The new federal law titled “Every Student Succeeds Act” encourages states to welcome newcomers to the field of teacher education, such as the Relay Graduate School of Education and the Match Graduate School of Education. Relay and Match have much in common. They do not have scholars or researchers on their “faculty.” At last check, neither had anyone with a doctorate in any subject on their faculty. They do not appear to teach cognitive development, child study, the history or economics of education, the uses and misuses of testing, early childhood education, or any other subject normally found in a typical graduate school of education. These “graduate schools” consist of charter teachers teaching future charter teachers how to raise test scores and how to maintain strict discipline. They might appropriately be called a “program,” but they are not “graduate schools of education,” nor should they have the right to award master’s degrees. Going to Match or Relay is akin to taking classes in computer programming or cooking or going to a trade school.
I discovered that EduShyster explained the Match “Graduate School of Education” a few years back. Read this short piece to understand what Match is and why so many of its ill-prepared teachers don’t last.
And remember, the Congress of the United States wants to promote more of these sham teacher-preparation programs.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
There’s additional helpful background material about MATCH here:
http://www.matchschool.org/about/annual-letter-2015/
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So this is the institution you want your child’s teachers trained at? Emphasis being on “trained”. Personally, I think dogs should be trained. People should be educated.
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Massive employee/leadership trainings guarantee Stepford-like employees. I believe that employee “training” is also one legal way to suck up some of that “poor-student” Title I money? http//:www.ciedieaech.wordpress.com/2015/10/09/stepford-principals
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This is more like a cult than a “graduate school.” Sign up, you get the right to be a “teaching” robot, complete with full circle exploitation.
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The actions of the majority of both houses of Congress reveal that they are also shams and frauds, and who holds the majority in both Houses — the GOP. When the GOP supports something, they almost always vote as a block with little or no descent.
But the Democratic, for all of their faults, do have large numbers of defectors in both Houses proving that the Democratic Party is not totally owned by the billionaire oligarchs like the GOP is.
For instance, the vote for the Iraq War:
In the House or Representatives, 215 Republicans voted yes and only 6 voted no, but only 82 Democrats voted yes and 126 voted no
In the U.S. Senate, 48 Republicans votes Yes and only 1 voted no, but 29 Democrats voted YES while 21 voted NO.
However, the billionaire oligarchs are spending hundreds of millions annually to also buy an overwhelming majority in the Democrats Party until they totally own both parties. That’s what Citizens United was all about, to speed up the process of subverting the US Government and its Constitution.
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Quote of the Week:
“I want the truth telling to start. There’s no opportunity in charters we don’t already have [in the Little Rock School District]. … If we’re going to have collaboration, we’ve missed our chance, frankly.”
— Former Little Rock School District Superintendent Baker Kurrus, delivering a parting shot the day before his contract expired on June 30. Kurrus was speaking to a public education stakeholder group formed to consider opportunities for collaboration between charter schools and traditional public schools in the Little Rock area. It’s widely assumed Kurrus was fired by the state Education Commissioner Johnny Key because of Kurrus’ opposition to charter expansions. Kurrus’ replacement, Michael Poore, took over as superintendent July 1.”
Now that the single dissenter is gone, let the fake-debate begin! “Privatization: great idea or greatest idea ever? Discuss”.
http://www.arktimes.com/arkansas/walton-foundation-doubles-down/Content?oid=4479675
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“Speaking of charters: The Walton Family Foundation announced it will contribute $250 million to help construct facilities for charter schools in 17 cities around the U.S. (Unlike traditional schools, charters can’t levy taxes to pay for new facilities.) That’s on top of the $1 billion the WFF said in January that it would be spending over the next five years to help new and existing charters. Little Rock is one of those 17 cities, though the WFF’s news release didn’t name which local schools will receive funds.”
Where are the Walton heirs opening charters? Anyone know? RttT cost 4 billion dollars. The Walton heirs alone are spending a quarter of that to open schools to replace existing public schools?
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Chiara,
That Walton $250 million is annually. Not one time. I posted a list of the 17 cities previously.
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I was curious what Jennifer at Edushyster meant by this remark:
“Yet by the end of this video, two thirds of the teachers have quit–and another clearly has her eye on the door.”
Apparently she’s referring to folks like Bob Hill and Nedra Massenburg who are each listed as “former teacher” in the video.
I see that Bob Hill is still with MATCH… went on to help found MATCH Beyond (looks like him on the right there in the first slide) where he is a senior coach: http://matchbeyond.org
https://www.linkedin.com/in/bob-hill-277a3160
That’s an interesting seeming venture.
And as for Nedra Massenburg, I see:
“NEDRA MASSENBURG | ALGEBRA II TEACHER
Ms. Massenburg graduated from Princeton University in Princeton, NJ with her bachelor’s degree in economics. She began at Match as a part of Match Corps IV in 2007, then stayed as a Corps Staff member for Match Corps V and as a member of the inaugural cohort of the Match Teacher Residency Program in 2008. After her Corps staff year, she joined the math department at Match for two years as the Algebra II and Geometry teacher, before moving into the administration as director of the Match Corps, Assistant Principal and then Principal. Through every role she has had at Match, she been excited to partner with our students and families to help create a community where each member is valued and pushed to grow and learn to their full potential. She also enjoys reading, cooking homemade meals and (loudly) cheering at Match sporting events.”
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Stephen,
Would you call a school where there are charter teachers teaching future charter teachers a “graduate school of education”? Would you call a facility with no faculty members holding a doctorate a “graduate school of education”? Would you call a place without any research or without studies in psychology or history or economics or sociology a “graduate school of education”? I know that “reformers” have mastered the art of double-speak, but this is fraud.
