Archives for the month of: September, 2017
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Jennifer Berkshire: Education Can’t End Poverty, So Why Do Pundits Keep Saying So?

By dianeravitch
September 21, 2017 //
36

Jennifer Berkshire interviews Harvey Kantor, author of a recent book that explains why some people have substituted education as the answer to poverty instead of job-creation or income transfers.

I happen to believe that education is crucial for everyone, and especially for those who live in poverty. But education alone is not enough.

Berkshire cites an article by David Leonhardt of the New York Times, who wrote last May that education was the most powerful force for reducing poverty and raising living standards. Leonhardt dismisses vouchers but admires charters, without acknowledging their penchant for cherrypicking or noting how many charters are failures, even by their own goals.

This claim is a fixture in the corporate reform world. They would like the public to believe that charter schools can raise test scores and thereby solve the problems of poverty. Berkshire might have also cited Wendy Kopp, who has said and written many times that we don’t have to fix poverty first, we have to fix the schools. (Of course, no one ever actually said that “we have to ‘fix’ poverty before we can ‘fix’ the schools, other than Kopp herself.) This is an offer that corporate leaders love, because throwing money at TFA and charter schools is a lot more attractive than raising corporate and individual tax rates. (The marginal tax rate during the Eisenhower administration was 91%. Today it is in the high 30s.)

Berkshire and Kantor discuss this strange belief that education, important as it is, can raise living standards without other major changes in social policy.

She writes:

Unions are weak. Wage growth is non-existent. Plutocrats have all the power. And yet the myth that education is all we need to finally “fix” poverty persists. AlterNet education editor Jennifer Berkshire talks with historian Harvey Kantor about how the US gave up on the idea of responding to poverty directly, instead making public schools the answer to poverty. Hint: it all starts in the 1960’s with the advent of the Great Society programs. Fast forward to the present and our belief that education can reduce poverty and narrow the nation’s yawning inequality chasm is stronger than ever. And yet our education arms race, argues Kantor, is actually making income inequality worse.

Jennifer Berkshire: I read in the New York Times recently that education is the most powerful force for *reducing poverty and lifting middle-class living standards.* It’s a classic example of what you describe in this excellent history as *educationalizing the welfare state.*

Harvey Kantor: Education hasn’t always been seen as the solution to social and economic problems in the US. During the New Deal, you had aggressive interventions in providing for economic security and redistribution; education was seen as peripheral. But by the time you get to the Great Society programs of the 1960’s, education and human capital development had moved to the very center. My colleague Robert Lowe and I started trying to think about how that happened and what the consequences were for the way social policy developed in the US from the 1960’s through No Child Left Behind. How is it that there is so much policy making and ideological talk around education and so little around other kinds of anti-poverty and equalizing policies? We also wanted to try to understand how it was that education came to shoulder so much of the burden for responding to poverty within the context of cutbacks in the welfare state.

JB: You argue that by making education THE fix for poverty, we’ve ended up fueling disappointment with our public schools, a disillusionment that is essentially misplaced. Explain.

HK: One of the consequences of making education so central to social policy has been that we’ve ended up taking the pressure off of the state for the kinds of policies that would be more effective at addressing poverty and economic inequality. Instead we’re asking education to do things it can’t possibly do. The result has been increasing support for the kinds of market-oriented policies that make inequality worse.

If we really want to address issues of inequality and economic insecurity, there are a lot of other policies that we have to pursue besides or at least in addition to education policies, and that part of the debate has been totally lost. Raising the minimum wage, or providing a guaranteed income, which the last time we talked seriously about that was in the late 1960’s, increasing workers’ bargaining power, making tax policies more progressive—things like that are going to be much more effective at addressing inequality and economic security than education policies. That argument is often taken to mean, *schools can’t do anything unless we address poverty first.* But that’s not what we were trying to say.

Categories Charter Schools, Economy, Poverty

Ohio: The School That Produces the Most Dropouts Wants to Become a Dropout Recovery Center

By dianeravitch
September 21, 2017 //
9

I know this sounds ridiculous, but remember this is Ohio. In Ohio, the charter industry can get away with almost anything!

Stephen Dyer discovered a study completed in 2013 by researchers at Ohio State University finding that ECOT (the Electronic Classroom of Tomorrow) produces more dropouts than any other charter school in the state.

So, naturally, it makes sense (or no sense at all) for ECOT to apply to become a dropout recovery center.

