Peter Greene has written about the harsh, punitive test-and-punish regime called “reform” for several years. Teacher evaluation by test scores of students. Charter schools promising to close achievement gaps. Vouchers. Turnarounds. Closing schools. Common Core, which was supposed to make everyone college-and-career-ready and provide equity and close gaps.
He says this about the NAEP release today.
It failed.
”Ed reform has failed.
“Everything else is just details and noise.”
Retired teacher Guy Brandenburg went to the National Press Club to observe the official release of the NAEP scores for 2017, released one year after the tests were offered in every state to samples of students.
His judgment: NAEP 2017 demonstrates the failure of what has been called “Reform” since the signing of NCLB in 2002 and the hiring of Michelle Rhee as autocratic chancellor of D.C.
”In the morning session, presenters acknowledged that for the nation as a whole, reading scores are flat – essentially unchanged — after 25 years of various types of ‘reforms’. Panelists tried to explain why, and seemed to me to give just about diametrically-opposed solutions to the problem. The introductory presenter (whom we saw on tape), essentially blamed us adults for not letting kids see us read often and deeply enough, and said that if we just wish harder, the results will come. (not quite a direct quote, but close)
“I did a quick appraisal of how Washington DC’s scores have improved (or not) before and after mayoral control, which was imposed shortly after students took the 2007 NAEP. You may recall that Michelle Rhee was imposed as DC’s first education Chancellor. She and her henchwoman, Kaya Henderson (who succeeded Rhee) predicted, in writing, all sorts of miraculous gains that would come if they were free to fire teachers en masse and subject them to rigorous numerical control via IMPACT and VAM.
“None of it came to pass.
“With today’s data it is even clearer than ever. I found 16 separate subcategories of students for which I could easily find data. Of them, improvements were better BEFORE mayoral control for 12 of them, and in only 4 was the improvement slightly better AFTER mayoral control.
“That’s a three-to-one vote against mayoral control and the whole educational Reformster movement.
“In other cities and jurisdictions, it’s more of the same. The imposition of Common Core curriculum, along with SBAC and PARCC testing and the like, has in fact made the gaps between high-achievers and low-achievers wider than ever.”
This is what failure looks like. Watch the excuses come pouring out.
Did Governor Cuomo really broker a deal to unite the Democratic Party and bring the rebel Independent Democratic Caucus back from their alliance with the GOP?
Maybe not.
I just got this appeal from the Working Families Party:
“Well, that was quick.
“Just days after announcing they would “dissolve” their conference, the Independent Democratic Conference is inviting big-money donors to a $5000-a-plate NYC fundraiser for the IDC campaign committee, according to the Buffalo News.1
“Despite promising to immediately return to the Democratic fold, Senator Jeff Klein and the IDC are still raising money from real estate developers and hedge fund billionaires to their own separate campaign committee.
“This is exactly why need to defeat the IDC at the polls and replace them with progressives who we can count on to ALWAYS support a Democratic-Working Families majority in New York’s State Senate.
“Let’s defeat the IDC and Republicans for good and elect Working Families Democrats who we can count on to be part of a durable progressive majority. Chip in $20 to fight back against the hedge fund and real estate billionaires who continue to fund the IDC.
“For years, the Working Families Party has laid it all on the line to elect a Democratic-Working Families majority in the State Senate — and progressive Democrats to Congress — across NY state. But every step of the way, we’ve been stopped by the IDC-Republican alliance.
“We need to make absolutely sure not only that we win this year, but that we do it with candidates who will stand unequivocally with working families, not millionaires and billionaires.
“That’s why we’re proud to be working to elect courageous Working Families Democrats like Alessandra Biaggi, Robert Jackson, Jessica Ramos, Zellnor Myrie, Rachel May, Jasmine Robinson, and John Duane who are running energetic grassroots campaigns challenging IDC incumbents in their home districts.2 These are candidates who would never even THINK of supporting Trump Republicans.
