Carol Burris, executive director of the Network for Public Education, has fun comparing the boasts of reformers and their response to flat scores on NAEP.
They were so sure that the Common Core and charters would promote dramatic gains in testcscores. But they didn’t.
Read how reformers explain their embarrassment.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
This is really an instant classic in the genre:
https://edexcellence.net/articles/indiana-the-greatest-spectacle-in-education-reform
I wondered how they would explain Indiana because Indiana is a reform paradise. Indiana politicians bought ALL of it. They have vouchers they have unregulated charters they have test cities for “the portfolio approach” (which is identical to “the privatization approach”) and they have utterly abandoned the 90% of students who attend the unfashionable public schools. It’s an ed reform state.
And still. Flat scores. They blame the 3 politicians in that state who still support public schools. Because apparently they cannot succeed unless there is lock step agreement and 100% cheerleading. Any dissenters, at all, and ed reform is ruined.
There should have been more charters, and more vouchers, and the wholesale abandonment of kids in public schools should have been 100% instead of 90%!
THEN it would have worked. They cannot fail. They can only be failed.
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Ed reformers probably aren’t going to be able to “improve public education at scale” as long as they stick to their plan of destroying the schools 90% of children attend.
That won’t work. It isn’t “working” because this movement offers absolutely nothing of value or worth to children in public schools, and much to their horror, 90% of US kids attend the schools they don’t support.
With all the Ivy league degrees one would think this would occur to them, but instead they keep looking for zebras.
They can’t improve “public education” because they don’t support “public schools”.
One would actually have to put some effort towards public schools to improve them. Until that happens they will continue to do harm.
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It’s obviously because of TMDITS (Too Many Doors In The Schoolhouses)
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“The scores are flat!”
The scores are flat!
So, what of that?
Recession’s hit
The scores a bit
The scores are flat!
So what of that?
The test is bad
It’s just a fad
The scores are flat!
So what of that?
It takes some time
For scores to climb
The scores are flat!
So, what of that?
Just wait ten years
And have some beers
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And Betsy DeVos and the chorus of ed reform academics can continue to insist that children don’t attend public schools but instead are solo actors getting an education in some abstract sense but that is not in fact what happens.
They go to public schools. When ed reformers weaken or abandon public schools those students suffer. Their theory is not the reality.
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This is an example of what they wanted, flat scores. These education reformers who have no background in education nor like minorities are instituting what they know will keep people poor, no education and no access. At this rate minorities will be the underclass for the next fifty years. May not like what I am saying but it is the truth and Diane and all the rest of them knows it to be the truth. White people have made plenty of money off of studying the education issues for decades and nothing changes..
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Public schools could start on the road to recovery by not taking advice from ed reformers.
Stop taking advice from people who seek to eradicate your school. That’s permitted. You can hire people who support public schools. That’s an option.
My guess is it will work out better for your students, given that your students attend a public school. There’s no requirement that we hire and pay people who actively lobby against the existence of our childrens’ schools. In fact, that’;s crazy and a bad idea.
We could demand that they not only “support” our childrens’ school in a passive, abstract sense, but we can demand that the people we pay actually contribute something of value. We can insist on that. It’s allowed.
Would a private school hire a bunch of people who oppose private schools? No. They would not. Public schools shouldn’t either. Your schools have value. Act like it.
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“Public schools could start on the road to recovery by not taking advice from ed reformers.”
But yet they all do. Michael Hynes is featured around here so often because he’s one of the few who doesn’t. So why is it that public school administrators are so eager to take advice from ed rephormers? Is it the same reason that so many doctors are so eager to take advice from pharmaceutical reps?
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This is a well reasoned and documented post. Burris went through each reformer’s spin or excuses for the stagnant scores, and she presented evidence to the contrary. She made the deformer talking heads look about as convincing as “just pray away the gay.”
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Just bat away the flat!
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“The things we do for scores” (Parody of the 10cc song, The things we do for love”)
Too many tested kids have fallen by the wayside
Too many tested souls have drifted out to sea
You give your tests and then you pay the price
The things we do for scores, the things we do for scores
Intestication is the problem, not the answer
You’ve got the opt-out but your hand is on the test
The scores have turned and all the scores are down
The things we do for scores, the things we do for scores
Like testing in the rain and the snow
When there’s nowhere to go
And you’re feelin’ like a part of you is dying
And you’re looking for the answer in their eyes
You think you’re gonna throw up
Then you say to take a “make up”
Ooh they made me test you
Ooh they’ve got a way
Ooh they had me crawling up the wall
Like testing in the rain and the snow
When there’s nowhere to go
And you’re feelin’ like a part of you is dying
And you’re looking for the answer in their eyes
You think you’re gonna throw up
Then you say to take a “make up”
A compromise will NEVER help the situation
Agree to torture kids but disagree how much
When after all it’s just a compromise of
The things we do for scores, the things we do for scores
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Part of the problem lies in the ferocious thoughtlessness, better expressed as utter lack of thought, of those calling the shots for corporate education reform.
The numbers & stats generated by high-stakes standardized tests are, in their eyes, irrefutable hard data. Pure gold. The truth, and nothing but the truth, so help them $tudent $ucce$$.
Yet with all this putting their eggs in one basket so to speak—
They have demonstrated over and over and over again that they don’t know anything about what standardized tests are, or what they do or don’t do, or what problems have plagued them since their inception. For example, ask any rheephorm heavyweight what a “construct-irrelevant variance” is or means—
And be prepared for anything from a blank stare to an even blanker stare.
*See Daniel Koretz, MEASURING UP: WHAT EDUCATIONAL TESTING REALLY TELLS US (2008, pp. 221-223).
What they do know is wheeling and dealing, ordering and mandating, swelling their own bank accounts and egos, and the like.
They are clueless by design.
Makes it easier for them to sleep at night…
😎
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