Archives for the month of: May, 2018
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G.F. Brandenburg: More Scandals in D.C. Schools

By dianeravitch
May 13, 2018 //
18

Remember all the hype about the amazing District of Columbia schools, about how they had improved more than any other urban district thanks to the reforms launched by Michelle Rhee and nurtured by her successor Kaya Henderson? Test scores rising, graduation rates soaring.

The hype seems to be unraveling.

An audit in January reported that fully 1/3 of graduating students had not met minimum standards to graduate.

Now, G.F. Brandenburg says that the scandals continue.

He writes:

“Not in my wildest dreams could I make this stuff up about how completely incompetent and criminal is the leadership of DC Public Schools. But these incidents are all reported in today’s Washington Post.

“1. The flagship DC high school for the performing arts, Duke Ellington, was found to have fraudulently given about 30% of its highly-coveted student slots to kids whose families neither lived in DC nor paid out-of-state tuition. Those fraudulent slots of course meant that hundreds of talented DC students were rejected. (Part of the reason for Ellington leaders getting away with this is the overlapping public and private leadership of the school, allowing them to report much less detail to any central authority. Similar to the situation in charter schools here and elsewhere.)

“2. Somebody has fraudulently erased the records of unexcused first-semester absences for a bunch of students at Roosevelt SHS so they would be eligible to graduate. These students had been absent so much that they had received Fs. However, their records now indicate that they had ZERO absences in the first quarter. Teachers reported the erasures but are afraid of reprisals.”

He goes on to describe the seniors at Roosevelt HS, where only 29% are on track to graduate. He points out that 38% of the class dropped out.

D.C. used to be the reformers’ favorite district, after New Orleans. Not so much now.

Categories Accountability, Corporate Reformers, District of Columbia, Education Industry, High School Graduation

Denis Smith: The Unexamined Charter Corruption in Ohio

By dianeravitch
May 12, 2018 //
4

Denis Smith oversaw charter schools when he worked for the Ohio Department of Education. Since he retired, he has documented the numerous instances of corruption that have gone uninvestigated.

The recent collapse of ECOT (Electronic Classroom of Tomorrow), which died while owing the state many millions of dollars for inflated enrollments garnered media attention. But the media ignored the numerous times that legislators accepted expensive gifts of foreign travel paid for by the Gulen charter chain.

Cliff Rosenberger, the powerful Speaker of the House, recently resigned because he had accepted junkets from the payday lending industry.

“Before he left on the series of overseas junkets to China, France, and the UK that sealed his doom, Rosenberger pocketed $36,843 in campaign contributions from ECOT and its founder, William Lager. In 2016, the former speaker served as the commencement speaker for the now-closed charter school in the midst of the Ohio Department of Education audit controversy which ultimately brought down the ECOT empire.

“While all of the current attention about Rosenberger seems to focus on payday lending and foreign travel, there has been zero commentary about a previous all-expense foreign junket the former speaker and several of his fellow Republican legislative colleagues enjoyed just prior to his election as leader of the Ohio House.”

Why is the press alert to the sins of the payday lending lobbyists, but indifferent to the depredations of the charter industry?

Bill Phillis of the Ohio Coalition for Equity and Adequacy read Denis Smith’s article and posed these questions:

“The Speaker of the House resigned under a dark cloud precipitated by overseas junkets funded by the payday lender lobby. So why didn’t the Speaker resign after taking a trip to Turkey funded by the Gulen Islamic charter school lobby? Would the Turkey junket have had influence on the fortunes of the Gulen charter industry?

“But there is more, ECOT provided the former Speaker with $36,843 in campaign contributions plus commencement speaker perks. Would these “benefits” have had an influence on the way the former Speaker handled charter legislation?

“If the Speaker resigned due to payday lender lobby-funded trips, should there not be an investigation of those who have been fed a steady diet of ECOT campaign funds? These funds were laundered from tax money that should have been used for the education of students?”