“We need to win these races and others if we want to win a durable Democratic-Working Families majority in Albany. But with IDC members still collecting huge checks from their corporate donors, it’s going to take all of us pitching in to do it.
“Fight back against the hedge fund and real estate billionaires who continue to fund the IDC and Republicans. Chip in $20 to help us elect Working Families Democrats across New York:”
Cynthia Nixon got Governor Cuomo to put on a show of unity.
But once again, like four years ago, his promise did not last.
Who will Cuomo support in the Democratic primaries? The unfaithful IDC or the Democrats supported by the WFP?
The Florida Education Association decries Governor Scott’s efforts to take credit for Florida’s test scores on NAEP. He and his allies in the Legislature have been consistently hostile to public schools and their teachers. Don’t believe the myth of the Florida success story. It is not a model for the nation. The state is consistently in the middle of the pack nationally, as I showed here.
April 10, 2018 CONTACT: Joni Branch, (850) 201-3223 or (850) 544-7055
FEA: Scott doesn’t get the credit for Florida students’ achievements
TALLAHASSEE — Gov. Rick Scott is crowing today about Florida’s results on the just-released 2017 National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP).
Indeed, Florida showed improvement from 2015 to 2017 in fourth-grade math and eighth-grade reading and math. In a larger context, a look at past NAEP reports shows that Florida has just been holding steady since Rick Scott took office, with ups and downs along the way.
Whatever achievements Florida’s students make are no thanks to Rick Scott. The FEA would congratulate instead the people who do the work – teachers, education staff professionals and students – despite all the obstacles put in their path.
To Rick Scott and the Legislature, thanks for:
An ever-worsening shortage of qualified teachers
Teacher pay that lags the national average by $9,000, making it difficult to attract and keep new teachers
Education funding that hasn’t kept pace with inflation, and is still $1,000 below 2007 per-student levels (inflation adjusted)
An increase of just 47 cents per student in the new state budget
Working to weaken public education by channeling tax dollars to unaccountable private schools and charters
“Gov. Scott is trying to spin political gold from assessment results that, over the long term, don’t back him up,” said FEA President Joanne McCall. “But we’re happy to give credit where credit is due, to the teachers, education staff professionals and students who continue to achieve no matter how many roadblocks this administration has put in their way.”
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Mike Petrilli of the conservative Thomas B. Fordham Institute got an early release of the NAEP scores and did a good job of analyzing them.
https://edexcellence.net/articles/naep-2017-americas-lost-decade-of-educational-progress
A cheerleader for testing, accountability, and choice, he has to admit that the overview is bleak.
Minor bright spots, but overall stagnation.
He writes:
“As feared, the new results from the National Assessment of Educational Progress show that national trends are mostly flat. Coming on the heels of some modest declines in 2015, the 2017 scores amount to more bleak news. It’s now been almost a decade since we’ve seen strong growth in either reading or math, with the slight exception of eighth grade reading. There’s no way to sugarcoat these scores; they are extremely disappointing.”
The big gainers appear to be two of the lowest scoring jurisdictions: Mississippi and D.C.
Maureen Downey reports that Georgia’s first virtual charter high school will close. It enrolls some 2,000 at-risk students.
What shallow thinkers (the nicest term that comes to mind) concluded that students who were struggling needed to sit in front of computers, rather than getting the time and attention of a trained professional? Were they trying to cut costs? Surely, the deciders did not have the well-being of the students in mind.
Despite the fact that New York is a blue state, its legislature is divided, and Governor Cuomo likes it that way. The Democratic-controlled State Assembly wants progressive legislation, the Republican State Senate does not. A breakaway group of 8 Democrats (called the Independent Democratic Caucus) has caucused with the Republicans, giving them complete control of the Senate, with perks for the breakaway Democrats who keep the Republicans in power. Cuomo’s support of Republican control of the State Senate protected him from ever having to veto progressive legislation because the State Senate reliably vetoed all progressive legislation, such as a tax on the 1% who finance Cuomo’s campaigns.
