The Education Commission for the States, a once reputable organization, recently decided to honor Mississippi with the 2016 Frank Newman Award for State Innovation.
Among other things, Mississippi was honored for expanding charter schools, prioritizing early literacy, and adopting an A-F grading system for schools (invented by Jeb Bush), which closely tracks the family incomes of students. Maybe Jeb Bush and Arne Duncan should have gotten the Frank Newman Award for Innovation. Mississippi was just going with the flow.
Unmentioned in the award was that the Governor and State Legislature of Mississippi fought successfully just a few months ago to block an increase in state funding for the public schools of Mississippi.
Also unmentioned is that Mississippi has adopted the strategy of not promoting third graders unless they pass a standardized test, which has no evidence of success. About 15% of students do not pass, although some will qualify for a “good cause exemption.” The law was amended this year to raise the bar and flunk more children.
The ECS statement says that Mississippi saw “historic gains” on NAEP at both 4th and 8th grades. But this is not true. The state registered no gains in eighth grade, in either mathematics or reading. There were gains in fourth grade, but Mississippi is nonetheless one of the lowest performing states in the nation.
What kind of standards does ECS have for making this award? Is the award meant to recognize states that refuse to fund their schools adequately and that enact legislation to privatize the public schools and to penalize students?
Diane Ravitch's blog 
If you follow the corporate playbook and do what ALEC tells you, you get rewarded. Carrots for reformsters, sticks for true educators in the civic arena.
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Innovation these days means Collusion.
Just like when the DOE tells a school leader, “Be creative.” They mean do something shady or unethical.
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In my experience, when our district nonchalantly assigns Never Been A Teacher “reform” leaders who are told to “be creative,” they are not clever enough to do something shady — they simply do things which are stupid and invasive and this then plays into “reformer” hands by keeping scores low. Ultimately, YES, this is unethical.
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I’ve tried to find out who funds the Education Commission of States and can’t get a response. If the US Dept. of Ed. has $71 mil. to expand charter schools in Ohio but, doesn’t have the money to fund ECS, it sends up a red flag. That’s particularly true, if ECS is involved in policy decisions.
It’s odd that ECS devotes space to columns written by the Aspen Institute. (Until recent weeks, the photo of David Koch, as an Aspen Institute board member, was in the website array.) The Gates Foundation funds Aspen Institute education programs like the Pahara Aspen Institute and the Senior Congressional Education Staff Network. The founder of Pahara, who also co-founded New Schools Venture Fund ($22 mil. in Gates financing), said in an interview at Philanthropy Roundtable, “marching orders…to develop charter management organizations that produce a diverse supply of different brands on a large scale.”
The ECS column that identifies the 2016 representatives of various organizations, by state, includes those identified with their public school districts. The column is titled “Company”. The definition for company is a commercial business.
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This is a partial list of the “partners” that appear at the ECS site- National Association of Charter School Authorizers, Pearson, USA Funds, State Farm, ACT, Amplify, Alliance for Early Success (at that site, the Gates Foundation is listed as an “investor”…..
Other information at the N.J. state library shows an annual report for an organization titled, Education Commission of the States 2013. It lists “partners” and thanks them for their support. A partial listing from the document includes, “Corporate Partner- USA Funds …Gold- Amplify, Corinthian College, Pearson, State Farm…Grants and Contracts- Walton Family Foundation, Gates Foundation, Lumina…”
The history section at the ECS site lists support from states.
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To clarify my earlier comments, the ECS site states that the organization developed as an initiative by the states and was funded by the states (explaining the lack of federal funding). In the history section (1965 document), there is the following statement, “(ECS) will not lobby inside states nor, in Washington.”
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Did Bill Gates or the Koch brothers also buy The Education Commission for the States?
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Add the union hating, poverty wage paying Walmart Walton family to my previous questions.
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ECS “Silver Partners”- Milken Family Foundation, ETS, Measured Progress, Meta Metrics, SAS, BloomBoard …
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Proving once again that the billion ares are proving that almost every man/woman has a price. And for the few that can’t be bought, use radical, for right hate media to destroy their reputation through lying propaganda.
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Several points:
First, in my opinion, work of the Education Commission of the States became a captive of the governors who insisted that “education determines the fate of the economy,” mid-1980s, Nation at Risk, and all that now discredited rhetoric —including a mea culpa from economists, starting in today’s Wall Street Journal.
Second, in no small measure the work of the Education Commission of the States has also been eclipsed by the growing influence of the Council of Chief State School Officers in tandem with the National Governor’s Association and the action arm of both, Achieve, Inc. These groups launched the Common Core, promoted the PARCC and SBAC tests, and are now working on tech and teacher education.
Third, ECS lost some of it’s independence due to shrinking funds from the states and hence the usual chasing money from so-called “partners.” These partners are now credited as helping out, according to tiers of “investment.”
Highest Tier= Platinum: GE Foundation; USA Funds® (works to enhance student success in postsecondary education and following graduation)
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Middle Tier=Gold: ACT (testing, in theory a non-profit); Amplify (leading the way in data-driven instruction); Alliance for Early Success (solicits funds for Birth Through Eight State Policy Framework); AT&T; College Board (in theory a non-profit); Farmers Insurance; The National Association of Charter School Authorizers; Pearson; Renaissance Learning™ (cloud-based K12 assessment and learning analytics); Scholastic Corporation; State Farm Foundation;
Lowest tier =Silver: Education Testing Service (in theory a non-profit);Education Networks of America, “best of breed” tech solutions; BloomBoard (online data capture for analyzing educator effectiveness); Burns & McDonnell (engineering, architecture, construction, environmental and consulting solutions); Measured Progress test-driven interventions; MetaMetrics (creators of The Lexile® Framework for Reading and The Quantile® Framework for Mathematics marketed in the Common Core); Milken Family Foundation (MFF); SAS Institute the infamously invalid “student growth metrics,” packaged as EVASS.
For more on the origin of the Education Commission of the States see http://www.ecs.org/about-us/history/
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W-2’s on the backs of taxpayers and kids – some directly and, others, indirectly, through venture philanthropists’ tax avoidance.
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“Aspen Education and Society Program…Aspen workshops …brought together many key players…program officers at Gates…Mike Cohen (who was for several years the Aspen Program’s senior fellow and former co-chair; is now president of Achieve Inc )…significantly shaping…the national..school reform reffort.” At the Aspire website, Cohen is credited with overseeing the development of PARCC.
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correction- Achieve instead of Aspire, in final sentence.
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Innovative does not necessarily mean better. Disrupting democratically-governed public schools and replacing them privately-governed charter schools is innovative. But it is terrible for equity. No evidence education in the US is value free. The folks who made the award to Mississippi have different values. https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/answer-sheet/wp/2014/08/04/its-innovative-but-is-it-really-better/
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I think the real message of disruption is getting rid of the old & hiring the new. Few people want to go into a profession that is being disrupted unless there’s an opportunity for great wealth- yet another difference between education and business.
Parents do NOT want disruption when it comes to their kids! They need predictable, reliable, already proven methods.
If there’s one word I’d like to have disappear from the edu-reform & political language it’s disruption.
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