Archives for the month of: June, 2018
« Older Entries
Newer Entries »

Jeanne Allen Warns: Do Not Watch NBC Charter Exposé Tonight!

By dianeravitch
June 17, 2018 //
26

Jeanne Allen, CEO of the pro-choice, Pro-DeVos Center for Education Reform, does not want you to watch an NBC special tonight on charter schools. Allen’s CER is an outspoken supporter of privatization of public funding and a hyperactive opponent of public schools.

In the following letter, she reports that she warned NBC that its show was based on an article in The Hechinger Report,” which she says is biased against charter schools. Really? It’s been my observation that The Hechinger Report is completely nonpartisan and unbiased on every contentious issue.

Here is the letter that Jeanne (former education analyst for the fringe-right Heritage Foundation), sent to NBC and to her mailing list of thousands.

The Center for Education Reform

RE: NBC’s Charter School Mistake

Dear Friends:

Sunday night, June 17th, NBC News is airing a charter school story that argues charters are increasingly geared to support “white flight.” If the claims weren’t so outlandish and unfounded, it would be laughable.

The producer, who was incredibly open to receiving information countering these allegations, based his report on an analysis performed by the Hechinger Report. In one of the documents CER supplied, we demonstrated Hechinger’s bias against charter schools, as well as the folly of the argument.

Indeed, Hechinger claims to have used NCES data to calculate racial balance in charter schools across the country that justify erroneous claims that increasingly charter schools do not reflect the racial balance of surrounding schools. However, as we pointed out, no researcher can make such statements based on NCES data. One needs at least 4 data points (see link for explanation) and further review, analysis and study, to make any legitimate comparisons.

In the case of the school they use as their prime example, George’s Lake Onocee Academy, originally boundaries were drawn around the school based on a development that was responsible for its existence. The other public schools in the district were failing, and developers wanted to offer a better school to the community. The district was opposed to the creation of the school. And while the boundary no longer exists around that school, local leaders have still fanned the flames of bigotry that Hechinger seized to market the sizzling story to its media partner NBC.

The Hechinger Report journalist then called numerous other states and asked about racial composition of their schools. One might ask why they’d have to call states if they thought they had irrefutable data.

We don’t fault NBC for viewing Hechinger’s work as legitimate or being misled by their data. The thousands of policies, laws and data points that apply to charter school everywhere are complex and require a trained eye and understanding. However, if one is disposed against charters as Hechinger is because they give parents freedom to make choices rather mandate assignment based on artificial factors, then one will make any conclusion that justified their narrative.

Such is the case in this piece which some charter advocates argue is balanced. Regardless of what is said tomorrow night, there is no balance in any piece which starts with the premise that the very reform that created opportunities for millions of children who were failed by the traditional system, and which serve a higher percentage of at risk and minority children, is creating racial imbalance. Indeed, if mandatory assignment by zip code and busing were the answer, we would not have failed students for 3 generations.

All children deserve the education they need to become exceptional adults. The freedom to make that choice is fundamental, as charter schools have shown consistently since 1992.

We hope NBC and other news media will find ways to help the public understand that fact, as well as the enormous need that still exists to bring innovation and opportunity to millions more students trapped in failing schools that Hechinger and its friends in the teachers unions irresponsibility seem determined to defend at all costs, including mis-use of data.

If you’d like to discuss this or any other issue, please call us at 202-750-0012 or drop us a note here.

– Jeanne Allen, Founder & CEO

Categories Accountability, Charter Schools, Education Industry, Media, Privatization, Segregation, Shame

Jan Resseger: Why Did DeVos Overrule Her Staff to Reinstate a Shoddy Accreditor?

By dianeravitch
June 17, 2018 //
7

Jan Resseger writes here about Betsy DeVos’s decision to overrule a strong recommendation from Department career staff and resinstate an accrediting agency with a terrible record.