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

Marc Tucker: “A Nation at Risk” Was Fake News

By dianeravitch
May 12, 2018 //
123

 

In his regular column at Education Week, Marc Tucker cites Anya Kamenetz’s incisive reporting on “A Nation at Risk” and agrees that the report was fake news. The commission agreed in advance that American education was in decline and cherrypicked facts to prove its conclusion. His column is behind a paywall.

Tucker says that achievement was not in decline at the time the report was written. The American people, he says, were lied to. He cites a contemporaneous report by Daniel Koretz, now at Harvard, then at the Congressional Budget Office, which

“showed that there had indeed been a decline, mainly in high school performance, that had begun in the 1960s.  But he reported that this decline ended with the cohort of students that entered school in the late 1960s.  As that cohort wended its way through the grades, they continued to do better than their predecessors, and those that followed also did better.  Further, Koretz reported, the poor and minority students whose test performance was analyzed showed no dip in performance in the period in which the performance of virtually all other students of all ages was falling.

“Put this picture together and you will see that the American people were lied to.  Their children had not been falling off an educational cliff right up to the day the report was released.  Instead, the performance of American students had been doing better and better beginning with the cohort of students who had entered school in the late 1960s, FIFTEEN OR SO YEARS before the panel sounded its famous false alarm.”

Tucker notes that at least one observer thought that “A Nation at Risk” was beneficial, but he does not agree.

”At the end of her story, Kamenetz quotes Jim Guthrie, now a professor at Lynn University, who has held many prominent positions in the American education establishment.  She asked him what he thought about the lack of evidence presented by the authors of the 1983 report. “My view of it, in retrospect,” he says, “is seldom, maybe never, has a public report been so wrong and done so much good.”

“Let us leave aside the question as to whether the end justifies the means to consider, for a moment, whether Guthrie is right.  Is it true that A Nation at Risk has done the United States a world of good?  What’s the evidence for that?

“Once again, there is none.  For as long as there was a long-term version of NAEP (that is the version in which the items in the assessment did not change over time, permitting valid comparisons over the long haul), the scores of high school students changed only very slightly from the 1970s, when the survey was first administered.  The 1970s, you recall, was the decade before A Nation at Risk was released, so this data shows no change in high school performance since the report’s release.   From the time that PISA, the international comparison of student achievement administered by the OECD, was first given in the year 2000, to the present, the scores of U.S. students have been steady to slightly falling, while students in a growing number of other countries have been doing better.  PISA also surveys high school students.  So there is good reason to believe that there has been no improvement in the academic performance of high school students since the release of the report.  Guthrie might have been referring to the maelstrom of “reforms” instituted in the United States since A Nation at Risk was released in 1983, but reform is not improvement, and there has been precious little improvement.”

He writes that the negative tone of the report

“delegitimized the teachers and school administrators in our public schools and ushered in policies based on a profound distrust of the very professionals on whom the improvement of the system would depend.  The subtext of the “reforms” so much admired by Guthrie and his colleagues is the charge that it is the regular public school teachers, their unions and the school administrators who are responsible for the alleged failure of the country’s schools and reform should be about circumventing or at least weakening their control of the system…

“The attitudes toward teachers and teaching, and the actions that flowed from those attitudes, have led to a steep decline in the number of high school students deciding to be teachers, the long slow relative decline in teacher compensation, the early retirement of many capable teachers, the steady decline in the average tenure of school principals and superintendents and the rise in employment of unqualified teachers. William Bennet, President Reagan’s Education Secretary, famously declared school administrators to be “the blob.”  While the United States was busy attacking its education professionals, the countries whose students are now outpacing ours were working hard to raise the status of the profession of teaching by improving compensation, raising standards for entering the profession, creating incentives for the most competent professionals to share their expertise with others and instituting myriad other measures, all of which can be characterized as investing in the profession.  Not one of these countries chose to improve their education system by implicitly attacking the competence and commitment of their education professionals.  A Nation at Risk set the tone and provided the rationale for all of this.”

