Bill Honig was State Superintendent of Schools in California in the late 1980s. I came to know and admire him at that time. Bill Honig has spent many years dedicated to the improvement of education. He continues to work in schools, providing ideas and support.
He recently created a website to share what he has learned about education.
The site is designed to present the research and experience supporting the “build and support” approach and show why the more extreme measures of the “test and punish” approach haven’t worked. It has 16 short articles about the major issues in the debate including a piece about experience in California and is designed for educational and political policy makers and members of the media. The site provides accessible background, research, and evidence and could be a useful tool. If you read the home page and the introductory remarks you can get the flavor of the effort.
I urge you to read it. Bill is a staunch friend of public education.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Superb! Must reads!
Bill Honig absolutely “gets it”. The articles are totally on point and his professionalism is second to none. His “build-and-support” model for school improvement provides a sensible and proven alternative to the failed “test-and-punish” reforms of the past 15 years.
“Reformers have operated under an extremely unsophisticated view of the educational landscape and how best to influence it. This causes two fundamental errors. First, they target their improvement efforts on a limited and weak set of levers for change. Secondly, they undertake solutions that have either little or no basis in research or experiential support. Reformers fundamentally misunderstand how schools and districts work. Unfortunately, the specific measures in the reform playbook rely on discredited and faulty assumptions about the best ways to improve schools. This is why [their] individual reforms have produced limited or nonexistent results.”
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It is worthwhile reading for those that are interested in education. Honing takes a frank look at many of the issues facing teachers and schools today. Best of all, he does not represent the bias of a “think tank” or foundation. He should forward a copy to Hillary and her campaign as anyone running for president needs to understand the issues, and an overview of where we are could be helpful to her.
His section on charters focused mostly on Newark. There were many aspects of “reform” he did not broach. While he did mention the meager results of reform, he did not discuss the impact reform has had on public schools. He did not mention that in addition to budgets being slashed since 2008, many school districts are tettering on the brink of collapse due to charter proliferation. He did not mention that charters function as parasite to public schools. Also, not mentioned was the practice of cherry picking and high attrition rates many charters have used to skew performance results. He also did not address all the public funds that are going to grifters instead of needy public school students. Last of all, while he mentioned that charters are often less convenient for families, they also contribute to destroying communities resulting in land grabs by for profit developers. The biggest loss with charters is the loss of democratic governance of local schools. Many poor, minority parents have been denied this right when a community is forced to adopt a charter. The whole premise of charters has been distorted to allow the uninformed access to public money, and it has become a boondoggle.
Actually, all those points were specifically mentioned in the Article on charters and I agree they are all important. Thanks for the kind words.
Not so fast… Bill Honig is personally profiting from Common Core. He sits on the board of greatminds.org, the company behind Eureka Math.
Eureka Math is the commercialization of EngageNY, a weak, error-riddled curriculum developed at the expense of state taxpayers now repackaged for national sales. Ostensibly a not-for-profit entity, greatminds.org is very much part of the Common Core/Gates empire.
D.L. Paulson, I’m no longer on their Board. Great Minds is non-profit period, not ostensibly. I never received one dime in payment from them and received reimbursement only once for travel when I first joined the Board and went to a Board meeting in Washington, D.C. Finally, while the writer has a right to his or her opinion on the quality of Eureka Math, teachers seem to love it and it is one of the most popular math programs being used in the United States. Their other endeavors in literature and history are also high quality. Great Minds has been a strong advocate for a broad liberal arts for a decade.. Diane Ravitch was one of the original board member of this enterprise and has always been a champion of a broad liberal arts curriculum.
Sigh. A lot of talk about “performance” and “results” but nothing on what those words mean. We can’t talk about success unless we agree on what it is.
Intrigued, I went to Honig’s site, and looked at his article on charter schools:
http://www.buildingbetterschools.com/charter-schools-are-not-the-key-to-improving-public-education/
There, he states:
“According to the well-regarded Center for Research on Education Outcomes (CREDO) research group from Stanford, only about one-quarter of charter schools score better in reading and math than their public school counterparts. Of course, reading and math test results are not the be-all and end-all of school quality. Even so, one-quarter of charters score worse, and the remainders’ performance is no different from non-charter public schools. Specifically, the study found virtually no difference in overall test scores between charters and public schools with comparable students. In another finding, about 31% of charter schools did statistically worse in math than their local public school counterparts; only 29% did better. The findings were even less impressive in reading: 19% of charters did worse; just 25% did better.”