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“Would you call a school where there are charter teachers teaching future charter teachers a ‘graduate school of education’? Would you call a facility with no faculty members holding a doctorate a ‘graduate school of education’? Would you call a place without any research or without studies in psychology or history or economics or sociology a ‘graduate school of education’?”
I’m not skilled in the art of classifying graduate schools. I see that: “The Sposato Graduate School of Education was approved by the Massachusetts Board of Higher Education in the spring of 2012.” and “The Sposato Graduate School of Education is in the process of applying for regional accreditation.”
Looking at the Leadership, adjunct faculty, and board, I’m not, myself, at all troubled by the dearth of doctorates reflecting years in academia (I see all 5 of board member, Paul Reville’s doctorates are honorary). He and the faculty seem superbly well qualified to facilitate the path to becoming a skilled educator.
http://www.sposatogse.org/people/faculty/
Seems to me that the Sposato approach should be celebrated as considerably better, for example, than the TFA pathway into teaching for those who want it to be their longer-term career. But I guess the proof is in the pudding. Reading this: http://www.sposatogse.org/annual-letter/ particularly in conjunction with the letter I cited above http://www.matchschool.org/about/annual-letter-2015/ certainly predisposes me to think that the school is relatively well capable of preparing Sposato students for teaching careers.
I’d be interested in your estimation of the graduate schools of education that you think best prepare their students for teaching, rather than, for example, the alternative, also important, path of academic research?
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Stephen,
Learning to raise test scores is not the same as learning to teach. Teachers should have a deep understanding of education, not just tricks to prepare for tests.
They need to learn how tests are created and what they measure. That is called critical thinking. If teachers do not know how to think critically, they can’t teach students to do it. Neither Sposato nor Match are graduate schools; they are training programs. Yes, they are accredited, which shows how warped and pervasive the reform mentality is.
A barber school is not a graduate school of esthetics.
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Your hypothesis (conclusion?) is that graduates of more typical graduate schools of education are better prepared with critical thinking skills than graduates of the Sposato program? I’m unsure of your reasoning. Would be glad to see any evidence.
Did you come to that conclusion (and the “just tricks to prepare for tests” analysis) before or after reviewing the Sposato curriculum?
http://www.sposatogse.org/about/curriculum/
“A barber school is not a graduate school of esthetics.”
That we can agree on!
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Stephen Ronan,
I think Diane already made her case that the Sposato program is unprofessional and operates without the same accreditation and professional requirements traditional colleges and public schools have had for decades in almost every if not every developed country.
Does Finland train its teachers with a program simliar to Sposato? Does China? Does France? Does Japan? Does Singapore?
For instance, Stanford has a graduate school of education. Do you think Stanford’s teacher education program would be better if it was run the Sposato way?
“Stanford Graduate School of Education is a leader in pioneering new and better ways to achieve high-quality education for all. Faculty and students engage in groundbreaking and creative interdisciplinary scholarship that informs how people learn and shapes the practice and understanding of education. Through state-of-the-art research and innovative partnerships with educators worldwide, the school develops knowledge, wisdom and imagination in its diverse and talented students so they can lead efforts to improve education around the globe.”
Read Stanford’s Points of Distinction. Why not learn what Stanford does instead of some questionable shill program called the Sposato way?
https://ed.stanford.edu/about
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Stephen,
Defend academic fraud if you wish. I won’t.
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Thanks, Lloyd!
You think Sposato students’ critical thinking skills could be further polished if Stanford’s Caroline Hoxby, Ph.D. came here to Boston as a visiting lecturer (“I find that teachers’ unions increase school inputs but reduce productivity sufficiently to have a negative overall effect on student performance.”)
And perhaps some of the Stanford CREDO gang?
“The magnitude of the gains that charter school students in Boston received compared to their traditional public school counterparts is the largest we see in any area of the country we have studied,” says Margaret Raymond, director of the Center for Research on Education Outcomes at Stanford University, which conducted the study.
Perhaps they could help teach Sposato’s introductory course SPO 100: Culture, Community AND Context? Sounds good to me.
Of course I’d want Diane there also…
– Stephen
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Stephen,
Do not put words in my mouth. I did not say “You (meaning me) think Sposato students’ critical thinking skills could be further polished if Stanford’s Caroline Hoxby, Ph.D. came here to Boston as a visiting lecturer”
And I did not mention CREDO.
Tell me what I really meant.
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CREDO is not into teacher education. All CREDO does is collect information so people like Stephen Ronan can cherry pick what they want to use to support their agenda to turn OUR children over to autocratic, for profit, child abusing, cherry picking students, often fraudulent and inferior corporate charter schools.
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Stephen Ronan,
Why don’t you invite Caroline Hoxby and Macke Raymond to lecture at the Sposate “Graduate School of Education.” They don’t know how to teach K-12, and they don’t know how to raise test scores, but they are reputable scholars. I know them both from my time at the conservative Hoover Institution. It would be nice if the kids at Match or Relay encountered a scholar. Just once.
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Sorry, Lloyd I meant to have a question mark at the end of that first bit regarding Dr. Hoxby. I’m now guessing the answer is no, you don’t think that that particular Stanford Professor would helpfully supplement the M.A.s at Sposato.
And I’ll give you the benefit of the doubt and assume you intended a question mark at the close of your final sentence re: CREDO ;-).
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I’m curious why you only pointed out the alleged success of autocratic, opaque publicly funded, private sector for profit corporate charters in Boston and not point out how many corporate charters across the United States are performing the same or worse than the community based, democratic, transparent, non profit traditional public schools that have done such a great job — and I’m not being cute/ironic/sardonic.
Most of the reputable evidence, except bogus questionable high stakes tests that profit corporations, supports that fact that public education in the U.S. has done and is still doing an incredible job despite the obstacles that greedy billionaire oligarchs and their elected minions keep putting in the way.