Before the Obama Department of Education put the Accrediting Council for Independent Colleges and Schools (ACICS) out of business in 2016, ACICS had been instrumental in accrediting a number of unscrupulous, for-profit colleges whose fiscal survival depended on attracting students bringing dollars from federal loans. After ACICS was put out of business by the Obama Department of Education, ACICS filed a lawsuit claiming its record had not been fully examined. In March of this year, a federal judge ruled in favor of the accreditation agency—saying that the Department of Education still needs to consider 36,000 pages of information ACICS submitted that was never considered. On April 3, 2018, after the judge’s ruling, Education Secretary, Betsy DeVos conditionally reapproved ACICS pending further study.

Last Friday, however, DeVos’s department was forced to release an internal report drafted by career staff at the U.S. Department of Education, a report condemning ACICS and recommending that its status as an accreditor be terminated. In April, DeVos ignored this new staff report when she restored—conditionally— the agency’s status. The Chronicle of Higher Education‘s Eric Kelderman explains: “For the second time in less than two years, officials at the U.S. Department of Education have recommended against approving a controversial accrediting agency that primarily oversees for-profit colleges. But their finding may have little effect on the accreditor’s future. Friday evening, the department released a 244-page document advising that the Accrediting Council for Independent Colleges and Schools, known as ACICS, failed to meet nearly 60 federal regulations on accreditation. The analysis is a draft of a report that was meant to be released in May at a hearing scheduled to consider the accreditor’s status. That hearing was cancelled following a judge’s order in a lawsuit filed by the council.”

Advocates have pressured for the release of the Department’s internal draft report, while, of course, ACICS has been trying to block the report’s becoming public. The Wall Street Journal‘s Michelle Hackman explains: “The document was released Friday under the Freedom of Information Act after the Century Foundation… sued the Education Department for initially declining to make it public. ‘It’s no wonder that ACICS and Education Secretary Betsy DeVos didn’t want this report to come out,’ said Alex Elson, a former Obama-era Education Department official whose firm, the National Student Loan Legal Defense Fund, helped sue the department. ‘Clearly, she was well aware that ACICS was getting worse, not better.’ The career staff’s findings could put Mrs. DeVos in a tough position as she weighs whether to allow the accreditor to continue operating.”

Why would DeVos do this?

Does she like accrediting agencies that ignore fraud?

Apparently the answer is yes.

After all, she was an investor in for-profit colleges before she became secretary. Did she divest? Who knows?

Categories Betsy DeVos, For-Profit, Fraud, Higher Education

The Asian-American Lawsuit Against Harvard

By dianeravitch
June 17, 2018 //
101

A group called Students for Fair Admissions is suing Harvard University, claiming that it systematically discriminates against Asian-Americans in its admissions process. The group forced Harvard to release internal documents about its admissions decisions, which showed that Asian-American students were downgraded for personal characteristics even when their test scores and grades were perfect.

Two important principles are clashing in this dispute. On one hand, there is the principle of merit-based admissions. On the other is the practice of affirmative action, weighting the scales to give places to students who are black and Hispanic who might have lower scores but have the ability to succeed at Harvard.

Here are some statistics.

The U.S. population is about 6% Asian, African Americans are 13%, whites are 61%, Hispanics are 18%.

The Harvard class of 2021 is 22% Asian, 14.6% African American, 11.6% Latino, and 2.5% Native American or Pacific Islander.

The goal of Students for Fair Admissions is to eliminate affirmative action and to base admissions entirely on objective statistics. Conservatives have rallied to the cause because they oppose affirmative action.

The dilemma that Harvard and other elite institutions face is they they want to have a diverse student body. If they based admissions solely on tests and grades, their student body would have very few blacks or Hispanics, like New York City’s elite, exam-based high schools, where admission is determined solely by one test score, resulting in student bodies with few black or Hispanic students.

I hope that Harvard prevails, or racial segregation will intensify in executive suites and professions.

Categories Accountability, Education Reform, Testing

Paul Thomas: “Everything You Know Is Wrong”

By dianeravitch
June 17, 2018 //
18

Paul Thomas considers some of the research verities that have recently been exploded, like “the marshmallow test,” “growth mindset,” and “the word gap.”

