I’m sure if his billionaire lords tell him to start supporting public schools and that Diane Ravitch is right, Peter Cunningham will happily issue you an apology and eat crow. He’s apparently happy to do whatever it takes to earn his paycheck and now his orders are to attack you. Maybe if and when the billionaires who own Mr. Cunningham ever develop a conscience and realize their reforms aren’t working, he will apologize. It will depend on what he is told to do, as he obviously believes in a big paycheck above all else.
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And some interesting typos from autocorrect, but we love you anyway.
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Doggone autocorrect
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Campbell brown should stay out of education where she doesn’t belong and go to her country club with her rich friend where she belongs
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According to the NAEP website, “Proficient is not synonymous with grade-level performance.”
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Right, George, I said in my post that proficient is not grade-level. Grade level is a floating median. NAEP proficient is a high level of academic performance. Only about a third to 40% of students reach NAEP proficient
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Diane,
Peter says “we (You and Burris) “attack” anyone who disagrees with us.”
There can not be a more profound statement by anyone. I agree. You do not tolerate anyone who disagrees with you.
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Raj – if Diane didn’t tolerate you, she would not allow you the chance to discuss topics on this forum – she would censor you, which she doesn’t do!
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Raj, pointing out ignorance, such as what test levels on the NAEP mean versus what some “experts” think they mean, and pointing out the harmful nature of certain policies is hardly an attack. If you are that thin skinned you do not need to comment, or are you under the assumption you are always right?
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The problem is that the reformers don’t simply “disagree” on matters of opinion. They “disagree” on the FACT that their ideas, their policies, their programs, and their products have all FAILED. They have had 15 years to prove that test-and-punish reform works. They have had 4 years to prove that Common Core standards make students college and career ready. They have had decades to export new and innovative programs and pedagogies from “successful” charter schools to “struggling” public schools. Ad infinitum. And they have FAILED at every turn. So we don’t “disagree” with them Raj, we call them out on their FAILURES, and all they offer is more of the same.
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And we call them out on their fraudulent credentials as educational “experts” and “thought leaders”. We don’t “disagree” that they lack experience in the teaching profession. They don’t. We don’t “disagree” that they refuse to send their own children into public schools that are forced to implement their failed policies. They don’t.
So this in not about “attacking” those we “disagree” with. It is about the truth and it is about calling them out on their lies and their spin and their bogus claims and their snake oil sales pitches and their misuse of data and their overall disingenuous bullshit. We are pulling the current back and they don’t like it because we are right and they are wrong. And that is a fact – not a disagreement.
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Raj, you are commenting on my blog. Allowing you to do so is a demonstration of tolerance. Would you prefer to be kicked off?
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Twitter and mainstream media eliminate free speech, blocking comments with which the rich and powerful disagree. Maybe it’s time to fight fire with fire, Diane. Censorship is a slippery slope. I don’t know.
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Raj,
Do you understand the definition of “tolerate”? You used it incorrectly.
And you did exactly what Peter Cunningham did. YOU attacked Diane Ravitch.
Correcting people who lie is not attacking them. But attacking those who call out your lies because you hope to change the subject because you can’t actually argue the facts? Now that is pretty low. That’s what Donald Trump and his supporters believe is an admirable thing to do, so if you are a big Trump fan, I can understand why you think that calling out someone’s lies is simply not allowed to be done.
Peter Cunningham was dishonest. That is the truth. Campbell Brown said something that was either purposely dishonest or embarrassingly ignorant. That is also the truth.
You can argue the facts. But if you can’t, you can try your best to change the subject and whine that the person who called you out for your dishonesty is a meanie.
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The meaning of “tolerance” per my computer’s dictionary app:
“allow the existence, occurrence, or practice of (something that one does not necessarily like or agree with) without interference.”
As just one commenter (formercheesehead) put it: “Raj – if Diane didn’t tolerate you, she would not allow you the chance to discuss topics on this forum – she would censor you, which she doesn’t do!”
When a visitor in someone else’s home, an honest decent person apologizes when s/he deliberately insults the host.
We have here a crystal clear chance for someone to show a sense of honor by taking responsibility for a gratuitous insult.
