Reformers have been trying to figure what to say about Trump and DeVos. It is embarrassing for people who call themselves “progressives” to acknowledge that their agenda of charters and choice has been embraced by the most rightwing president in the past century, if not all of American history. They want more charters, as Trump promises, but they have to distance themselves from a president who has been warmly embraced by the KKK and other neo-Nazi groups.
Shavar Jeffries of DFER and Peter Cunningham of Education Post (and former aide to Arne Duncan) try to wend their way through the political thicket in this article. THE LINK IS NOW WORKING.
First, they list all the Democrats (like Rahm Emanuel and Andrew Cuomo) who support school choice. But they include Albert Shanker without admitting that after promoting the idea of charters in 1988, he denounced them as no different from vouchers in 1993, when he saw the business groups vying to run schools for profit. Documented in my book The Death and Life of the Great American School System, pp. 127-128, revised edition).
Second, they give a nod to their friends in the unions, neglecting to mention that 93% of charters are non-union and are endorsed by all the Red State governors and right wing think tanks as a way to break unions.
Their biggest concern seems to be that DeVos might not adhere to the accountability regime established by George W. Bush. For them, high-stakes testing is a civil rights issue. Critics of high-stakes testing know that these tests measure family income and cause immeasurable harm to children who are poor, children with disabilities, and children who are English language learners. Just look at the Common Core scores in any state: most kids “failed” a test that was a grade level or two above their real grade. The highest failure rates were among the children with the greatest needs.
Accountability belongs at at the top. That’s where crucial decisions are made about resources and leadership. Yet the “reformers” still want to pin it on teachers and students.
As for “choice,” the results of 20+ years of vouchers in Milwaukee and Cleveland and Detroit, and of charters there and in other cities should persuade everyone that neither vouchers nor charters address the needs of our children, especially those who are poorest. Their most damaging result is to drain resources from the public schools that enroll all children, making them less able to do their job.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
“Critics of high-stakes testing know that these tests measure family income and cause immeasurable harm to children who are poor, children with disabilities, and children who are English language learners.”
Actually, it can’t be said often enough. High stakes standardized tests cause immeasurable harm to all kids, including the white, male and affluent, and including the “smart” kids (the good test takers). It harms all kids because it reduces everyone to a number and normalizes the idea of competition for “worth”. Until the people at the top of the pyramid start to understand how they too suffer, everyone in the pyramid will suffer. Dominance is oppressive and not just to the oppressed. True equality – the recognition of everyone’s worth as a human – benefits everyone.
As an antidote to this election I’ve been working my way through David Levithan’s books and basically that’s what he promotes. He creates these fictitious (for now) spaces in which everyone is free to be who and what they are and he takes running leaps with what that could mean for humanity. I highly recommend everyone should do the same. I just finished BOY MEETS BOY (I think Infinite Darlene may be my favorite fictional character ever) and I’m starting on WIDE AWAKE. I’ve also read TWO BOYS KISSING and HOW THEY MET. All of which are recommended without reservation for kids and adults alike (personally, young adult fiction is about all my brain can handle at this point). Levithan is primary tagged as an LGBTQ author (which he is), but his vision of universal human acceptance transcends that box.
““Critics of high-stakes testing know that these tests measure family income. . . ”
I don’t believe you will find a more strident critic of standardized testing than me on this blog.
But I don’t know “that these tests measure family income”. As a matter of fact I know that those TESTS DON’T MEASURE ANYTHING of the sort. The test scores correlate rather closely with parental income (more specifically the educational level of the mother which is closely tied with SES status). CORRELATION DOES NOT EQUAL MEASURE by any stretch of the meaning of those terms.
The TESTS MEASURE NOTHING, quite literally when you realize what is actually happening with them. Richard Phelps, a staunch standardized test proponent (he has written at least two books defending the standardized testing malpractices) in the introduction to “Correcting Fallacies About Educational and Psychological Testing” unwittingly lets the cat out of the bag with this statement:
“Physical tests, such as those conducted by engineers, can be standardized, of course [why of course of course], but in this volume , we focus on the measurement of latent (i.e., nonobservable) mental, and not physical, traits.” [my addition] (notice how he is trying to assert by proximity that educational standardized testing and the testing done by engineers are basically the same, in other words a “truly scientific endeavor”)
Now since there is no agreement on a standard unit of learning, there is not exemplar of that standard unit and there is no measuring device calibrated against said non-existent standard unit, how is it possible to “measure the nonobservable”?
