Archives for the month of: May, 2017
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Laura Chapman on Eric Hanushek

By dianeravitch
May 21, 2017 //
15

When Laura Chapman read Some DAMPoet’s poem, “Economists are Like Weathermen,” she responded with an informative comment. I know Eric (Rick) well. We served together for years on the Hoover Institution’s Koret Task Force on Education. I wrote a bit about Rick in “Reign of Error,” and pointed out that his work has long applied econometrics to education. He was featured as an expert voice in “Waiting for ‘Superman'” where he reinforced the film’s message that public education is failing, choice are better, bad teachers cause low scores, and the best way to raise test scores is to fire teachers who can’t raise test scores. He has testified as an expert witness in court cases against increased funding for schools. I quoted at length from one of his articles in which he claimed that firing the bottom 5-7 teachers and replacing them with average teachers would cause a leap in test scores that would make us equal to Finland. The Gross Domestic Product would then soar by $112 trillion, just because of those higher test scores.

Laura writes:

Don’t get me started. The creep of econometric thinking into education has gone beyond reason, and the reason is this: Economists are addicted to scores on tests as indicators of anything that catches their fancy–school quality, teacher quality, instructional quality, cognitive skills, worker skills, state ranking in economic growth, national ranks in productivity, the fate of the nation’s economy.

On March 9, 2017, The Wall Street Journal published an Op Ed by economist Eric A. Hanushek titled “American Teachers Unions Oppose Innovative Schools—in Africa with the subtitle “Bridge Academies show promising results in Kenya and Uganda, but unions see them only as a threat.”

It begins “No longer content to oppose educational innovation at home, the unions representing America’s teachers have gone abroad in search of monsters to slay.

For nearly a decade, Bridge International Academies has run a chain of successful private schools in the slums of Kenya and Uganda. A for-profit company, Bridge has shown that it’s possible to provide high-quality, low-cost primary education to poor children in the developing world….” https://www.wsj.com/articles/american-teachers-unions-oppose-innovative-schoolsin-africa-1489099360

Readers are at least informed that Dr. Hanushek s a consultant for Bridge International Academies. The WSJ is an advertorial for Bridge, well place to attract even more investors to this not so low cost system of education with all questions and answers delivered on computers.

Hanushek has been VAMing teachers since his dissertation, about 1968. He is a frequent contributor of dubious statistics to legal cases that blame teacher unions for students who are “underperforming.” Like Chetty he is a serial publisher of inferences about the fate of the economy based on student test scores.

I do not doubt that he and many economists are well-trained statisticians, but if economists who pontificate about schools could not rely on test scores as the coin of their realm, they would probably be out of the education business business.

Here is a sample of the amazing inferences that can be made when you rely only on formulas to think about schools. Quote:

“Our primary analysis relies on these estimates of skills for students educated in each of the states. Minnesota, North Dakota, Massachusetts, Montana, and Vermont make up the top five states, whereas Hawaii, New Mexico, Louisiana, Alabama, and Mississippi constitute the bottom five states. The top-performing state (Minnesota) surpasses the bottom-performing state (Mississippi) by 0.87 standard deviations.

Various analyses suggest that the average learning gain from one grade to the next is roughly between one-quarter and one-third of a standard deviation in test scores (Hanushek, Peterson, and Woessmann (2013), p. 72).

Thus, the average eighth-grade math achievement difference between the top- and the bottom-performing state amounts to about three grade-level equivalents – highlighting the problem of relying exclusively on school attainment without regard to quality. ”

From Hanushek, Eric A., Paul E. Peterson, and Ludger Woessmann. 2013. Endangering prosperity: A global view of the American school. Washington, DC: Brookings Institution Press.

These three economists are also responsible for the use of standard deviations to assert that this or that intervention or comparison of schools yield a gain of “days of learning,” or months, or years. Those inferential leaps are really absurd.

Categories Accountability, Corporate Reformers, Education Industry, Privatization, Teachers, Testing

Good News: Pro-Public School Activist Wins Seat on Portland, Oregon, School Board

By dianeravitch
May 21, 2017 //
4

Rita Moore, a pro-public education advocate, won a hotly contested seat on the Portland, Oregon, school board. Her son attended Portland public schools, and she has long been involved in support of public education. She holds a Ph.D. in political science.