Off the top of my head (I’ve scrolled the the CREDO report so many times to find those ratios, I refuse to do it again), I think those numbers are 57 percent of corporate charters perform the same or worse than the public schools in math and in reading that number is 72 percent.
How many years now have the corporate charter schools been struggling to beat the public schools while they keep loading the dice in their favor? And to achieve any success usually means getting rid of the most challenging students that the traditional public schools can’t get rid of.
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“I’m curious why you only pointed out the alleged success of autocratic, opaque publicly funded, private sector for profit corporate charters in Boston…”
Lloyd, there are zero “for-profit corporate” charter schools in Boston, nor any anywhere in Massachusetts. I think we can agree that that’s a good thing.
And presumably the chart on page 9 here: https://urbancharters.stanford.edu/download/Urban%20Charter%20School%20Study%20Report%20on%2041%20Regions.pdf buttresses the sense we share that there is great variability of success and failure among charter schools nationwide.
I focused on charter schools in Boston, because that is where the MATCH schools are and where its Charles Sposato Graduate School of Education is located. Much of the faculty of Sposato is affiliated with top notch charter schools in Boston. And Boston is where a large fraction of the school’s graduates teach. The success of Sposato seems interrelated with the success of Boston charter schools.
Perhaps you don’t like what you see in the MATCH annual report? Perhaps you don’t consider CREDO’s analysis credible?
“In both reading and math, 83 percent of [Boston] charter schools perform significantly better than their traditional public school market… Roughly 17 percent of charter schools were not significantly different from their market and none were found to be significantly worse than their TPS peers. […] However, the performance of students enrolled in Boston’s TPS remained generally stable over the sample period, suggesting that the positive charter effect is largely driven by high growth in the charter sector, not falling performance among Boston’s TPS. Charter students in Boston gain an additional 12 months in reading and 13 months in math per school year compared to their TPS counterparts.”
Click to access MAReportFinal_000.pdf
Perhaps you’ll nevertheless respect the judgment of Boston parents amongst whom word of mouth is a powerful vehicle? 1,949 children joined MATCH’s waiting lists this year alone… I know well some of those kids whose parents wish they could have been admitted.
The headline of the Edushyster article that Diane celebrated was “The Incredible Disappearing Charter School Teachers”. And punchline: “Yet by the end of this video, two thirds of the teachers have quit–and another clearly has her eye on the door.”
Aside from the evidence that none of the “former” MATCH teachers in the video have actually fled far, there’s this Sposato finding, which I find impressive: “96% of the graduates from our third cohort returned for a third year of teaching. 97% of the graduates from our fourth cohort returned for a third year of teaching.”
BTW, if you haven’t seen it yet, you may find this info about Charles Sposato, himself, of interest, as I did.
http://www.sposatogse.org/people/charles-sposato/
Cheers to his memory and the continuing work of Bob Hill, Nedra Massenburg et al.
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Do you really think I’m trust reports from Match on Match. With as much fraud, lies and cherry picking that the corroborate charter industry pumps out, only a fool or a paid shill would trust any charter that reports on itself.
How about a look at this story in the Boston Globe?
https://www.bostonglobe.com/metro/2013/12/30/dispute-over-tutors-pay-roils-match-charter-school/Zo0iry9UCbKqPxDGtFYTxN/story.html
Or this one from EduShyster written by an actual tutor that work for Match.
http://edushyster.com/the-match-that-started-a-blaze/
Or this piece about the student attrition rate at Boston’s charters.
From 6th to 12th grade – each listing is for a different Boston charter.
From 81 to 26
From 88 to 35
From 102 to 39
From 130 to 47
From 53 to 24
Match Charter School – From 72 to 45
Quote: “Match is by far the most effective charter high school in Boston, retaining 62.5% of its students until 12th grade.” …
BUT “As a point of comparison Boston Public schools enrolled 5,862 9th graders in 2009-210 and has 3,869 12th graders this year. This is 79 percent retention.
http://bluemassgroup.com/2013/03/charter-school-attrition/
Your Match Charter School is another fraud, another hoax, another liar that pays poverty wages to its temporary teachers/tutors and then gets rid of the most difficult to teach students to boost its test scores. You can point to Match’s own PR propaganda BS until hell freezers over and it will still be meaningless rubbish.
Look at what tutors that worked at Match have to say about that charter school on Glassdoor.com. No cherry picking. Look at every pro and con comment because anyone reading this can click the link and see for themselves.
A ridiculous work load and low pay are mentioned repeatedly but that isn’t all they have to say.
https://www.glassdoor.com/Reviews/Match-Charter-Reviews-E404991.htm
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I constantly see references to “Boston’s high performing charters” and wonder who created this talking point – Great Schools Now or Families for Excellent Schools?
All these charters have sky high suspension rates. All have high rates of kids migrating back to our public schools. All have terribly low graduation rates, once attrition of cohort rates is examined. All are staffed by large numbers of inexperienced teachers who lack full credentials. Few admit and keep ELL’s or SWD’s, other than those with mild disabilities.
