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Nancy Bailey: Why Do Corporate Reformers Love “The Science of Reading”?

By dianeravitch
June 20, 2023 //
72

I apologize in advance. I am habitually skeptical of fads and movements. When a hot new idea sweeps through education, it’s a safe bet that it will fall flat in the fullness of time. If there is one consistent theme that runs through everything I have written for the past half century, it is this: beware of the latest thing. Be skeptical.

The latest thing is the “Science of Reading.” I have always been a proponent of phonics, so I won’t tolerate being pilloried by the phonics above all crowd. If you read my 2000 book, you will see that I was a critic of Balanced Literacy, which was then the fad du jour.

Yet it turns my stomach to see Educatuon journalist and mainstream dailies beating the drums for SOR. As you know, I reacted with nausea when New York Times’ columnist Nick Kristof said that the SOR was so powerful that it made new spending unnecessary, made desegregation unnecessary, made class size reduction unnecessary. A dream come true for those in search of a cheap miracle!

Veteran teacher Nancy Bailey, like me, is not persuaded by the hype. She wrote a column demonstrating that the corporate reform world—billionaires and politicians—are swooning for the Science of Reading.

She writes:

Many of the same individuals who favor charter schools, private schools, and online instruction, including corporate reformers, use the so-called Science of Reading (SoR) to make public school teachers look like they’ve failed at teaching reading.

Politicians and corporations have had a past and current influence on reading instruction to privatize public schools with online programs. This has been going on for years, so why aren’t reading scores soaring? The SoR involves primarily online programs, but it’s often unclear whether they work.

The Corporate Connection to the SoR

Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation

The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation fund numerous nonprofits to end public education. The National Council of Teacher Quality (NCTQ), started by the Thomas B. Fordham Foundation backed by Gates and other corporations, an astroturf organization, promotes the SoR.

SoR promoters ignore the failure of Common Core State Standards (CCSS), embedded in most online programs, like iReady and Amplify. CCSS, influenced by the Gates Foundation, has been around for years.

Also, despite its documented failure ($335 million), the Gates Foundation Measures of Effective Teaching, a past reform initiative (See VAMboozled!), irreparably harmed the teaching profession, casting doubt on teachers’ ability.

EdReports, another Gates-funded group, promotes their favored programs, but why trust what they say about reading instruction? They’ve failed at their past education endeavors.

But the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation continues to reinvent itself and funds many nonprofits that promote their agenda, including the SoR.

Former Governor Jeb Bush’s Organizations

Former Governor Bush of Florida (1999 to 2007) promoted SoR, but if children have reading problems, states should review past education policies, including those encouraged by former Governors, including Mr. Bush. His policymaking in public education has been around for a long time.

One should question, for example, Mr. Bush’s third-grade retention policy ignoring the abundance of anti-retention research showing its harmful effects, including its high correlation with students dropping out of school.

He rejected the class size amendment and worked to get it repealed. Yet lowering class size, especially in K-3rd grade, could benefit children learning to read.

As far back as 2011, Mr. Bush promoted online learning. He’s not talking about technology supplementing teachers’ lessons. He wants technology to replace teachers!

Here’s a 2017 post written in ExelInEd, Mr. Bush’s organization, A Vision for the Future of K-3 Reading Policy: Personalized Learning for Mastery. They’re promoting online learning to teach reading as proven, but there’s no consistent evidence this will work.

Here’s the ExcelinEd Comprehensive Early Policy Toolkit for 2021 where teachers often must be aligned to the SoR with Foundations of Reading a Pearson Assessment. If the teacher’s role loses its autonomy, technology can easily replace them. 

Laurene Powell Jobs and Rupert Murdoch’s Amplify

How did Rupert Murdoch’s old program Amplify become the Science of Reading?

Rupert Murdoch invested in Amplify, News Corp.’s $1 Billion Plan to Overhaul Education Is Riddled With Failures. Then Laurene Powell Jobs purchased it. Does a change in ownership miraculously mean program improvement?

Teachers from Oklahoma described how student expectations with Amplify were often developmentally inappropriate, so how is this good reading science?

