During the hearings on Betsy DeVos, the Republican Senator Richard Burr (North Carolina) asked why people get all hung up on process, when they should be talking about “results.” DeVos agreed. I was hoping the committee might then discuss the results of DeVos reforms in Michigan and Detroit. Or anywhere else. How awesome is Detroit, which is overrun with charters? On the National Assessment of Educational Progress, it is the lowest performing urban district in the nation. How awesome are Milwaukee and Cleveland, which have had vouchers and charters for more than 20 years? They barely top Detroit among the lowest performing urban districts in the nation.
Here is what the New York Times said about charters in Detroit:
Michigan leapt at the promise of charter schools 23 years ago, betting big that choice and competition would improve public schools. It got competition, and chaos.
Detroit schools have long been in decline academically and financially. But over the past five years, divisive politics and educational ideology and a scramble for money have combined to produced a public education fiasco that is perhaps unparalleled in the United States.
While the idea was to foster academic competition, the unchecked growth of charters has created a glut of schools competing for some of the nation’s poorest students, enticing them to enroll with cash bonuses, laptops, raffle tickets for iPads and bicycles. Leaders of charter and traditional schools alike say they are being cannibalized, fighting so hard over students and the limited public dollars that follow them that no one thrives.
Detroit now has a bigger share of students in charters than any American city except New Orleans, which turned almost all its schools into charters after Hurricane Katrina. But half the charters perform only as well, or worse than, Detroit’s traditional public schools.
“The point was to raise all schools,” said Scott Romney, a lawyer and board member of New Detroit, a civic group formed after the 1967 race riots here. “Instead, we’ve had a total and complete collapse of education in this city.”
This morning I was on the NPR radio show from D.C. that used to be the Diane Rehm show but is now called 1A, with Rick Hess of the DeVos-funded American Enterprise Institute, and he said that Detroit charters were outperforming Detroit public schools. As Stephen Henderson, the editor of the Detroit Free Press wrote not long ago, the charters in Detroit vary in quality but many of them are failing and they are no better than the public schools.)
Henderson deconstructed the CREDO studies that Rick Hess cited, and concluded:
In a city like Detroit, for instance, where, on average, students perform well below statewide norms, kids in charter schools should more quickly close their gaps than kids in traditional public schools.
Hypothetically.
The problem is they really haven’t. Not for 20 years, dating to the beginning of Michigan’s charter experiment.
CREDO also found that, for instance, 63% of charters statewide perform no better than traditional public schools in math. And in Detroit, nearly half all charters do no better than traditional public schools in reading.
Overall, about 84% of charter students perform below state averages in math; the number is 80% for reading. That tracks closely with the outcomes for traditional public schools.
The gains for charter students are also clustered, in many instances, in high-performing outliers. But because Michigan does not require charter operators to have proven track records before they open schools or do much to hold them accountable after their schools open, the number of underperforming charter schools far outweighs the high achievers.
In addition, the CREDO results need to be considered in the context of other data about charter schools.
The Free Press investigation of charter schools, for instance, revealed that even taking poverty into account, charter schools essentially perform the same as traditional public schools, and in some cases, a little worse.
If Detroit, which is still the lowest-performing urban district in the nation, is the DeVos model of “success,” then our nation’s education system is doomed.
Similarly, Michigan’s standing on the National Assessment of Educational Progress has dropped, in some cases dramatically since 2003, about the time Betsy took control of education in the state. EdTrust wrote a report warning that the state was on its way to the bottom:
Among the 2015 NAEP results highlighted in the report:
• Michigan ranked 41st in fourth-grade reading, down from 28th in 2003.
• The state ranked 42nd in fourth-grade math, down from 27 in 2003.
• It ranked 31st in eighth-grade reading, down from 27th in 2003.
• It ranked 38th in eight-grade math, down from 34th.
Given these dismal results, why would anyone listen to Betsy DeVos on the subject of education? It must be the funding she has showered on Republicans, including 10 of the 12 Republicans on the committee that will judge her fitness to serve. It can’t be results.
We need a lot more information on the DeVos role in “value schools” in Michigan.
This was a scheme to push cheap online learning into low and middle income communities. The goal was to cut costs to 5k per student:
“There is now no question that plans to develop a “value school” to offer a “value education” were closely tied to the simultaneous effort to re-write Michigan’s school funding system and fully reflect the priorities of the Snyder administration. The “value school” plan was developed by a strong proponent of vouchers – political insider Richard McLellan – along with representatives of online schools and technology companies which stood to profit from the plan. No one can claim that this was “all about the kids.”
If the US Department of Education will now be hawking this crap, people should be on notice that the Department is no longer a source that can be trusted.
http://www.mipfs.org/node/201
Why would anyone listen?
Easy.
Money, Greed, politics ad nauseum.