She ran against a candidate who was principal of a KIPP school in Houston and worked also for TFA. See here.

In her response to a survey of candidates, she expressed her views about the importance of public education.

What is your stance on the movement to privatize education?

I am fundamentally opposed to efforts to privatize education. Free public education is America’s gift to the world. It has been the foundation of our society, the bedrock of our democracy, and the engine of economic growth, producing the American dream and making the US the capital of innovation.

Privatizing education is not good for students or this city. I am completely opposed to it, as is the vast majority of voters and residents of Portland. Public education is a door that all kids have the right to walk through and which we as a society have the obligation to fully fund.

Congratulations, Rita Moore!

Categories Charter Schools, Corporate Reformers, Education Industry, Education Reform, Portland, Privatization, Supporting public schools

Arizona: Governor Ducey’s Plan to Destroy Public Education

By dianeravitch
May 21, 2017 //
30

David Safier writes frequently about politics and education in Arizona.

In this post, he shows how Governor Doug Ducey’s education plan is moving step by step to create a three-tier system of schools, thus abandoning the Supreme Court’s mandate to provide equal educational opportunity.

He begins:

Are you outraged at Governor Ducey’s “education budget”? You should be. After Prop. 123 passed, he promised some “next steps” were coming soon, but all we got is an insulting 25-cents-an-hour raise for teachers and a little money sprinkled over a few high-profile programs to make it look like he’s doing something. Watching Ducey quacking and smiling as he dubs himself the “education governor” is infuriating. But push aside your anger over those outrages for a moment. Something far more important happened in the Legislature this year, something which could change the nature of Arizona education irrevocably. It’s the one-two-three punch of vouchers for everyone, results-based funding and lowering of teacher certification requirements. Over time, those changes will lead to an increasingly stratified education system, with more money flowing to education for children of higher income families and less going to everyone else.

If Ducey and the conservative majority in the legislature could speak freely, if they knew the voters couldn’t hear what they were saying, their vision for Arizona’s education would sound something like this.

“We should have a three tiered education system,” they’d say. “The top tier has to be the best schools money can buy to supply us with our future movers, shakers and innovators—our captains of industry and the geniuses who help them create better, more profitable products and services. The next tier should be good, but not overly expensive schools to teach children who will become our educated professionals—our doctors, lawyers, middle managers and such. Give those kids a K-12 education that’s good enough to get them into colleges where they can obtain the career training they need. As for the rest, they really don’t need much of an education to perform the tasks expected of them. Their schools should teach them to read, write and do math at a sixth grade level. That’s more than enough from them to wash our floors, change our oil and ask, ‘Do you want fries with that?'”

We’re closer to a codified version of this three-tiered educational scheme than we’ve ever been, thanks to the work of Ducey and his legislative majority.

At the top of the educational hierarchy are the most expensive private schools. Courtesy of the new vouchers-for-all law, taxpayers will be giving the wealthiest Arizonans $4,500 or more to help them pay for their children’s tuition. Call it financial aid for the rich. Even with vouchers, the rest of us won’t be able to afford those schools—they start at $10,000 a year—so the rich don’t have to worry about the riffraff showing up.

What? You don’t think the public should subsidize tuition at private schools for rich kids? That’s old thinking.

Categories Arizona, Corporate Reformers, Education Industry, Privatization, Vouchers

Massive Data Breach Announced by New York State Education Department

By dianeravitch
May 21, 2017 //
18

The New York State Education Department sent out the following notice to all principals in the state:

The Department has learned that Edmodo, Inc., a learning platform used by many schools and districts across the State, has suffered a security incident that potentially affects the accounts of Edmodo users. Edmodo’s platform was hacked and the user names, email addresses, and hashed passwords of about millions of account users were acquired by an unknown, unauthorized third party.

The Department is using this communication to ask districts to instruct their Edmodo users to reset their passwords immediately, and to warn them to be vigilant about phishing attacks that may result from this incident. Users who use the same password on multiple sites should be encouraged to change them on those sites as well. To reset a password on the Edmodo platform, users should: 1. Go to the Edmodo website and log in to your account. 2. Click on the “Password Reset” link in the notice at the top of the page. 3. Enter their current password, and then create a new password. Questions about resetting passwords should be directed to the Support Help Center on the Edmodo website.

