Alan Singer pulls back the curtain to reveal the dirty little secret behind the high-stakes exams that determine the fate of teachers, students, administrators, and schools.
http://m.huffpost.com/us/entry/us_5922bf13e4b0b28a33f62dcd
Pearson hires minimally qualified people and pays them by the hour to determine whether you will be humiliated, fired, lose a promotion, or your school will be closed.
If you are a professional, your failure profits Pearson.
We now know that William Sanders, the creator of Value-Added Measurement, which measures teacher quality with the methods of an agricultural statistician, is revered in the think tank world of D.C.
But Peter Greene, who teaches in a Pennsylvania high school, doesn’t think much of VAM.
He recounts how Sanders was inspired to think about measuring teachers based on his studies of radioactivity in cows that were downwind from a nuclear explosion (really!).
To which Sanders writes:
Oh, let’s tell the truth. VAM systems have also been limited by the fact that they’re junk, taking bad data from test scores, massaging them through an opaque and improbable mathematical model to arrive at conclusions that are volatile and inconsistent and which a myriad educators have looked at and responded, “Well, this can’t possible be right.”
You’ll never find me arguing against any accountability; taxpayers (and I am one) have the right to know how their money is spent. But Sander’s work ultimately wasted a lot of time and money and produced a system about as effective as checking toad warts under a full moon– worse, because it looked all number and sciencey and so lots of suckers believed in it. Carey can be the apologist crafting it all into a charming and earnest tale, but the bottom line is that VAM has done plenty of damage, and we’d all be better off if Sanders had stuck to his radioactive cows.
The New York Times published a tribute by Kevin Carey of the New America Foundationto William Sanders, “the little-known statistician who taught us to measure teachers.”
One hates to speak ill of the dead, but accuracy requires that we note that Sanders’ statistical model for “measuring” teachers was flawed, inaccurate, and damaged the lives of thousands of teachers based on Sanders’ obscure algorithms. Sanders was an agricultural statistician before he found a goldmine in education. Measuring teacher quality really is not akin to measuring cattle or crops. Every analysis of the influences on students’ test performance gives far more weight to family income and education than to the teachers who see her or him for an hour or five hours a day. Sanders tried to remove human judgment from the equation and ended up creating a profitable business that distorted teaching and learning into a struggle for higher test scores. If the tests themselves are invalid, then any accountability measures based on them will be invalid.
No one knows William Sanders’ works and its flaws better than Audrey Amrein-Beardsley. She has studied Sanders’ value-added measures for years and testified against them in court. She comments on the New York Times’ article here. Amrein-Beardsley points out that Sanders’ methods have been faring poorly in court because it is unfair to judge a teacher based on a mysterious algorithm that no one can understand or explain.
In my book Reign of Error, I wrote about the fallacy behind Sanders’ reasoning by quoting a song from “The Fantasticks.” I paid $1200 for the right to reprint the lyrics. It is the one that goes “Plant a radish, get a radish, not a sauerkraut./That’s why I love vegetables, they know what they’re about.”
No one can say the same about children. Children from the same parents are different, even when their upbringing is as identical as those parents can make it. They look different, they act different, they have different interests, they have different goals.
Sanders never understood that.
Education Week is a paradox. On one hand, it has many excellent reporters who check facts and write lucidly without partisanship. On the other, the corporate entity has become a selling platform for technology and charter schools.
I used to blog regularly at EdWeek, in a column called “Bridging Differences,” with Deborah Meier. No one ever changed what I wrote. I know that editorial independence is central to a journal’s integrity.
But since I departed (and even before), Education Week needed advertising from the industry on which it was reporting, and it began to turn into a platform for the industry. EdWeek also receives funding from the Gates Foundation and the Walton Foundation, each of which has its own agenda.
And so I regularly open my email box to find advertisements from EdWeek for tech products, webinars, seminars, panels, events, etc.
The latest was a solicitation for a webinar about “Mastering the Charter School Market.” Part of the pitch was that charters would capture 20-40% of the “market” by 2035.
Where did they get that figure? I thought about it. Then I discovered the source: The projection was made by Bellwether Partners, a consulting firm founded by reformer Andrew Rotherham, a leader in the charter school movement who represents charter corporations and advocates. This 2015 report (slide 60) says that the charter schools will have 22-38% of the “market” by 2035. That assumes that the numerous scandals associated with deregulation and the resistance of parents and educators to privatization have not slowed the movement long before then.