Under pressure from Cynthia Nixon’s challenge from his left, Cuomo took a crucial step to unite the New York Democratic Party. After eight years in office, Cuomo persuaded the members of the IDC to support the Democratic Party. As one Democrat said, he is wary and will “sleep with one eye open.” The more that Cuomo protests that Cynthia Nixon had nothing to do with his change of mind, the more it appears that she was the precipitating factor.
Now, State Senator Andrea Stewart-Cousins will lead the Democrats in the Senate and Jeffrey Klein of the IDC will be her deputy. Only a few weeks ago, Cuomo and three other men were writing the state’s sexual harassment policy, excluding Stewart-Cousins; not a woman in the room as the guys determined what sexual harassment is and how to deal with it.
Four years ago, Cuomo promised the Working Families Party to corral the IDC, promised to help Democratic candidates running for the State Senate, got its endorsement, then broke his promise the day after he won the WFP endorsement.
Why is he shifting gears now? Because Cynthia Nixon has called out Cuomo as a phony progressive.
Sadly, control of the State Senate now resides in the hands of one man: State Senator Simcha Felder.
Felder represents the Orthodox Jewish community in Brooklyn. Although nominally a Democrat, Felder caucuses with the Republicans. He makes clear that he is loyal only to the religious group who elected him.
”Without Mr. Felder, who recently held up the state budget for concessions on how yeshivas are overseen by the state, the new Democratic coalition would still be one vote short of a majority. In an interview, Mr. Felder reiterated that he has no loyalty to either party, but rather is looking for the best deal for his district, which includes a large population of Orthodox Jews.”
Felder held up adoption of the state budget, until he got reassurances about the independence of the state’s yeshivas, which enroll a small fraction of the state’s 2.7 million students. The Yeshivas do not want the state to monitor their curriculum, such as, whether they teach English and science. Ironically, the final legislation gives the oversight authority to the States Education Department, which has the power to make and enforce demands.
As the swing vote, Felder now controls the State Senate.
Republicans in Congress have been pushing a bill to promote vouchers for military families by turning federal Impact Aid—which supports public school districts that enroll military children—into “Education Savings Accounts,” debit cards for private and religious schools.
But the major organization representing military families wrote Congressional leaders to oppose the bill.
“The Military Coalition, a consortium of uniformed services and veterans associations representing more than 5.5 million current and former service members and their families and survivors, writes to express our opposition to H.R. 5199, The Education Savings Accounts for Military Families Act. This legislation would divert funding from Impact Aid in order to provide a voucher for military families living in selected school districts.
“The vast majority of the Nation’s nearly 600,000 school-age military children attend public schools in their local civilian communities. Impact Aid is a vital revenue source for many of the schools serving military families, helping to offset lost property tax revenue when a district includes nontaxable federal land such as a military installation. Using Impact Aid dollars to fund Education Savings Accounts (ESAs) for military-connected students would be financially devastating for many school districts, critically compromising the quality of the education they could provide to military children and their civilian classmates.
”Additionally, we note that relatively few military families would be eligible for an ESA under the legislation – and among those that would be eligible, the majority would receive ESA’s of only $2500. No children of service members in the National Guard or Reserves would be eligible. It is counterproductive to defund Impact Aid, a successful program that has long enjoyed bipartisan support, in order to provide a benefit of questionable value to a minority of military students.
”Military families place a high value on the quality of their children’s education. We urge you not to reduce funding to a program critical to ensuring military children receive the best possible education.”
Thank you to our wise and thoughtful military families, who understand the dire consequences of defunding the nation’s public schools.
Tongue planted firmly in cheek, John Merrow questioned Rick Hess’s anguished post about the failure of reform in D.C. under Michelle Rhee and her deputy Kaya Henderson. Hess admitted that “reformers” circled the wagons and refused to listen to naysayers, but he blamed the naysayers for being critical of the fraud and the coverup.
John Merrow spent many hours covering Michelle Rhee as the PBS education correspondent, and it was only at the end of her reign of error that the scales fell from his eyes. But fall they did, and he has since documented the depth of the flimflam that Rhee, Henderson, and their enablers perpetrated.