Please remember that any unauthorized access to a student’s personally identifiable information should be reported to SED’s Chief Privacy Officer at Privacy@NYSED.gov.

Presumably someone will find a fix and patch whatever went wrong.

Given the constant hacking these days, we can safely assume that someone will hack into the system again. And again. And again.

The massive hack by a group who call themselves “The Shadow Brokers” disrupted computers all over the world, locked them up, and unlocked them for ransom money.

Nothing online is secure.

It is time to start thinking seriously about solutions to the invasion of privacy. Better security is one solution, but for every new lock, there is a better lock-picker. Think about it.

Categories New York, Privacy and Privacy Rights, Technology

SomeDAM Poet: Economists Are Like Weathermen

By dianeravitch
May 20, 2017 //
65

The blog poet makes the assertion that economists are like weathermen, but in this case, I disagree respectfully. Economists of education express a certainty that no weatherman would. Weathermen (meteorologists) give you different scenarios, warn you that the track of the storm might shift, recognize that there are many uncertainties. Economists of education (not all of them! Think Helen Ladd of Duke) claim that they can use test scores to measure teacher effectiveness, and that they have taken all contingencies into account. Hundreds, probably thousands, of educators have lost their careers because of the specious claims of economists like Raj Chetty, who assert that they can judge the value-added of teachers by the test scores of their students, that third-grade teachers affect the life-time earnings of their students, and that teachers who don’t hit arbitrary test scores marks should be fired, sooner rather than later.

“Economists are like weathermen”

Economists are like weathermen
This cannot be denied
Cuz if, by chance, they get it right
It’s greatly AMPLIFIED!!

But mostly, they just get it wrong
And utter not a word
For them to actually point this out
Would really be unheard

And when their goof’s so blatant
They really can’t ignore it
They simply claim they found a “flaw”
But “markets” will restore it

Categories Accountability, Teacher Evaluations, Testing, VAM (value-added modeling)

Red Queen in L.A.: What If We Held an Election and Nobody Came?

By dianeravitch
May 20, 2017 //
26

Red Queen in L.A. reflects on the debacle in Los Angeles. Turnout for a consequential school board election was abysmal.

She notes that Los Angelenos have participated in rallies in great numbers in recent months, but when it came time to vote, they were missing in action.

In the school board election on Tuesday, only 9.3% of eligible voters bothered to vote.

From a school district that is approximately 75% Hispanic and 80% eligible for free-or-reduced-price-meals, comes an election of national significance, decided by a preponderance of very narrow, special interests including relatively affluent silicon-beach-millenials, attorneys, entertainment executives, and real estate investors from the coastal plain to the palisades of LA’s westside. For it to happen in the face of the last six month’s electoral imbroglio is at once mystifying and maddening. After all we’ve been through, here we are all over again witnessing the triumph of alternative facts, propaganda, Big Lies and even bigger money.

What is the cause of this apathy when so much is at stake?

Categories Accountability, Charter Schools, Corporate Reformers, Education Industry, Los Angeles, Privatization

Steven Singer: Charter Schools and Voucher Schools Are Virtually Identical

By dianeravitch
May 20, 2017 //
27

Steven Singer finds it annoying when corporate reformers insist that “charter schools are public schools.”

He insists in this post that the two are almost the same.

Neither is a public school, and neither should be subsidized by public funding.

He writes:

The stark orange monolith that was Donald Trump is starting to crumble.

And with it so are the dreams of corporate education reformers everywhere.

Where in previous administrations they could pass off their policies as Democratic or Republican depending on whichever way the wind blows, today their brand has been so damaged by Trump’s advocacy, they fear it may never recover.

Under Presidents George W. Bush and Barack Obama, they could champion both charter schools and school vouchers with impunity. But now the privatizers and profiteers hiding in progressive clothing are trying desperately to rebrand.

Not only is Trump’s voucher plan deeply unpopular, but the public has already begun to associate any kind of school privatization with a doomed President.