The link he provided at “the study” is this:
http://urbancharters.stanford.edu/summary.php
What I see at that CREDO study that he cites actually say:
“Specifically, 43 percent of urban charter schools deliver larger learning gains in math than the local TPS alternative, with 33 percent showing equivalent results and 24 percent posting smaller learning gains. In reading, 38 percent of urban charter schools outpace their TPS peers, 46 percent fare the same, and only 16 percent of urban charter schools have smaller gains each year.”
” When learning gains for urban charter students are presented for individual urban regions, regions with larger learning gains in charter schools outnumber those with smaller learning gains two-to-one.”
“Learning gains for charter school students are larger by significant amounts for Black, Hispanic, low-income, and special education students in both math and reading. Students who are both low-income and Black or Hispanic, or who are both Hispanic and English Language Learners, especially benefit from charter schools, Gains for these subpopulations amount to months of additional learning per year.”
“Despite the overall positive learning impacts, there are urban communities in which the
majority of the charter schools lag the learning gains of their TPS counterparts, some to
distressingly large degrees. In some urban areas, cities have no schools that post better
gains than their TPS alternatives and more than half the schools are significantly worse.”
Anyone able to explain why Honig and I are finding such different reported results in the same study?
Stephen,
Charters can get higher test scores by weeding out the kids with lower test scores. We have seen the same phenomenon in district after district. Charters seldom have the children with profound disabilities and have been known to push out English language learners, problem children, and students with disabilities. Perhaps you didn’t notice that the ACLU IN California released a report accusing at least 20% of the state’s charters of cherry-picking students to raise test scores.
In addition, charters drain resources from the schools that educate great majority of children, including those not wanted by the charters. That means the pursuit of charters harms most children, because their public schools were forced to lay off teachers and cut programs.
Can you explain why it is a good idea to have two publicly funded school systems, one that enroll all children, the other free to exclude the ones it doesn’t want?
If New Orleans is your ideal, why is the district still among the lowest performing in Louisiana after 11years of charters?
Why are you so eager to give public money to private operators and to privatize public education?
Stephen, there are two CREDO studies. The quotes from the first looking at all charters are accurate. The second study on urban schools did show some benefits for some charters (and some low performers) but the overall effect size was extremely small and pales in comparison to other educational strategies. Moreover, as Diane contends below many so-called high-flyers use a variety of methods to exclude low-performing students. A recent study in California found that a substantial number of charter schools engage in such behavior. .https://edsource.org/2016/report-charges-many-charter-schools-exclude-children-in-violation-of-the-law/567622 Finally, using test scores in reading and math as the sole determinant of quality is highly questionable.
Thanks, Bill. There’s more than two CREDO studies, but I understand now that in the second paragraph of your paper you refer to the data found on page 86 of this 2013 CREDO study.
Click to access NCSS%202013%20Final%20Draft.pdf
However, you provide a link there at “this study” instead to a different study, the 2015 Urban Charter study:
http://urbancharters.stanford.edu/summary.php
As of 8/10/2016 that incorrect link remains. May I suggest that you fix that?
Also, your references to the 2013 study data might be helpfully supplemented by acknowledging the CREDO statement on the previous page (p. 85):
“White students fare worse on average in charter schools than in their local TPS in both reading and math while Asian charter students had weaker growth in math. In contrast, students in the following subgroups received significantly more days of learning each year in charters than their virtual twin in TPS:
♦ Students in Poverty (both reading and math)
♦ English Language Learner Students (both reading and math)
♦ Black Students (both reading and math)
♦ Black Students in poverty (both reading and math)
♦ Hispanic Students in Poverty (both reading and math)
♦ Hispanic English Language Learner Students (both reading and math)
♦ Special Education Students (math only)”
And, if and when you’re hacking away at paragraph 2, may I suggest that you give a close look to your final two sentences. I don’t think they say what you’d want them to say in respect to comparing the math and reading results.
In respect to what you say about admissions procedures, I understand what you’re saying re: the ACLU analysis. But I’m not yet convinced that has much impact on the results of studies that use a VCR methodology like those done by CREDO.
Honig: “Finally, using test scores in reading and math as the sole determinant of quality is highly questionable.”