And, as Peter Greene has pointed out, “non-profit” charters just have better money laudering operations than the for profit ones. Here’s an example of how the money flows and accumulates:
Click to access FY15ExcessSurplus.pdf
And has, since 2009
http://archive.boston.com/news/local/massachusetts/articles/2009/02/19/audit_mass_charter_schools_flush_with_cash/
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(1) In Philanthropy Roundtable, AEI’s Frederick Hess and, an external affairs manager of Gates-funded, Data Quality Campaign, co-wrote an article. The post reads, “…reformers…declare ‘We’ve got to blow up the ed schools.’ ” As an alternative, the two authors outline a plan for plutocratic control. (2) The Gates Foundation funds Aspen’s Senior Congressional Education Staff Network, which claims it is non-ideological, despite the Gates Foundation’s and Aspen’s support for charter schools and Common Core. Microsoft has a deal with Pearson to create products for Common Core and, Bill Gates, Mark Z-berg, Pearson,… own the schools-in-a-box, retailer, Bridge International Academies. BIA’s co-founder stated the business model’s 20% return would attract investors. Until a few weeks ago, David Koch, was in the photo array of Aspen Board members. (3) Isn’t Hoxby associated with SIEPR, disparagingly referred to as, the Stanford Institute for the Evisceration of People’s Retirement? Doesn’t State Budget Solutions, which is associated with the Koch’s, advocate for the elimination of Social Security and public pensions?
The entire war against American democracy, currently staged on the education battlefield, is about the elimination of opponents to oligarchy. The objective is concentration of wealth, with the consequences that Picketty documented.
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Lloyd,
MATCH’s data presented in its annual report seem to me reasonably consistent with what I get directly from our Massachusetts Department of Elementary and Secondary Education databases, though I haven’t strived to check it all in every detail. If you can identify any errors, please do let us know.
In respect to the understanding you achieved via jamaicaplainiac’s numbers at bluemassgroup.com, those are misleading you, Lloyd, because they fail to account for grade-level retention (thereby missing effects like more individual students retained during the first year of charter schools than in later years) and also misinterpret the effects of transfers (large numbers of transfers into the TPS schools in the upper grades, but not at the charter schools).
FWIW I discussed that sort of defective analysis of attrition data at much greater length with Jeannie Kaplan formerly of the Colorado School Board and parent010203 in the comments on Merrow’s blog a while back here:
(my last posting in the thread hadn’t appeared for many hours, so I sent it again, slightly edited, at which point they both appeared… you could skip the first). I’d be grateful to know if you find any flaws in my views expressed there.
If you would genuinely like to get an accurate picture of the relative attrition of Boston charter schools and Boston traditional public schools, a good place to start is the chart on page 39 here: http://www.doe.mass.edu/research/reports/2016/02CharterReport.pdf
In regard to MATCH’s marvelous corps of tutors… I thought Jo in the Edushyster comments addressed the particular controversy you allude to in a well-motivated, well-balanced, well-informed, well-reasoned manner.
My own initial perception of the role of the MATCH tutor corps was shaped by reading Chapter 5 in “Inside Urban Charter Schools: Promising Practices and Strategies in Five High-Performing Schools” by Katherine K. Merseth Ed.D.. According to that book, which was published in 2009, Dr. Mersheth, the principal investigator of the study, had “taught math in traditional public middle and high schools for ten years, has provided instruction in math pedagogy, and is the director of the Harvard Graduate School of Education (HGSE) Teacher Education Program, which she founded in 1984. Merseth holds a master’s degree in mathematics from Boston College, and both a master of arts in teaching and a doctorate in education administration, planning, and social policy from HGSE.”
If you might care to get a brief, easy-to-read independent perspective on the day-to-day inner workings of MATCH and other charter schools in this area, I would recommend that book to you ($3.30 + shipping at Amazon).
Glassdoor?
81% would recommend MATCH to a friend looking for work? That ain’t half bad! Compares favorably with the 58% for IBM and 67% for the NY Times.
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From what I have been reading, MATCH is just another autocratic, child abusing, opaque, for-profit fraud run by fakes that worship and the alter of avarice and nothing you say is going to change my mind. I think that you are either a shill paid by MATCH to counter the truth or you are a fool.
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Christine Langhoff: “I constantly see references to ‘Boston’s high performing charters’ and wonder who created this talking point – Great Schools Now or Families for Excellent Schools?”
Perhaps Dr. Merseth of HGSE via that book I cited above?
“All have high rates of kids migrating back to our public schools. All have terribly low graduation rates, once attrition of cohort rates is examined. All are staffed by large numbers of inexperienced teachers who lack full credentials. Few admit and keep ELL’s or SWD’s, other than those with mild disabilities.”
Large numbers of inexperienced teachers and tutors and the like in the sector, I’ll grant you.
Do you retain those other views after reviewing this: http://www.doe.mass.edu/research/reports/2016/02CharterReport.pdf and the academic research I cited in a back and forth with Dr. Ravitch concering Jay Greene’s musings: https://dianeravitch.net/2016/06/16/jay-greene-do-higher-test-scores-predict-better-life-outcomes/#comment-2565739 ?
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Stephen –
Either HGSE is a wholly owned subsidiary of ChartersUSA, or ChartersUSA is a wholly owned subsidiary of HGSE. Not only have they been attempting to take over the Boston schools for about the past twenty years, as a “non-profit” they don’t pay the taxes on their Boston properties which would underwrite our schools. They are a miserly participant in our PILOT (payment in lieu of taxes) program. Few on this blog believe in their “prestige”.
Our state board of ed is appointed by the governor, who has stacked it full of privatizers, including Roland Two-Tier Fryer, of the Harvard Edu Lab, and his disproven theories about merit pay are being put into practice in Southborough, recently taken over by DESE as “failing”. Governor Baker has just sign a budget which underfunds the reimbursement to charter school from the public ones.
As to attrition rates reported by DESE, last year they changed the definition of attrition to students who leave the school between June and September, at the same time many blogs were posting information that showed very large decreases in cohorts of students each school year in charters. Perhaps that’s just a coincidence, but I think everything happens for a reason. DESE has also redefined what “poverty”is among our children.
If you’ve come to Diane’s blog looking for information and thoughful analysis, you’re in the right place. If on the other hand, you’re a provocateur or a paid shill, I’d say you’re outmatched.