Four years prior to the school’s application to be considered a dropout recovery school this summer, the Electronic Classroom of Tomorrow — the state’s oldest and largest online school — was found to be Ohio’s leading producer of high school dropouts while only recovering 1.5 percent of those dropouts.

In a 2013 report completed by Ohio State University’s Education Research Center, the authors concluded that between 2006-2010, ECOT produced 13,000 dropouts, or 21.5 percent of all dropouts in Ohio’s charter schools. In 2010 alone, ECOT had 2,908 dropouts — nearly double the number of the Cleveland Municipal School District’s 1,600. At the time, Cleveland had nearly double the students enrolled as ECOT had, according to the report.

Of its nearly 3,000 dropouts, only 75 returned. Quite a record.

And now the state is considering ECOT’s request to become a dropout recovery and prevention center.

What a farce!

Categories Accountability, Education Industry, Ohio, Privatization, Virtual Charter Schools

John Merrow and Mary Levy: Did the Rhee-Henderson Reforms Succeed in the D.C. Public Schools?

By dianeravitch
September 21, 2017 //
14

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?

Categories Accountability, Corporate Reformers, District of Columbia, Education Industry, Education Reform, Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA), NCLB (No Child Left Behind), Rhee, Michelle, Teacher Evaluations, Teachers and Teaching, Testing

What Do Failing Charter Schools Do? They Turn into Voucher Schools!

By dianeravitch
September 21, 2017 //
25

Annie Waldman, writing for ProPublica, examines the curious fate of failing charter schools.

Public schools that don’t get higher test scores are closed or turned over to charter operators.

But what happens to failing charter schools?

They turn into voucher schools!

“This past June, Florida’s top education agency delivered a failing grade to the Orange Park Performing Arts Academy in suburban Jacksonville for the second year in a row. It designated the charter school for kindergarten through fifth grade as the worst public school in Clay County, and one of the lowest performing in the state.

“Two-thirds of the academy’s students failed the state exams last year, and only a third of them were making any academic progress at all. The school had had four principals in three years, and teacher turnover was high, too.

“My fourth grader was learning stuff that my second grader was learning — it shouldn’t be that way,” said Tanya Bullard, who moved her three daughters from the arts academy this past summer to a traditional public school. “The school has completely failed me and my children.”

“The district terminated the academy’s charter contract. Surprisingly, Orange Park didn’t shut down — and even found a way to stay on the public dime. It reopened last month as a private school charging $5,000 a year, below the $5,886 maximum that low-income students receive to attend the school of their choice under a state voucher program. Academy officials expect all of its students to pay tuition with the publicly backed coupons.

“Reverend Alesia Ford-Burse, an African Methodist Episcopal pastor who founded the academy, told ProPublica that the school deserves a second chance, because families love its dance and art lessons, which they otherwise couldn’t afford. “Kids are saying, ‘F or not, we’re staying,’” she said.

“While it’s widely known that private schools convert to charter status to take advantage of public dollars, more schools are now heading in the opposite direction. As voucher programs across the country proliferate, shuttered charter schools, like the Orange Park Performing Arts Academy, have begun to privatize in order to stay open with state assistance.”

Why convert from charter school to voucher school?

Voucher schools are less likely to have any state supervision or accountability than charter schools. If the accountability bar is low for charters, it is almost invisible for voucher schools.

“As private schools, the ex-charters are less accountable both to the government and the public. It can be nearly impossible to find out how well some of them are performing. About half of the voucher and voucher-like programs in the country require academic assessments of their students, but few states publish the complete test results, or use that data to hold schools accountable.

“While most states have provisions for closing low-quality charter schools, few, if any, have the power to shut down low-performing voucher schools…

“The type of voucher program that rescues failed charter schools like Orange Park in Florida may soon be replicated nationwide. Visiting a religious school in Miami last April, Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos praised the state’s approach as a possible model for a federal initiative.

“Typically, voucher programs are directly funded with taxpayer dollars. Florida’s largest program pursues a different strategy. Its “tax-credit scholarships” are backed by donations from corporations. They contribute to nonprofit organizations, which, in turn, distribute the money to the private schools. In exchange, the donors receive generous dollar-for-dollar tax credits from the state. This subsidy indirectly shifts hundreds of millions of dollars annually from the state’s coffers to private schools. More than 100,000 students whose families meet the income eligibility requirements have received the tax-credit coupons this year.