So like cockroaches, neoliberals have begun to skitter to one type of privatization over another. Fake Democrats hide beneath unfettered charter school expansion. Bought-and-sold Republicans cling to the idea that we should spend taxpayer dollars on private and parochial schools.

But is there a real substantial difference between each of these so-called “choice” schemes? Or are they both just scams when compared with traditional public schools?

THE DIFFERENCES

Charter Schools and Private Schools are basically the same thing.

The biggest difference between the two is funding.

Charter schools are completely funded by tax dollars. Private schools – even when school vouchers are used – often need to be subsidized by parents. For instance, many private schools charge tuition of $30,000 – $40,000 a year. Vouchers rarely provide more than $6,000. So at best they bring the cost down but still make it impossible for most students to attend private schools.

Sure they may start as an effort to allow only impoverished children to use tax dollars towards private and parochial school tuition. But they soon grow to include middle class and wealthy children, thus partially subsidizing attendance at the most exclusive schools in the country for those families who can already afford it.

Parochial schools, meanwhile, are exactly the same except for one meaningful difference. They teach religion.

Their entire curriculum comes from a distinctly religious point of view. They indoctrinate youth into a way of seeing the world that is distinctly non-secular….

The biggest commonality between these types of educational institutions is how they’re run. Unlike traditional public schools – which are governed by duly-elected school boards – charter, private and parochial schools are overseen by private interests. They are administered by independent management firms. They rarely have elected school boards. Their operators rarely make decisions in public, and their budgets and other documents are not open to review by taxpayers. This is true despite the fact that they are funded to varying degrees by public tax dollars.

So in all three cases, these schools are run privately, but taxpayers pick up the tab….

Neoliberal Democrats may try to save the movement by claiming charter schools are completely different. But they aren’t. They are fundamentally the same.

Open the posts to see the links and to finish reading the rest of it.

Categories Accountability, Charter Schools, Privatization, School Choice, Vouchers

Massachusetts: More than $43 Million Spent Last Fall in Losing Effort to Expand Charter Schools

By dianeravitch
May 20, 2017 //
6

The battle over Question 2 in Massachusetts was overshadowed by the national election, but it was an important bellwether in the fight against privatization.

The amount of money spent was phenomenal. The usual billionaire suspects put up most of the money to promote the measure and the teachers’ union, spending the dues collected from individual teachers who work daily in the classrooms of the state, put up most of the money to resist increased privatization of public schools.

The ballot measure was defeated overwhelmingly, by 62-38. The only districts to approve it were affluent districts that would unlikely to have any charters, and the districts that voted against it most heavily were those that already had charters and saw the drain on their budgets.

An Associated Press review of donations to school choice ballot questions and candidates found that spending on the 2016 question — which would have let Massachusetts add up to a dozen new or expanded charter schools each year outside of existing caps — topped $43 million.

Of the nine school choice-related ballot questions put before voters across the country since 2000, that level of spending was second only a 2000 ballot question in California, which would have established school vouchers.

Spending on the California question neared $63 million.

Both the Massachusetts and the California question failed. In Massachusetts, more than six in 10 voters rejected the proposal.

Those supporting the Massachusetts question included a handful of big money donors who rank among the top 48 individuals or married couples who gave at least $100,000 from 2000 to 2016 to support statewide ballot measures advocating for the creation or expansion of charter schools or taxpayer-funded scholarships that can be used for private school tuition for students in kindergarten through high school, according to the AP review.

Some of those top money donors to last year’s ballot question hailed from out-of-state including: Alice Walton, of Arizona, a member of Wal-Mart’s Walton family, who gave $740,000; Bloomberg founder and former New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg, who contributed $490,000; and John Douglas Arnold, of Texas, a Centaurus Advisors hedge fund manager and former Enron trader, who gave $250,000.

The top 48 donor list also includes Massachusetts residents who supported the 2016 charter school question, including: Edward Shapiro, a Wellesley resident and partner at Par Capital Management, who gave $225,000; Bradley Bloom, a Wellesley resident and co-founder of Berkshire Partners, who gave $150,000; and Ray Stata, a Dover resident and Analog Devices founder, who contributed $125,000.