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Diane Ravitch: “Why don’t you invite Caroline Hoxby and Macke Raymond to lecture at the Sposato ‘Graduate School of Education.'”
Yikes, I wish I were in a position to do that. And to be there. If they could arrive together perhaps they could recapitulate and update the classic CREDO/Hoxby debate, with a local focus. Have Boston charters truly been just as successful as CREDO has suggested? Or was Dr. Hoxby correct in 2009… and CREDO’s methodology systematically understated the successes of charter schools? Would want you there, Dr. Ravitch, to moderate, and add color and dimension, of course.
Perhaps end with a pop quiz on standard methods of attrition and graduation rate calculation. I’ll score that, if I may.
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Me: If you would genuinely like to get an accurate picture of the relative attrition of Boston charter schools and Boston traditional public schools, a good place to start is the chart on page 39 here: http://www.doe.mass.edu/research/reports/2016/02CharterReport.pdf
Sorry, that should be page 36 not page 39 in respect to the numbers on the bottom left of each page.
Lloyd: “From what I have been reading,..”
I would encourage you to continue your research, with an open mind.
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Stephen, you imply that I don’t have an open mind, but I suspect my mind is way more open then yours will ever be.
You see, no one owns my soul and I have no master telling me how to think.
I have been reading extensively for several years about what is going on and who is behind the autocratic, often fraudulent and inferior, for-profit corporate public education take over movement. I don’t just read books written by a few authors. I have researched this issue extensively on my own and written about it on my own blog about education here:
https://crazynormaltheclassroomexpose.com/
I was a public school teacher for thirty years (1975-2005). You can even read about what kind of teacher I was because I was successful enough to make the local papers near the schools where I taught, and the district where I worked even submitted my name to California’s Golden Apple Award early in my career as an educator. Every district submits the name of at least one teacher each year and there are more than 1,000 school districts in California.
If you click the link, scroll down to read what the Rowland Heights Highlighter wrote about me and my students.
http://www.mysplendidconcubine.com/teachingyears.htm
I am also an investigative journalist and author of four award winning books and one of them was a best seller. My BA is in journalism. I never planned to become a teacher, but to make a long story short, it happened.
And to become a teacher, I went through a year-long, full-time urban residency program in 1975-76 with a master teacher in her 5th grade classroom in a school with a child poverty rate approaching 100 percent. I was hired and ended up teaching in that same school district. In addition, the high school where I taught for the last 16 years had a minority student population of 92 percent and the child poverty rate was 70 percent or higher.
If you have an open mind, you can read about what it was like to teach in that high school in my award winning memoir that was based on a detailed daily journal I kept for one full school year in the mid 1990s.
http://crazynormal.com/
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Thanks for sharing that, Lloyd. Very impressive what I’ve reviewed so far, esp. the Nogales High School newspaper. Will check it all out further.
I lack your vast, highly relevant experience but will respond with one small anecdote. I was hanging out this afternoon in an out-of-school setting with a sizable gaggle of youth. When one whom I scarcely knew suddenly, unexpectedly challenged me to a game of chess. As, a few minutes later, he maneuvered with swift, calm, pensive confidence, I asked where he’d learned to play. As he cited a particular Boston charter school, I thought I had better up my game. Narrowed my focus, became increasingly oblivious to everyone else in the room. Rookie mistake. But no major penalty on this occasion, thankfully.
– Stephen
“O that I were a fool!
I am ambitious for a motley coat.”
As You Like It: Act 2, Scene 7: The Forest
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Talk about chess. I was the co-advisor for the community based, democratic, transparent, non-profit public high school chess club at the high school where I taught my last 16 years. I enjoy playing chess even when I lose.
When lunch hit, my classroom filled with reporters/editors from the student newspaper, students who played chess, belonged to the democratic environmental club (I was also the faculty co-advisor of this extra curricular club that students wanted — you see in a community based, democratic public high school the students have a voice through their elected ASB government — a great way to introduce children to a participatory democratic republic).
I didn’t win every chess game I played with the high school students in that student chess club either. One year there was one Latino senior who came from a poor family in the barrio who ended up with a perfect SAT score and a full ride scholarship to Stanford. I played chess with this student, who was also a reporter on the student high school newspaper, and I probably won as many games as he did.
In fact, all of the students in my journalism class went to college out of that poor community, because learning what teachers teach is a choice in a country that values freedom. An education is offered in the public schools but we don’t force the students to learn and throw them out if they don’t cooperate and/or get high test scores. We keep every student, even the ones that make no effort to learn and cause problems for us when we are teaching, but all of the teachers I worked with and knew never gave up trying to motivate them to learn what we teach.
As one of the two voluntary faculty advisors for the democratic student environmental club, it was my choice to go on the all day Saturday hikes once a month in the wilderness near Los Angeles. Since many of our students had parents working more than one job earning poverty wages, that meant asking other teachers to give up one Saturday each month so we had enough drivers and cars to transport all the students into the mountains or out to the desert. We never had a shortage of teachers willing to drive and join one of these hikes.
The extracurricular student clubs on campus were formed by students (who were responsible to find a teacher/administrator to be their faculty advisor) operated as a democracy where the members got to vote for their club president, VP, secretary, etc. Every student in the journalism class, that was also a club, the chess club and the environmental club all had freedom of expression because they were democratic organizations.
The United States has built a very rich and rewarding public education system, but all I see from the autocratic, often fraudulent and inferior, opaque, cheery picking facts/students, for profit anyway you look at it corporate Charter schools is a dismantling of the public education tradition in this republic and democracy.
High test scores from questionable and often faulty high stakes tests that profit private sector corporations like Pearson will never be enough to convince me that those schools offer children a better education.