Inaction, deflection, avoidance, silence, would simply be an admission of moral vacuousness.
A ver qué pasa… Let see what happens…
😎
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Raj, why do you bother to come here and lie? Personally, I disagree with you, and I cannot tolerate, nor stand you. Be gone and lie elsewhere.
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You are wrong about NAEP equating proficient with grade level A
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George, I served on the NAEP board. Have you reviewed the questions? I have. NAEP proficient means solid academic achievement. An A.
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NAEP does not assign an “A” grade level equivalency to the proficiency score. That error should be corrected.
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George Mitchell,
NAGB does not assign an A to the “proficiency” level but I do. Proficiency represents solid mastery of the standards. I do. I was on the NAGB board for 7 years. It is very difficult to score proficient. Having read the questions for seven years, I believe that any student who is proficient is an A student.
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Diane and George,
What you are discussing points to the fallacies of using grades and/or any other label to describe student performance in a given situation. To render down a complex interaction of the student with the subject matter to a “grade” or “level” of supposed proficiency or lack thereof is ludicrous and risible.
The second most risible and ludicrous practice is then attaching that label of the interaction to the student. Do we attach the label to the other half of the interaction, the particular subject matter? Of course not and we cannot logically pin it onto the student.
Wilson, Wilson and more Wilson is what most folks need to begin to understand why discussing any results of standardized tests and/or grading of students is “vain and illusory”. Discussing such invalidities as if they are valid is the height of ignorance and in many cases stupidity.
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Ludicrous and risible. I LOVE it. Duane Swacker, I bow down to your ability to turn the perfect phrase!
It is true though. I sometimes find myself getting pulled off the real message (the intrinsic flawed nature of the entire testing scheme as a mechanism for measuing student learning or teacher value — and start playing on “their” field — by quibbling over the intricacies of testing and standards.
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Ludicrous and Risible – aren’t they two hip-hop artists?
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Thanks for the kind words, JEM!! May they come back around to you!
And Rager, I don’t know, I think I’ve heard of Ludicrous (is that the way he/she spells it?) certainly not Risible.
Speaking of ludicrous and risible. Check out this statement from Richard Phelps in the introduction to his book “Correcting Fallacies about Educational and Psychological Testing”:
“Physical tests, such as those conducted by engineers, can be standardized, of course, but in this volume, we focus on the measurement (i.e., nonobservable) of mental, not physical traits.”
So we can “measure” the nonobservable (sic)??? Really. What type of psychedelic substance has he been ingesting. If his statement doesn’t blow your mind, well I’ve got that great ocean front white sand beach over at Lake of the Ozarks for sale cheaply.
Can’t wait to get the hard copy and pollute my mind, oops I mean read, the rest of this claptrap of bovine excrement extraction.
My ultimate goal being to hang the supporters of these harmful educational malpractices by their own illogical and incompetent mental petards.
Though I’ve gotta get my forthcoming book “Infidelity to Truth: Educational Malpractices in American Public Education printed first-putting the finalized version together now
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So, you are saying good bye before you will get kicked out? That’s the dumbest comment I ever read in your posting.
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To Raj,
You don’t need bother commenting if you don’t like what we are discussing here. You simply waste your time away with your petty invective that reaches to the lowest level of absurdity you deserve.
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Huge new pot of federal money will be going to online learning under the new ed law:
“Therefore, states are required to compile and maintain an updated list of state-approved high quality academic tutoring providers that: (1) is developed using a fair and rigorous selection and approval process; (2) provides families with meaningful choices; (3) offers a range of tutoring models, including online and on- campus; and (4) includes only providers that have a demonstrated record of success in increasing students’ academic achievement; comply with all applicable federal, state and local health, safety and civil rights laws; and provide instruction and content that is secular, neutral, and non-ideological.”
Like all things ed reform, it came out of Louisiana- it’s the “course choice” program writ national. It’s really a safe bet when reading ed reform initiatives that they come out of two states or one city- Louisiana, Tennessee or DC.
Apparently they’re completely ignoring Ohio’s 15 year (dismal) record with online learning or “Tutors with Computers” in Texas under NCLB, which was a huge rip-off.