Many SoR supporters who imply teachers fail to teach reading do podcasts for Amplify. Are they compensated for their work? Where’s the independent research to indicate that Amplify works?

Amplify, and other online reading programs, are marketed ferociously to school districts with in-house research relying on testimonials. When schools adopt these programs, teachers have a reduced role in students’ instruction.

Chan-Zuckerberg Initiative (CZI) and Their Data Collection

Priscilla Chan pushes Reach Every Reader, including prestigious universities that write SoR reports.

Why must they collect data involving children and their families?

CZI promotes the Age of Learning and ABC Mouse for young children. The reviews of this program appear primarily negative.

Categories Accountability, Billionaires, Chan-Zuckerberg Initiative, Charter Schools, Class size, Corporate Reform, Curriculum, Education Industry, Fake, For-Profit, Funding, Gates Foundation, Bill Gates, Literacy, Online Education, Research, Teachers and Teaching, Technology

Texas: Governor Abbott Threatens to Veto Every Bill Until He Gets What He Wants

By dianeravitch
June 19, 2023 //
33

Governor Greg Abbott is having a temper tantrum. He called a special session to push for vouchers, which failed in the regular session. But now he’s feuding with his Lt. Governor Dan Patrick over what to do about property taxes.

The state is sitting on a $33 billion surplus. Abbott has vowed to veto every bill until he gets vouchers and his own property tax plan. Abbott wants all property taxes reduced, while Patrick wants the biggest breaks to go to businesses.

Gov. Greg Abbott has continued to follow through with his perceived threat to veto a large number of bills in the absence of a House-Senate compromise on property taxes. As of Saturday afternoon, the governor had vetoed 47 bills in the past five days, most of which originated in the Senate, adding fuel to his feud with Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick.

The common theme in his many of his vetoes, 21 of which were announced Friday: The bills can wait until after lawmakers figure out property taxes.

“At this time, the legislature must concentrate on delivering property tax cuts to Texans,” Abbott said in multiple veto proclamations Friday.

He vetoed more than a dozen bills Saturday, which included a new objection tied to school vouchers, another one of Abbott’s legislative priorities this year. In explaining why he rejected a bill setting new training rules for fire alarm technicians, Abbott said the legislation “can be reconsidered at a future special session only after education freedom is passed.”

During the regular legislative session, Abbott spent significant political capital traveling across the state to promote education savings accounts, a voucher-like program that allows parents to use taxpayer dollars to pay for their kids’ private schooling. The Texas Legislature failed to pass such a bill, mostly because of staunch opposition from Democrats and rural Republicans in the House, who argue that vouchers will hurt public schools’ finances. Abbott has said he’ll call a special session specifically to discuss vouchers again.

On Wednesday during a bill-signing ceremony at the Capitol, Abbott raised the possibility of vetoing a significant number of the hundreds of bills that he hasn’t yet signed. With lawmakers still deadlocked on property taxes, Abbott said he “can’t ensure that any bill that has not yet been signed is going to be signed.”

Categories Accountability, Education Industry, Funding, Rural Schools, Stupid, Texas, Vouchers

Houston: New School Board Meets…and Excludes the Public

By dianeravitch
June 19, 2023 //
12

The state takeover of the Houston Independent School Board involved firing the elected school board, replacing them with a state-picked board, and hiring a new superintendent who was never a teacher but is a military man, a Broadie, and a failure as Dallas superintendent.

The new school board held its first meeting and set up only 35 seats for the public. The room holds 310 people. Everyone else was shunted to a room where they could watch the meeting on a screen. One man who registered to speak was handcuffed when he insisted on entering the room where the board was neeting.

The board unanimously agreed that superintendent Mije Miles should be allowed to serve even though his state license had lapsed in 2018.

This meeting exemplified the state’s contempt for public schools, and its complete indifference to the public, which has a stake in public schools. The public schools belong to the public, not to Republican politicians in Austin.

