John Merrow and Mary Levy responded to a laudatory article by Tom Toch about the miraculous transformation of the D.C. Public Schools, under the leadership of Michelle Rhee and Kaya Henderson. Together, Rhee and Henderson led the district for a decade. Their results should be clear. Toch was impressed. Merrow and Levy were not.
Merrow is the nation’s most distinguished education journalist; Levy is a civil rights lawyer who has documented changes in the D.C. public schools for many years. The article they criticized (“Hot for Teachers”) was written by Tom Toch, whose organization FutureEd is funded by, among others, the Walton Family Foundation (“hot for privatization”), the Bezos Family Foundation (“amazon.com”), the rightwing Smith Richardson Foundation, and the Raikes Foundation (former president of the Gates Foundation). Its aim apparently is to justify the high-pressure, high-stakes
Tom Toch responded to Merrow and Levy, repeating what he said in the original article. You can read his response, which follows the Merrow-Levy article.
Here is a sampling of Merrow and Levy’s commentary:
To remain aloft, a hot air balloon must be fed regular bursts of hot air. Without hot air, the balloon falls to earth. That seems to be the appropriate analogy for the District of Columbia Public Schools (DCPS) during the ten-year regime (2007–2016) of Chancellors Michelle Rhee and Kaya Henderson. Their top-down approach to school reform might not have lasted but for the unstinting praise provided by influential supporters from the center left and right—their hot air. The list includes the editorial page of the Washington Post, former U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan, and philanthropist Katherine Bradley. The most recent dose is “Hot for Teachers,” in which Thomas Toch argues that Rhee and Henderson revolutionized the teaching profession in D.C. schools, to the benefit of students. But this cheerleading obscures a harsh truth: on most relevant measures, Washington’s public schools have either regressed or made minimal progress under their leadership. Schools in upper-middle-class neighborhoods seem to be thriving, but outcomes for low-income minority students—the great majority of enrollment—are pitifully low.
Toch is an engaging storyteller, but he exaggerates the importance of positive developments and misrepresents or ignores key negative ones, including dismal academic performance; a swollen central office bureaucracy devoted to monitoring teachers; an exodus of teachers, including midyear resignations; a revolving door for school principals; sluggish enrollment growth; misleading graduation statistics; and widespread cheating by adults.
Academics
When they arrived in 2007, Rhee and her then deputy Henderson promised that test scores would go up and that the huge achievement gaps between minority and white students would go down. Here’s how Toch reported what has happened on their watch: “While Washington’s test scores have traditionally been among the lowest in the nation, the percentage of fourth graders achieving math proficiency has more than doubled on the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) over the past decade, as have the percentages of eighth graders proficient in math and fourth graders proficient in reading.”
Those results, however, stop looking so good once we disaggregate data about different groups of students. Despite small overall increases, minority and low-income scores lag far behind the NAEP’s big-city average, and the already huge achievement gaps have actually widened. From 2007 to 2015, the NAEP reading scores of low-income eighth graders increased just 1 point, from 232 to 233, while scores of non-low-income students (called “others” in NAEP-speak) climbed 31 points, from 250 to 281. Over that same time period, the percentage of low-income students scoring at the “proficient” level remained at an embarrassingly low 8 percent, while proficiency among “others” climbed from 22 percent to 53 percent. An analysis of the data by race between 2007 and 2015 is also discouraging: black proficiency increased 3 points, from 8 percent to 11 percent, while Hispanic proficiency actually declined, from 18 percent to 17 percent. In 2007 the white student population was not large enough to be reported, but in 2015 white proficiency was at 75 percent.
The results in fourth grade are also depressing. Low-income students made small gains, while “others” jumped to respectable levels. As a consequence, the fourth-grade proficiency gap between low-income and “other” students has actually increased, from 26 to 62 percentage points, under the Rhee/Henderson reforms.
