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The A-F Grading System: A Politically Motivated Fraud

By dianeravitch
August 9, 2013 //
23

Jeff Bryant writes a comprehensive review of what he calls “Bennett-gate,” and shows that the A-F grading systems initiated by Jeb Bush is itself a phony way to judge the quality of schools.

He cites Matt Di Carlo, who reviewed Indiana’s grading system, and determined that the grades reflect the characteristics of the students in them:

“Di Carlo’s analysis showed, “Almost 85 percent of the schools with the lowest poverty rates receive an A or B, and virtually none gets a D or F.” Conversely, over half of the schools with the highest percentages of the poorest students received “an F or D, compared with about 22 percent across all schools.”

His conclusion, “as is the case with most states’ systems, policy decisions will proceed as much by student performance/characteristics as by actual school effectiveness.” (emphasis original)

“Under Indiana’s system, a huge chunk of schools, most of which serve advantaged student populations, literally face no risk of getting an F, while almost one in five schools, virtually every one of which with a relatively high poverty rate, has no shot at an A grade, no matter how effective they might be.”

By definition, the A-F system must label some schools with a D or F, so those schools are set up for privatization.

One of the beneficiaries was Charter Schools, USA, a for-profit corporation that hired Tony Bennett’s wife when they moved to Florida.

Frankly, the idea that a school should get a letter grade, like a restaurant, is ridiculous on its face.

Imagine if your child came across from school with a report card that contained nothing but a single letter. As a parent, you would be outraged at the stupidity and simple-mindedness of such a way of gauging “quality.”

A report card should be comprehensive, including both resources available as well as outcomes, and there should be multiple ways of assessing both resources and outcomes, such as teacher turnover, student poverty levels, etc.

No report card will capture every dimension of school performance, but a single letter captures almost no dimension of school performance.

That is why the A-F system is a fraud and a scam, meant to set up schools for privatization.

And let’s be clear: When schools fail, those who should be held accountable first are the leaders of the state and the district. They are the ones who decide when and where to allocate crucial resources. They should not crow about closing schools when it is they who failed to provide the necessary supports for the schools.

 

 

Categories Accountability, Administrators, superintendents, Florida, Indiana

Those Phony, Misleading Test Scores: A NY Principal Reacts

By dianeravitch
August 8, 2013 //
55

Katie Zahedi is principal of Linden Avenue Middle School in Red Hook, New York, which is located in upstate Dutchess County. She is active in the association of New York Principals who bravely oppose the State Education Department’s educator evaluation plan based mostly on test scores. Zahedi has been a principal and assistant principal at her school for twelve years. The views she expresses here are solely her own and not those of the district or her school. Suffice it to say that she is a woman of unusual integrity and courage, who is determined to speak truth to power. She wrote this piece for the blog in response to the release of the Common Core test results in New York, in which scores collapsed across the state.

Katie Zahedi writes:

Days before the release of embargoed New York Common Core test scores, laced within comments/double talk about “higher standards”, Secretary of Education Arne Duncan joined Commissioner John King in assuring New Yorkers that lower scores on the Math and English Assessments were expected.  The NYSED claims to have formulas to account for all sorts of nuanced variables so maybe they will produce one for the testing fiasco called the Bunkum Conversion Table!

What the public may not understand in the midst of today’s controversy is that when a test yields 80% (of a particular cohort) of students passing over a 5 year span, and scores suddenly drop to below a 35% passing rate, that the problem is probably unrelated to student performance. In fact, the last two years of tests produced by the NYSED have been rife with mistakes, missing tables needed for computation, and confusing and misleading questions.

The failure rates on the NYSED site are dissimilar to reported numbers in the 8/6/13 New York Times, leaving principals unsure how the data is being or will be manipulated for public reporting.  What is immediately clear is that the NYSED is out on a limb with its political machinations of student test data.

Historically, up to 15% of my students have been scheduled for Academic Intervention Services (AIS) for remedial help. Now, thanks to “higher standards”, those students’ needs are obfuscated by the new facts that nearly 70% of my students have been identified (by a state test) to be in need of remedial math.

I shouldn’t complain since I serve as principal of a high performing middle school. Last year our 8th graders (the same cohort described above) won the New York State Math League Award for 1st place in Dutchess, Ulster, Orange, Putnam and Rockland Counties, which is the reason that up to 70% of my students will require special pull-out classes designed to work on “their weaknesses”. After all, that is much better than many New York schools having 80-90 % failure rates.