Categories Accountability, Broad Foundation, Corruption, Democracy, Disruption, Education Industry, Elections, Extremism, Fraud, Houston, Injustice, Texas

Ohio: Vouchers for the Rich

By dianeravitch
June 18, 2023 //
10

William Phillis, founder of the Ohio Coalition for Equity and Adequacy, reports on the evolution of vouchers. Initially, they were sold as a way to “save poor kids from failing schools.” but now they are a subsidy for upper-income families.

Darrel Rowland, ABC6 (WSYX6) and Fox28 News tweets about vouchers

Darrel Rowland, a former Columbus Dispatch reporter, public affairs editor and senior editor, gleaning data from Howard Fleeter’s June 2023 Policy Brief on Vouchers in Ohio, in a series of Tweets, sheds light on the trend in income level of voucher users. The data show that the percentage of low-income EdChoice voucher users has dropped from 32% in 2014 to 15% in 2023. The State Budget for fiscal years 2023-2024 and 2024-2025 will ratchet-up EdChoice voucher expansion. In the future, EdChoice voucher users will be mostly in the higher income brackets. Low-income students were exploited by voucher advocates to get the voucher foot-in-the-door. Universal vouchers will result in higher private school tuition, which will eliminate voucher participation for nearly all low income students….

School-funding numbers cruncher extraordinaire Howard Fleeter looks at Ohio’s vouchers Two main findings:

1. Originally intended to help students at low-performing public schools ‘escape,’ vouchers are now benefiting a growing number of students already attending private schools

2. Percentage of low-income students assisted through these programs has significantly declined while more students in wealthy families are accessing vouchers Fleeter, consultant for public schools groups, concludes that recent GOP legislative changes “reflect a pronounced “change in the focus of Ohio’s voucher programs from one of expanding opportunity to one where the state simply pays for vouchers for students whose families have already demonstrated that they have the means to afford private school”

In FY 2014, 35% of one (Cleveland-style) voucher program’s recipients were from low-income backgrounds, but by FY 2023, this number had decreased to 7%. For another (EdChoice), the percentage of low-income students receiving vouchers dropped from 32% in FY 2014 to 15% in FY 2023

Learn about EdChoice Vouchers: An Existential Threat to Public Schools

Learn About Vouchers Hurt Ohio
8 Lies About Private School Vouchers

Like us on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/OhioEandA

VOUCHERS HURT OHIO

William L. Phillis | Ohio Coalition for Equity & Adequacy of School Funding | 614.228.6540 |ohioeanda@sbcglobal.net| http://ohiocoalition.org

Categories Accountability, Education Industry, Hoax, Ohio, Privatization, Vouchers

Idaho: Charter School in Trouble with Finances, Enrollment, and Leadership

By dianeravitch
June 17, 2023 //
1

While the billionaire-funded CREDO report assured us about the “impressive” but trivial academic results of charter schools, the reality on the ground is that the charter sector is unstable. It’s not unusual for charters to close their doors without warning or to experience graft or financial problems.

The charter in Boise has been afflicted with multiple issues. It had “financial malpractice” issues, it defaulted on its loan, its enrollment declined by more than 50%, and its leader got a better job.

It’s worth repeating that research continually shows the importance of stability in children’s lives. “Stability” is not the word for the Boise charter.

Sadie Dittenber of Idaho Education News reported:

Boise’s Village Leadership Academy will downsize to a smaller facility this year after defaulting on its building loan. The move is the final step in a multi-year plan to get the school’s finances back on track.

In 2019, a third-party report uncovered financial malpractice within the Boise charter, putting the school at risk of closure. But over the past three years, the school has operated on a balanced budget and improved most of its financial outcomes, according to a report given to the Idaho Public Charter School Commission Thursday.

But the school’s current building, located on Fairmeadow Dr. in Boise, is too large and too expensive for the charter to maintain, according to the report. The building was purchased in 2017, in hopes that the school’s student body population would grow to fill the space and pay off the facilities loan. But since 2019, the student population dropped by more than half.

In May, the charter board decided to exit its current loan — an option outlined in a December forbearance agreement between the VLA and its bank — and seek a smaller, more affordable building. The new facility is located on Goldstone Dr. in Meridian. The move could result in a boundaries shift for the school.