He adds:

”Kamenetz closed her report with another observation I have made in this space.  She wonders whether, rather than painting a picture in which the report produced important gains in American education despite the failures of American educators, it might be more accurate to paint a picture in which we see American educators succeeding despite the attacks on them stimulated by the report.  In this view of the world, one that I think has a lot of merit, we need to see the steady scores of American high school students since the 1970s as a victory.  Why?  Because they held steady in spite of a substantial increase in the proportion of students living in poverty, recent increases in school segregation by socio-economic status and race, a decrease in the equity of school funding within states and an increase in the spread between teacher compensation and the compensation of others with the same amount of education.“

Tucker closes by saying that our education system needs vast improvement to keep up with a changing world, not by looking to the past, but by looking to a different future to meet new challenges, a future in which all must be well educated.

 

 

Categories Education Reform

Justin Parmenter to N.C. Teachers: Professional Teaching Standards Support Your Right to Speak Out on May 16

By dianeravitch
May 12, 2018 //
2

North Carolina teacher Justin Parmenter says that some districts have resorted to intimidation tactics to discourage teachers from showing up at the State Capitol in Raleigh on May 16.

But, he writes, North Carolina professional standards encourage teachers to act and speak on behalf of improving working conditions for teachers and students.

He writes:

“On the contrary, the North Carolina Professional Teaching Standards actually encourage teachers to be active in their advocacy and work to improve teaching conditions and change policies that negatively impact our profession.

“Take a look at Standard 1 for yourself:

“Teachers lead the teaching profession.

“Teachers strive to improve the teaching profession. They contribute to the establishment of positive working conditions in their school, district, and across the state. They actively participate in and advocate for decision-making structures in education and government that take advantage of the expertise of teachers. Teachers promote professional growth for all educators and collaborate with their colleagues to improve the profession.

“Strive to improve the profession
“Contribute to the establishment of good working conditions
“Participate in decision-making structures
“Promote professional growth”

He recommends that you take a selfie on May 16:

“While you’re at the General Assembly advocating on behalf of your students and colleagues, be sure to get some pictures of yourself. They will serve as useful evidence of your distinguished performance on Standards 1c and 1d.”

Categories Accountability, Education Reform, North Carolina, Resistance, Teachers

E.J. Montini: That 20% Raise for Arizona Teachers Was 100% Bull

By dianeravitch
May 12, 2018 //
16

E.J. Montini, opinion columnist for the Arizona Republic, explains how Governor Doug Ducey pulled a fast one on the teachers who thought they won a promise from him.

“An analysis by The Arizona Republic – based on the state auditor general’s numbers – indicates that 59 school districts wouldn’t get enough money under the law to give all of their teachers the promised raise.

“In other words, that 20 percent pay hike for all teachers was 100 percent bull.

“Sure, some teachers will get raises, but apparently not all of them and not at the level that was promised.

“In addition, the devastating education spending cuts made for years were not reversed. Support staff salaries were not guaranteed an increase. And there was no moratorium on tax cuts.

“If the RedForEd people want to accomplish their goals they’re going to have to do it on their own.

“With a ballot initiative.

“Perhaps it will be one that has been put forth by coalition of teachers, parents and education advocates led by the Center for Economic Progress.

“The plan, called the Invest in Education Act. would increase taxes for individuals earning more than $250,000 a year and couples earning more than $500,000.

“The wealthy prefer a sales tax

“A group of local CEOs, along with the Chamber of Commerce – people who earn that kind of money – would rather place the tax burden for education on our poorest brothers and sisters by boosting the sales tax.

“They’re prepared to spend a ton of money to fight the income tax proposal.

“(They’d rather do that, apparently, than put the money into public education.)”

They will need to collect 150,000 signatures by July 5 to get the proposition on the ballot. A number of groups and faith communities have offered their help. They say it is a moral issue.

“The protesting educators in the RedForEd movement tried to teach that lesson.

“The governor and Legislature failed the exam.

“They’re going to need a make-up test.”