Sitting around a table with my fellow administrators, our astonishment was somehow normalized in the run-off of a year saturated in convoluted, nonsensical, time-consuming and expensive directives from the NYSED. After disbelieving stares, I said “people, we have a responsibility to directly address the individuals responsible for this fiasco”.  Educators are a hearty bunch so after a brief pause we got back to work on compliance.

While not representing the views of my school district, I submit that we ought to take a look at the core problem.  We have a duty to speak truth to power (and his best friend: money) and hold the NYSED “accountable” for the failures that they are producing. The NYSED is need of internal reform. Straight up, my school is not in need of full scale revision and neither are most schools in New York. All schools should run in a constant state of improvement led by experienced principals and struggling schools need investment, support and a team relationship with a partner school that is successful. 

Mistakes like the fiasco of the NY State Assessments are to be expected when individuals who are scarcely qualified to apply for an assistant principal role in a district like mine are appointed to lead the state and federal education departments! Unsurprisingly, much time and public money will be wasted by well-meaning people who are appointed to important posts based on political association and/or possession of inordinate amounts of money.

The NYSED is a stately and dignified building that is waiting for benevolent and wise leadership. Doing his best, John King is working hard, holed away with privately hired “fellows” who are young, overpaid and fabulously confident considering their profound lack of experience in teaching and school administration.  Regardless of the plausibly good intentions of NYSED leadership, it is objectionable for New York State to allow the normal process of schools to be interrupted and for principals and teachers to be distracted from their important work with students to try out the half-baked ideas of politically appointed newbies. Whether on the state or federal levels, the appointment of individuals with insufficient experience in public education, should be discontinued.

If the name of the game is accountability for higher standards, let’s require that all appointees to state and federal leadership roles possess the education and experience required to serve with wisdom and dignity.

Categories Accountability, Administrators, superintendents, Common Core, New York, Testing

Hugh Bailey: Is the School Reform Movement Falling Apart?

By dianeravitch
August 7, 2013 //
9

Hugh Bailey, columnist for the Connecticut Post, takes a clear-eyed look at what is called “school reform” and finds that it is full of holes.

The essential element of “reform” is that schools should be run by a non-educator.

Paul Vallas is a poster boy for that theory.

He didn’t think it was necessary to be an educator; he boasted that he was not an educator.

But Connecticut law says that superintendents must be educators.

That is a pretty big hole.

He writes:

“School reform has for more than a decade meant a headlong dash in one direction, toward more testing, less protection for teachers, more faith in miracle workers. At the heart of the debate is whether educators should be running things. It sounds like a simple enough proposition, but one of the central tenets of education reform as commonly practiced is that educators might belong in the classroom (maybe), but have no business in administration. Vallas, the admired and maligned superintendent of Bridgeport schools, personifies this debate.

Vallas is not an educator. He used to make a habit of announcing that fact as if it were a badge of honor. Even as he has led school systems in three major cities, he has never pursued an education degree.

Connecticut law, though, requires an educator as superintendent, which Vallas and his allies suddenly find to be extremely inconvenient.

But none of it should be considered accidental. Reformers are proud of the fact that their leaders aren’t educators, as if only people outside the system are clear-headed enough to knock some sense into a failing system.

This makes sense in the same way that it would be a good idea for the Yankees to hire some corporate CEO to run their baseball operations rather than someone who maybe knows a little bit about baseball.”

Bailey sees a growing resistance to this ersatz reform, despite the fact that the “reformers” have a near monopoly on money and political power:

“School reform is running into increased resistance nationally, and it doesn’t help that any number of high-profile, billionaire-backed reformers have been exposed as cheats and frauds.

“It’s a movement that may have already crested. More people are understanding that what troubled schools actually need, like real resources and integrated classrooms, are not the goals of today’s reformers. And there is a growing understanding that it is not a school but society in general that is failing too many people who live in poverty, and that to dump all the blame on teachers who are working to help those children is not only unfair but counterproductive.”

This so-called movement, fueled by power and money, is floundering. Bridgeport, Connecticut, may be one place where the movement ran into an immovable object: the law.

 

Categories Administrators, superintendents, Connecticut, Corporate Reformers, Vallas, Paul

Dallas: Teachers Flee, Superintendent Mike Miles Under Investigation, His Family Moves Back to Colorado

By dianeravitch
August 6, 2013 //
53

Since the arrival of Superintendent Mike Miles a year ago, the Dallas Independent School District has been in constant turmoil.