Results of the Common Core tests known as PARCC, first administered in 2015, are similarly unimpressive. The black/white achievement gap is 59 percentage points. Although DCPS students achieved 25 percent proficiency system-wide, the average proficiency in the forty lowest-performing schools was 7 percent. In ten of the District’s twelve nonselective, open-enrollment high schools, somewhere between zero and four students—individuals, not percentages—performed at the “college and career ready” level in math; only a few more achieved that level in English. This is a catastrophic failure, strong evidence that something is seriously wrong in Washington’s schools.
Remember that these students have spent virtually their entire school lives in a system controlled by Rhee and Henderson. In short, despite promises to the contrary, the achievement gap between well-to-do kids and poor kids as measured by the NAEP has widened under their watch and is now over twice as high in fourth grade and two and a half times as high in eighth as it was a decade ago. White proficiency rates now run 55 to 66 percentage points above black proficiency rates and 42 to 66 percentage points above Hispanic rates…
Toch writes about Washington’s success in recruiting teachers, even poaching them from surrounding districts. He attributes this to higher salaries and increased professional respect and support. And he adds, in a carefully qualified sentence, that “the school system’s strongest teachers are no longer leaving in droves for charter schools.” Well, perhaps they’re not leaving for charter schools, but they sure as heck are leaving—in droves. Toch fails to mention the embarrassingly high annual turnover of 20 percent system-wide and a staggering 33 percent every year over the last five years in the forty lowest-performing schools. This means that in the neediest schools, one out of every three teachers is brand new every year. And all newly hired teachers, whether novices or poached from elsewhere, leave DCPS at the rate of 25 percent annually. In a recent study of sixteen comparable urban districts, the average turnover rate was just 13 percent.
Defenders of the D.C. approach would have you believe that these teachers have failed to increase test scores. While that is true in some cases, other evidence should be considered. Student journalists at Woodrow Wilson High School interviewed this year’s departing teachers, who expressed frustration with “DCPS’s focus on data-driven education reforms” and “lack of respect and appreciation.” Teachers, including those rated “highly effective,” cited the stress of frequent changes in the demands of the IMPACT teacher evaluation system as well as the absence of useful feedback.
Merrow and Levy also cite the large increase in the number of administrators, the high level of principal turnover, and the large number of teacher resignations midyear. They also refer to allegations of widespread cheating, which Toch dismisses. They ask whether the graduation rates can be taken seriously when the test scores are so low.
They conclude:
But, ultimately, Rhee and Henderson lived and died by test scores, and their approach—more money for winners, dismissal for losers, and intense policing of teachers—is wrongheaded and outdated. Their conception of schooling is little changed from an industrial age factory model in which teachers are the workers and capable students (as determined by standardized test scores) are the products. The schools of the twenty-first century must operate on different principles: students are the workers, and their work product is knowledge. This approach seeks to know about each child not “How smart are you?” but, rather, “How are you smart?”
Rhee and Henderson had the kind of control other school superintendents can only dream of: no school board, a supportive mayor, generous funding from government and foundations, a weakened union, and strong public support. Yet, despite carte blanche to do as they pleased, they failed. Without the hot air of public praise, the Rhee-Henderson balloon would have plummeted to earth.
Toch defends the NCLB test-and-punish approach. He thinks that the pressure on teachers was good for the teachers, the principals, and the students. The sorriest part of the NCLB legacy is that so much of it was preserved in the “Every Student Succeeds Act.” If you think about it, is there any difference even rhetorically between saying “no child left behind” and “every student succeeds”? Does anyone seriously believe that any federal law can achieve either result? After nearly 20 years of trying, isn’t it time to ask the question that John Merrow repeatedly asks: Not, how smart are you? But, how are you smart? Isn’t it time to read Pasi Sahlberg’s books and learn about what 21st century education looks like? Isn’t it time to stop Taylorism and abandon the failed ideas of the early 20th century?
Diane Ravitch's blog 
What makes Merrow “America’s most distinguished education journalist”? After he brought us Michelle Rhee in the first place, firing a principal on camera? He was far too credulous of her to begin with and has really not done enough of a mea culpa on that score.