“While the building will have some drawbacks, it will continue to allow VLA to be a safe, small, village oriented, Leader in Me school for our Kindergarten through 8th grade students,” wrote school administrator Josh Noteboom in a May email to parents. “We are excited to be working towards the end of our facility challenges, and set the school up for success in the future.”

According to Thursday’s report, the decision ensures “an affordable location for the next 6 years.”

The VLA’s relocation fulfills the first of four renewal conditions set out by the Charter Commission in February.The first condition required the VLA to take action on its financial default by July 1.

I

But with the move comes another shift: Noteboom accepted a position as federal programs director with the State Department of Education, which he’ll begin in July. The current administrator said the transition was unexpected, but he’s honored to be selected.

“I have full confidence in the VLA community to select a new leader to continue the momentum and success we have achieved thus far,” Noteboom wrote in an email to EdNews. “I’ve committed to completing the transition to the new facility over the summer and onboarding new leadership. We have achieved a great milestone with the resolution of the facility issues and VLA is set to continue to thrive.”

Categories Accountability, Charter Schools, Disruption, Education Industry, Funding, Idaho

Nora de La Cour: It’s Long Past Time to End the Tyranny of High-Stakes Testing!

By dianeravitch
June 17, 2023 //
104

Nora de la Cour writes in Jacobin about the damage done to children by our politicians’ obsession with high-stakes standardized testing. They do not test what was taught; they encourage teaching to the tests; the results come back too late to be helpful; they distort teaching and learning.

Nora de la Cour writes:

When I taught at an alternative public school for kids with exceptional social-emotional, behavioral, and learning needs, one of my students — I’ll call him Dante — got As in every class he took. School staff would frequently elevate Dante’s extraordinary focus and commitment as an example for his peers.

In the spring of Dante’s senior year, his counselor informed him he’d earned the status of valedictorian. His beaming smile of pride after hearing the news affirmed everything I love about public education. When his mother found out, she burst into tears of joy.

Then, abruptly, we were informed that there had been a mistake. Because Dante’s exceptional learning needs made it impossible for him to pass the Massachusetts Comprehensive Assessment System (MCAS) — the standardized tests that Massachusetts requires high school students to pass prior to graduation — he would not receive a diploma. Without a diploma, he couldn’t be valedictorian — even though, according to his grades and the unanimous judgment of his teachers, he clearly deserved the honor. A wave of incredulity rippled through the staff as we tried to resign ourselves to this obviously cruel, unfair reality. For Dante, the news was devastating.

Even before the “giant federal wrecking ball” (to borrow leading education policy analyst Diane Ravitch’s phrasing) known as education reform, evidence from diverse fields had demonstrated a scientific concept known as Campbell’s Law: the more we base social decision-making on a specific quantitative measure, the more likely it is that that measure will become distorted, ultimately corrupting the processes it’s intended to monitor.

Just so, in the two decades since Congress reauthorized the 1965 Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA) as George W. Bush’s No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB), researchers have collected a mountain of data showing that in the long run, attaching high-stakes, or punishments, to student standardized test scores does not improve educational outcomes. Instead, it results in a host ofperverse consequences, with poor, minority, and disabled kids like Dante experiencing the greatest harms. This last point makes a lot of sense when you consider that standardized testing was first developed by eugenicists looking to organize people into racist taxonomies based on perceived ability.

But despite these serious problems — and the persistent, bipartisan unpopularity of the high-stakes testing regime inaugurated by NCLB — our current, Obama-era iteration of the ESEA (the Every Student Succeeds Act or ESSA) still requires states to impose inappropriate test-based accountability on students and school communities.

When we sort children into “proficient” and “failing” categories based on test scores, we’re not solving the opportunity gaps that show up in public education; we’re creating new ones. No one is helped, and many people are hurt, when we give students, teachers, and schools an impossible assignment and then sanction them for failing to complete it. Looking forward to the ESEA’s now overdue reauthorization, it’s high time we built accountability systems that nurture the humanity and potential of all kids — rather than placing artificial roadblocks in their way.

