Rob Levine, a Resistance-to-Privatization blogger in Minneapolis, reports here on the failure of the Bush Foundation’s bold “teacher effectiveness” initiative, which cost $45 million. All wasted.
The foundation set bold goals. It did not meet any of them.
Levine writes:
Ten years ago the St Paul-based Bush Foundation embarked on what was at the time its most expensive and ambitious project ever: a 10-year, $45 million effort called the Teacher Effectiveness Initiative (TEI). The advent of the TEI coincided with the implementation of a new operating model at the foundation. Beginning in 2009 it would mostly would run its own programs, focusing on three main areas: .
- “developing courageous leaders and engaging communities in solving problems”
- “…supporting the self-determination of Native nations”
- “…increasing the educational achievement of all students”
Bush foundation president Peter Hutchinson told a news conference that the initiative would “increase by 50 percent the number of students in Minnesota, North Dakota and South Dakota who go to college.”
The Teacher Effectiveness Initiative was the foundation’s real-world application of its broad educational philosophy. Peter Hutchinson, the foundation’s president at the time, told a news conference announcing the plan that the initiative would “increase by 50 percent the number of students in Minnesota, North Dakota and South Dakota who go to college.” How was this miraculous achievement to be done? By “[enabling] the redesign of teacher-preparation programs” at a range of higher educational institutions where teachers are educated in the three-state area.
The foundation also said that, through “Consistent, effective teaching” it would “close the achievement gap.” It would achieve these goals by “producing 25,000 new, effective teachers by 2018.”
Not only was the Bush Foundation going to do all these things, but they would prove it with metrics. It contracted with an organization called the Value Added Research Center (VARC) to expand its Value Added Model (VAM) to track test scores of students who were taught by teachers graduated from one of its programs. The foundation, which paid VARC more than $2 million for its work, would use those test scores to rate the teachers ‘produced’ – even giving $1,000 bonuses to the programs for each ‘effective’ teacher.
10 years later: Fewer students in college, ‘achievement gap’ unchanged
By just about any measure the Teacher Effectiveness Initiative was a failure. Some of the top-line goals were missed by wide margins. The promise of 50% more college students in the tri-state area over the 10 years of the project? In reality, in Minnesota alone the number of post-secondary students enrolled actually dropped from almost 450,000 in 2009 to 421,000 in 2017 – a decline of about six percent.
Just one more example of the complete and utter failure of the hoax of “reform,” which was always about privatization and union-busting, not improving schools or helping students.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Diane, you need to write this as a template and let people just fill in online the blanks: “foundation name,” “school system experimented on,” and “magnitude of failure.” Should save you some time.
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The ———-Foundation experimented on the —————-School District. The foundation poured $——-million to prove that it could double the graduation rate and close the achievement gaps within 10 years by using test scores to evaluate teachers, by replacing experienced teachers with TFA, or by closing public schools and replacing them with charter schools, or by ————————. Sadly, the experiment failed, but the foundation put out a cheerful press release congratulating itself for trying.
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I like the added “fill in the blank” that “publication of record” declares it a sterling success. Conference convened to “explore new directions.”
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Addendumb:
Though it had already had ten years, the ________ Foundation claimed it would need another ten years before it would know whether their education stuff had worked.
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nicely said
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The amount of money wasted on so-called reform is a mind numbing figure. The Bush Foundation project is a perfect example of so-called failed reform. This project made a failed systemic error. It assumed that poor students do not get good scores on standardized tests due to lazy, incompetent teachers. This is a biased, flawed assumption.
Teachers have a very limited impact on standardized scores. “Reformers” refuse to believe that poverty is the main culprit in low test scores. We should not be “evaluating” schools or teachers by scores. We should look at other factors to evaluate schools like class size, student supports, community outreach, legitimate training of teachers, variety of courses offered and graduation rates. Billionaires continue unphased by repeated failure and reality to pound square pegs into round holes.
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“Not only was the Bush Foundation going to do all these things, but they would prove it with metrics”
Were they going to prove it with millimeters or microns?
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You’re kidding right?
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Nanometers??
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Foundations should follow the old carpenter’s adage: measure twice, cut once. No children should be harmed in these productions.
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Actually, in trim carpentry (eg, for baseboard and door trim), it often pays to measure twice AND cut twice.
The first time, you cut it just a hair’s breadth too long so that it can be shaved by a hair if need be.
