Rick Hess and Michael McShane of the AMERICAN Enterprise Institute bring a fresh perspective from their perch on the right. Writing in the conservative journal Education Next, they speculate on the reasons for the disappointing results of No Child Left Behind and Race to the Top, the twin policies of Bush and Obama.
Policy makers in Washington loved the ideas of testing, accountability, choice, and national standards. Yet, we now know that these policies were controversial and ultimately ineffective. NAEP scores flatlined, and there is little or no evidence that these policies succeeded.
They write:
“Within a few years, though, those Obama administration efforts—especially its support for teacher evaluation and the Common Core state standards—would themselves turn controversial, breeding backlash that rivaled the dissatisfaction with NCLB. Obama’s reforms would get mired in bitter debates about their emphasis on test scores and whether they constituted federal overreach.
“The results of all this activity were decidedly mixed. There’s some evidence that NCLB’s accountability push led to modest test score gains, at least early on (though one can reasonably ask how much of those gains was evidence of schools “getting better” and how much might have been due to teachers shifting time and energy from other subjects to reading and math instruction). Over the past decade, however, the National Assessment of Educational Progress has shown an unprecedented flat-lining of achievement growth. Research suggests that ambitious efforts to remake teacher evaluation did not lead to meaningful changes in how candidly teachers are actually evaluated, and that the $7 billion in the federal School Improvement Grant program did not, on average, improve achievement in participating schools. The Common Core and many of these other efforts may yield benefits down the road, but the results have certainly not been revolutionary and are widely perceived to be disappointing.
“This brief recap prompts a simple query: What happened? Why did each of these initially promising, seemingly popular efforts at federal leadership ultimately lose its luster? Were the high-profile initiatives of the Bush-Obama years a much-needed kick-start that forced America to get serious about school improvement, or a recipe for slipshod policymaking and rushed implementation that ultimately undermined reform? Did these reforms reflect a gutsy commitment to putting students first or political gamesmanship that yielded a counterproductive series of distracting mandates?”
There is no reason to believe that the latest version of these policies—the Every Students Succeeds Act—Will fare any differently.
Most of our politicians are out of touch with reality (they are mired).
Forget the American Enterprise Institute’s opinioning about failed policies and neglect of all the collateral damage to public education those opinions, embedded in policies, have caused.
Here is some great news for the day.
https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2018/10/4/1801555/-Some-good-news-Rev-William-Barber-gets-a-MacArthur-genius-grant?detail=emaildkre
“This brief recap prompts a simple query: What happened? ………Bill Gates.(and Arne Duncan)
Reblogged this on David R. Taylor-Thoughts on Education.
“The Common Core and many of these other efforts may yield benefits down the road…”
Really? How many years will it take and how much damage is supposed to occur before it is finally labeled a complete disaster?
Well at least ten years according to the education guru Gates.
And that’s ten years too long! On top of the previous 5-10 years of really bad policy! So much wasted time for many children. We now have “A Nation At Risk”…maybe that was the intention all along? All I have to say is that the generation of children most affected will be tending to the maladies of the aging reformer population. Karma is a _itch!
And we shouldn’t have to wait 10 years. 8 years in, and it’s already proven to be a sham (for those, unlike us, that thought CCSS would work).
And my students coming to me with dubious “skills” and NO CONTENT AT ALL are a demonstration of the disaster this has all been.
GET RID OF REFORM!!!! LET US TEACH OUR STUDENTS.
This seems like the perfect place for the saying, “There are none so blind as those who will not see.”
NCLB and test based accountability failed because they were based on false assumptions. They were based on the notion that teachers were responsible for students’ test scores and that teachers were inept at their job. These initiatives were also based on the belief that standardization and higher test scores would result in better outcomes for students. The whole design of the CCSS and NCLB were top down high stakes testing with punitive results for those that failed to reach specific benchmarks.
The main problem with these problems is that there is no evidence that shows that standardized testing will result in higher achieving students. Testing is a feeble attempt at measuring, and it is not a program. Real change occurs from the bottom up, not from the top down. Not only have NCLB and CCSS failed, they have cause considerable damage to students that have been over tested and have been subjected to a narrowing of the curriculum. Learning is not just skills. It is also content.
“Real change occurs from the bottom up, not from the top down.” — Unless you mean a revolution, no. And even in revolutions the leaders are usually from a privileged class because they have luxury of time and wealth to think and plan and write proclamations.
Sadly too true: in endlessly invaded big city districts so many well-intentioned “leaders” against school reform have little honest idea of what the kids/teachers inside poorest schools honestly need. Meaning well (and then imposing hands-off theory) and actually doing what is honestly needed are seldom partners.