I’d think of people like Valerie Strauss or Jeff Bryant first. Mercedes Schneider and Jennifer Berkshire too, although they are, sadly, far less known.
Dienne,
He has been an education journalist for forty years. He has done work I admire and work I didn’t admire. He helped to create the myth of Rhee, but he had the integrity to realize she was a phony and say so. Maybe because I changed my mind, I realize how rare it is and how hard it is to do so, especially when you are in the public eye. John did it. He is uniquely situated to call out the Rhee myth, and I salute him for it.
Don’t forget the piece he did called Rhee’s reign of error or something like that, where he totally ripped her apart over the test cheating scandal that she presided over and was largely covered up by the same hot air machine.
Someone needs to look at Indianapolis. My sense is they are wildly inflating the “portfolio” scheme they’re all so enamored with.
Indiana ed reform is as wild west as Ohio and Michigan. Unless Indianapolis is a total outlier in the midwest, they’re inflating the “success”.
They used to push Cleveland and then Cleveland quietly disappeared from the “miraculous” list. Check the claims in Indianapolis.
Chiara,
I recently published several posts about the privatization push in Indianapolis.
See here: http://www.radicalteacher.net/think-national-fight-local-the-story-of-indianapolis-and-the-dpe-destroy-public-education-movement/
“Two Sheldon ISD schools serving combined 3,000+ students will stay closed for weeks, possibly all of fall semester.”
These are unfashionable public schools, of course, so no one at the US Department of Education can be bothered with the fact that these schools are struggling to OPEN.
Instead they’re off to another “choice” cheerleading session at Harvard, where they’ll all pat themselves on the back for “putting kids first” unlike those greedy public school employees.
Can we get one person in DC to act as an advocate for the 90% of families who are completely ignored by the ed reform “movement”? Do we have to hire a private advocate? 2400 employees, 500-some members of Congress and we can’t get ONE?
It’s really amazing how opaque charter schools are:
“Success Academy Charter Schools, Inc. (SACS) is a private nonprofit organization that provides services to charter schools, but it is not itself a charter school or a government agency under FOIL,” wrote Success Academy lawyer Robert Dunn in response to an appeal of a Chalkbeat request for Moskowitz’s emails under the state’s Freedom of Information Law, which the network had denied. “Thus, it is not in and of itself subject to FOIL or required to have an appeal process.”
In addition, Success officials said the emails would not need to be released because they qualify as internal communications that are exempt from the public-records law.
The city’s most prominent charter school networks — including KIPP and Uncommon — have similar CMO structures, which appears to shield their leaders from at least some FOIL requests. While “the KIPP NYC public charter schools themselves are subject to the New York Freedom of Information Law,” KIPP spokesperson Steve Mancini said in an email, the “CMOs are not.”
They basically created a large group of publicly-paid employees who aren’t subject to the same disclosure requirements as the other group of public employees- the people who work for public schools.
It’s two tiers. One group of publicly-paid employees must disclose, the other doesn’t have to.
This is why media have so much trouble accurately portraying how privatized systems work- you have to peel back the onion, go thru the layers of contracts,or you know nothing about these entities.
https://www.chalkbeat.org/posts/ny/2017/09/21/private-managers-of-public-schools-charter-leaders-enjoy-extra-buffer-from-public-records-laws/
And this is how privatized school systems work in NYC- one of the most if not THE most regulated places in the country.
Imagine a privatized system in Texas or Arizona. It’ll be a free for all. No one will have any idea where public money goes.
The so-called successes of the reform movement are all based on lies and propaganda, a frightening sort of turn from the recent past, when they actually believed their own faulty data. Now, even though the evidence is before them, they continue to lie and play cruel games with children and teachers so that they can continue to destroy public schools. It’s time to put this charade before the public in a way that is easily understood because allowing it to blossom means it will get even further out of control. Rhee et al continue to dehumanize teachers and students…let’s focus on that because it is a crime for profit. They are hucksters and thieves. Look at what they have done…look at their lifestyle! They are not saints for children. They are a bunch of spoilt rich people trying to get even richer. It’s ridiculous.