I am posting this after the event, because this is not an advertisement but rather a post expressing my concern about Edweek’s descent into marketing for the edBiz, whether it is technology or charters.
The registration form can be found here.
Larry Cuban posted this article by Benjamin Herold, who writes for Education Week about technology, on his blog.
The term “personalized learning” has been captured by the technology industry to represent computer-based instruction. Some people think it would be justifiable to refer to computer-based instruction as “depersonalized learning” since a computer is a machine and not a person.
The other terms the tech industry has used for marketing purposes are “individualized” and “customized.”
Herold’s review is balanced and appropriately critical, distinguishing between independent research and marketing.
The studies seem to use test scores as the best indicator of success. These scores may gauge of whether sutudents learned what the computer taught them, but says nothing about whether they could pass a test of similar material that the machine didn’t teach them.
And that’s without going into what should be the lasting effects of education: the ability to think independently, to ask questions, to think outside the box, to accomplish tasks for intrinsic purposes, rather than to win a prize.
Many educators think that the goal of computer-based instruction is to develop classrooms without teachers; a paraprofessional could be available to answer questions about the technology. Is that where the tech industry is headed? Consider this recent article in Bloomberg News which hailed the development of ships without sailors. “Doing away with sailors will make the high seas safer and cleaner.”
It sounds like a ghost story: A huge cargo vessel sails up and down the Norwegian coast, silently going about its business, without a captain or crew in sight. But if all goes as planned, it’s actually the future of shipping.
96% of all marine casualties are caused by human error. Solution: get rid of the humans. Problem solved.
Carol Burris, executive director of the Network for Public Education, has written a brilliant critique of the rankings of America’s high schools. She looks specifically at Jay Mathews’ list of “America’s Most Challenging High Schools,” but her critique applies equally to U.S. News & World Report’s ranking of “America’s Best High Schools.”
As she points out, charter advocates jumped for joy when they learned that the lists were dominated by charter schools, and they urged the nation to learn from the success of these schools.
Burris points out that the highest ranking school on Jay Mathews list is BASIS Phoenix (the U.S. News & World Report had BASIS charters as numbers 1, 2, and 3 on its lists, albeit not the one in Phoenix). And consider what the lessons might be:
The BASIS Phoenix graduating class of 2016 had 24 students — fewer than the average New York City kindergarten class. It began four years earlier with 43 ninth-graders. The drop from 43 to 24 represents an attrition rate of 44 percent. Jay’s list says that the school’s enrollment is 757 students, but that is deceiving because BASIS Phoenix is both a middle and high school. The entire high school population (which is what the list is about) in 2016 was only 199[3].
BASIS Phoenix does not have a free or reduced-price lunch program, and it does not provide transportation. It asks its parents for a $1,500 donation per child each year, along with hefty fees to participate in sports and extracurricular activities. In 2016, the school had so few students with disabilities, the state could not list the number without violating privacy — not even to give a total for the entire school. Thirty-three percent of its students were Asian American and 57 percent were white. In Maricopa County, Arizona, where the school is located, 3 percent of the students are Asian American, and 41 percent are white. The majority of Maricopa County students are Latino, and 47 percent receive free or reduced-priced lunch.
Burris points out that Jay Mathews uses the senior class as the denominator, not those who started in the high school, and this rewards high attrition rates:
Because Jay’s formula uses the senior class enrollment as the denominator to create the Challenge Index, schools with high attrition rates that give AP exams to underclassmen are rewarded. This results in BASIS Phoenix’s absurdly high Challenge Index of 26.250. If you used the original number of students who entered the high school as the denominator, the Index would drop to 14.65. Losing kids who can’t keep up has it rewards.
The number 2 school on Jay’s list had 11 graduates, out of 17 that started. One of the best high schools in America?
Jay gives credit to schools where students take AP classes, whether or not they pass them. Some of the schools on the list offer incredible numbers of AP classes. His list has encouraged this practice.
Burris writes:
What, then, are the lessons public schools should learn from the “top schools?”
Should our neighborhood schools follow the lead of the top charters and cater to the strivers and the gifted so those who cannot complete 11 AP courses, or pass an AP course, are forced to move out?
Should ranking lists call high schools “the best” when their program keeps teenagers with Down syndrome and serious learning disabilities out, or when they shed 10 percent or more of their students who cannot keep pace? Should we then have “default” public high schools where the students who can’t keep up are segregated from more academically able peers? If we continue down the path of unfettered choice with vouchers and boutique charters, that will surely be the outcome.