Echo chamber.
Click to access Chiefs-for-Change-Direct-Student-Services-April-2016.pdf
Huge business opportunity for anyone who wants to form a contracting company and offer online tutoring. This could be a whole new publicly-funded “sector” in ed reform.
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There is a common thread in all of these failed initiatives. They are all created by adults who will never understand why their ideas are dead on arrival. Teachers spend entire careers trying to find what works with large groups of children on a day to day basis. Adults removed from the group dynamic of the classroom have no chance.
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Rager,
If I may finish your last thought (in which you are quite correct): “Adults removed from the group dynamic of the classroom have no chance OF UNDERSTANDING THE COMPLEXITIES OF THE DAY IN/DAY OUT WORKINGS IN THE CLASSROOM.
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The echo chamber in Ohio can be amusing if one is careful reader. I see things in my state like Fordham pushing a law or policy change with a round of op-eds, then OH Dept of Ed employees or state legislators parroting Fordham, then when the law or policy change goes in they do a round of congratulations to one another.
It’s seamless. ‘Round and ’round. A closed system.
Ohio legislators once held a hearing on a public school issue where 14 of the 15 witnesses came from Students First.
I genuinely do not know why the public is paying these people. Couldn’t we skip the middlemen and just have ed reform lobbying groups draft laws? Alternately, the publicly-paid people could get on the Fordham payroll. This is very inefficient 🙂
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Dear Diane, I keep wondering if the Bloomboard Marketplace that teachers in Bridgeport, CT and elsewhere have to go to to type our evaluation paperwork is connected to Bloomberg. If so, doesn’t this prove once again that people are making money off of a teacher’s angst? If not, who does profit from these websites that we have to type information into on our own time (weekends and nights) to prove that we’re teaching?
Sent from my iPhone
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I wouldn’t be typing that in on my time. I’d tell them (and I have and you should see the looks on their face with their jaws hanging so low) they can pay me double time to come in on Saturday or find a substitute (a very piss poor alternative) to take care of my class so I have time. Even better have the the adminimal be the substitute. When you start talking like that they usually back off pretty quick-“That Swacker fellow is a bit strange”. Hell, it’s the adminimal’s job to evaluate me. Let him/her do what they get paid for.
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Raj notwithstanding, Diane, I am glad to see your response in the HuffPo to PC’s right-wing propaganda.
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Here’s Peter Cunningham’s Education Post spinning the dismal graduation rates of online charters:
http://educationpost.org/ask-the-right-questions-about-charter-school-graduation-rates/
“A four-year graduation rate is largely irrelevant to a charter (or any) high school that seeks out highly-mobile students and former dropouts, especially when their program is based on mastery of subject matter rather than seat time. (To its credit, Grad Nation calls for routine reporting of five- and six-year graduation cohorts for all schools. That’s allowed under Every Student Succeeds Act and should quickly become the norm.)”
Oddly, I haven’t heard a word from Arne Duncan on Ohio’s huge for-profit online charters which are literally the worst schools in the country.
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“any high school that SEEKS out highly-mobile students….”
Wow, did Peter Cunningham unintentionally reveal a lot by contrasting “seeks out” with “can’t get rid of fast enough” as the charters with superior results do?
Public schools don’t “seek out” those kids because they are OBLIGATED to serve all kids, Mr. Cunningham. Even the ones you and your buddies wish would disappear unless you can pretend their “below grade level” results is the fault of the public schools where charters force them to go if they aren’t “worthy”.
Oops, in Ohio some of them accidentally got pushed into on-line schools happy to take them because they were getting millions anyway and didn’t real care about educating them. So suddenly Mr. Cunningham pretends that those kids ONLY get an education in schools that “seek them out”?
Unfortunately, Mr. Cunningham is so used to schools who can’t get rid of those unwanted kids he despises fast enough that he unwittingly revealed how little he thinks of them. If they go to a school, the school must have “sought them out” because of course, otherwise the charter school would have kicked them out long ago.
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Indeed NYCPSP!
Cunningham rails about the importance of “choice”, conveniently omitting the fact that is the carter schools that do the actual choosing.
They have duped many low information parents into thinking otherwise. It’s a creative spin-off of a bait and switch.