Yes, the critique of the puff piece is good. But there are larger issues related to test scores that are seldom articulated.
The first, which Diane and John mention glancingly, is that engaging in the discussion around NAEP or any other test scores is a tacit acknowledgment that they matter. Yes, it’s important to reveal dishonest manipulation and reporting of data. But it invites the inference that it actually matters – that if their claims were accurate it would be meaningful.
But it would not be meaningful.
The second point may veer close to contradicting myself, but . . .
As with testing of any kind, there is abundant evidence that the testing itself, along with preparation for testing, will predictably raise scores. SAT prep, for example is well-demonstrated to add 100-200 points, merely by better preparing students to play the game. Take this passage from the piece (please! as Rodney Dangerfield might say):
“From 2007 to 2015, the NAEP reading scores of low-income eighth graders increased just 1 point, from 232 to 233, while scores of non-low-income students (called “others” in NAEP-speak) climbed 31 points, from 250 to 281.”
A reasonable observer might expect reading scores of low-income eighth graders to improve somewhat just by virtue of 8 years of playing the game, even if their reading was not improved. This suggests that their actual abilities decreased significantly during these 8 years. It is more than plausible that the 31 point “improvement” among “others” is only an artifact of gaining test-taking skill and/or spending precious hours preparing to take tests.
I have no doubt, based on this kind of analysis, which I’ve done in more depth, that the failures of the testing era are substantially more serious than the reports suggest. The lack of progress actually represents enormous loss, not just stagnation. And all of it is accompanied by the crime of omission – the millions of days children could have been playing, discovering, loving to learn and learning to love.
There is another plausible explanation for the spike in scores among the non-poor students. While some may be due to test taking preparation, I believe that another logical explanation for the change is gentrification. Washington has become “hot” real estate market with developers reinventing previously working class neighborhoods. Yuppies are buying in the city at record numbers. With changes like these Washington has an ever greater opportunity for integration, but I doubt this will happen without government pressure to make it happen. http://www.npr.org/2017/01/16/505606317/d-c-s-gentrifying-neighborhoods-a-careful-mix-of-newcomers-and-old-timers
Indeed!
“But it would not be meaningful.”
And why wouldn’t the scores be meaningful?
Because the scores (actually the whole onto-epistemological underpinnings) are COMPLETELY INVALID as proven by Noel Wilson. To understand read and comprehend his “Educational Standards and the Problem of Error” found at: http://epaa.asu.edu/ojs/article/view/577/700
Brief outline of Wilson’s “Educational Standards and the Problem of Error” and some comments of mine. (updated 6/24/13 per Wilson email)
1. A description of a quality can only be partially quantified. Quantity is almost always a very small aspect of quality. It is illogical to judge/assess a whole category only by a part of the whole. The assessment is, by definition, lacking in the sense that “assessments are always of multidimensional qualities. To quantify them as unidimensional quantities (numbers or grades) is to perpetuate a fundamental logical error” (per Wilson). The teaching and learning process falls in the logical realm of aesthetics/qualities of human interactions. In attempting to quantify educational standards and standardized testing the descriptive information about said interactions is inadequate, insufficient and inferior to the point of invalidity and unacceptability.
A major epistemological mistake is that we attach, with great importance, the “score” of the student, not only onto the student but also, by extension, the teacher, school and district. Any description of a testing event is only a description of an interaction, that of the student and the testing device at a given time and place. The only correct logical thing that we can attempt to do is to describe that interaction (how accurately or not is a whole other story). That description cannot, by logical thought, be “assigned/attached” to the student as it cannot be a description of the student but the interaction. And this error is probably one of the most egregious “errors” that occur with standardized testing (and even the “grading” of students by a teacher).