True enough, BA. We are studying this week about the Latin American Revolutions, led by the Creoles, mostly wealthy people like Bolivar.
BA: now that I have time: I would add that revolutions usually get out of control due to the expectations of the under classes who have the most to gain by any real change. This always scares the original revolutionaries and you witness what Craine Brintion called a Thermidorian Reaction, so named for the arrest of Robespierre on the ninth Thermidor.
An odd sort of revolution started sort of bottom up when a conspiracy to separate Mexico from Spain was hijacked by the cry of Dolores, led by a priest who believed in the common man (Miguel Hidalgo). It was quite messy, as are most revolutions, and ended bad with many people getting killed and years of civil war and distrust of the common people. Modern Mexico still celebrates Grito de Delores as the birth of their country. Modern Mexico would seem to have other reasons to cry.
“The results of all this activity were decidedly mixed.”
Um, no, the results decidedly NOT been “mixed”. They’ve been universally terrible. The only thing that test-based “accountability” has improved is kids’ ability to take standardized tests (and that only marginally).
Amen!
Hess & McShane conveniently ignore their own roles in this 2 decade fiasco. Hess was one of NCLB & RttT’s loudest cheerleaders. I have serious doubts the mandates he so enthusiastically embraced 20 years ago were ever intended to work for children or teachers but a means to an end.
Privatizing public-ed was and is AEI’s mission. Now that their test based accountability is so unpopular AEI needs a new tool to undermine teachers and public schools.
I’m so sick of the rank dishonesty of reformers like Hess & corporate funded think-tanks like AEI. It’s their own self-serving institutions that need some creative destruction and the inevitable mass firings that accompany its application. That’s real accountability.
Why didn’t test-and-punish work?
Because they never asked WHY marginal or low functioning students were struggling to succeed. They simply(and incorrectly) assumed that it had to be low standards and/or ineffective teachers. Nearly two decades of FAILURE to budge the achievement needle shows them just how wrong they were.
And they ignored thousands of very successful schools and millions of very successful students (and their parents) who proved that it had nothing to do with low standards or ineffective teachers.
Problem was, no one can legislate brain wiring, parental support, or luck of the draw.
You wrote:
“Why didn’t test-and-punish work?”
Because for all the after-the-fact seemingly reasonable cautions and caveats, the “brains” behind corporate education reform still don’t and won’t engage in the kind of genuine self-reflection based on real world facts that would lead to a useful and morally sound type of self-correction.
All in for testing-and-punishing? Putting the profit motive at the heart of all the significant reform efforts? Applying worst business principles [like MBO = Management By Objective, i.e., numbers & stats] to education?
Now there’s a recipe, for any “stable genius” committed to rheephorm, for $tudent $ucce$$ and the swelling of egos and authority.
And, every now and then, take a brief time out from all the ideas and practices you and your rheephorm buddies have actually pursued and pushed in order to write the kind of critiques highlighted in the posting.
You can get compensated for that too.
For the few, it’s a proven formula for success. For the rest of us, the vast majority, not so much…
😎
The money quote: “And, every now and then, take a brief time out from all the ideas and practices you and your rheephorm buddies have actually pursued and pushed in order to write the kind of critiques highlighted in the posting.”
Test Score Flag…
“I pledge allegiance to the test score Flag of the Divided States of America, and to the social order for which it stands, one delusion, under Fog, divisible, with meritocracy and injustice for all.”
NAEP scores flatlined…
NCLB’s accountability push led to modest test score gains…
Yep, gotta have a standard, eh. Stand up straight and salute the standard.
Zackly…
“For “them”, to
destroy the flag is to destroy the social order it represents, and thus to destroy their
identity within that order.” N.W.
Read the piece. McShane and Hess are still trying to put lipstick on a pig.
Their first point regarding ancillary benefits is pure garbage. Their primary “benefit” was increased data transparency systems. All I see is an effort to affect the data through strategy rather than attempt to encourage more authentic learning. We engage in systems (like Readers Apprenticeship) that are purely for test prep. Why? To improve the data!
Their examples of direct action to spur changes didn’t even spur positive changes. Lifting the cap on charter schools? Using data in teacher evaluations? Annual state testing systems? Can even McShane or Hess suggest that those changes have borne significant, ripe fruit?
Lastly, their final point is the old “bad implementation” argument. Poor ideas fail even if implemented well.
Interestingly and tellingly, no reflection on the exclusion of teachers from contributing to education policy.
I’d say that McShane and Hess only learned how to drive their policy ideas forward. Their bad policy ideas. This wasn’t a reflection on the actual policies. But on how to move policies forward in the future.
What a garbage article.
Read the piece. McShane and Hess are still trying to put lipstick on a pig.