Back to the high school where I taught. There were many extra curricular clubs in that high school with a 92 percent minority population and more than a 70 percent child poverty rate. When the students we taught came to us asking if we would be the faculty advisor for a club they wanted to form, we didn’t have to say yes. We could say no but I never heard of a teacher that said no unless they already advised one or more other clubs and didn’t have the time to take on one more.
America’s community based, democratic, transparent, non profit, traditional public schools are much more than a questionable, faulty, flawed test score.
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Christine,
In respect to HGSE and Sposato, perhaps we can agree that it is appropriate to maintain a curious and inquisitive skepticism about any and all graduate schools of education regardless of their count of Ph.D.s, Ed.D.s, volumes in the library.
“Our state board of ed is appointed by the governor, who has stacked it full of privatizers.”
The meme about “privatizers” could perhaps become more interesting, if not persuasive, if in sensible, rational manner, with a solid basis in research and evidence, it assessed the impacts of all for profit and not-for profit corporate entities with sizable impact on education, including both 501(c)(3) public charities and also 501(c)4 entities.
Instead I tend to encounter a whole lot of 501(c)(4) advocates attacking involvement of 501(c)(3) entities while many of the leading arguments they advance don’t survive careful examination of the relevant data. Not to negate the possibility for alternative arguments, currently largely hidden in the weeds, that may be more persuasive…
“Governor Baker has just sign a budget which underfunds the reimbursement to charter school from the public ones.”
Thanks for the update, I hadn’t heard yet just how much in next year’s budget Massachusetts traditional public schools will be paid for students who have departed.
“As to attrition rates reported by DESE, last year they changed the definition of attrition to students who leave the school between June and September, at the same time many blogs were posting information that showed very large decreases in cohorts of students each school year in charters.”
As you likely know, DESE regrettably provides figures only separately for those who leave schools in the summer and for those who leave schools during the school year. The great majority of departures come between school years and those are reflected in the chart I pointed you towards. My best understanding is that when combining the effects of both summer and school-year departures one finds proportionately fewer Boston Commonwealth charter school students departing their schools than students leaving traditional Boston public schools (my impression is that only about 75 total charter school students returned to BPS during the school year last year). Please let me know if you have contrary evidence.
There are some who face the alternatives of, on the one hand, needing to combine those two data sets (summer plus school-year departures), or, on the other hand, just looking at the ratio of students in 9th and 12th grades and find the latter approach intuitively obvious, less arduous, and therefore more appealing and persuasive. There are other folks that are cognizant of the facts that the latter approach can, in a potentially useful political fashion, be highly misleading as it neglects factors like grade level retention and differential rates of incoming transfers, and they therefore promote that approach.
“If you’ve come to Diane’s blog looking for information and thoughful analysis, you’re in the right place. If on the other hand, you’re a provocateur or a paid shill, I’d say you’re outmatched.”
I assume we agree that those don’t exhaust the possibilities. There’s unpaid shill for example. Or looking to understand the perspectives/arguments/data of those intensely hostile to charter schools, regardless of whether informative/disinformative, thoughtful/reflexive.
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Captivating posting, Lloyd, reflecting years of hugely impressive work.
If you’re still in that area, and up for co-leading a hike, I think these folks would appreciate your involvement.
http://angelesico.org/info-for-leaders
I do hope you recognize that charter schools commonly offer a far richer diet than standardized test prep. Whether it’s the kids I know studying Mandarin, the neighbor lad who this month is overseas with a charter school all-star basketball team, or the young chess-player yesterday, it ain’t all about test prep by any means. In respect to the last of those it was the warm smile, handshake and compliment he offered at the game’s conclusion that most especially won my admiration. BTW, I’ve yet to see any cherry pickers parked in the lot of the public housing development where he lives in Boston’s lowest income neighborhood. But send ’em over. Plenty of ripe pickings.
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This is what I think about the autocratic, opaque and often fraudulent and inferior, allegedly child abusing for profit/not profit corporate charter schools.
They corporate public education take over movement has been funded by the deep pockets of billionaires for decades. It is a corporate war on the public sector, a war against public unions, a war against public teachers, a war against children, a war against parents.
For decades, the billionaires funded legislation to get through organizations like ALEC to get what they wanted and failed repeatedly because the majority of voters supporter the community based, democratic, transparent, non-profit pubic schools.
Because asking the voters for permission to take over public education didn’t work, these billionaire psychopaths made an end run and started to fund election campaigns for candidates that would support their extremist profit motivated agendas.
The publicly funded private sector corporate charter education industry is an invading force, an enemy to the republic, and what’s left of the U.S. Republic is at war with that sector.
That’s why I see the entire publicly funded private corporate education sector as an element of organized crime. They are not legitimate and should all be denied public funds and closed.
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The billionaire boys club meme is another here that I don’t find especially persuasive. Should I oppose criminal justice reform if Charles Koch joins George Soros in supporting it?
Where you reference “public unions”, Lloyd, I assume that’s a relatively concise allusion to entirely private corporations whose corporate purpose is to represent the interests of member employees of public schools, whether exam, pilot, magnet, charter or traditional.
And I need to correct myself in my prior message… should have written 501(c)(5) where I wrote 501(c)(4).
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Stephen, why are you wasting your time leaving me comments?
Well, I already know that answer so don’t bother to answer it.
If we were back in the Revolution (1775-1783), I would think of you as a King George loyalist and act accordingly.
Nothing you write and none of the crap you use to support your thinking is going to win me over or prove me wrong to those who have open minds and are willing to fact check all the data out there without cherry picking.
You support what I think of as an irrelevant and illegal industry no matter what laws have been passed to support this often fraudulent and inferior corporate charter school industry. I will never support a compromise that lets this industry survive. I want all public funds to be cut off from publicly funded private sector schools.
