For a few years, Gary Rubinstein was our nation’s leading debunker of “miracle school” claims. He found that the so-called miracle schools usually had high attrition rates but somehow forgot to mention them or some other manipulation of data.
Probably because of the power of Gary’s pen, corporate reformers stopped making claims about dramatic turnarounds, in which schools zoomed from the bottom 1% to the top 10%, or some such. The Tennessee Achievement District, which Gary covered closely, was an epic example of this kind of failure, on a large scale. Its leader, Chris Barbic, boldly predicted that he would take over the state’s lowest performing schools–those in the bottom 5%–turn them over to charter operators, and within five years, they would be in the top 20% of schools in the state. It didn’t happen. Not even close. After five years, the first cohort of ASD charters were still in the bottom 5%, although one made it to the bottom 6%. The ASD has since announced that it was returning the schools to their districts, but it has not said whether they would return as public schools or charter schools.
Now Gary turns his attention to an announcement by TFA about five schools in Baltimore that were “turned around” by the miracle of having inexperienced and enthusiastic TFA teachers.
He begins:
As an ashamed TFA alum, I receive their quarterly alumni magazine, ‘One Day.’ In the most recent issue, which I also saw on their Twitter feed, was an article called ‘Undefeated: Inside Five Baltimore Turnaround Schools that Refuse to Fail.’
The article is about five Baltimore schools that are run by TFA alumni and were recipients of some of the Obama/Duncan $3 billion school turnaround grant. The most aggressive turnaround strategy is to replace the majority of the staff, which is what these five schools did. The school turnaround grants have generally been considered a failure across the country, even by staunch reformers.
(Actually it was a study sponsored by the U.S. Department of Education that declared that the $3 billion turnaround program was a failure; it was released quietly in the closing days of the Obama administration.)
Gary reported the boasting about miraculous turnarounds and then he reviewed the state data:
Maryland has the star system where schools can get from one to five stars, kind of like the A to F letter grades. The stars are based on test scores and also on ‘growth’ and other factors. There are 1,300 schools in Maryland and about 10% of them get either one or two stars. So 3 stars is like a ‘C’ and over 60% of the schools in the state are either 4 stars or 5 stars. Of the five schools that have been ‘turned around,’ three are still 2 stars, which is like a ‘D.’ But looking more closely at the data from these five schools, I found some pretty awful numbers.
The Commodore John Rogers Elementary/Middle School that has the test score increases got two different percentile ranks, one for the elementary and one for the middle school. While the middle school is the one bright spot of all the schools , or subschools, in the 100% project, having risen to the bottom 28% of schools the elementary school is ranked in the bottom 8%.
One school, The Academy For College And Career Exploration (ACCE) has a middle and a high school. The middle school is ranked in the bottom 2% while the high school is in the bottom 9%. In the high school they had 9.3% score proficient in math and 3.6% score proficient in ELA. In the middle school they had 2.7% score proficient in ELA and, no this isn’t a typo, 0% score proficient in math.
The lowest rated school of the five is James McHenry Elementary/Middle. While the middle school was ranked in the bottom 15%, the elementary school was only ranked in the bottom 1%. If not for the middle school, the elementary school would be one of the 35 schools out of 1,300 that would have gotten just one star and be slated for possible closure.
I’m not sure why TFA is clinging to a narrative that went out of style about five years ago, when Arne Duncan stepped down as Secretary of Education. These five schools, on average, do not prove that firing most of the teachers in a school is likely to cause an incredible turnaround at a school.
5-6-2018, by the Director of National Research- Ed Choice, in the Washington Examiner,
“Why This New Catholic School Can Save Baltimore”
I love how TFA and ed reform completely ignore the history of public schools. The reason we stopped allowing principals to hire and fire whoever they wanted was because public schools had become political patronage jobs and they were hiring and firing not based on merit but on their own subjective bias.
This is one of the arguments that ed reformers use for standardized testing- that we need testing because if students are evaluated without it there will be subjective bias. That’s one of the things labor union protections protect against- arbitrary bias. They provide process- a consistent process for all employees.
The ed reform “movement” is incoherent. None of their dogma hangs together. The thing doesn’t make sense.
Their argument for standardized tests is completely contradicted by their anti-labor union arguments. There are so many examples of this incoherence in “the movement” I have stopped counting. Right now, in Ohio, they are passionately arguing that publicly supported private schools need no oversight or accountability WHILE arguing for more oversight and accountability in the public schools they ideologically oppose. No one cares that this is nonsensical- they just easily drop one argument and pick up the opposite side, depending on which set of schools they’re talking about.
I would like to “TURN AROUND” Congress and the rest of those yahoos who have DEFRAUDED Public Schools. The Ed Reform movement is really about defrauding our students and blaming teachers. Sick.
It’s time we turned the tables on them. I am so tired of their LIES.
Betsy DeVos is outraged on Twitter that there are sexual harassment claims in public schools. She singles out public schools for this outrage- just slams PUBLIC schools.
What she doesn’t say is no one is collecting any centralized stats on the private schools she prefers- the only reason she knows about the problems in public schools is because schools and teachers unions report statistics.
Once again- completely incoherent. They insist on transparency in (ONLY) public schools and then use the numbers that are collected and reported to pretend public schools are the only schools with problems.
That’s because this is POLITICAL, not educational. It’s a belief system. They believe private schools are intrinsically BETTER than public schools so therefore don’t require ed reformer supervision.
If it were actually ABOUT great schools or transparency they would insist their standards apply across schools, but they don’t. The thing falls apart the minute you apply any scrutiny at all.
ArchBalt.org
“Two weeks into the 2019 Maryland General Assembly, measures supported by the Maryland Catholic Conference are getting attention in Annapolis.” (BOOST funding)
Research from Notre Dame is cited, “Looking at patterns of closed Catholic schools…increased crime and disorder and decreased social cohesion…”
My opinion- the Koch network’s goal in promoting Catholic schools is to achieve the same culture of obedience that the Catholic church provided for similar business interests during the great hunger when 1,000,000 Irish died of starvation.
As evidence- Catholic support for tax credits, a plan that defunds government i.e. programs for the poor- the programs that are anathema to America’s wealthy libertarians like Gates.
TFA Turn around
They’ve turned around
(360)
Their claims abound
(They’re shifty)
Didn’t Michelle Rhee (after learning from all the mistakes she made in her first month of teaching?) raise a class from 7th percentile to 90th percentile? There must be something special about Baltimore.
That Rhee claim about raising her class from 13% proficient to 90% was debunked by blogger G.F. Brandenburg, who obtained the school’s records and showed that her claim was impossible.
Excellent, Diane. Truth optional for your Disrupters.
Something special about Michelle Rhee’s math
Rheeformed Math
The math of Rhee
Is aught to see
There’s naught but weed
So pay no heed
Maybe she was actually smoking weed when she came up with that claim
…and when she ate the 🐝
Tell you what, SDP. There really must be some sort of genius to her lies. She really had people believing her 7 to 90 claim.
It was 13% to 90%. I remember reading about it in the Wall Street Journal and other major media. No one investigated other than G.F. Brandenburg.
From 7% to 90% would have been impressive.
But only from 13% to 90%?
Not so much.
Wondering if Mr. Barbic thought some billionaire backer might purchase the graders of his schools’ tests…