Their first point regarding ancillary benefits is pure garbage. Their primary “benefit” was increased data transparency systems. All I see is an effort to affect the data through strategy rather than attempt to encourage more authentic learning. We engage in systems (like Readers Apprenticeship) that are purely for test prep. Why? To improve the data!
Their examples of direct action to spur changes didn’t even spur positive changes. Lifting the cap on charter schools? Using data in teacher evaluations? Annual state testing systems? Can even McShane or Hess suggest that those changes have borne significant, ripe fruit?
Lastly, their final point is the old “bad implementation” argument. Poor ideas fail even if implemented well.
Interestingly and tellingly, no reflection on the exclusion of teachers from contributing to education policy.
I’d say that McShane and Hess only learned how to drive their policy ideas forward. Their bad policy ideas. This wasn’t a reflection on the actual policies. But on how to move policies forward in the future.
What a garbage article.
Garbage is right. Hess is so busy pandering to the bankers he forgets there are real people who remember his role in ruining their lives.
Another reason test-based accountability “failed” (failed in its stated purposed; succeeded admirably in its true purposes of undermining democracy and transferring public wealth into private hands) is that all tests are inherently normed, not criteria-based. Yes, yes, many claim to be criteria-based, but we all know that tests are carefully designed to produce a bell curve. There will always be 50% of students in the bottom half. Even if the actual scores improve, they just move the cut score or in some way change up the test to make it “harder” so the scores will go back to where they’re “supposed” to be. It’s a shell game.
“Drawing on the extensive and fascinating analyses that comprise the volume, here are four insights from the Bush-Obama years that should inform our thinking in the years ahead.
Significant advances are often ancillary to what reforms were originally meant to accomplish.
2.Politically dictated timelines are frequently at odds with educational timelines.
Incentives are most effective when success is straightforward and much less effective when the goal is to spur complex changes.
Once reforms gain momentum, it can be hard to course-correct.”
Nah, Rick, what should inform our thinking is get the deformers and privateers the hell away from the teaching and learning process and let the professionals, the teachers determine what needs to be done in their classrooms. All the bad policies and malpractices that deformers like Hess and McShane so heartily endorsed and cheered on were known by the teachers to be wrong and harmful to the students. (Sadly, they implemented them anyway-can you say GAGA?) Deformers like Hess and McShane know very little about the actual teaching and learning process that goes on in K-12 schools-neither have ever taught in a public K-12 school. Why the hell should we listen to them again–Fool me once. . . Fool me twice-NOT!
Hess and McShane also write, importantly:
“Education, after all, suffers from a curious malady. It is a field marked by passionate commitment, urgency, and high hopes. These are wonderful things. But they have also left many policymakers, reformers, philanthropists, and system leaders inclined to look always forward, confident that the next program or reform will be the one that delivers for kids. This assurance is an admirable quality, a healthy and wholly American optimism. But it can leave us lacking in perspective or understanding. As today’s researchers have become increasingly intent on determining ‘what works,’ they’ve had less time to ask what we might learn from what has been tried. Indeed, we’re struck by how often, in talking about this volume, we’ve heard versions of ‘we need to focus on what’s ahead and not rehash what’s behind.’
Then they wrap up with:
“This reluctance to look back comes at a steep price. As a result, we tend to do a poor job of learning from the missteps and miscalculations that have gone before. Advocates imagine that they are pioneering approaches to turning around troubled schools when they may be revisiting strategies that have previously disappointed. Experience winds up being dismissed as negativity, and hard-earned lessons get lost along the way. So long as this is the case, school reformers are unlikely to see their efforts deliver the desired results. In that spirit, our hope is that our forthcoming volume, if only in a small way, can help.”
Translating through a Deming’s lens, all it amounts to is executing ambitious Plan-Do cycles, one right after another, so learning nothing between cycles. Lacking is Study of results for Acting on whether to implement the plan, revise the plan, or discard the plan and try a new one. In short, Plan-Do-Study-Act, a learning cycle.
“Reformers” never get to the evaluation phase of their initiatives which is an essential part of the process. They simply move on to the next market based idea which they claim is fantastic, and try to impose it on public schools. Schools need to realize that they should do what is best for students and resist spending lots of money jumping on another bandwagon that will likely be another costly failure.
It’s not just Reformers who are guilty of bandwagon-ism. 99% of educators are equally guilty.
But Laurene Powell-Jobs will save us!
Fordham will never be held accountable in the state of Ohio.
And Fordham’s buddies in the Center for American Progress will never be held responsible for causing the loss of the Democratic presidential candidate.
in our district there is now an identifiable pattern which is exactly as your write it here: invade, suck up money, have “public” meetings with zero intent of responding, move on to the next invasion
It wasn’t failure to evaluate the effectiveness of their plan (standards-based, test-and-shame) it was the failure to accurately assess the “cause” or the “effect”. They were clueless or willfully disregarded the first step in problem solving – understanding the problem.