“It must be the funding she has showered on Republicans,”
Yep those Rethugs sure do appear to like showers of gold, eh!
Nah
And there is the bigger picture of reform failure, well beyond Michigan and Detroit and Devos. Add Duncan.
Arne Duncan’s “Race to the Top” Legacy.
Results: http://ies.ed.gov/ncee/pubs/20174013/
“Low-performing schools that received BILLIONS in federal School Improvement Grants (SIG) under Race to the Top used more practices promoted by the program than other schools, but there was no evidence that the grants had a significant impact on student outcomes, according to a new report released today (Jan. 18, 2017 ). ”
Not surprising. These grants were for managerial changes in the lowest performing schools–transform, turnaround and so on.
The” outcomes only” managerial tricks are dead ends, including the proliferation of charters and chains of these. The worst offenders are the for-profits that DeVos has supported.
Results. Usually, just stupid, meaningless, crass blather. What people say when they don’t understand things, and sometimes don’t want to understand. Of course, she agrees. She’s dim and deluded.
BB = DD?
Akedemos,
There is a supposed exchange between F. Scott Fitzgerald and Ernest Hemingway, in which Fitzgerald says “The rich are different from us.” And Hemingway responds, “Yes, they have more money.” In looking for the source, I learned that this is an urban legend.
Fitzgerald wrote:
“Let me tell you about the very rich. They are different from you and me. They possess and enjoy early, and it does something to them, makes them soft where we are hard, and cynical where we are trustful, in a way that, unless you were born rich, it is very difficult to understand. They think, deep in their hearts, that they are better than we are because we had to discover the compensations and refuges of life for ourselves. Even when they enter deep into our world or sink below us, they still think that they are better than we are. They are different.”
Fitzgerald was right. Billionaires are not like normal people. They live in a bubble. They are pampered. They never wonder what anything costs; it doesn’t matter. If they drop their clothes on the floor, someone will clean up after them. They never do the dishes or look for a babysitter.
They love to play the role of Lady Bountiful, showing the depth of their concern for “the poor.” They do love the poor. They will fight any increase in their taxes because the little urchins must learn to work for what they have. The billionaires didn’t work for what they have, but that’s another story.
Betsy DeVos is the perfect billionaire princess. Her father sold his business for more than a billion. She married an even richer man. Being a Calvinist, she believes she deserves what she has. You, on the other hand, get what you deserve. Not much? Too bad. God decided long ago.
http://www.quotecounterquote.com/2009/11/rich-are-different-famous-quote.html
For most, religion involves the rationalization or coming to terms with suffering. Apparently for some it is about the rationalization or affirmation of their place in the world, their fundamental scam on mankind, their good things. Deep down they are perversions of Stuart Smalley, and gosh darn it they are good enough to be the very best, the tippy-top of the elite. And this includes Erik Prince, salivating at the idea of forming death squads again. Deep down they know damn well there is no deep down in them. They are on no spiritual journey. The most childlike of them know this. Motivate, scam, pitch, attack, reboot.
Today on my way to work I listened to your interview on NPR. I agreed with all your points about DeVos. I don’t understand how it is so easy for some of us to see what is going to come down the Education pike while others truly believe that their corporate initiatives are going to work to improve education in this country. They have experienced a completely different world from mine – a world of privilege where money is not an issue – and they are being picked to make decisions for everyone. But they have no clue what the rest of us need. Ever since I learned about the voucher programs back in the 90s, and then learned about charter schools, it was crystal clear to me that these initiatives are enemies of public school education. Under this new presidency we will see the dismantling of public education and the privatization of education like we’ve never seen it before. Enterprising teachers will most likely decide to open up their own charter schools with intelligent themes and back up money readily available from a willing corporation (of course… invest in the future… of your own company). I hope to be completely wrong, but we’re going back to the darkest ages and many children are going to end up being the losers. This is extremely frightening and very anti-democratic. I hope teachers are ready for what is coming.
“the Republican Senator Richard Burr (North Carolina) asked why people get all hung up on process, when they should be talking about “results.” DeVos agreed.”
Is not the answer to that why self obvious?
And this guy is a US Senator?
If he is characteristic of the members of the Senate, and I have no reason to doubt that after watching the DeVos hearing, it is no wonder this country struggles to fulfill it’s ideals to guarantee that ALL (not just the rich Kochsuckers-that’s a generic Koch) CITIZENS can pursue life, liberty and happiness, that the general welfare will be provided for.
Does it need to be explained to this less than stellar thinker that without the process being what it needs to be to produce the desired outcome, that desired outcome will never be produced. Is that really that hard of a concept to comprehend.
INDEED, IT’S THE PROCESS, STUPID!
And how much of our taxpayers dollars does this a$$wipe take for not doing his job??