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Jill Lepore: The Myth of “Creative Disruption”

By dianeravitch
January 8, 2018 //
15

This is a fantastic article that first appeared in the New Yorker in 2014. At the time, I posted it. This is an article that I should post at least once a year.

In it, Jill Lepore demolishes the myth of “creative destruction.”

We often hear corporate reformers say that disruption is a wonderful thing, as they close beloved local public schools and replace them with charter schools run by out-of-state entrepreneurs; if that school fails, then they close it and open another and another. Isn’t disruption wonderful?

I have always thought that disruption was a concept that might be good in the corporate world, but not in the personal realm. Children crave stability. They need a stable family, a stable home, and a stable school. They need to feel protected, because they are small. Disruption is unhealthy for them.

But we are told that disruption is the way of the modern world.

Lepore says no. She tears apart Clayton Christenson’s case studies about innovation and disruption.

She writes:

Disruptive innovation as an explanation for how change happens is everywhere. Ideas that come from business schools are exceptionally well marketed. Faith in disruption is the best illustration, and the worst case, of a larger historical transformation having to do with secularization, and what happens when the invisible hand replaces the hand of God as explanation and justification. Innovation and disruption are ideas that originated in the arena of business but which have since been applied to arenas whose values and goals are remote from the values and goals of business. People aren’t disk drives. Public schools, colleges and universities, churches, museums, and many hospitals, all of which have been subjected to disruptive innovation, have revenues and expenses and infrastructures, but they aren’t industries in the same way that manufacturers of hard-disk drives or truck engines or drygoods are industries. Journalism isn’t an industry in that sense, either.

Doctors have obligations to their patients, teachers to their students, pastors to their congregations, curators to the public, and journalists to their readers—obligations that lie outside the realm of earnings, and are fundamentally different from the obligations that a business executive has to employees, partners, and investors. Historically, institutions like museums, hospitals, schools, and universities have been supported by patronage, donations made by individuals or funding from church or state. The press has generally supported itself by charging subscribers and selling advertising. (Underwriting by corporations and foundations is a funding source of more recent vintage.) Charging for admission, membership, subscriptions and, for some, earning profits are similarities these institutions have with businesses. Still, that doesn’t make them industries, which turn things into commodities and sell them for gain.

I won’t attempt to summarize the article. I will just say: Read it and enjoy.

Categories Corporate Reformers, Education Industry, Education Reform, Privatization

New York: How Charter Schools Won the Right to Hire Unqualified Teachers

By dianeravitch
January 6, 2018 //
13

 

Jake Jacobs reports the complicated political story behind the decision by the State University of New York’s charter committee to allow its nearly 200 charter schools to hire unqualified teachers. New York State has high standards for new teachers. SUNY has some of the best education programs in the state.

Yet a SUNY  committee selected by Governor Cuomo decided that charter schools it approves need no qualifications at all, not even a college degree, not even a high school degree.

Behind this tangled tale is Eva Moskowitz’s Success Academy Charter Chain, which has such a high teacher turnover rate (as much as 60% annually in some schools) that she is faced with a perennial teacher shortage.

Read on to learn why SUNY would undermine teacher professionalism.

Categories Accountability, Charter Schools, Corporate Reformers, Education Industry, New York, Teachers, Testing

Proof that Choice Zealots Never Learn: Thomas Carroll’s Failed Albany Charters

By dianeravitch
January 6, 2018 //
13

 

Thomas Carroll was one of the authors of New York state’s charter law, passed in 1998,when Republican George Pataki was governor. The governor traded a pay raise for legislators to get their support for charters.

Carroll started a charter chain in Albany called “Brighter Choice.” It included single-gender schools for boys and girls. He operated 11 charter schools in the state capitol and hoped to charterize the entire district. He failed, the chain failed. But Carroll is now promoting the virtues of school choice on behalf of the Trump-DeVos agenda to denizens of D.C. who are ignorant of his over-hyped, costly, failed charter chain in Albany.

Carroll is not an educator, but he figured out how to make charters pay. His chain was handsomely funded by the Walton Family Foundation, and Carroll thought of other ways to generate funding and profits through real estate deals and clever use of public bonds.