THE TESTS MEASURE NOTHING for how is it possible to “measure” the nonobservable with a non-existing measuring device that is not calibrated against a non-existing standard unit of learning?????
PURE LOGICAL INSANITY!
The link didn’t work for me.
Me neither. But putting:
choice_without_accountability_puts_children_at_risk_1327.html
into Google allows me to use the down arrow on the right to get to a cached copy.
Good for you. All I can get is a 404, Page Not Found.
It was there this morning. It was there when I posted it. It was there soon after I posted it. It’s gone.
Maybe it is getting so many hits that the server crashed.
Look for a small downward pointing arrow right after the URL in one of the google search results… Rather than selecting the title, try selecting that arrow and it may bring up something that says “Cached”. Selecting that is what got me to Google’s saved copy.
Thanks, Stephen. I have been using the computer since 1983, and I still have a lot to learn.
Stephen and anyone else who found the article in cache:
I looked for the cached page in google right away, but for me that led to just an intro page, not the actual article. Clicking on Cummings led to another intro page for the article, again not the real thing. Could you please copy and paste the article here?
I think the original link that Diane provided is working successfully again.
Thanks, that worked.
The link worked for me.
here is the url:
http://www.realcleareducation.com/articles/2016/11/30/choice_without_accountability_puts_children_at_risk_1327.html
The link is working again
War is peace, freedom is slavery, ignorance is strength and billionaires destroying public institutions for profit and control is “progressive”.
“War is peace, freedom is slavery, ignorance is strength”
That’s what one of my t-shirts says!
Orwell knew his stuff, eh!
While the likely “pleasures” of a Trump administration will be few and far between, there will at least be some mordant satisfaction in watching these self-described “progressives” (who are anti-union, anti-democracy and opposed to any notion of the Public Good) contort themselves into accepting and then profiting from the privatization gravy train that is speeding toward us. We’ll hear some tsk-tsking at first, and then they will gorge themselves.
So-called reformers have always been inherently, objectively reactionary; they will soon be obvious for all to see as they join in the looting.
People like Cunningham and Shavers will have to stop hiding behind the civil rights rhetoric as shills for DFER. “Reform” is about access to public money whether the assaults come from the left or the right. There will be no need to hide their motives.
Correction : Jeffries
Did they happen to mention public schools outside of testing and data collection?
I’m unclear when it became acceptable for public schools to be valued only as testing centers. As long as we compliantly turn in test score data, ed reform has no other use for our schools and children?
There’s really a lot more to public schools than test scores. Ed reformers should drop by a public school sometime. We do other stuff besides generating and providing data to the federal government and the “ed reform movement”.
If we agree to keep providing the data they value once a year, will they agree to stop attacking our schools?
This is a terrific piece, Diane.
It is so right on.
The “circus” continues where there’s $$$$$ to be had by the few who control power and the rest of us.
Step right in folks. . . .
Let’s be clear about how reformers view “accountability”.
When a child in a high-performing charter school isn’t doing well, the only people accountable are the child himself and his or her parents. If the child “chooses” to leave, there is absolutely no accountability for the charter school except they “lose” the money that they would get for educating that child. Since some children are more expensive to educate than others, it is a win-win for a charter to rid itself of those kids. In fact, as Peter Cunningham well knows, market forces would REWARD charters who rid themselves off expensive kids. No “accountability” necessary!
When that child ends up in a public school, the “accountability’ then falls on the teachers and the public school system.
It’s a warped system that will reward crony capitalists and the ones most willing to sacrifice kids to the bottom line.
Many more bureaucratic rules from the state and federal governments have been thrust on public schools. Teachers have enough work planning and grading; they should not be spending so much time collecting data.
Isn’t it true that in many cases, the charter school doesn’t jettison the undesired student until after October 15 so that it keeps the money?
“Isn’t it true that in many cases, the charter school doesn’t jettison the undesired student until after October 15 so that it keeps the money?”
What state are you in? It’s not true in Massachusetts where:”For students who attend the charter school for less than the full year, the tuition payment shall be reduced based on the number of days of enrollment.”
http://www.doe.mass.edu/charter/governance/adminguide.doc (page 74)
And adjustments are made quarterly (page 75).
Oh Stephen, we both know that some kids aren’t worth the money paid to teach them. There is a reason that private schools don’t take every child. There is a reason they often counsel out the children they “mistakenly” take in Kindergarten. Even at $40,000/year tuition, those kids are just not worth teaching! And they barely have learning issues compared to what kids in public schools have.