He might have added “grit” to the list of recently debunked nostrums. Christine Yeh of the University of San Francisco wrote a terrific piece in Education Week last year titled “Forget Grit. Focus on Inequality.” She is right, of course. If a child is hungry, grit won’t fill her tummy. If she is hungry and homeless, grit doesn’t change the objective facts of her life.

He writes:

“It may well be true that everything you know is wrong, but that doesn’t mean it must stay that way. Good intentions and missionary zeal must be replaced by greater philosophical awareness and the sort of skepticism a critical lens provides.

“This is not about fatalism—giving up on research—but about finding a better way forward, one that rejects programs and blanket ideologies and keeps our focus on students and learning along with the promises of formal schooling as a path to equity and justice, not test scores and compliant students.”

It takes courage to think for yourself, especially in a culture that values compliance and conformity.

Categories Courage, Grit

Research: High School Grade Point Average is a Better Predictor of College Success than SAT or ACT

By dianeravitch
June 17, 2018 //
48

There is an emerging consensus among researchers that high school grade point average is a better predictor of success in college than scores on the SAT or ACT.

This appears to be the case for students transitioning directly from high school to college. For those who have delayed admission by a year or more, the tests have a slight advantage in math, not in English. The advantage is very small.

“Among students who delayed college entry, GPA didn’t consistently turn out to be more predictive than standardized exam scores. It depended on the subject and exam. Compared to SAT and ACT scores, GPA was a better predictor for success with college English. But compared to the ACCUPLACER scores, the percentage of the variance in college-level English grades explained by GPA was only one point greater. In math, the percentage of the variance in college-level math grades was just a point higher than the percentage explained by SAT scores. GPA was less predictive of college-level math grades than were ACT and ACCUPLACER scores.”

Given the predictive value of the GPA, there is no advantage for students or colleges in using standardized admissions tests.

Currently, in the competition to gain admission to highly selective colleges, parents spend large sums to pay for test prep. Some spend thousands of dollars. The top tutors command hundreds of dollars per hour, even $1,000 an hour.

To see how crazy this is, read this article by an SAT tutor who commands $1,000 an hour. At first, I thought he was jeopardizing his lucrative gig by this public confession, but by the time I finished reading, I realized he had transitioned into online tutoring, which apparently makes lots of dough and works as well as personal meetings. When confronting a mechanical test, a mechanical prep works well.

He writes:

“Nearly every student who came my way was, apparently, a “bad tester.”

“What do most parents mean when they refer to their children as bad testers?

“Bad tester (n.): A student capable of keeping a 3.9 GPA at a competitive high school while participating in four extracurricular pursuits who is nonetheless incapable of learning the small set of math facts, grammar rules, and strategies necessary to get a high SAT score.

“How is it possible that a student who can ace his trigonometry tests and get an A+ in English can’t apply those same skills to the SAT? On the surface, it seems unlikely. But as I learned, parents and students around the country have been conned into thinking that it’s not only possible but standard.

“The first thing you need to know in order to understand the illegitimacy of this entire concept: The SAT isn’t particularly difficult.

“What do you need for a perfect SAT score? A thorough knowledge of around 110 math rules and 60 grammar rules, familiarity with the test’s format, and the consistent application of about 40 strategies that make each problem a bit easier to solve. If you can string together a coherent essay, that’s a plus…

“Kids are remarkable learners. If we give them the tools they need to study, the belief that they can learn on their own, and the gentle support necessary to encourage the process, they’ll accomplish remarkable things.

“On the other hand, if we put the power of education in the hands of figureheads, externalized structures, and programs that dictate what students are supposed to learn, when, where, and how, American students will continue to flounder.

“I’ve seen what students can do and learn on their own, and I’ve seen how students act when someone else is given the reins. I prefer the former.“

The author is explaining how to prep for the test.