This article by a union activist in Albany was written in 2010:

“They said charters would offer needed competition to community schools, but they didn’t say the competition would be about public dollars. Last week Albany Times Union reported on the city’s Albany Leadership Charter High School for Girls “asking for $15 million in tax-free public financing to buy the brand-new charter high school for girls built by the Brighter Choice Foundation.”

“Here’s the cute part. The nonprofit Brighter Choice Foundation, which runs all 11 charter schools in Albany and erected the building at a cost of some $10.1 million, is directing its Charter Facilities Finance Fund to ask the city to back its selling tax-exempt bonds to investors so it can buy the school building and — are you ready for this? — lease it back to Brighter Choice.

“Forget about whether the deal sounds dodgy, because it does. If the deal also sounds a bit familiar, it may be because Thomas Carroll, the prime mover behind the Brighter Choice charter schools, has been profiting from a similarly questionable real estate tax loophole for the past several years, a story exposed earlier this year by Juan Gonzalez in the Daily News.

”Critics say Carroll’s latest charter real estate trick runs counter to the purpose of the city providing tax free bonds, which is to jump-start job creation and promote economic development. No jobs will be created here; the school is already up and running. Where’s the public benefit in financing a project that’s already completed?

“The paper cites Brighter Choice Chairman Chris Bender’s bright expectation that the high school’s sale would “replenish the revolving line of credit” it holds with the Walton Family Foundation, the charity run by the family that owns the nonpareil union-busting Wal-Mart.

“As the paper notes, that cozy arrangement “could create another potentially controversial scenario in which Brighter Choice is essentially using the proceeds from the sale of tax-free bonds to bolster the account from which it builds new schools to compete with the city school district.”

“Supporters say the school does create jobs —some two dozen new ones — but that’s denied by an Albany schools spokesperson who says it’s more a case of job shifting than job creation, given that 200 public school staff members, including 100 teachers, were laid off in the last two school years.

“We should note that Carroll, the little man on the charter school stair, is the honcho behind School Performance Inc., which in turn runs the Charter Facilities Finance Fund that wants to make deal for the city.

“His adventures in education aren’t restricted to the state’s snow belt. President of the charter-flacking Foundation for Education Reform & Accountability, Carroll is also president of the Empire Foundation and CHANGE-NY, both far-right-of-center organizations that mask conservative ideology as fiscal prudence. Ripping off Albany’s tax base must be the new style in protecting the public’s dollars.”

This is what Juan Gonzalez wrote about Thomas Carroll’s Brighter Choice real estate deals:

“Wealthy investors and major banks have been making windfall profits by using a little-known federal tax break to finance new charter-school construction.

“The program, the New Markets Tax Credit, is so lucrative that a lender who uses it can almost double his money in seven years.

“In Albany, which boasts the state’s highest percentage of charter school enrollments, a nonprofit called the Brighter Choice Foundation has employed the New Markets Tax Credit to arrange private financing for five of the city’s nine charter schools.

“But many of those same schools are now straining to pay escalating rents, which are going toward the debt service that Brighter Choice incurred during construction.

“The Henry Johnson Charter School, for example, saw the rent for its 31,000-square-foot building skyrocket from $170,000 in 2008 to $560,000 last year.

“The Albany Community School’s rent jumped from $195,000 to $350,000.

“Green Tech High Charter School rents went from $443,000 to $487,000.

“Meanwhile, all the Albany charter schools haven’t achieved the enrollment levels their founders expected, even after recruiting hundreds of students from suburban school districts to fill their seats.

“The result has been less money in per-pupil state aid to pay operating costs, including those big rent bills.

“Several charters have fallen into additional debt to the Brighter Choice Foundation.”

In 2015, the state closed down two of the Brighter Choice charter schools for low performance, high teacher turnover, poor learning materials,  Eventually, all but two of the Brighter Choice charters were closed.

Scott Waldman wrote in Politico in 2015  about “the educational model that failed”:

“In total, Albany taxpayers have spent more than $300 million on the city’s charter schools in the last decade, Albany school district spokesman Ron Lesko said. Many of those schools have now been closed.

“We didn’t need to spend scores of millions of dollars to find out that the work our teachers and staff do and the staff in Rochester, Syracuse, Buffalo and New York City, and every city in poor communities in America is doing is hard work,” he said. “There is no quick and easy fix and privatizing education is no answer and that’s been proven here.”