That we would agree on.
Stephen,
Why are you here? Do you think the readers of this blog are ignorant of the damage that charters do to real public schools?
Do you think we don’t know that the hedge fund managers and the billionaires have decided to create a free-market of schools?
Do you not know that we are aware of their lies?
What is your response to the Dobbie-Fryer study, which found that charters can raise scores yet have no effect on earnings?
You are like a Bosox fan in the Yankee dugout.
We know your game. We are not impressed.
“You are like a Bosox fan in the Yankee dugout.”
Well, Diane, now I am really and truly insulted You have at last gotten deep under my skin. I’m speechless, frothing at the mouth.
Once a Stuyvesant town lad, never a Bosox fan! Go Yankees.
Also a friend who pays more attention than I do just sent me this about Honig: OPEN COURT was a scandal in itself. Gave money to Bush’s friends in Texas. McGraw-Hill.
“Helping to end phonics instruciton in California and then selling “Open Court” phonics instruction to school districts, working to subvert the elected school board of Oakland, using illegal means to unseat Black elected school board members. Found guilty of corruption and unseated as State Supt. of Insruction. What about that?”
Joan Kramer: very little of that is true. Bill Honig was a very popular state superintendent. He was a lawyer who quit the law to teach fourth grade. He came from a wealthy family (Honig Vineyards in Napa Valley). Ran for state superintendent. Overhauled the state curriculum frameworks to make them content-rich and well-rounded. He was re-elected and some thought he might be a candidate for governor against the then-Republican governor. Then he was brought up on charges because his wife ran a company to encourage parent involvement –and it won a state contract. I flew from Washington to be a character witness at his trial. His friends thought this was all politics, getting him barred from the governor’s race. He was convicted, lost his job, and his wife committed suicide. He is one of the finest, most dedicated people I know. We don’t agree about Common Core, but I admire him and would trust him with my life. Please trust me. He is a good man.
I really appreciate how Honig advocates for a well-rounded liberal arts education. However I fear he’s in the dark about what’s actually happening in CA schools. In our district, at least, it’s like NCLB never ended. The focus is all on the CAASP (a.k.a. SBAC) tests –i.e. badly conceived language arts and math tests. Perhaps it’s just force of habit; perhaps it’s the (reasonable) expectation that test-and-punish has only taken a brief hiatus. Yes, the Common Core Standards and state ELA frameworks prescribe the systematic building of content knowledge, but no one is listening. The only thing they hear is the siren call of higher CAASP scores. One example that illustrates my point: we’re adopting new ELA materials in my district. I found some wonderful literature anthologies published by Greatminds and others that I wanted to pilot. But our superintendent refused even to pilot anything that wasn’t an official “state-adoption” even though I informed her of the law that says we don’t HAVE to go with the official state adoption (I wonder if there’s a single district in CA that has the courage to make use of this law’s freedoms). I think she fears, perhaps with some justification, that these eccentric programs won’t help test scores on these awful tests. So we’re stuck with the most test-preppy programs to pilot –one of which is pure, undisguised test prep. Another is a complex monstrosity featuring brief, disparate “bleeding chunks” of texts, larded with a bazillion analytical processing activities. It’s all about “skill building” and test prep, not actually experiencing literature and letting literature organically nourish the mind. I pity the kids in ELA classes these days –it’s a joyless sweatshop –all in the name of pseudo-excellence. As I’ve said before, the new Common Core tests have spawned what can only be called “mutant” curricula –no adult would recognize these untested, unproven, and extremely unpalatable experimental modes of learning. We all would have hated school if we’d faced this fruitless “rigor”. No smart adult ever got smart through such methods.
Well said!
Ponderosa,, Always good to hear from you. There is no doubt that many districts in the state still have not shifted to a build and support approach and are not following the guidance of the state frameworks and policy which emphasize a broad, liberal arts curriculum and the importance of deeper learning. But many have and are now struggling to move from an test and punish strategy to the more positive approach. The philosophical shift seems to have caught on with most educators in California from top policy makers to local practitioners. One of the articles in my website http://www.buildingbetterschools.com tells the story of that effort with examples from many districts undergoing the change.
What a service Honig has done by creating this website and making information readily available about a time in California’s Golden Age of education. In this cynical age, it serves as a reminder of why many people got into public service in the first place. I look forward to reading every word.