“Of the nearly 2,900 private schools in Florida, over 1,730 participated in the tax-credit voucher program during 2016-17, according to the most recent state Department of Education data. On average, each school received about $300,000 last year.

“While more than two-thirds of these schools are religious, the roundabout funding approach protects the vouchers against legal challenges that they violate the separation of church and state. Earlier this year, the state Supreme Court dismissed a lawsuit by the Florida Education Association, a teacher’s union, challenging the constitutionality of the voucher program.

“In an education budget proposal from May, DeVos detailed her voucher plans, pitching a $250 million plan to study and expand individual state initiatives. She has since suggested that the administration may also create a federal tax-credit voucher scheme through an impending tax overhaul.

“School choice advocates like DeVos have long contended that vouchers improve educational opportunities for low-income families. They reason that competition raises school quality, and that parents, given more options, will select the best school for their children.

“A growing body of research, though, casts doubt on this argument. It shows voucher-backed students may not be performing better than their public school counterparts, and may do worse.”

What has become clear is that the privatization movement is not about providing better education. Choice advocates no longer believe that they are saving “poor kids from failing public schools.” Typically the so-called “failing” public school is superior to the voucher school. It is about choice for the sake of choice. It is about distributing money to religious and for-profit groups, which creates a political base to sustain choice. It is about undermining public education.

Categories Accountability, Charter Schools, Education Industry, Education Reform, Privatization

Emily Talmage Lashes Out–at Me

By dianeravitch
September 20, 2017 //
119

I have admired Emily Talmage’s fierce independence and intelligence and have posted many of her columns. Imagine my surprise when I discovered that she attacked me because I was a judge on the MacArthur Foundation’ s competition to award a $100 million gift.

She was astonished that I had anything to do with this dreadful Foundation.

She invited me to respond.

This was my comment on her blog:

“Emily,

“I was invited some months ago by the MacArthur Foundation to be one of hundreds of reviewers for their $100 million contest for a single great idea. The foundation received 2,000 applications. I reviewed 10. A few were not very good ideas. Some were very impressive. They were submitted by well qualified teams of experts with sound ideas about alleviating hunger, poverty, disease, and other major problems, in this country and in impoverished countries. None of the ideas I approved were profit-making ventures.

“I was not paid for doing this. It was an interesting assignment, to which I devoted a few hours one evening.

“I was not asked to review the MacArthur Foundation. In my extensive readings of nefarious organizations, I don’t recall coming across the MacArthur Foundation as a funder. Had I been asked to do a similar assignment for the Walton Foundation or the Broad Foundation or the CZI or the Gates Foundation, I would have said no.

“I know the MacArthur Foundation only for its “genius” awards, which I have never seen as controversial.

“I make no apologies for judging 10 of 2,000 proposals.

“You can reach any conclusion you wish.

“I am not your enemy. You have read my blog. You know where I stand on testing, privatization, and CBE. Frankly, I was surprised that you would write as if I were not on your side. News flash: I am your ally.”

Diane Ravitch

Categories Accountability, Philanthropy, Ravitch, Diane

Los Angeles County Investigates Enrollment of Catholic School Students in Online Academy

By dianeravitch
September 20, 2017 //
21

This is a new kind of charter school scandal. A virtual school enrolled students already enrolled in Catholic schools and claimed full state tuition. The virtual school gave the Catholic school cash and laptops. Meanwhile, the parents paid tuition to the Catholic school. In effect, the students attended two schools.

Bizarre new world of profit-taking.

http://www.latimes.com/local/education/la-me-edu-lennox-virtual-academy-20170920-story.html

Categories Accountability, Catholic Schools, Charter Schools, Education Industry, Funding, Los Angeles, Privatization, Technology, Virtual Charter Schools

Over Half a Million Views! YOU Did It!

By dianeravitch
September 20, 2017 //
56

Thanks to your efforts, the inaugural video about the fight to save public schools from privatization has reached over half a million viewers. In addition, it has been logged in by over a million Facebook feeds.

This is the video you shared. Please share it some more. We are aiming for one million views!

Our voices together have generated a mighty roar!

The public is waking up to the threat to their public schools.

They know that Betsy DeVos hates public schools and wants their children to go to charter schools, religious schools, cyber-charters—anything but a public school. She truly doesn’t understand the role of public schools in a democracy, nor does she have any ideas about how to improve them other than to eliminate them.