Wilson identifies four “frames of reference” each with distinct assumptions (epistemological basis) about the assessment process from which the “assessor” views the interactions of the teaching and learning process: the Judge (think college professor who “knows” the students capabilities and grades them accordingly), the General Frame-think standardized testing that claims to have a “scientific” basis, the Specific Frame-think of learning by objective like computer based learning, getting a correct answer before moving on to the next screen, and the Responsive Frame-think of an apprenticeship in a trade or a medical residency program where the learner interacts with the “teacher” with constant feedback. Each category has its own sources of error and more error in the process is caused when the assessor confuses and conflates the categories.
Wilson elucidates the notion of “error”: “Error is predicated on a notion of perfection; to allocate error is to imply what is without error; to know error it is necessary to determine what is true. And what is true is determined by what we define as true, theoretically by the assumptions of our epistemology, practically by the events and non-events, the discourses and silences, the world of surfaces and their interactions and interpretations; in short, the practices that permeate the field. . . Error is the uncertainty dimension of the statement; error is the band within which chaos reigns, in which anything can happen. Error comprises all of those eventful circumstances which make the assessment statement less than perfectly precise, the measure less than perfectly accurate, the rank order less than perfectly stable, the standard and its measurement less than absolute, and the communication of its truth less than impeccable.”
In other words all the logical errors involved in the process render any conclusions invalid.
The test makers/psychometricians, through all sorts of mathematical machinations attempt to “prove” that these tests (based on standards) are valid-errorless or supposedly at least with minimal error [they aren’t]. Wilson turns the concept of validity on its head and focuses on just how invalid the machinations and the test and results are. He is an advocate for the test taker not the test maker. In doing so he identifies thirteen sources of “error”, any one of which renders the test making/giving/disseminating of results invalid. And a basic logical premise is that once something is shown to be invalid it is just that, invalid, and no amount of “fudging” by the psychometricians/test makers can alleviate that invalidity.
Having shown the invalidity, and therefore the unreliability, of the whole process Wilson concludes, rightly so, that any result/information gleaned from the process is “vain and illusory”. In other words start with an invalidity, end with an invalidity (except by sheer chance every once in a while, like a blind and anosmic squirrel who finds the occasional acorn, a result may be “true”) or to put in more mundane terms crap in-crap out.
And so what does this all mean? I’ll let Wilson have the second to last word: “So what does a test measure in our world? It measures what the person with the power to pay for the test says it measures. And the person who sets the test will name the test what the person who pays for the test wants the test to be named.”
In other words it attempts to measure “’something’ and we can specify some of the ‘errors’ in that ‘something’ but still don’t know [precisely] what the ‘something’ is.” The whole process harms many students as the social rewards for some are not available to others who “don’t make the grade (sic)” Should American public education have the function of sorting and separating students so that some may receive greater benefits than others, especially considering that the sorting and separating devices, educational standards and standardized testing, are so flawed not only in concept but in execution?
My answer is NO!!!!!
One final note with Wilson channeling Foucault and his concept of subjectivization:
“So the mark [grade/test score] becomes part of the story about yourself and with sufficient repetitions becomes true: true because those who know, those in authority, say it is true; true because the society in which you live legitimates this authority; true because your cultural habitus makes it difficult for you to perceive, conceive and integrate those aspects of your experience that contradict the story; true because in acting out your story, which now includes the mark and its meaning, the social truth that created it is confirmed; true because if your mark is high you are consistently rewarded, so that your voice becomes a voice of authority in the power-knowledge discourses that reproduce the structure that helped to produce you; true because if your mark is low your voice becomes muted and confirms your lower position in the social hierarchy; true finally because that success or failure confirms that mark that implicitly predicted the now self-evident consequences. And so the circle is complete.”
In other words students “internalize” what those “marks” (grades/test scores) mean, and since the vast majority of the students have not developed the mental skills to counteract what the “authorities” say, they accept as “natural and normal” that “story/description” of them. Although paradoxical in a sense, the “I’m an “A” student” is almost as harmful as “I’m an ‘F’ student” in hindering students becoming independent, critical and free thinkers. And having independent, critical and free thinkers is a threat to the current socio-economic structure of society.
When they treat students like objects rather than subjects, those children lose no matter how good they try to make their schools look. What about the agenda of children? Keep up the good work John and Mary!