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“RageAgainstTheTetsocracy
May 21, 2016 at 7:25 am
There is a common thread in all of these failed initiatives. They are all created by adults who will never understand why their ideas are dead on arrival. Teachers spend entire careers trying to find what works with large groups of children on a day to day basis. Adults removed from the group dynamic of the classroom have no chance.”
I don’t pretend to know either, but I just spent a week with other parent volunteers doing a presentation on careers for 5th graders and we had an online component. They ignored it. They wanted to talk to us.
I was proud of them for insisting on having a human being interact with them. They weren’t buying palming them off on a screen 🙂
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Children are just young, inexperienced people who are trying to understand the world, and their place in it. Even a 10 year old intuitively knows that computer screens will not help them. They know that there is no substitute for human guidance and support.
For most kids, computers have become sources of casual and fleeting entertainment – not careful study, deep thought, and meaningful learning. Are ed-reformers smarter than a 5th grader? Clearly they are not.
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“Teachers spend entire careers trying to find what works with large groups of children on a day to day basis.”
“I don’t pretend to know either”
Don’t worry. I’ve been teaching for 36+ years, and I’m still searching for the sweet-spot. The ideal activities that are not too easy, not too difficult and are also interesting and meaningful for all students. And its the “all” students that makes it so challenging for teachers. On-line instruction will not work for the vast majority. That idea (CBE) is a guaranteed to be “dead on arrival” – but they will push it anyway.
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Chiara
The main reason that computer based LEARNING will never work is because machines lack the one characteristic that links experience to long term memory: human emotion.
And if they did work, (don’t worry, they won’t) would we really want the generations of Stepford Students that they would create?
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Clone wars/military fodder?
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Duane,
How would you suggest we grade students in school? Or should we not?
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We should not “grade” them. What, do we think they are eggs for sale??
My children, in a suburban St. Louis district were assessed in a holistic, portfolio fashion in grades 1-5. At parent/teacher conferences we (each child and parents) would sit down at the child’s desk (that is an important part of it as in the classroom that is the child’s personal space and they feel comfortable there) and have the child present their work (and that usually was expanded and extended to the various projects and pets and “fun areas”). At the same time the teacher was showing how the work fit in with the curriculum (no, not standards) and where they believed your child was in relation to learning the curriculum. No “grades” were given. In being a sports coach and cub scout leader I was able to see how not labeling a child can help with their development.
A young lady with some moderate disabilities and an IEP whom I had coached for many years came up to me at my daughter’s high school graduation ceremony (of course this young lady was a part of it) and gave me a big hug and asked if I remembered her. Of course I did, how could I not remember her from the many good (and sometimes difficult times) we had been through in sports and girl scouts (yes I also helped with that).
The middle school conferences were similar with meeting with the “team” of teachers although they were assigning grades to try to get the students ready for what was going to happen in high school.
The point being, why label (grade) students in the first place? What good does it do? The harms caused far outweigh any supposed benefits to that rating and ranking scheme that is the “grading” of students. Long standing cultural memes and icons are not tumbled down easily!!
And yes this country has more than enough wealth to provide those types of services that I saw work at my children’s school. We, as a society, lack the intelligence and will to do so.
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The holistic, portfolio approach becomes much more unrealistic (given the time constraints) at the secondary level. Properly assessing 120+ portfolios is probably not workable in MS and HS.
Assigning number grades using arbitrary and often capricious teacher grading systems paints a superficial picture that is meaningful only when the sample size becomes large enough. Hence the weight placed on high school GPA for college admissions.
Eliminating grades entirely would require quantum shift in parent and student attitudes. How would we answer the second most commonly asked question by students of teachers: “Does this count?”
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Don’t call them “grades”, call them “feedback”. If we truly want to eliminate the notion of standalone grades, then we need to fully fund enough teachers to provide feedback. But my ELA peers spend long evening hours reading essays and responses and still cannot possibly assess 150 assignments every night. When I started, I naïvely graded math homework making corrections and offering guidance, but found myself quickly buried in work until midnight and my family wondering what happened to dad. America does not great schools, she wants cheap schools.