This is particularly true if you are not painting the trim and leaving it natural. If you cut it too short by a bit, you have a gap which shows if you can’t caulk it. So better to cut twice.😀
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Roy
I agree that cutting is not appropriate to education (although it is very prevalent), but in trim carpentry, the idea of cutting twice is actually to save precious material. In other words, it’s a conservative technique. It takes longer, but pays dividends in the long run in less wasted material and tighter fitting joints.
Come to think of it , it actually does have applicability to education because it is far more like sculpture where you take a little bit off at a time rather than hacking off pieces.
I imagine this is the approach taken by Michelangelo on the David.
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In carpentry, the idea of “cutting twice” is actually to save precious material.
It is measure twice … not cut twice.
:o)
I’m a woodworker (have been for 50 years — a hobby that works great to tamp down the stress), and I often measure more than twice to make sure I do not waste expensive wood since I often work with cherry, oak, and walnut.
I paid more than $350 for one 4′ x 8′ sheet of 3/4 inch white oak, finished plywood, and I measured each cut way more than twice before I cut.
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Or, SDP, for those of us obsessed with perfection but haunted by incompetence, cut three or four times, throw away in disgust, cut another piece, throw it away, and finally have to settle,for,a piece of work inferior worth. Somehow the analogy, I am sure you would agree, is far gone by now. We cannot throw students upon an experimental scrap heap without breaking some basic rules of humanity.
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Most if not all public school teachers are “life-long” learners. At least in California, they are where public school teachers are required to take approved workshops, seminars and/or classes to keep up with what’s going on in education, learning what works and what doesn’t and to keep our jobs and credentials, we had to prove it.
In fact, the public school district where I worked for thirty years had its own teacher campus in the district with teachers teaching teachers how to improve their teaching. I won’t go into detail how that worked, but in my experience, it was worth it.
Therefore, I conclude that the people that cannot and will not learn about education and know little to nothing about it are the corporate vampires pushing education reform.
Trump is not the only billionaire that thinks he is a genius and knows everything even though he clearly is deranged, has brain damage, and on a scale of 1 to 10, ten being the most literate and educated, he is a minus 10 or even worse. It is an insult to the word “stupid” to call Trump stupid. Bill Gates fits in Trump’s category, as do the Walton family, the Koch family and too many other wealthy and powerful, totally corrupted billionaires and multi-millionaires that because of their wealth, they have way too much time on their hands so the meddle in the lives of everyone else that has to work to survive..
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They didn’t waste the money — they spent it exactly how they wanted to spend it.
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On drugs and alcohol?
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VARC. Good heavens I commented about one aspect of this scam way back in 2012.
In case you missed it, VARC spent money on the infamous “Oak Tree Analogy” comparing students to oak trees and teachers to more less effective gardners. The analogy is impossibly stupid. It was put together in an effort to explain an invalid and impossiblly complex metric known as VAM with VA for “value added” + M for metric,or measure, or methodology–take your pick.
This VAM thing is still being used in Ohio and in Tennessee (from which it came). The measue is a crock. Here is a still active link to the still infamous “Oak Tree Analogy.”
http://varc.wceruw.org/tutorials/Oak/index.htm
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Well, I will have you know that I for one DO grow oak trees in my garden and this year I have a bumper crop of acorns, although it is an ongoing battle with the squirrels and I just had to get an AR 15 to deal with the mangy varmints.
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And I evaluate the growth each year, using the Valuable Acorn Model
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Why not the Variable Accidental Model?
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Don’t carry it into Walmart.
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I think a good low caliber sniper rifle would work better to take out those squirrels that are hogging all of your acorns.
An AR-15 is good for shooting into a crowd inside a mall, a church, a movie theater, a music festival, but squirrels tend not to form crowds or even join them. That means one shot at a time, then shift, line up through the scope on the next squirrel, pull the trigger, watch squirrel explode, move to next furry target with a twitchy tail and repeat.
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My first choice was the Apache helicopter with squirrel seeking missiles, but they no longer offer that option. The salesman said there was too much collateral damage.
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Those of us who are bird feeders are at constant war with squirrels. These persistent rodents fool almost every attempt to keep the varmits from eating all the bird food. A more adroit friend of mine once killed 40 and still had to contend with them.
Squirrels are a really good model for what the money does in education. The more acorns you throw at it, the more squirrels there are to get them.
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I was only kidding about shooting the squirrels (and don’t even own a gun, to say nothing of an AR 15)
And I actually find watching squirrels solve problems to get to feeders to be very fascinating. Although they can be a nuisance, They are extremely intelligent creatures and I have never shot one or harmed one intentionally (though have hit a few with my car)
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