Why take the test when your GPA matters more and shows your persistence over four years?

Even better for students would be to skip the test, save your parents’ money, go to school daily, do the work, and improve your GPA.

Categories Competition, Education Industry, Education Reform, Higher Education, Testing

Henry Giroux: Striking Teachers Fight for Public Education and the Public is With Them

By dianeravitch
June 16, 2018 //
41

Henry Giroux places the recent wave of teacher strikes in historical perspective. The teachers are fighting a battle on behalf of the public good against an assault by reactionary neoliberalism.

He writes:

“The power of collective resistance is being mounted in full force against a neoliberal logic that unabashedly insists that the rule of the market is more important than the needs of teachers, students, young people, the poor and those deemed disposable by those with power in our society. Teachers are tired of being relentless victims of a casino capitalism in which they and their students are treated with little respect, dignity and value. They have had enough of corrupt politicians, hedge fund managers and civically illiterate pundits seduced by the power of the corporate and political demagogues who are waging a war on critical teaching, critical pedagogy and the creativity and autonomy of classroom teachers.

“Since the 1980s, an extreme form of capitalism — or what in the current moment I want to call neoliberal fascism — has waged a war against public education and all vestiges of the common good and social contract. In addition, this is a war rooted in class and gender discrimination — one that deskills teachers, exploits their labor and bears down particularly hard on women, who make up a dominant segment of the teaching force. In doing so, it not only undermines schooling as a public good, but also weaponizes and weakens the formative cultures, values and social relations that enable schools to create the conditions for students to become critical and engaged citizens.

“Schools have been underfunded, increasingly privatized and turned into testing factories that deliver poor students of color to the violence of the school-to-prison pipeline. Moreover, they have also been restructured in order to weaken unions, subject teachers to horrendous working conditions and expose students to overcrowded classrooms. In some cases, the dire working environment and dilapidated conditions of schools and classrooms appear incomprehensible in the richest nation in the world…

“Moreover, as state and corporate violence engulfs the entire society, schools have been subject to forms of extreme violence that in the past existed exclusively outside of their doors. Under such circumstances, youth are increasingly viewed as suspects and are targeted both by a gun culture that places profits above student lives and by a neoliberal machinery of cruelty, misery and violence dedicated to widespread educational failure. Instead of imbuing students with a sense of ethical and social responsibility while preparing them for a life of social and economic mobility, public schools have been converted into high-tech security spheres whose defining principles are fear, uncertainty and anxiety. In this view, a corporate vision of the U.S. has reduced the culture of schooling to the culture of business and an armed camp, and in doing so, imposed a real and symbolic threat of violence on schools, teachers and students. As such, thinking has become the enemy of freedom, and profits have become more important than human lives…

“Rejecting the idea that education is a commodity to be bought and sold, teachers and students across the country are reclaiming education as a public good and a human right, a protective space that should be free of violence and open to critical teaching and learning. Not only is it a place to think, engage in critical dialogue, encourage human potential and contribute to the vibrancy of a democratic polity, it is also a place in which the social flourishes, in that students and teachers learn to think and act together.”

Categories ALEC, Betsy DeVos, Billionaires, Corporate Reform, Courage, Democracy, Education Reform

National Education Policy Center: Another Phony Report on Teacher Prep by NCTQ

By dianeravitch
June 16, 2018 //
21

The National Council on Teacher Quality is a conservative group created to make professional teacher education look bad. I was on the board of the Thomas B. Fordham Foundation when it was started. It floundered a while, then got a $5 Million Grant from then-Secretary of Education Rod Paige to get its act together. It has done that. Now it is Gates-funded and is a darling of reformers, who yearn to replace the teaching profession with TFA temps and screen time.

Now the NCTQ has made itself the arbiter of “Standards” for teacher education, despite its lack of qualifications. It isssues an annual report for the media, informing them that very very few institutions meet their standards. Some major media take their ratings seriously, never asking who they are and how they have the chutzpah to rate every ed school in the nation, without bothering to visit any campuses. Linda Darling-Hammond described their first report stating that it was like a colllecyion of restaurant reviews based on menus, not on visits and tastings.