Of course, Miles wanted it that way, as he is a Broad-trained superintendent and he apparently believes that disruption is good.

He started off with ambitious goals, some of which seemed wildly unrealistic, including a goal that by 2015, 75% of the staff and 70% of the community would agree with his vision for the district.

In his year on the job, seven of his top staff resigned, and nearly 1,000 teachers quit. Just this month, another 300 resigned.

The district sent letters out to 150 other school districts urging them not to hire the teachers who left DISD, trying to get them permanently blackballed from teaching in Texas.

Miles is under investigation for interfering with bidding for contracts and with internal audits.

To add to his problems, some of the city’s business leaders have expressed no confidence in his “disruptive” leadership style.

And now he has announced that his wife and son are moving back to Colorado to get away from the negative press about him.

A reader of the blog sent this private email to me:

“Not only is Miles under investigation for corruption, cronyism, and contract bid rigging, now, after leading DISD as a little dictator with a management style characterized by morale crushing fear, intimidation, and bullying, he is demanding that other Texas school districts not hire the DISD teachers he has run off. DISD plans to report those teachers to the Texas Education Agency for them to be sanctioned which effects their certification.Miles has worked tirelessly to make the lives of DISD teachers so miserable that no one in their right mind would want to stay at DISD, Anyone with a better option would be a fool not to take it after experiencing Broad Foundation management. These efforts are designed to replace veteran teachers with low salary TFAs. Miles is reviled and hated by ALL teachers. None of his ‘reforms’ help kids. Miles’ reforms were designed specifically to dump additional work on teachers while doing nothing for kids in order to intimidate and exhaust teachers with the goal of running them off. More teachers were run off than expected leaving DISD with an extreme teacher exodus making fall classes untenable. Miles is toxic, his reforms are cancerous. He drove away so many teachers that now DISD is in a precarious situation with school starting in less than a month and no teachers to staff the classrooms. The sooner this guy goes along with his reforms the sooner DISD can get back to the work of educating kids.”

Categories Administrators, superintendents, Broad Foundation, Texas

Tony Bennett Critics: Dancing in the Streets

By dianeravitch
July 29, 2013 //
31

A friend in Indiana had this to say about the Tony Bennett grade-fixing scandal:

“For those of you who are not from Florida or Indiana, you have no idea how this feels for us who are. This is early birthday, Christmas in July, karmic, happy dancing joy for those of us who have lived with the disastrous policies that the Bennett (Daniels/Jeb Bush) juggernaut has foisted on us.”

Karen Francisco, the editorial page editor of the Fort Wayne Journal-Gazette, had this to say in an editorial called “How Much for an A?”

” I never doubted that the grading rubric was changed to make some schools look better, but I wouldn’t have guessed it was all about making one charter school look good….Indiana voters dispatched Bennett without knowing of his behind-the-scenes manipulation of school data. Now voters should realize the lengths public officials will go to keep the biggest donors happy. The nonsensical grading system foisted on Indiana schools was designed to punish public schools and advance the choice agenda.

“The question for lawmakers listening to hours of testimony over last spring’s ISTEP+ computer meltdown is not whether the scores are valid. It’s how much longer will the lawmakers themselves continue to support a charade designed and maintained to please wealthy donors?”

Categories Accountability, Administrators, superintendents, Bush, Jeb, Indiana

How “Reformers” Are Lowering Standards for Educators

By dianeravitch
July 28, 2013 //
77

A reader sent the following commentary on reformers’ efforts to lower standards for educators and to welcome people without professional preparation and credentials to teach in and administer the nation’s public schools and charter schools. His response was prompted by a post about teachers in Arizona with online degrees. He writes:

“Arizona teacher: “I have seen staffs comprised of high school graduate teachers who bought their degrees online and took not one college level course.”

To the Arizona teacher… destroying the profession of teaching and filling it with unqualified faux teachers is not a bug in the privatizers’ “reform” model, it is a feature.

I just found this from the Connecticut Policy Institute—a “think tank” and “a non-partisan research institute on Connecticut economic policy and education reform” that fronts for for-profit business interests that are trying to profit from the privatization of education. To do this, they put out bogus “studies” and “policy papers” in support of these business interests’ practices and approaches to privatized education:

http://www.ctmirror.org/op-ed/2013/06/30/vallas-certification-debacle-reveals-shortcomings-education-reform-efforts

In this op-ed, Ben Zimmer defends Vallas’ lack of credentialing, but goes one further.