Together, we are sending her a message. The public schools belong to the public. They were paid for with tax dollars, and we are not giving them away, leasing them, or selling them off to entrepreneurs.

We will not tolerate this theft of public assets.

The public schools are a public responsibility, not a consumer good.

Categories Network for Public Education, Privatization, Supporting public schools

Leonie Haimson: Why Eva Moskowitz’s Former Lawyer Should Not Be Allowed to Open Her Own Charter School

By dianeravitch
September 20, 2017 //
6

Leonie Haimson, hardworking CEO of Class Size Matters and New York City’s foremost parent advocate, has written a letter to the SUNY charter committee explaining why Eva Moskowitz’s former chief attorney for the Success Academy charter chain, should NOT be allowed to start her own charter school.

Open the link to read the citations and the letter written by the parent of a student with special needs whose file was made public by Success Academy in retaliation for her appearance on John Merrow’s program about the abusive practices of Success Academy.

To the SUNY Charter committee and Board:

I urge you to reject the proposed authorization of the Zeta charter school, for many of the reasons cited by the Tory Frye of the D6 Community Education Council,[1] but also because Emily Kim, the proposed founder, was the chief attorney for the Success Academy chain while the network proceeded to repeatedly violate state and federal laws and deprive students of their civil rights.

More specifically:

· In October 2015, Success Academy retaliated against a parent of a special needs child who had spoken on a PBS show about his repeated illegal suspensions by Success, by posting her child’s disciplinary file online and sending the link to reporters nationwide. This action was a flagrant violation of his federal privacy rights according to FERPA, the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act. [2]

· Only after the parent, Fatima Geidi, filed a complaint with the US Department of Education, and several months ensued did Success Academy finally take down his file.[3]

· On January 20, 2016, parents of 13 current and former students of Success Academy filed a complaint with the Office of Civil Rights of the US Department of Education, accusing the network of discriminating against students with disabilities by denying them their mandated services, repeatedly suspending them without providing alternative instruction, and in some cases pushing them out. This complaint was joined NYC Public Advocate Letitia James; Councilman Daniel Dromm, the chair of the NYC Council Education Committee; Legal Services NYC; the Legal Aid Society; MFY Legal Services; the Partnership for Children’s Rights; and the New York Legal Assistance Group.[4]

· Subsequently, the federal Office of Civil Rights launched an investigation into Success Academy’s discriminatory practices, the results of which have not yet been released.[5]

· SUNY itself was reported to have launched its own investigation into Success Academy’s push-out policies, and more specifically the infamous “Got to Go” list. [6]

· In April 2016, parents at Success Academy Fort Greene launched a new federal lawsuit, alleging “illegal, discriminatory” campaign against children with special needs , including sending their children to emergency rooms without cause, illegally suspending them, and threatening to call the Administration for Children’s Services if they refused to pick their child up early from school These parents are represented by Stroock & Stroock & Lavan LLP, New York Lawyers for the Public Interest and Advocates for Justice.[7]

· In addition, the application for this new charter school should be rejected since Ms. Kim is planning to co-locate her school in a district public school building, which would prevent the already-overcrowded schools in the district from having sufficient space to reduce class size, as previously agreed upon by the city in its original Contracts for Excellence plan. [8]

· In July 2017, a legal complaint was filed against DOE with the NY State Education Department for failing to comply with the its state-approved Contracts for Excellence class size reduction plan. [9] This complaint was prepared by the Education Law Center on behalf of Class Size Matters, the Public Advocate, the Alliance for Quality Education and nine NYC public school parents.[10]

Until the results of the investigations by the federal Office of Civil Rights and SUNY are released and these complaints and lawsuits are decided, it would be premature and ill-considered to allow Ms. Kim to open her own charter school, given her history of facilitating and defending repeated violations of children’s civil rights.

Below are additional personal observations by Fatima Geidi of Ms. Kim’s behavior, while her child attended Upper West Success Academy.

Yours sincerely,
Leonie Haimson, Executive Director

Categories Accountability, Charter Schools, Corporate Reformers, Education Industry, Harlem Success Academy, Privatization

Illinois: ALEC Slipped Vouchers into a Blue State School Funding Bill

By dianeravitch
September 20, 2017 //
17

This comment by a reader explains that ALEC managed to slip a voucher into a needed school funding bill in Illinois, but it does not explain why elected officials in Illinois did not understand what was happening and block it. A “tax credit” is a voucher by another name. It was designed for states with constitutions that prohibit vouchers, with language that unequivocally says that public money may not be spent in religious schools for any purpose.