The National Education Policy Center reviewed the latest NCTQ report:

BOULDER, CO— The National Council on Teacher Quality (NCTQ) recently released its 2018 Teacher Prep Review. The report examines whether U.S. teacher preparation programs are aligned with NCTQ’s standards. This alignment, the report insists, will produce teachers “not only ready to achieve individual successes, but also [ready] to start a broader movement toward increased student learning and proficiency.”

The NCTQ report regularly garners generally credulous coverage from media outlets, including this year from Education Week and The Atlanta Journal-Constitution.

Marilyn Cochran-Smith of Boston College, Elizabeth Stringer Keefe of Lesley University, Wen-Chia Chang of Boston College, and Molly Cummings Carney of Boston College reviewed the report for NEPC. The reviewers are all members of Project TEER (Teacher Education and Education Reform), a group of teacher education scholars and practitioners who have been studying U.S. teacher education in the context of larger reform movements since 2014. Their review found the report to have multiple logical, conceptual, and methodological flaws.

The report determines that most teacher preparation programs are not aligned with the NCTQ standards. Accordingly, it finds “severe structural problems with both graduate and alternative route programs that should make anyone considering them cautious.”

However, the report’s rationale includes widely critiqued assumptions about the nature of teaching, learning, and teacher credentials. Its methodology, which employs a highly questionable documents-only evaluation system, is a maze of inconsistencies, ambiguities, and contradictions. Further, the report ignores accumulating evidence that there is little relationship between the NCTQ’s ratings of a program and its graduates’ later classroom performance.
Finally, the report fails to substantively account for broad shifts in the field of teacher education that are nuanced, hybridized, and dynamic. It also exacerbates the dysfunctional dichotomy between university programs and alternative routes. For years now, researchers and analysts have pointed out that this distinction is not very useful, given that there is as much or more variation within these categories as between them. Ultimately, the report offers little guidance for policymakers, practitioners, or the general public.

Find the review, by Marilyn Cochran-Smith, Elizabeth Stringer Keefe, Wen-Chia Chang, and Molly Cummings Carney, at:
http://nepc.colorado.edu/thinktank/review-teacher-prep-2018

Find 2018 Teacher Prep Review, written by Robert Rickenbrode, Graham Drake, Laura Pomerance, and Kate Walsh and published by the National Council on Teacher Quality, at:
https://www.nctq.org/dmsView/2018_Teacher_Prep_Review_733174

Categories Education Reform, National Council on Teacher Quality (NCTQ), National Education Policy Center, Teacher Education

Jesse Hagopian: Seattle Teachers Vote for Moratorium on All Standardized Tests

By dianeravitch
June 16, 2018 //
23

Jesse Hagopian, star teacher and organizer, reports that the Seattle Education Association voted for a moratorium on all standardized testing.

This is a stellar example of teachers taking control of their profession and their classrooms. They are wresting control from uninformed legislators and the greedy testing industry, as well as Congress, which heedlessly imposes mandates without a clue about the damage they do to children, teachers, and education.

He writes:

I am bursting with pride for my union.

The Seattle Education Association voted at this week’s Representative Assembly to support a resolution calling for a moratorium on all standardized testing! This vote comes in a long line of organizing and opposition to high-stakes testing in Seattle.

