I posted the other day that Arne Duncan’s punitive, data-driven, high-stakes “School Improvement Grants” program did not have any impact on test scores, which was its goal. $3.5 Billion blown away, used to fire principals, fire teachers, turn schools over to charters, and close schools. I read on Twitter that the failure of SIG proves that money doesn’t matter. That’s nonsense. Money spent on the wrong things doesn’t matter. If children are misbehaving because they are sick and hungry, they need medical care and food, not belies of consultants and programs unrelated to their actual needs.
Peter Greene explains here what the failure of SIG shows, aside from a skewed understanding of how to improve schools.
“SIG was like food stamps that could only be spent on baby formula, ostrich eggs, and venison, and it didn’t matter if the families receiving the stamps lived on a farm with fresh milk and chicken eggs, or if they were vegetarians, or if they lived where no store sells ostrich eggs, or if there are no babies in the family. USED used SIG to dictate strategy and buy compliance with their micro-managing notions about how schools had to be fixed.
“The moral of the story is not that money doesn’t make a difference. The moral of the story is that when bureaucrats in DC dictate exactly how money must be spent– and they are wrong about their theory of action and wrong about the strategies that should be used by each school and wrong about how to measure the effectiveness of those strategies– then the money is probably wasted. We’ll see soon enough if anyone left at the Department of Education can identify that lesson.”
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Reblogged this on David R. Taylor-Thoughts on Education.
I am always astonished that those politicians think that OUR TAX DOLLARS are considered to be “PLAY” money by politicians for their “pet” deforms. Makes me sick. Those TAX dollars belong to THE PEOPLE, NOT greedy and corrupt politicians who line their pockets and get rich off the backs of the poor and the almost gone middle class.
TAX dollars for schools belong to our PUBLIC SCHOOLS, not those fly-by-night money making charter schools and such ridiculous things that Gates and the rest of those yahoos dream up.
The SIG money was typical of Obama’s carrot and stick policies during his two terms. If you accepted the SIG money, then you had to choose one the following ineffective ideas. The choices were like deciding between the firing squad, the guillotine or the hangman. Name your “poison!” As a result, three and a half billion dollars were spent improving nothing. As long as policymakers refuse to implement evidence based policies and ignore the existence of poverty, we will continue on the path of market based madness, especially when corrupt policymakers are being paid to deliver public money to greedy corporations.
When lawyers are in charge, well … LOOK! When big $$$$$ is in charge, well … LOOK AGAIN.
Carrot and stick doesn’t work in the long run. But boy using carrot and stick while in office sure pays off big for the deformers. SAD.
Our government is supposed to be as Lincoln stated: of the people, by the people, for the people, . . .
Well, a government of, by, and for the people hasn’t existed in this country for a LONG TIME. It is a government of the etntitled, by the entitled, and for the entitled.
Government/social interference by the entitled is becoming ever more blindly abusive. I would add in the word clueless, perhaps: in my experience almost all invasive school “fixes” have been implemented by the CLUELESS entitled.
retired teacher: pardon the quibble re “spent improving nothing”…
But as you yourself so succinctly point out, three and a half billion dollars were spent on something—that “something” being an increase in the bottom line of the “greedy corporations” you mention.
Who, natcherly, then contributed generously to their political enablers who further loosened the public purse strings and showered them with even more gold aka $tudent $ucce$$.
So when all is said and done, there were a few winners even if there were many many losers…
Thank you for your comments.
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An excellent refutation of the “flush with cash” argument used against public schools.
For me, it also brings to mind a couple of other points.
The first being that, for the umpteenth time, one-size-fits-all educational solutions based on outmoded standardized-production-factory models that value efficiency & profit-making over excellence fail. Fail BIGLY. And one of their most telling failures is that even by the narrow metrics of rheephormsters (of whatever political/religious coloration) they don’t make the grade—even the misleading and useless ones set by themselves.
The second is a riff off of comments in the thread to a previous posting today re Lamar Alexander. When genuine teaching and learning are grievously harmed by a particular band of rheephormistas or a particular rheephorm policy or eduproduct, the knee-jerk response is well summed up by a NJ Comm. of Ed: [start] “It will take time to see the type of progress we all want,” he said. “Whatever we’re doing, we need to double down.” [end]
Link: https://dianeravitch.net/2015/03/04/lyndsey-layton-governor-christie-fails-in-newark/
Rheephormish-to-English translation: self-reflection & self-critique & self-correction are just so, you know, passé! Or to put it another way: the default setting for corporate education reform is unapologetic failure masked by “alternative facts.”
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Oh, it’s pretty exciting what ed reformers have planned for public schools for the next 4 years.
More funding for vouchers and charters.
Lucky public school students, on the other hand, get yet another unfunded, ridiculous measuring scheme.
Why do voucher and charter school students get carrots and public school students get sticks? Is the goal to make public schools so horrible everyone flees for a charter or private school?
If they want to promote exclusively charters and vouchers why don’t they butt out of public schools completely?
https://twitter.com/The74
Our government will continue to beat public schools with sticks in order to privatize as many as possible. Our policymakers are operating under a privatization “green light” based on the assumption that public schools must be eradicated. Corporations will continue their hostile takeover unless the public becomes actively involved in defending public education. In local communities we forge an alliance with other like minded groups as there is power in numbers. We must let representatives know we expect their support for public education. If they refuse, we should demonstrate and call the media and get as much attention as possible. Parents should expand opt out and other refusal tactics. If local representatives refuse to support public schools, we should work to replace them. We need to expand grassroots efforts to defend democratic public schools.
” Is the goal to make public schools so horrible everyone flees for a charter or private school?”
Yes.
It’s always heads they win, tails we lose.
All of my kids’ schools received SIGs. What a nightmare to administer. If you want your staff and faculty to spend time on paperwork rather than with the kids, get a SIG!
“Money doesn’t matter.”
That’s a good one.
Let’s never fail to point that to the so-called reformer and Overclass parents who spend $40,000 and more a year to send their kids to elite private schools with every imaginable resource and service.
The dishonesty and hypocrisy of so-called reformers literally has no limits.
“Money doesn’t matter”
Money doesn’t matter
Said the school Deformer
Climbing up the ladder
Raking in the former