So one again, we have charters that absolve themselves of all responsibility — financial and moral — if a child “chooses” to leave. And we have a pubic system that is responsible for every child’s education.
Economics 101 — you should be smart enough to know what the incentives are here. Get rid of expensive kids. That is a FEATURE of top performing privates and charters. Not a bug — it is the only way they can exist. If privates want to profit, that’s fine, but it is abhorrent to set up a separate system where some schools are not responsible if they can drum out a kid. Guess what incentives that produces?
Maybe we can both agree that anyone who wins a charter school lottery can choose to leave a charter for a private school and the charter would have to pay $100,000/year tuition for that child just like a public school system does if they make a child feel so unwanted that he acts out. I bet you’d see a huge drop in attrition rates in top performing charters. And a huge drop in their test scores. But then again, apparently money is the only thing that makes some charters act in moral ways. If it doesn’t pay, morality is just another thing sacrificed to prestige and bragging rights.
Also, when did anyone in ed reform ever show the slightest concern for the right of collective bargaining?
Obama didn’t do one thing for labor unions, which is part of why so many of them abandoned Democrats in Ohio and voted for Trump.
DC Democrats AND Republicans have absolute contempt for labor unions and labor union members. These people are 2 or 3 generations removed from anyone who would belong to a labor union. They don’t live near working class people, they don’t socialize with them, and they attend different schools. They know absolutely nothing about “the working class” other than what they learned in poli sci classes or what they heard from their grandparents or great grandparents.
Since ed reform rarely mentions public schools, seems to have little interest in public schools, and offers no added value to public schools, can we ask that they butt out of our school decisions?
Why are they running public school policy when all they talk about is charter and private schools?
We get the worst of both worlds- we get their mandates and gimmicks and fads and none of their support. They should decide. If they want to focus exclusively on charter and private schools- fine- that means they’re irrelevant to public schools and we can stop taking orders from them.
I still think that there are contexts in which choice can enhance educational practice–as it did in East Harlem as well as serving integration.. school size is still important and conducive to choice. Diane you must visit Julia Richman high school to see what possessed vilifies it has.
Choice is not necessarily divisive and dies not necessarily lead to privatization.
Deb
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Speaking of interference from testing, my school is vigorously planning for PARCC. For five weeks all computer labs where business, accounting, and technology courses are taught are being shuttled off to other classrooms devoid of computers. Meanwhile our school has to come up with 20,000 dollars to upgrade computers to be PARCC READY. Money must be taken for materials of instruction. Our entire school is basically shut down in Spring. So much for testing “only impacting 2% of the school year.
Obama was no friend to public schools. So it was ok for them to pally waddle do da with Obama but they have to distance themselves from Trump? Hilarious.
“For them, high stakes testing is a civil rights issue”. They mean, in the sense, that a “two-tier” system is best, where kids in rich Boston suburbs learn about Shakespeare, while kids in the poor-performing urban areas are tested everyday? I read about that at the Deutsch 29 blog, in a post quoting Harvard’s Roland Fryer. It’s worth noting, the grants in Fryer’s c.v., especially a huge one from Gates.
This year, “progressive” Sen. Sherrod Brown asked for and received $71 mil., from the U.S. Dept. of Ed., to expand Ohio’s privatization rip-off. How does he not choke on his hypocrisy? The Dispatch devoted space to Brown’s outrage at Trump’s current advocacy of Medicare privatization. Brown referred to it as a betrayal and a “hand-out” to Wall Street. Note to Sherrod…,charter school debt returns 10-18% to Wall Street and, the Democrats betrayed their base, with far greater intent and duplicity, relative to public schools.
Ole’ Sherrod, asks Trump to “unite Americans based on our nation’s shared values”. How are those “shared values” learned, particularly, in the context of heterogeneous charter schools, like say, the ones linked to Turkish nationals? Trump and his advisors didn’t learn them in their privatized education.
Notice they mentioned nothing about the voucher concerns that genuine Progressives have regarding public funds going to religious education, in violation of the separation between church and state? I guess DFER looks the other way on this matter, much like Obama and Duncan did.
So, in addition to tax dollars paying for kids to learn that Jesus and the dinosaurs co-existed in the same era, our tax dollars could be going to create our very own homegrown radicalized Muslims in madrassas made in the USA.
And nobody with power and money cares a wit about any of this!?
Haven’t you ever read about how Jesus fought the Tyrannosaurus? It was eating the sheep.
In most people’s books, I think wrestling a T-Rex would be right up there with walking on water, but that didn’t make it into any of my bibles.