In 2013, the teachers at Garfield High School voted unanimously to refuse to administer the MAP test. The boycott spread to several other schools in Seattle. When the superintendent threatened the boycotting teachers with a 10 day suspension without pay, non of the teachers backed down. At the end of the year, because of the overwhelming solidarity from parents, teachers, and students around the country, not only were no teachers disciplined, but the superintendent announced that the MAP test would no longer be required for Seattle’s high schools. In the subsequent years we have seen the movement continue to develop with Nathan Hale High School achieving a 100% opt out rate of the junior class of the Smarter Balanced test in 2015, with some 60,000 families opting their kids out of the common core test around Washington State.

whats-wrong-w-standardized-tests-infographic

Despite these heroic efforts to stand up to the testocracy, they are still trying to reduce teaching a learning to a score and use that score to punish students. Thousands of students will not graduate from high school across Washington State simply because they didn’t pass the common core test. The average student in the public schools in the U.S. takes an outlandish 112 standardized tests in the K-12 career–forcing teachers to teach to the test, rather than teach to the student. Study after study has reveled that these tests are a better measure of family income that aptitude. These test measure resources and your proximity to the dominant culture, negatively impacting English Language Learners, special education students, students of color, and low income students.

For all these reasons and more, my colleague Jeff Treistman, introduced a New Business Item (NBI) to bring before the Seattle Education Association this week to consider taking a bold stance against the outrageous over testing of students. Below is a short statement from Jeff explaining his reasoning behind the successful resolution, and gives us the language of the NBI. It is my sincere hope that the Seattle School Board heeds this resolution and moves to implement a “two year moratorium on all standardized testing, at the district, state, and federal levels and to open a public forum along with Seattle Public Schools on the best way to assess our students.”

Continue reading for the statement of Jeff Treistman, who introduced the resolution, as well as the text of the resolution.

Categories Accountability, Education Reform, Resistance, Seattle, Standardized Testing

North Carolina and the Hypocrisy of Test Scores

By dianeravitch
June 16, 2018 //
9

The North Carolina General Assembly believes that the only thing that matters in judging the quality of a school is its test scores. As teacher Justin Parmenter explains here, public schools are graded solely by their test scores. The grades accurately reflect the income level of the families enrolled. The state could save money by just checking family income instead of giving tests.

But wait! For voucher schools, test scores don’t matter. Voucher schools, most of which are evangelical, are not required to take the state tests.

Why? The General Assembly is afraid of seeing the results.

Maybe if the scores showed that the voucher schools are failing, they would have to send the kids back to public schools, where they would have certified teachers who have passed criminal background checks.

Hypocrites.

Categories Education Reform, North Carolina, Privatization, Testing, Vouchers

Arkansas: Walton-Funded School Board Refuses to Buy New Science Textbooks

By dianeravitch
June 16, 2018 //
21

The Walton family, which controls most of Arkansas, invested in the purchase of the Pulaski County School Board. At a recent meeting, the board voted 3-2 NOT to purchase new science textbooks to replace obsolete ones. The majority said the district could not afford the $1 million cost, even if stretched out over three years.

The School Board for the Pulaski County Special School District voted 4-2 Tuesday against the immediate purchase of new science textbooks to replace books that are more than a decade old and do not match the state’s new science standards or the district’s science curriculum.

A committee of district teachers, school administrators and others had recommended earlier this year that the district purchase new science books for kindergarten-through-12th grades.

Jennifer Beasley, science program administrator for the district, returned to the board Tuesday with that recommendation but at a newly discounted cost of slightly more than $1 million, and with an alternative option that would spread the purchase of the new science books over three years.

In the first year of the three-year plan, classroom sets of textbooks and digital subscriptions to those books would be purchased for high schools at a maximum cost of $409,544.

Textbooks for middle schools would then be purchased for the 2019-20 school year and for the elementary schools in the following year.

“The committee’s rationale for allowing the high schools to be first to adopt books was that all of our high schools have a D on the state report card,” Beasley told the board, “and committee members agreed it is important for students and teachers to have resources aligned to the new standards.”

The high schools will be teaching to the new state science standards for the first time in this coming school year. The elementary schools incorporated the new standards in the previous two years, Beasley said, and the elementary teachers feel they are better prepared to continue with the instructional materials and lessons they’ve developed. Additionally, the elementary schools typically earned A’s and B’s on the state report card.

The Walton members should have asked their patrons to help out.

Categories Arkansas, Curriculum, Funding, Science, Walton Foundation
« Older Entries
Newer Entries »