Let’s not forget that it was laws and taxes from the British Empire that led to the American Revolution and the U.S. Constitution with its Bill of Rights and Amendments.
To find out who you are a minion for, I suggest you read “Dark Money: The Hidden History of Billionaires” by Jane Mayer. And if you aren’t one of their paid for minions, I think that leaves only one word to describe who you are. That word has four letters starting with an “F” followed by two vowels and ending with an “L”.
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Thanks, Lloyd. I appreciate your dry wit.
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But again, I believe the tone was set for a lot of assumptions and presumptions when we let National Boards take such a high place in teacher ambition. The Common Core provides a way for charters to have unity around the country, and likewise some set of national teacher standards does the same for any other pop up “institution” claiming to certify teachers.
Maybe teachers should have been reading the local newspaper instead of preparing for National Boards. . .or serving on local committees and attending the symphony and local concerts so that the connection of schools and their leaders to community didn’t disappear, as it seems to have.
I think all of this national teaching stuff, be it teacher prep or student standards is much like the interstate highway system. At the end of the day, about 25% of miles driven happens on interstates. We all know that interstates have their perks and their downsides, and that unless you have a car that can drive at high speeds safely, the interstate is not for you anyway.
25%, still leaves 75% using truly state-led initiatives like university teacher programs and standards that really are state led. So that’s pretty good, maybe.
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Well, the intent is to radically transform public education and privatize all of it. It’s not a big secret in ed reform circles:
https://edexcellence.net/articles/the-accountability-legacy-of-a-hundred-year-old-decision
I don’t know why anyone would be surprised that they need new teacher training methods. These are people who casually mention they intend to draft new local “governance” systems. No one who is voting for any of the ed reform political actors has any idea how ambitious this agenda is- or that it’s essentially a done deal. As far as they’re concerned the debate is over- we’re privatizing.
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well and the momentum supports that. Even the actions of local public school leadership seems to lead us closer to it.
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Praising a PhD in education? That’s rich. The most useless teachers i know have PhD’s in education and work at ‘real’ universities. It’s almost cliche.
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Brian,
Don’t insult me. I have a Ph.D. in the history of education from Columbia University Graduate School of Arts and Sciences. I studied with great mentors and scholars at Teachers College, who were experts in their fields.
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this sort of classic “anti intellectualism” is exactly what is behind the whole push for Match and Relay Graduate Schools of Education.
suggesting that the “faculty” at these “graduate schools” are better suited than Ph.D.s in education to prepare future teachers is like suggesting that Ken Hamm and his Creationism should be taught as “science” in the schools.
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Listening to the useless hedge fund managers, on any subject, including education, is ludicrous and destructive. The American people allow the financial sector to drag down GDP, forcing those who work productively, to cover the losses caused by Wall Street.
There is no punishment too great for those who rob the nation and those who plot to take its democracy.
If a ranking of useless and evil demographical groups is composed, Wall Street is at the top. The fraudsters in the financial sector are far worse than welfare queens. At least the latter spend their ill-gotten gains, benefitting the economic multiplier effect. And, they don’t buy politicians to enact laws legitimizing theft, like carried interest. And, they don’t deprive citizens of their right to vote, through campaign funding to gerrymander and suppress voting.
Brian Ford’s focus, even if it had any merit, reflects a distraction that permits the threat to American citizens’ freedom, to grow.
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MATCH is among “teacher providers” with the least interest in public schools and authentic professional education but with deep pockets to sell the Department of Education and Congress on what great teacher preparation is, how to measure it, and the purpose of teacher preparations programs. Teacher providers exist to in order to satisfy their “customers.” MATCH is not alone in this belief system.
In June 16, 2016 this pompous press release was circulated by “PRWEb, BALTIMORE, MD Here are some excerpts. http://www.prweb.com/releases/2016/06/prweb13493676.htm
“Joint Statement Calling for Transparency of Outcomes to Improve Teacher Preparation and Better Serve Students and Districts”
“Urban Teachers—along with Aspire Public Schools, Blue Engine, Boston Teacher Residency, Match Teacher Residency, National Center for Teacher Residencies, Relay Graduate School of Education, Teach For America and TNTP—join together to request the Department of Education and Congress create clear guidance for state education agencies as they attempt to act on this opportunity and improve the quality of teacher preparation at the state-level. “
“Specifically, our coalition is recommending the Department of Education and Congress provide states with specific guidance around developing systems where all teacher preparation programs are accountable for collecting and publicly sharing outcomes data on the success of their programs, participants, and graduates.”
This coalition of “charter school teacher providers” wants the Department of Education to modify ESSA. How? Through “regulations” that would actually change the law. The coalition wants USDE to require every state to collect data on the inputs and outputs of teacher education programs, rate the programs, and then determining program “quality”—all based on a “customer service” model.
In effect, high quality teaching becomes defined as “pleasing” the customer and the purpose of any “teacher provider” is get great reviews, thumbs up, likes, smiley faces.
“Specifically, our coalition is recommending the Department of Education and Congress provide states with specific guidance around developing systems where all teacher preparation programs are accountable for collecting and publicly sharing outcomes data on the success of their programs, participants, and graduates. These data will provide states the ability to meaningfully determine program quality; they will allow local education agencies to identify programs that produce the effective teachers they need; and, they will enable aspiring teachers to select a program that will set them up for a successful career.” …
The anonymous writer of the press release plays the circular thinking game of equating success, with high quality, being well-prepared, and pleasing the customer with data gathering that will be very, very expensive and extremely hard for states to gather.
…”The Department of Education and Congress must create clear roadmaps to inform state education agencies how to develop a system that allows potential teacher candidates (customers, type 1) and school leaders (customers, type 2) to identify high-quality teacher preparation programs.”