Not only should there be no credential requirement for Superintendents, THERE SHOULD BE NO CREDENTIALING OR EDUCATION REQUIREMENT OF TEACHERS (???!!!) as well as ADMINISTRATORS.

————————————————————–
Ben Zimmer: “With a few exceptions, Connecticut law requires teachers to have a degree in education, meaning many talented people who didn’t decide to become teachers until after completing their educations have difficulty doing so.

“This serves the economic interests of existing teachers and administrators by limiting competition for their jobs, but does not advance the goal of obtaining the highest quality teaching and administration possible.”
————————————————————

Don’t you get it? If the government entity in charge of education requires thing like ohhh… bachelor’s degrees, or even 2-year community college associate degrees… or even one single college course… well, you’re just “serving the economic interest of existing teachers and administrators by limiting competition for their jobs.”

Those teachers who’ve actually achieved these “worthless degrees” will bring along with them accompanying demands for a decent salary, health benefits, retirement, etc…. AND WHO NEEDS THAT when you’re trying to make a profit… err… excuse me… make “transformational change” in education?

Oh, you don’t believe this? Well, Connecticut Policy Institute’s “studies and papers” have “proven” all of this to be true… that you need nothing more than a high school diploma to teach in K-12 schools.

Zimmer goes on:

————————————————————
Ben Zimmer: “As the Connecticut Policy Institute has discussed in our papers on education reform, there is no evidence linking certification regimes to teachers’ or administrators’ effectiveness in increasing student achievement. They simply serve to limit the recruitment pipeline of outstanding educators and keep the antiquated education administration departments of the state university system in business.”
————————————————————–

An organization fronting for business interests that want to profit from the privatization of education—some of them charter school chain CEO”s making $500,000/year or more (Geoffrey Canada)—has its spokesman attacking education departments—some of them Ivy League universities… most of them having turning out quality teachers for 100-150 years or more—as only being “in business” to advance the selfish financial interests of their administrators and professors that work in them. They are deliberately blocking “outstanding educators” from entering the field because they are out for themselves, and not the students’.

Wow! I”m so glad someone’s finally blowing the lid off this!

But then look at this assclown Zimmer’s bio at Connecticut Policy Institute:

http://ctpolicyinstitute.org/about/bio/ben-zimmer/leadership

He proudly touts his own education credentials:

———————————————————————-
“Ben received a J.D. from Yale Law School, where he specialized in business law and economic policy, and a B.A., magna cum laude with highest honors in history, from Harvard College.”
———————————————————————-

But Ben, I thought those high-falutin’ things like degrees didn’t matter. Aren’t those “J.D.’s” and “B.A.s” and “magna cum laude’s” just worthless pieces of paper spit out by “antiquated” entities that are only trying to keep themselves “in business” to pay the undeserved salaries of the folks who work in them?

No, no, no… you see in Ben’s world, rigid requirements like… oh… years of post-secondary education, or even passing a certification test…. those things only matter in OTHER careers or professions. They don’t matter in the realm of K-12 education… as his noble “kids first” organization, Connecticut Policy Institute, has produced studies and papers” have “proven” that.

No, according to Ben, teaching is like working the fry machine at McDonald’s… just let anyone in the door—education and credentials be damned—to have at it and compete for the job, then just keep the ones who do it best. And THAT is how you end up with a staff of what Ben describes as a nation of “outstanding educators.”

Got that?

You see the way to get better teachers in front of kids is just simple… so simple that those antiquated ed departments full of money-motivated hacks have been missing it for over 150 years.

The way to fill our country’s schools with “outstanding educators” is to lower or even eliminate the standards and requirements for becoming one.

That’s it!!!! Why hasn’t anyone thought of that until now?

What’s that, you say? The highest achieving nations like Finland and South Korea don’t operate that way? In those countries, becoming a teacher is as difficult and demanding as becoming a doctor?

Well, that would never work here in the United States.

Categories Administrators, superintendents, Alternate Route To Certification, Corporate Reformers, Teachers

A Broadie Superintendent Resigns

By dianeravitch
July 23, 2013 //
47

After a divisive two years as superintendent of schools in Sumter, South Carolina, Randolph Bynum resigned.

The community expressed relief. At a meeting Monday night, more than 800 people showed up to express opposition to Bynum.