Categories Arizona, Funding, Resistance, Teachers

Peter Greene: Charter Schools Would Have Been A Great Idea, But….

By dianeravitch
May 12, 2018 //
20

Peter Greene has written a post in honor of Charter School Week. He notes that it was designated to conflict with Teacher Appreciation Week, but that strikes him as somehow apt. Charters might have been a good idea, but they fell into the hands of the wrong people, that is, people who wanted to use them to bludgeon and destroy public schools.

When Al Shanker first spelled out the idea of charter schools, he envisioned them as a way to help public schools, sort of like an R&D laboratory, using union teachers to help try out new ideas. That was in 1988. When he saw that business entrepreneurs were taking over, he turned against charters. By 1993, he denounced charters and declared they were no different from vouchers, that they had turned into something far different from his vision, and that they would be used to smash unions and privatize public schools. Yet reformers still like to point to Shanker as their founding father, forgetting that he renounced what his idea had morphed into.

Greene writes:

At first glance, putting Charter School Celebration Week O’Self Congratulations on the same week as Teacher Appreciation Week may seem a bit obnoxious, but I’ve come to see it as sort of appropriate, a symbol of how the charter business competes with public school teachers for resources and attention. Kind of like putting Fight Cancer Week and Celebration of Tobacco on the same calendar dates, it encourages people to see that there’s a fundamental conflict here.

Not that there needs to be. The irony for me is that even though I write extensively about the many ways in which modern charters are detrimental to public education and just plain bad policy, it doesn’t actually have to be that way. Charters could work. Charters could be a great addition to the education landscape. But instead, charter fans have chosen to pursue them in the most destructive, counter-productive manner possible. It’s like a landscaper says, “Your yard would look so much better with some azalea bushes,” and you think that, yeah, they would, but then the landscaper puts the bushes in by ripping holes in the front wall of the house and planting the bushes directly into the water and sewage lines for your home.

So I’m going to celebrate charter week with a little reader of posts that have run here, laying out the ways in which the charter industry has gotten it wrong.

Categories Charter Schools, Competition, Education Industry, Privatization

Watch Jackie Goldberg Take LAUSD Board to the Woodshed!

By dianeravitch
May 11, 2018 //
25

Take 3 minutes and watch this great video of Jackie Goldberg, former president of the LAUSD Board, former member of the State Assembly, give the current board a tongue lashing for not choosing an educator as superintendent. For being “bought and paid for” by the devil.

And to Ref Rodriguez for not having the decency to resign or recuse himself when he is under felony indictment.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jackie_Goldberg

Categories Education Reform, Los Angeles

The Answers, My Friend, Are Blowing in the Wind

By dianeravitch
May 11, 2018 //
9

What happened to the fourth grade test booklets in the Niagara Wheatfield Central School District in New York?

Gone with the wind.

http://www.wivb.com/news/local-news/completed-state-math-tests-blown-away-by-the-wind/1172055747

Thanks to teacher Chris Cerrone

Categories Education Reform

Bill Gates and Mark Zuckerberg Want YOUR Ideas!

By dianeravitch
May 11, 2018 //
49

According to James Shelton and Bob Hughes, respectively of the Chan-Zuckerberg Initiate and the Gates Foundation, they want to hear from you!

They don’t understand why there is such a big gap between research and practice. They don’t see why schools are improving so slowly despite their best efforts.

They write”:

Recent months have thrust some of the education sector’s resource strains into the national spotlight. Across the country, budget constraints in several states have highlighted the difficulty of educating today’s students in crumbling schools, and with decades-old instructional materials. Meanwhile, many educators are struggling to support students through the increasing pressures of poverty, a changing economy, and a demand for higher-level skills. Yet despite these challenges, the education sector spends less than a tenth of the average percentage on research and development across other U.S. industries.

So, get this, despite low teachers’ salaries, despite crumbling buildings, despite funding that has not reached 2008 levels, the real problem is that we are not spending enough on R&D.

Could you help them with some of your ideas?