The tax credit allows corporations and wealthy individuals to give large sums to an independent entity (which takes a cut). The independent entity uses the money to give scholarships to students to go to religious schools. The corporation and individual get a tax credit, and the state loses money that would otherwise be in the state treasury.

The anonymous reader writes:

So: In terms of funding its schools, Illinois ranked #50, providing only around 26% of school funding. This had resulted over time in astonishing inequity, with districts spending between $7000 (poor, downstate, rural) and $32,000 per student (Chicago North Suburbs).

The new formula, which is referred to as the “EBM”, evidence-based-model, considers each of IL’s 852 school districts as a separate entity, calculates what the district can provide for schools (based on property taxes and federal aid), what is needed (using a state-wide baseline of about $12,200 iirc and incorporating all special characteristics of each district), and then separates schools into four Tiers, 1-4. The lion’s share of state funding will go to Tier 4 school districts, followed by Tier 3 (there are mathematical formulas involving percentages here), Tier 2, and Tier 1 (no state aid, deemed more than adequate). Determination of funding levels is based on 27 separate criteria (derived from, but not identical to Odden & Pincus’s model) and sensitive to the fact that different schools/districts may have different student profiles and thus, funding needs.

If all goes as planned: no district will ever lose money from the previous year (this is the famous “hold harmless” clause); all districts will gradually converge towards equity in public education resources; individual districts may, if deemed at 110% adequacy, choose to reduce property taxes, and each district’s state funding will be determined by its actual, evidence-based needs.

The bill’s chief sponsor in the Illinois Senate is to my mind a hero – very few people apart from the authors and the state’s superintendents of schools have understood how ground-breaking this bill is. For many districts–including the one where I was raised (poor, urban, downstate)–this will entail a near-reversal of funding percentages from what obtained previously.

The whole voucher thing–never wanted, never intended, not in the original version of the bill–has to do with unfortunate events in state politics over the summer. The original version of the voucher amendment – it was an ALEC bill, tweaked for Illinois – was weakened in the final version: yearly limit of $75 million (instead of $100 m) (and thus theoretically available to around 10,000 out of Illinois’ 2,000,000 school-age children, or one-half of 1%); 75% credit (instead of 100%); no year-over-year increases (instead of an automatic increase of 25% per year); tight regulations/audits by an independent outside auditor (plus spending cap of 10% for non-education activities such as advertising), and a sunset provision for automatic repeal at the end of 5 years unless it’s reintroduced as separate legislation.

It’s the job of public education advocates in Illinois to make sure that it isn’t re-introduced as a standalone bill – Illinois has no provision for referendums for Article X of its constitution (“Education”), so let’s hope the (national) public education advocacy groups assist Illinois’s own group (RaiseYourHandforIllinois)–and let’s hope that advocacy group gets on top of this, and stays on top of it, for the next five years so that it’s DOA in 2024. This is a big challenge, because we can lose sight of longer-term threats in the heat of day-to-day crises, of which Illinois has more than its share.

During the months I followed the issue in both the political and education press/blogs, I discovered that (a) even top political writers in the state didn’t understand vouchers, and absolutely refused to understand how “tax credits” were a specially-crafted form of voucher for states with some version of the Blaine Amendment, and (b) it was nigh-on impossible to attract the interest of national-level education writers to what was about to happen–thus, most of the national-level coverage came after the fact, when it was too late to do anything.

That’s why sites like this one are so vital – they allow us to remain current with what’s happening in states other than our own, so that we can be alert when something similar is afoot at home.

Categories ALEC, Education Reform

Yong Zhao: Why Americans Should NOT Copy Chinese Education

By dianeravitch
September 20, 2017 //
33

Yong Zhao was born and educated in China. He has studied Chinese and American education for many years. He is currently “a Foundation Distinguished Professor in the School of Education at the University of Kansas, as well as a professorial fellow at the Mitchell Institute for Health and Education Policy at Victoria University in Australia, and a global chair at the University of Bath in the United Kingdom.” His honors and awards are too numerous to list.

He recently saw an article in the Wall Street Journal titled “Why American Students Need Chinese Schools.” He knows from personal experience and research that this is a dreadful idea.

In this article, he explains why Chinese schools are not a model for our schools..