They wonder why teacher-improvement efforts didn’t work. Hmm, could it have something to do with the fact that they simultaneously mandated bad teaching? Teaching to the Common Core tests is bad teaching.
There is also evidence that Bill Clinton, G. W. Bush, and Obama were all the same person. How could that be, you might ask? Well, that one person who was three presidents must be a shapeshifter.
Donald Trump, no matter his many, many flaws, might be the first president in the last twenty-five years to not be the same shapeshifter.
“Over the past decade, however, the National Assessment of Educational Progress has shown an unprecedented flat-lining of achievement growth.” — which is just fine if it flatlines at some decent level. This country is built on the idea that a business must always grow, if it does not grow than it dies. With this approach we are now burning up the planet. We cannot expand infinitely like the Universe. The same measurement is used for education – the growth has stopped, they cry. SO WHAT? You cannot get more than 100% of anything… well, maybe during the war time you can. Bush’s idea of 100% proficiency was as preposterous as the idea of constant growth. The problem is not in flat-lining, it is the level at which this line has flattened, and this level is abysmally low. At least NCLB made clear that phonics is the preferred way to teach reading, great scott, it took half a century to do that.
“Research suggests that ambitious efforts to remake teacher evaluation did not lead to meaningful changes in how candidly teachers are actually evaluated, …”
Is this suggesting that teacher evaluations were not really rooting out the poor teachers? It seems to me that this report refuses to admit that the reason all this reform failed was that they attacked the wrong problem. It was not bad teachers, it was society itself.
AEI sacrifices democracy and truth for the rich johns who pay them, just like the Center for American Progress.
The Philanthropy Roundtable article, “Don’t surrender the academy”, written by AEI and a Gates funded employee shows us American authoritarianism/oligarchy in education.
Gates defined his plot, in the words of Kim Smith, “Our goal is to develop charter management organization that produce a diverse supply of different brands on a large scale”. All of the reform baggage was a means to an end- big box education.
Arne, it seems, has stopped trying to sell his book/his idea of “How Schools Work” (i.e., because he has no such idea), & is now on to moving about the Chicago area (specifically, Winnetka) lecturing on how to stop violence in Chicago.
Yeah, this man is gearing up for a future political run…
In other Chicago news (specifically Joravsky in The Reader & on Progressive Talk Radio), he’s talking about how Rahm has been backtracking RE: his treatment of/thoughts on CPS teachers (should’ve paid them more, etc.), & that many mayoral candidates painting teachers in a good light, & not in favor of charters (Toni Preckwinkle, being a former CPS History Teacher, would most certainly be one of them, as would Troy LaRaviere, of course). However, Joravsky also places Paul Vallas into this category (of course, Vallas is going to take this stance, even after he has wreaked havoc on New Orleans & Philadelphia).
Chicago & Chicago area blog readers (& those of you w/friends & relatives who live here), please make them all aware of the bigger picture RE: Vallas & Duncan.
We know who they really are & what they stand for…& it’s not for the greater good of public school communities & children.
Rahm is DFER’s boy. DFER has been described as a sister to the Center for American Progress. CAP’s recurring theme in many of its papers this year has been instructional materials have greater impact than teacher quality. CAP’s papers quote dubious research from “experts” who are donor class-funded e.g. Arnold. CAP hides the corporate agenda with window dressing like, “teachers should be paid more”. I presume CAP’s recommendation that advertising on buses, generate needed money for school expenses, in lieu of taxes, appeased corporate sponsors and guaranteed no money for higher teacher salaries. IMO, Podesta’s CAP is one of the most Machiavellian groups in the U.S. (1) Arne and King’s chief of staff is a CAP Fellow. (2) CAP got $2 mil. from Gates. (3) CAP’s board includes a co-partner in Bain Capital (“Bain Capital spends big on charter schools”). (4) An exchange of money between CAP and Fordham occurred in 2013, according to Fordham-posted 2013 tax returns.
No doubt CAP is on the, “respect teachers”, bandwagon while they do everything but that.
I am truly worried that we have an entire generation of unskilled, uneducated young people coming up the pike.
The lack of knowledge, and worse, the lack of any desire to learn, that I see in my students, is heartbreaking to me, and it gets worse every year.
I DO NOT blame the teachers or students or parents in this equation. I blame the “leaders–” of schools, of districts, of states, of “reformers,” and of the federal government, who have shorn the term “education” of all of its meaning, and simply want to pass the buck to teachers, and no one else.
I fear for this generation and fear for our nation.