Here is my idea: When you two multibillionaires come up with a plan to reinvent education, find a willing district to experiment on. Get the consent of the teachers. Listen to them before you start your Big Plan. Don’t impose it on the nation until you can demonstrate that you have tried your Big Plan in one place and worked out the bugs and determined that it helps kids and teachers. Until then, please don’t use the nation as your petri dish. Our children are not your guinea pigs.

Categories Billionaires, Chan-Zuckerberg Initiative, Gates Foundation, Bill Gates

Laura Chapman on the Gates-Zuckerberg Alliance

By dianeravitch
May 11, 2018 //
48

Laura Chapman reviewed the Gates-Zuckerberg alliance and their thoughts about next steps for reformers:

Forget charter schools but not test scores.
Here is where a big pot of money is going next.
“Forget crumbling schools” and “decades old teaching materials.”
That is the wisdom coming from Bob Hughes education leader for the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation and Jim Shelton leader of the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative in education collaborators on a new project: Advanced Research and Development on three areas of interest.

Citing the mediocre NAEP tests scores in math and ELA, these hired hands of billionaires say they want to “meaningfully put more students on paths to success after high school. The truth is that we need to dramatically accelerate learning, and to do that, we need to understand it more deeply in order to design teaching environments and support systems that can deliver much better outcomes”

In addition to completely ignoring the crumbling schools and decades old instructional materials to say nothing of pre-judging teachers are too lethargic and muddled in getting students ready for “success” after high school, these two Quick Draw McGraw data-hungry fans of computers and artificial intelligence want to invest in proofs of the efficacy of their interests in 1. Mathematics, 2. Nonfiction writing, and
3. Executive function (the skill set concerning memory, self-control, attention, and flexible thinking). In the press release and invitation to researchers, each of these topics is presented with a brief rationale for inquiry along with the specific interests of these funders—interests that researchers should address.

The program called: Improving Writing: Developing the Requisite Habits, Skills and Strategies is introduced with some moaning about the low “proficiency” scores in writing on NAEP tests presented in a graph with breakouts for sub-groups. That graph is followed by a 2004 claim from a College Board Report that American companies spend about $3.1 billion annually for “writing remediation.” So, the education funders begin with a misunderstanding of “proficient” on NAEP tests, plus an outdated quote about the cost to businesses of remedial writing. That claim also comes from a dubious source of information, the College Board. Apparently a good reason to teach writing faster and better is to save money for business.

The brief rationale ends with a list of ten topics of interest for funding. Researchers are to address one or more of them. Here are a few:
—-“Support for writing planning – Efficient, technology-enhanced approaches to guide the planning of writing projects, for both teachers and students.”
—-“Intelligent tutoring systems for writing – Support processes (including teacher involvement) to develop narrative, descriptive, expository, and/or persuasive writing models that meet or exceed the impact of 1:1 human tutors.”
—-“Artificial Intelligence – Writing-focused AI that can provide analytics and feedback to teachers and students for context, syntax, sentiment or other analytics to improve writing skills.”
—-“’Learning Engineered’ professional development – Professional development and support for writing instruction that is grounded in evidence-based principles of human learning and motivation. “
—-“Writing mindset and motivation – Developing and measuring positive mindsets and motivation around writing capabilities.”

I conclude that tech-oriented proposals are of great interest and viewed as potentially more perfect, precise, intelligent and efficient (time and cost) than human teachers.

For “Improving Mathematical Understanding, Application, and Related Mindsets” the draft proposal begins in the same way, bemoaning NAEP scores but with the expectation that rapid improvement can be gained by computer-assisted approaches that would scale up practices of the “best 1:1 tutors.”