All told, supporters poured nearly $27 million into trying to persuade Massachusetts voters to support the initiative. The opposition, funded largely by teachers unions, spent more than $16 million fighting the question.

The group spending the most to support the question — the New York City-based Families for Excellent Schools — contributed more than $17 million. The group has refused to say who is funding them.

New Yorkers are familiar with “Families for Excellent Schools.” This is the group that spent millions on television advertising to attack Mayor Bill de Blasio when he tried to rein in Eva Moskowitz’s Success Academy schools. The New York Times reported that the group consists of wealthy Wall Street moguls. These “families” for “excellent schools” are rich white men who live in places like Greenwich, Connecticut, and other affluent suburbs, who have probably never set foot in a public school.

Categories Billionaires, Charter Schools, Massachusetts

Here are the Federal Programs DeVos Wants to Cut or Eliminate

By dianeravitch
May 20, 2017 //
12

Valerie Strauss has created a useful guide to the major budget cuts in the U.S. Department of Education programs, in the budget proposed by the Trump administration.

A total of $10.6 billion will be cut from existing programs, with a share of those “savings” invested in school choice.

The rationale is given for each cut:

Here are some details that aren’t in the story. First is a list in the budget documents of proposed discretionary programs targeted for elimination, which the documents say will save $5.9 billion, and following that are the given justifications for each. They were targeted, the documents say, because they “achieved their original purpose, duplicate other programs, are narrowly focused, or are unable to demonstrate effectiveness.”

If failure to “demonstrate effectiveness” is reason for the cuts, then charters and vouchers should be on the list. Neither has demonstrated their superiority to public schools. Many evaluations show they duplicate services, create a dual system, add additional managers, and get the same or worse results as compared to public schools.

Categories Accountability, Betsy DeVos, Budget Cuts, Trump, U.S. Department of Education

Florida Charter Scandal: Legislators Vote Millions for Charter Schools Where They Earn a Profit

By dianeravitch
May 20, 2017 //
14

Fabiola Santiago has a stunning story in the Miami Herald about the deep corruption in the state’s charter industry.

Several key legislators are financially connected to charter schools.

He writes:

Florida’s broad ethics laws are a joke.

If they weren’t, they would protect Floridians from legislators who profit from the charter-school industry in private life and have been actively involved in pushing — and successfully passing — legislation to fund for-profit private schools at the expense of public education.

Some lawmakers earn a paycheck tied to charter schools.

One of them is Rep. Manny Diaz, the Hialeah Republican who collects a six-figure salary as chief operating officer of the charter Doral College and sits on the Education Committee and the K-12 Appropriations Subcommittee.

Some lawmakers have close relatives who are founders of charter schools.

One of them is the powerful House Speaker, Richard Corcoran, the Land O’Lakes Republican whose wife founded a charter school in Pasco County that stands to benefit from legislation. He was in Miami Wednesday preaching the gospel of charter schools as “building beautiful minds.”

Other lawmakers are founders themselves or have ties to foundations or business entities connected to charter schools.

One of them is Rep. Michael Bileca, the Miami Republican who chairs the House Education Committee and is listed as executive director of the foundation that funds True North Classical Academy, attended by the children of another legislator. Bileca is also a school founder.

These three legislators were chief architects in the passage of a $419 million education bill that takes away millions of dollars from public schools to expand the charter-school industry in Florida at taxpayer expense.

They crafted the most important parts of education bill HB 7069 in secret, acting in possible violation of the open government laws the Legislature is perennially seeking to weaken. There was no debate allowed and educators all across the state were left without a voice in the process.

It’s no wonder it all went down in the dark. It’s a clear conflict of interest for members of the Florida Legislature who have a stake in charter schools to vote to fund and expand them. Their votes weaken the competition: public schools.

This issue has nothing to do with being pro or against school choice. It’s about the abuse of power and possible violations of Florida statutes.

Read more here: http://www.miamiherald.com/news/local/news-columns-blogs/fabiola-santiago/article151418277.html#storylink=cpy

When people ask you how you can possibly be against charter schools, think of this story.

Categories Accountability, Charter Schools, Education Industry, Florida, For-Profit, Fraud, Privatization
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