If, however, we believe that the good school equitably serves all children, there must be a balance between reasonable challenge and inclusivity. Asking all students, with the exception of students with the most challenging disabilities, to take an IB or AP course or two before graduation is an idea I support.
However, when we establish schools that create exclusivity by design, or by their unreasonably difficult graduation requirements, we are not furthering equity. And that results in lists more appropriate for Ripley’s Believe it or Not, than “best schools” lists.
In the current atmosphere, the one created by NCLB and Race to the Top, schools are congratulated when their scores and graduation rates are high even though their attrition rates are also high. Is the best high school the ones that set standards so high that a large number of students are pushed out? Is the best high school the one that is most selective? Or is the best high school the one that aims to educate all kinds of students and does a good job of preparing all of them for citizenship, for life, and for whatever path they choose after high school?
Do you want to know where YOUR state stands in the race to privatize public money for private schools?
Alternet has an excellent summary of the Network for Public Education report on school privatization.
The day after the election that handed control of the Los Angeles school board to charter promoters, the head of a now-closed Los Angeles charter school was charged with embezzling $200,000.
Kendra Okonkwo, 51, was charged with misappropriation of public funds, grand theft by embezzlement, money laundering and keeping a false account, according to a news release issued by the Los Angeles County district attorney’s office. Her son, 29-year-old Jason Okonkwo, is accused of approving fake invoices to further the plot and faces the same charges, prosecutors said.
Kendra Okonkwo founded the Wisdom Academy for Young Scientists near the Watts neighborhood in 2006, but the school quickly became a target of regulators and lost its charter in 2016. She and her son were arrested in Los Angeles on Thursday morning and remain jailed in lieu of $145,000 bail, according to Deputy Dist. Atty. Dana Aratani, who is prosecuting the case.
From January 2012 to March 2014, approximately $201,000 was transferred from the school to an unnamed business run by Okonkwo, according to the district attorney’s office. The money was then transferred to her personal bank account, prosecutors said.
That’s the downside of opening schools that receive public funds without transparency or accountability.
Here is a new charter school trick. The Florida legislature, which has an unseemly number of members who are directly connected to the charter industry, passed legislation that will benefit charters and harm public schools. Parents of public school students have been writing Governor Rick Scott and urging him to veto the bill. The public school parents are acting on their own. It would be unethical for their schools to encourage political activity. The two charter schools involved are part of the politically powerful for-profit Academica chain.
Some charter schools are offering parents an incentive to write the governor and urge him to sign the bill. At least two charter schools in Hialeah, Florida, are urging parents and students to contact the governor in support of the bill, which will help them and hurt public schools.
Some school choice advocates in South Florida are going so far as to offer incentives to parents in order to amplify the perception of public support for a controversial K-12 public schools bill that many are urging Gov. Rick Scott to veto.
At least two privately managed charter schools in Hialeah — Mater Academy Lakes High School and City of Hialeah Educational Academy — publicly advertised this week that they would give parents five hours’ credit toward their “encouraged” volunteer hours at the school, so long as they wrote a letter or otherwise urged Gov. Rick Scott to sign HB 7069.
“It is IMPERATIVE that the Governor, and the rest of the State of Florida, see what a POSITIVE DEMAND there is for this education bill,” read an alert on the homepage of Mater Academy Lakes’ website Thursday evening. “This is the strongest legislation supporting the charter school movement since charters were first established in Florida 20 years ago.”
“We need all of our Bear Family to show their support for HB 7069 and encourage your friends, family and children to get involved as well,” the message continued…
The two Hialeah charter schools’ advocacy and other promotional efforts by influential school choice organizations come in the wake of a groundswell of opposition from traditional public school supporters since lawmakers passed HB 7069 on May 8.
The nearly 10,000 phone calls, emails, letters and individual petition signatures received by Gov. Rick Scott were 3-to-1 against the bill, as of information provided Thursday evening. In contrast to the charters, there is no evidence that traditional public school advocates have offered incentives to boost support for their veto campaign.
Read more here: http://www.miamiherald.com/news/politics-government/state-politics/article151507657.html#storylink=cpy
Public school advocates are pinning their hopes for a veto on a Republican governor who looks to Jeb Bush for guidance. Will he listen to public school parents? We will watch.
Alison Gopnik is a professor of psychology at the University of California (Berkeley) who studies children. She wrote this article comparing Trump’s behavior to a four-year-old child. She thinks the typical child has far better behavior than Trump. Her article may have been a response to David Brooks’ article stating that Trump is a child.
Diane Ravitch's blog 