Ten topics of interest for research are outlined, all reeking with jargon about personalized, actionable, and scalable this and that.
—-“Performance-based measures and analytics – New and novel methods for measuring mastery, both procedural and conceptual, and providing immediate, actionable feedback for students and teachers.”
—-“Intelligent tutoring systems – Highly personalized, engaging math tutoring systems that take a whole-student approach and provide actionable information to students and teachers.”
—-“Artificial intelligence – Includes algorithms to improve personalization and/or real-time feedback to the student, virtual assistant technologies to improve engagement and interactivity with students, and support tools for teachers.”
—-“Technology-enhanced content – Innovative and engaging content to integrate in an intelligent tutoring system including, but not limited to, Augmented Reality, (AR), Virtual Reality (VR), games, comics, lecture, laboratories, etc., together with tools to connect teachers into these activities and student progress within them.”
—-“Neuroscience-based measures – Scalable technologies to provide measures of engagement, attention, and comprehension, delivering actionable information to students and teachers while safeguarding student privacy. “

I judge that the funders intend to pursue biometric monitoring of students with devices that give real-time, immediate, actionable feedback to students and teachers. See for example https://www.edsurge.com/news/2017-10-26-this-company-wants-to-gather-student-brainwave-data-to-measure-engagement

The final area of interest is Measuring and Improving Executive Function (EF). Because there are no NAEP or other test scores for EF, the funders include references for three studies is support of their desire to improve the development of the executive function (EF) in children, students, teachers and other adults. The funders cite some research to claim that skills for EF—working memory, cognitive flexibility, and inhibitory control—if strong in childhood, “predict higher socio-economic status, better physical health, and fewer drug-related problems and criminal convictions in adulthood.”

In my opinion, the research citations (three) allow the funders to sidestep the profound influence of poverty on outcomes, shifting attention instead to initiatives that are “scalable, precise, and effective ways to track progress or kinds of interventions to improve EF; ” and to “affordable cost to implement (solutions)- below current market pricing for existing solutions and attainable at a variety of per-student funding levels.” Should we be surprised that the billionaires want low cost and precise interventions at several tiers of per-student funding?

The specific areas of interest for proposals are presented as
—“Tracking progress of student executive function, PreK-12,” especially with unobtrustive, real-time measures of performance;
—“Student-facing interventions/programs/practices/tools to support EF development and use,” including “Technology-enhanced programs in or outside of school: Games, simulations, or other engaging content paired with teacher and family supports…”
—”Measures of educator EF and environmental EF supports,” including…”scalable, valid and reliable, repeatable, pragmatic measures of … (an) educator’s own EF within student learning contexts;” “Adult capacity to support EF growth in students, and technology-enhanced programs for these.”
—-“Critical field-building research topics, including, EF precursor skills”…such as “autonomy, supportive teaching and caregiving;” neuroscience connections such as “neural underpinnings of EF intervention effects, neural developmental progressions, compensatory pathways vs. EF improvement in the brain” and interactions between EF and other factors (e.g., stress, biology, motivation) toward academic and nonacademic outcomes/behaviors.” WHEW.

I conclude that this last area of interest is intended to increase the use of surveillance systems in classrooms with these devices targeted to capture student behavior and teacher behavior without them being aware of the data-gathering. There is clearly a desire to get data and issue judgments about teachers and adults as more or less competent that technologies in supporting improved EF. Surveillance systems are built into games and mobile technologies. These are also of interest as sources of data for improving EF—self control, delayed gratification, and cognitive flexibility. In addition, the funders have an interest in neurology— a medical understanding of EF and intervention effects, captured with biometric monitoring.

It is worth noting that all of these research interests call for a data-gathering on individual students (and teachers). All three initiatives ask researchers to “ identify ”possible privacy implications and strategies for ensuring the privacy and security of information.” Meanwhile Gates is among many others who are marketing tech-centric personalized learning and leading initiatives to get rid of FERPA constraints for any research intended to improve student outcomes.
Welcome to the brave new world of tech-mediated interventions and hope for “precise” solutions to accelerated learning of the kind these billionaires want to invest in.

Click to access FERPA%20Exceptions_HANDOUT_horizontal_0_0.pdf

http://k12education.gatesfoundation.org/researchanddevelopment/

Categories Chan-Zuckerberg Initiative, Corporate Reformers, Gates Foundation, Bill Gates
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