When Merrow read Hess’ apologia, he reached for the phone to question Rick, but Rick was on a national speaking tour.
The phone at the American Enterprise Institute was answered, Merrow said, by a woman with a French accent.
“I told the young woman that I had the press release in my hand and had hoped to talk with him before he left. I asked her whether he was going to apologize for being wrong about the so-called ‘school reforms’ in Washington, DC?
“Mais non. Monsieur Hess is going to be explaining why everyone of importance got it wrong about Washington. And zen he will explain how to get it right.”
“Hearing that upset me. I told her that a lot of us, including USA Today, Guy Brandenburg, Diane Ravitch, Mary Levy, the Washington City Paper, local politician Mark Simon, and me, got it right about DC. I told her that we have been saying for years that Michelle Rhee and Kaya Henderson were perpetrating a fraud.
“Zen, monsieur,” she said with a provocative giggle, “You must not be of importance, because Monsieur Rick explained it to me very clearly.”
“Tell me about the tour, I said. I see from the press release that The Four Seasons is the tour’s official hotel, NetJet the official airline, and Uber the official means of transportation. Will Rick be visiting schools?
“Oh, I don’t zink so,” she said. “Monsieur Rick, he does not like to be with noisy children. He prefers to talk to old people in auditoriums.”
“Will anyone else be appearing with Rick, I wanted to know? After all, lots of important people were wrong about DC: Arne Duncan, Checker Finn, Richard Whitmire, Campbell Brown, Katherine Bradley, Tom Toch, Andy Rotherham, Mike Petrilli, Whitney Tilson, Kati Haycock, the Washington Post, some major foundations, and others.”
Merrow is a notorious trickster. I suddenly remembered his resignation letter, when he announced that he was leaving PBS to join the board of Pearson. Or was that his April Fools’ letter?
Jan Resseger explains the continued failure of federal education policy.
Growing inequality, poverty, and segregation, especially in urban districts, were addressed by a strategy of testing and choice. At the same time, many states cut spending on education. The strategy had no bearing on the underlying problems.
We now know what doesn’t work: standards, testing, accountability, and choice. Portfolio districts, turnarounds, State takeovers, school closings. These policies, vigorously advocated by Jeb Bush, Arne Duncan, George W. Bush, Barack Obama, and the entire phalanx of so-called “reformers,” have failed. Budget cuts made matters worse.
She writes, in a thoughtful post:
“Bill Mathis and Kevin Welner summarize the way our society responded when, despite widening inequality and growing economic and racial segregation, federal law imposed sanctions and turnarounds on urban public schools: “As policy makers and the courts abandoned desegregation efforts and wealth moved from cities to the suburbs, most of the nation’s major cities developed communities of concentrated poverty, and policy makers gave the school districts serving those cities the task of overcoming the opportunity gaps created by that poverty. Moreover districts were asked to do this with greatly inadequate funding. The nation’s highest poverty school districts receive ten percent lower funding per student while districts serving children of color receive 15 percent less. This approach, of relying on under-resourced urban districts to remedy larger societal inequities, has consistently failed. In response, equity-focused reformers have called for a comprehensive redirection of policy and a serious attempt to address concentrated poverty as a vital companion to school reform. But this would require a major and sustained investment. Avoiding such a commitment, a different approach has therefore been offered: change the governance structure of urban school districts. Proposals such as ‘mayoral control,’ ‘portfolio districts,’ and ‘recovery’ districts (also referred to as ‘takeover’ or ‘achievement’ districts) all fit within this line of attack.” (“The ‘Portfolio’ Approach to School District Governance,” a brief that is part of a 2016 series from the National Education Policy Center, Research-Based Options for Education Policymaking)”
Right now, we must hope that a few members of Congress pay attention and act.
Failing that, we must rely on teachers across the nation to continue to walk out, strike, act in concert, demand increases in investment in education, and an end to failed federal policies.
Diane Ravitch's blog 