More than 150 teachers left the district during his brief tenure.

What do they teach at the unaccredited Broad Superintendents Academy? How to run a top-down organization that alienates teachers and parents? Apparently teamwork and collaboration are not part of the curriculum.

The story says:

“Luther Barnett, president of the Sumter Schools Education Association and a former English teacher at Sumter High School, said he’s relieved Bynum turned in his resignation letter.

“No, I’ve never seen anything like this in 17 years,” Barnett said. “I’ve been in Sumter for 17 years.”

He’s said it has been difficult to watch many teachers walk out the door.

“It’s been heartbreaking,” Barnett said.

Categories Accountability, Administrators, superintendents, Broad Foundation

Superintendent or CEO?

By dianeravitch
July 23, 2013 //
12

A reader encourages us to watch our language and use the right titles:

“PLEASE, PLEASE stop referring to Paul Vallas or Arne Duncan as “Superintendent” of Chicago Public Schools. They were CEOs – because in Illinois, they were unqualified to be Superintendents. If you’re the CEO, you don’t need an education background.”

Categories Administrators, superintendents, Corporate Reformers

Vallas Refers to Bloggers as “Electronic Graffitti”

By dianeravitch
July 22, 2013 //
62

These days, the blogosphere has become a medium for democratic expression. With so few mainstream media still in existence, blogging has become an important forum for those who have no voice.

Today’s New York Times has an article about the controversy surrounding Paul Vallas in Bridgeport. Vallas speaks contemptuously of bloggers as “electronic graffitti.”

The article speaks dismissively of the fact that Vallas does not have the credentials required by state law to be superintendent. After all, he served as superintendent in Chicago, Philadelphia, and the Recovery School District. The article failed to review how Vallas performed in those districts, while suggesting that this real-life experience should suffice to qualify him as superintendent of Bridgeport.

Is Chicago a successful district after years of control by Vallas and then Arne Duncan? Hardly.

What about Philadelphia? Vallas introduced the nation’s most sweeping privatization experiment when he was in charge, and it was a colossal failure. When he left, the city was in deficit, and it is now facing financial and educational collapse after a decade of state control.

And the Recovery School District? Its partisans, who have poured millions into privatization, keep speaking of “progress” and rapid test score gains, but fail to mention that the RSD in Louisiana is one of the state’s lowest performing districts, where at least 2/3 of the charter schools are rated D or F by the state.

Note that Secretary Duncan defends Vallas and his lack of credentials. This is not surprising because Duncan never had the credentials or education experience to be superintendent.

A reader commented on Duncan’s remarks:

The article says, “Arne Duncan, the federal education secretary, said the opposition to Mr. Vallas was ‘beyond ludicrous.’ He said too many school districts were afraid of innovation, clinging to ‘archaic ideas.’

‘This, to me, is just another painfully obvious, crystal-clear example of people caught in an old paradigm,’ Mr. Duncan said in an interview. ‘This is the tip of the iceberg.’”

“I imagine that the “old” paradigm is the one about true education: students learning and teachers teaching, based upon their philosophies, knowledge, and assessment of the moment, etc. That is, their professionalism, compassion, and fortitude.”

This is my comment:

What is the new paradigm? Education reduced to test scores delivered by inexperienced people with no professional preparation. Principals and superintendents with no education experience.

How, exactly, is that “reform”?

Categories Administrators, superintendents, Connecticut, Education Reform, Vallas, Paul

Joshua Starr Searches for Néw Measures

By dianeravitch
July 20, 2013 //
21

Superintendent Joshua Starr in Montgomery County, Maryland, is searching for ways to measure students other than test scores. The district has commissioned Gallup to develop measures of social and emotional factors.

Sounds good but why not do what Sidwell Friends, Exeter, Andover, Lakeside Academy, and schools in Finland do: Trust professional judgment.

HuffPost reporter Joy Resmovits tweeted this:

“@Joy_Resmovits: Reformy source: “that sound you’re hearing is Joel Klein & @michellerhee’s heads exploding”/ Schools measuring ‘hope’ http://t.co/UMGoUMD71O”

Justin Hamilton, who used to be Duncan’s press secretary, responded in a tweet:

@justinhamilton: @Joy_Resmovits FACT CHECK: Joel Klein is 100% in favor of hope

Hamilton now works for Joel Klein.

Klein works for Rupert Murdoch.

Categories Administrators, superintendents, Education Industry, Klein, Joel, Testing
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