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We live in the Age of the New Know-It-Alls masking as education reformers. Get used to it.
They’re all over the place. They tell doctors how to doctor, police how to police, and teachers how to teach. They’ve fouled up everything they’ve touched from healthcare to the military to universities to school lunches.
They all share the crazy commonality of telling people what to do … while never following their own advice … never content to do what they know best … only what they imagine best.
Some are wealthy and have this sudden need to drive over to the next lane and think that what they’ve learned … about microchips or copying machines or oil rigs … constitutes suitable qualifications to screw around with schools … and the small humans who live there.
So, they set out to blaze new trails and actually set fire to a whole lot of good stuff. And they think nothing of the fallout that is strewn in their rearview mirror because there is almost always another newly-inspired expert on the backstretch waiting for his turn at this educational wheel of misfortune.
Education seems to attract special flies like Michelle Rhee and David Coleman … each of whom owns and extensive supply of egoism and unfounded conceit. One has been run out of education all together … and the other is running education into the ground.
We unenjoyed Arne Duncan … a national dunce who ticked off a reform resistance with his asinine comments about mothers. His actual teaching experience could be penciled on a post-it note. His successor, John King, is another classroom-allergic educrat whose over-load of arrogance while ruing New York State almost single-handedly sparked this national opt-out movement. These two hold the distinction of having done more damage to the institution … in a shorter time … than any other force in American history. And they’re proud of it.
And then there are politicians turned immediate Socrates like Jeb Bush, Chris Christie and John Kasich … and most especially Andrew Cuomo who has done the unimaginable by botching a botched reform even more. They share a loathing for teachers … and insist that teaching is on par with minding the neighbor’s children … except, of course, when it comes to their own youngsters who are almost invariably educated behind expensive ivy walls. It seems they have this knack for over-paying babysitters. Go figure.
Fold in some fat-wallet types like Microsoft’s Bill Gates and Netflix owner Reed Hastings … and that gooey oil titan of Exxon Mobil, Rex Tillison … and you’ve got a revolting array of current Know-It-Alls … each suffering from a mysterious messiah-complex. They think that computers and robots and ouija boards are the educational tools of the 21st century. They all need yo-yos.
That’s where we are folks … deep into the Age of the Know-It-Alls … and everyone of them is determined to do their very best for mankind … including ruining it all in spectacular fashion.
I don’t quite know if we’re worthy, but I suspect we’re in for it.
Denis Ian
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“They’re all over the place. They tell doctors how to doctor, police how to police, and teachers how to teach. They’ve fouled up everything they’ve touched from healthcare to the military to universities to school lunches.”
And what are the commonalities: The neo-liberal belief in the supposed “free market” to properly sort and assign value. (I’d sure like to know where that “free market” is located other than in the heads of its proponents) The need to quantify and monetize all human actions into an economic model that will serve them to gouge out the population for their own personal profit.
In Kennedy’s days they were known as the “best and brightest” who got us into the boondoggle that was the Viet Nam war. So this beast of know-it-alls rears its many heads at various times throughout the last century (and probably for all time, eh).
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“Reformers” continue to stare at the bark rather than noticing the whole forest. Their arguments are based on assumptions, false perceptions, perversions of truth and insular elitism. A significant number of liberal minded folks, particularly young Sanders’ supporters, reject an economy that leaves them out in the cold. We will have to see where this fissure in Democratic party goes. It may result in a third party,or a refocus of progressive ideology in the party with more democratic socialism embedded in it. Time will tell.
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Dear Diane,
I have been wondering if Bloomberg is connected to Bloomboard Marketplace, the website that Bridgeport, CT and teachers elsewhere have to type our evaluation paperwork into. After all, it certainly makes sense that someone should profit from our angst, as we have to spend so much of our personal time to type in all of this extra information on weekends and nights to prove that we teach. In the meantime, there’s less time to prepare science experiments, give feedback on papers, read and gather new ideas, spend time with our own families and all of the things that we used to do! Unfortunately, someone always seems to benefit except the ones who should matter the most, our kids!
Thanks for all that you do that places emphasis on and can ultimately benefit our future leaders!
Mary Krotki
Sent from my iPhone
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