The article in the WSJ was written by Lenora Chu, a journalist who sent her son to one of the best schools in China. The book–“Little Soldiers: An American Boy, a Chinese School, and the Global Race to Achieve”–recalls the one about Chinese Tiger moms that was a bestseller a few years ago.

Zhao writes:

“I would have easily discarded the article for its ludicrous title if I had not read the galley of the book before. I did not see any convincing evidence in the book that supports the proposal that American students need Chinese schools. Quite to the contrary, I understood the book as further evidence for not importing Chinese schools into America.

“Little Soldiers is far from a love affair with Chinese schools as the title of the Wall Street Journal article suggests. It is, rather, a vivid portrayal of an outdated education model that does serious and significant damage.

“Chu and her husband are American journalists living in Shanghai. They enrolled their son Rainey in a local Chinese school. The book is a journalistic recount of her observations of the experience and her personal interactions with the school as well as with parents, teachers, students, education leaders, and scholars in China and elsewhere.

“Rainey’s experience in Soong Qing Ling, easily one of the best schools in Shanghai, which has perhaps the best schools in China, once again exposes the problems of Chinese education: rigid, authoritarian, and unhealthy competition. He was force-fed eggs by his teacher; he was silenced during lunch; he was rewarded for sitting still and mute; he was told to compete to become No. 1 because there was no reward for second place. He was not allowed to ask questions, and he learned that the teacher and the school have unquestionable authority. His family hired private tutors and spent breakfast time taking tests.

“Using threats as motivational tool is common in Chinese education. Chu calls the Chinese “world-class experts at fear-based motivation.” It works but it can have serious consequences. Rainey became afraid. He once asked his father if he’d be taken away by the police if he did not take a nap because the teacher in school threatened that if he did not nap as required, the police would take him away.

“Chu also reports that her son became afraid of other things associated with school: being late, missing class, or disappointing the teacher.

“As a coping strategy, Rainey learned to lie, to fake. He learned to fake a cough when he wanted water in class because he discovered that was most effective way to get to drink water without irritating the teacher.

“Chu was fully aware of the problems of Chinese schooling. She does not have Stockholm syndrome. She is a caring mother, a reflective journalist, and a curious observer. She, of course, wants the best for her child, as any mother would. The best for her is the “exact middle” between academic rigor and play, serious academic studying and enjoying what life has to offer in sports, arts, leisure, literature, drama, and comedy.

“It was apparent that the Chinese school was tilting too much toward one end. So the couple devised a countermeasure to mitigate the negative effects of Chinese schooling.

“Unlike many Chinese parents who typically have to reinforce what the school does at home, Chu and her husband decided to provide a very different experience for their child. They allowed him to make his own decisions, filled his environment with choices, provided him with art supplies, took him to museums, played soccer and tennis with him, and involved him in other activities for the sole purpose of leisure. Essentially, they created an American experience for their boy at home…

“The lessons Chu distilled from Chinese schooling are not new. Many before her have shared the same message: authority and rigidity are virtuous and should be adopted by American schools.

“In essence, she wants teachers as an unquestioned authority. She writes in her Wall Street Journal article: “[H]aving the teacher as an unquestioned authority in the classroom gives students a leg up in subjects such as geometry and computer programming, which are more effectively taught through direct instruction (versus student-led discovery) …”

“She also believes that rigidity is an educational advantage: “The reason is simple: Classroom goals are better served if everyone charges forward at the same pace. No exceptions, no diversions,” Chu writes in the article.

“Furthermore, Chu believes the sufferings delivered by the Chinese authoritarian, high pressure, and rigid education are nothing more than rigor.

“China’s school system breeds a Chinese-style grit, which delivers the daily message that perseverance — not intelligence or ability — is key to success” because the Chinese believe hard work trumps innate talent when it comes to academics, she wrote.

“In essence, Chu believes American education is not authoritarian enough, not rigid enough, and not demanding enough in comparison to education in China. She is not alone…

“As much as I enjoyed the book and admired Chu’s courage for sending her son to a Chinese school, I don’t see an authoritarian and rigid education as meritorious. As someone who has experienced both Chinese and American education as a student and teacher and an educational researcher for nearly three decades, I have learned that such a system results in unproductive successes — outcomes that appear appealing in the short term but result in long term irreparable damages. Something I call the side effects of education, akin to the side effects of medicine. In this case, the side effects are so severe that the medicine should not be approved.”

“Force-fed learning,” Zhao writes, is nothing to emulate.

Categories Discipline, International
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