Please open the link and read the article in full. FYI, in addition to referring to NCLB as a “giant wrecking ball,” I have also called it the “Death Star of American education.” If left without modifications, it would have caused the closure of almost every school in the nation. No national legisislature ever passed such a dumb law.

Categories Accountability, Cruelty, Education Industry, Failure, Fraud, NCLB (No Child Left Behind), Race to the Top, Standardized Testing

Tom Ultican: Mississippi Malarkey

By dianeravitch
June 16, 2023 //
15

Tom Ultican, retired high school teacher of advanced math and physics, investigates the claims of Nicholas Kristof about a “Mississippi miracle.” In his article in the New York Times, Kristof attributed a rise in Mississippi’s test scores to “the science of reading” plus a policy of holding back third graders who don’t pass a reading test, allegedly proving that spending more money is not necessary, poverty doesn’t matter, and reducing class size is unnecessary.

He begins:

Nicholas Kristof’s opinion piece in the New York Times might not have been blatant lying but it was close. His depiction of the amazing education renaissance in Mississippi as a model for the nation is laughable. Lauding their third grade reading retention policies as enlightened, he claims their secret sauce for success is implementing the science of reading (SoR). This is based on a willful misreading of data while tightly embracing Jeb Bush’s futile education reform ideology.

Ultican then produces a graph showing that Mississippi fourth-graders ranked 20th in the nation in 2022, but its eighth graders ranked 45th.

Misusing data allows Kristof to end the paragraph indicating poverty is not an excuse for education failure. It reminds me of a statement written by education professor Kathryn Strom,

“The “no excuses” rhetoric (i.e, “poverty is not an excuse for failure”) is one that is dearly beloved by the corporate education reformers because it allows them to perpetuate (what many recognize to be) the American myth of meritocracy and continue the privatization movement under the guise of “improving schools” while avoiding addressing deeply entrenched inequities that exist in our society and are perpetuated by school structures.” (Emphasis added)

To add heft to his argument that poverty is no excuse, Kristof quotes Harvard economist David Deming from the Harvard Kennedy School and Harvard Graduate School of Education, saying “Mississippi is a huge success story and very exciting.” He adds, “You cannot use poverty as an excuse.”

It is important to note that Harvard is famous for supporting privatization of public education and promoting failed scholarship. Deming is currently doing research with Raj Chetty and John Friedman. Along with Jonah Rockoff, Chetty and Friedman published the now thoroughly debunked value added measures (VAM) paper. Their faulty research caused many teachers to lose jobs before it was exposed as a fraud. Kristof is using an economist (not an educator) from a group best known for scholastic failure as his expert.

Kristof also indicates that spending is not important. He writes, “Mississippi has achieved its gains despite ranking 46th in spending per pupil in grades K-12.” If we look up at the 8th grade rankings, it seems they are getting what they paid for.

Ultican then goes on to describe the connections between the “Mississippi miracle” and TFA and Jeb Bush and a host of other corporate reform groups.

He concludes:

In this opinion piece, Nicholas Kristof touched on and promoted almost every billionaire inspired agenda item aimed at decreasing money going to public education. He acted as a representative of elites, advancing policies undermining education quality for common people.

This was not about improvement. It was about lowering taxes.

Please open the link and read this interesting article.

Categories Accountability, Class size, Fake News, Funding, Ignorance, Literacy, Mississippi

Florida Has a Horrible Record on COVID Deaths: DeSantis Lies

By dianeravitch
June 15, 2023 //
22

Mehdi Hassan of MSNBC writes here about Ron DeSantis’ lies about Florida’s COVID deaths.

DeSantis is an advocate of herd immunity, although he was not at the start of the pandemic. To woo the hard-right base of the GOP, he turned Florida into a state that opposed mandates for masks and vaccines. He found a surgeon general who agreed with him. He placed the economy above the lives of Floridians.

What were the results? Open the link.