“This system should require programs to collect and report evidence-based data on the preparedness of their participants and graduates to inform customers’ assessment of effectiveness.”
The coalition wants states to require these metrics:
(a) teacher retention. Meaning: teachers remaining at their school from one year to the next, called “stayers.” Of course, under the direct control of any teacher preparation program.
(b) teacher attrition. Again, not under the direct control of a teacher preparation program. What does attrition mean? The National Center of Education Statistics has an elaborated definition: “movers” teach in a different school than the previous school year, “returners” have resumed teaching after a year of not teaching, and “leavers” are no longer teaching after two or three years. NCES also tracks reported reasons for attrition and demographics for each group–age, whether a teacher was assigned a mentor, base salary, certification type, class organization, community type, whether a mover teacher’s contract was not renewed, whether a leaver teacher’s contract was not renewed, current/former status, whether a teacher entered teaching through an alternative certification program, full-or part-time teaching status, highest degree earned, occupational status, percent of K–12 students who were approved/eligible for free or reduced-price lunches, race/ethnicity and so on.)
c) principal satisfaction surveys. The principal is one of the “customers.”
(d) teacher evaluations. These are already required in almost every state.
(e) teacher performance on state exams (content? pedagogical? edTPA?)
(f) student achievement gains (within year, year-to-year? Seems to assume no change in teaching assignments)
“Through transparency of outcomes, teacher preparation programs can also make data-driven improvements to their programs and as a result, better serve their customers.”
“This data can also inform how states define effective teacher preparation, allowing them to identify and support programs that are producing quality teachers….”
The press release signals this data-mongering effort will be a campaign…
“This is the first in a series of letters to federal officials that will guide efforts to strengthen teacher preparation programs across the country.”
Allowing the TFAers to define teaching as “customer service” and to identify “the right metrics to assess program effectiveness” should be ridiculed as a concept and as a policy that USDE and Congress should enforce.
This is what franchised teacher prep programs value and depend on—pounding on the idea that they are experts in teacher prep, absent any evidence, combined with relentless marketing of teacher prep LITE.
These hucksters think teacher education is not much more than a matter of
(a) marketing programs to prospective candidates, and
(b) pleasing principals who hire graduates of programs
(c) massaging data to increase market share for “teacher providers”.
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OF COURSE they do…because this fits right in with TFA and TNTP, and getting alternate route Ivy League college grads all of 21/22 years old to become place mark “teachers” for a year, or 2, before starting up a charter school and becoming a Talent Agent, or Administrator of some sort, or realtor/dealer who owns the property and rents it back to the charters, all on the public dime, and through federal grants and schemes and hedge funded investments.
It absolutely sickens me that Relay, and Broad “Academy” are taken seriously, meanwhile if you’ve got an ed degree, in order to teach, you must be designated “highly qualified” (which TFA gets granted to them automatically), and licensed, and certified, and credentialled.
When the government purports to elevate these scheme schools, where robots of the schemers learn how to mistreat children and real teachers, etc., as bona fide, while bashing teachers and administrators who have gone through the courses to get the proper certificates in order to advance to positions of Principal, V. Principal, Superintendent, it is a slap in the face to REAL teachers and administrators, and the taxpayers as well.
Rich turds in education reform should NEVER have been taken seriously, and we should never have allowed them to usurp public education and replace it with militaristic/prison-like charters that treat children to be seen and not heard, and get wealthy while churning a revolving door of amateur scabs who care nothing about the kids, but only wish to bloat their resumes to impress their next employer, or move up the TFA ladder into their next position of incompetence and negligence.
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I think it is worth mentioning that Match has a very close and well-developed “partnership” with Harvard University–in particular,
“Our research partner is Harvard’s EdLabs, led by professor Roland Fryer. We work together to find new ways to make teachers better and their jobs easier.
Our evaluation partner is Harvard’s Center for Education Policy. They are among the nation’s leaders in examining various ways to evaluate teachers. We hope to constantly improve our own evaluation as the CEP draws lessons from around the USA.
Our graduate students have borrowing privileges at Harvard’s Gutman Library.”
Just more evidence at how completely Harvard’s Graduate School of Education has been co-opted and is controlled by the corporate reformers.
Far from a sign of credibility, Harvard’s endorsement of Match–and Relay–is just a sign of how far Harvard has fallen, and how they have sold out our profession in exchange for the financial support of the charter industry.
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I had lunch recently with a former student, who was recruited by TFA after she graduated from Smith College. She is a Latina, whose family is from Colombia, and her entire K-12 was in Boston Public Schools. She spent 3 years in an elementary school outside Miami, and then returned to the Boston area where she was hired by a charter to be “Dean of Discipline”. She told me she tried hard to be on the side of the angels in both places, trying to change the culture and to advocate for kids amid a no excuses culture.
She was unsuccessful in that quest and left for graduate school. She was accepted to HGSE and has just graduated. I asked her about that experience and her answer was, “Everyday, I was just angry, all the time. The professors had no idea what life is like for these kids. When I tried to say that teachers care for and about the students, no one wanted to hear it. They have never been students in the public schools. They just know all about it, they think, and they somehow get to make all the decisions.”
The HGSE pedigree was sufficient to land her a summer internship with MA DESE, but again, she felt completely at odds within an institution whose goal seems to be to dismantle our public schools.
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All university accreditation, has become suspect. Takeover attempts by the richest 0.1% are apparent, in the information at UnKochMyCampus.org. Those university faculty involved in the accrediting process, have an obligation to stop what they are doing and, redirect their full efforts to the protection of the integrity of collegiate institutions. If universities are not distinct from oligarch-funded think tanks, nor from industry trade groups, the reason for existing, becomes moot.
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