Categories Accountability, DeSantis, Elections, Florida, Health, Lies, Republicans, Science, Shame

WAPO: Trump’s Lawyers Urged Him to Return the Classified Documents; He Refused

By dianeravitch
June 15, 2023 //
56

In a fascinating article, the Washington Post reported that several of Trump’s lawyers urged him to avoid an indictment by returning all the classified documents. He refused. He chose instead to take the advice of Tom Fitton, head of the conservative group Judicial Watch, who told him he could keep the documents. Fitton is not a lawyer. Early on, in 2021, one of Trump’s lawyers tried to persuade him to negotiate a return, to avoid an indictment. Trump refused.

Since the National Archives first asked for the return of presidential documents in Trump’s possession in February 2021 and until a grand jury issued its indictment this month, Trump was repeatedly stubborn and eschewed opportunities to avoid criminal charges, according to people with knowledge of the case, many of whom spoke on the condition of anonymity to reveal internal details. They note that Trump was not charged for any documents he returned voluntarily.


Interviews with seven Trump advisers with knowledge of the probe indicate he misled his own advisers, telling them the boxes contained only newspaper clippings and clothes. He repeatedly refused to give the documents back, even when some of his longest-serving advisers warned of peril and some flew to Mar-a-Lago to beg him to return them.


When Trump returned 15 boxes early last year — leaving at least 64 more at Mar-a-Lago — he told his own advisers to put out statements to the National Archives and to the public that “everything” had been returned, The Washington Post has previously reported. But he quietly kept more than 100 classified documents….

Trump time and again rejected the advice from lawyers and advisers who urged him to cooperate and instead took the advice of Tom Fitton, the head of the conservative group Judicial Watch, and a range of others who told him he could legally keep the documents and should fight the Justice Department, advisers said. Trump would often cite Fitton to others, and Fitton told some of Trump’s lawyers that Trump could keep the documents, even as they disagreed, the advisers said…

“I think what is lacking is the lawyers saying, ‘I took this to be obstruction,’” said Fitton. “Where is the conspiracy? I don’t understand any of it. I think this is a trap. They had no business asking for the records … and they’ve manufactured an obstruction charge out of that. There are core constitutional issues that the indictment avoids, and the obstruction charge seems weak to me.”


Several other Trump advisers blamed Fitton for convincing Trump that he could keep the documents and repeatedly mentioning the “Clinton socks case” — a reference to tapes Bill Clinton stored in his sock drawer of his secret interviews with historian Taylor Branch that served as the basis of Branch’s 2009 book documenting the Clinton presidency.


Judicial Watch lost a lawsuit in 2012 that demanded the audio recordings be designated as presidential records and that the National Archives take custody of the recordings. A court opinion issued at the time stated that there was no legal mechanism for the Archives to force Clinton to turn over the recordings.


For his part, Fitton said Trump’s lawyers “should have been more aggressive in fighting the subpoenas and fighting for Trump.”


Trump’s unwillingness to give the documents back did not surprise those who knew him well. Former White House chief of staff John F. Kelly said that he was particularly unlikely to heed requests from people or agencies he disliked.


“He’s incapable of admitting wrongdoing. He wanted to keep it, and he says, ‘You’re not going to tell me what to do. I’m the smartest guy in the room,’” Kelly said Tuesday…

Other advisers said the FBI and National Archives wanting the documents so badly made Trump less likely to give them back…

“It’s mine,” Trump said, explaining why he did not want to give the materials back, according to people with knowledge of his comments.

If this sounds like the behavior of a 2-year-old, well, draw your own conclusions.

Categories Accountability, Corruption, Disruption, Ignorance, Justice, Lies, Stupid, Trump

Join Me at NPE’s 10th Anniversary Conference in D.C., October 28-29

By dianeravitch
June 14, 2023 //
3

Please join me and your many allies in D.C. on October 28-29 for our 10th anniversary conference. It promises to be our best ever! 

Sign up now.

You will have a wonderful time! 

And you will meet your favorite bloggers, hear great speakers, and meet people who are fighting against privatization across the nation.

Categories Accountability, Courage, Creativity, Democracy, Education Industry, Education Reform, Network for Public Education, Networkfor Public Education Action Fund
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