“The failure in Albany has shown the disruption that charters can cause to public school systems and surrounding neighborhoods. The Brighter Choice middle schools set to close were built just a few years ago, near the foundation’s headquarters. Half of a city block was leveled and residents were displaced from their homes.

“The closure of those schools has created an administrative nightmare for the Albany city school district, which must now establish an entirely new middle school in the next six months to handle the almost 400 charter school students who were enrolled in the failed Brighter Choice schools.

“Albany was once among the top 10 districts in the nation when it came to the percentage of public school students enrolled in charter schools. Just a few years ago, more than a fifth of the city’s 10,000 public school students were enrolled in charters.

“The Brighter Choice schools are supported by the Brighter Choice Foundation, once headed by Tom Carroll, a lobbyist for education reform and a former Pataki official who helped write the state’s charter school law. Carroll was a prominent critic of one of Albany’s first charter schools, New Covenant Charter School, which he did not create, and which he argued should be shuttered because it reflected poorly on the rest of the city’s charter sector. Carroll criticized the school, which started in trailers on a vacant lot in Albany, for growing too quickly and never developing its curriculum. Its closure, over the objections of Governor George Pataki, drew significant media attention.

“The Brighter Choice schools, Carroll said, were designed to be better, the answer to New Covenant failings, small and with a “relentless focus on standards and results.” Carroll, who earned more than $400,000 annually from the nonprofits he created to encourage charter growth, raised more than $15 million from the Walton Foundation to help build Albany’s charter schools. He also turned to hedge-fund billionaires including Bruce Kovner to bring outside money for help growing Albany’s charter sector.”

So, having cost the district of Albany hundreds of millions of dollars, having demonstrated the failure of school choice, Thomas Carroll now claims that school choice is the wave of the future.

His own example proves that he is wrong. Unless we want to waste billions on more failures.

 

Categories Accountability, Charter Schools, Corporate Reformers, Education Industry, Privatization

North Carolina: Rightwing Republicans Continue to Wreak Havoc on State’s Public Schools

By dianeravitch
January 5, 2018 //
6

 

In 2010, the Tea Party and assorted rightwing zealots took control of the North Carolina General Assembly. They gerrymandered districts to assure their continued domination. They passed legislation for charters, vouchers, and cyber charters. They approved for-profit schools. They damaged every functioning part of the government.

Recently, they passed a mandate to reduce class sizes in the early grades but did not increase funding. Educators warned of massive layoffs, loss of the arts and physical education, and other consequences. Now a key legislator claims he has heard their complaints and plans to fix the mess. Educators fear that the chaos is intended to promote privatization.

On another front, the North Carolina General Assembly decided to replicate Tennessee’s failed Achievement School District. In Tennessee, the ASD took over low-performing schools, turned them over to charter operators, and promised miraculous results. There were no results. It flopped.

North Carolina  was impressed nonetheless. Nothing like copying failure. It created an “Innovative School District.” It hired a superintendent, Eric Hall, who is paid $150,000 a year. The plan was to take control of five schools and give them to charter operators. However, almost all the schools that were supposed to be placed in the ISD backed out. Only one school is now about to be taken over. The state has received applications from two firms to operate the one-school district. 

So the one school in the Innovative School District will have a principal, a superintendent, and will be operated by a reform organization.

How do you spell B-O-O-N-D-O-G-G-L-E?

 

Categories Accountability, Charter Schools, Corporate Reformers, Education Industry, Hoax, North Carolina, Privatization

Steven Singer Shares His Top Ten Posts of 2017

By dianeravitch
December 31, 2017 //
3

Steven Singer had a stellar year in 2017. He published a book and he posted some brilliant commentaries. He even got censored by Facebook, not once, but twice.

Here are his top ten posts.

His #1 Post was about the ignorance and arrogance of Betsy DeVos.

His #2 Post was about U.S. schools. He said, “They are NOT failing. They are among the best in the world.”

Categories Accountability, Betsy DeVos, Corporate Reformers, Creativity, Education Industry, Education Reform, Privatization, Testing

Laura Chapman: The Great Vampire Reform Squid with Many Tentacles

By dianeravitch
December 29, 2017 //
10

Laura Chapman writes here about the beast that wants to Destroy Public Education, which has many names:

Many of these schemes are part of the Education Cities initiative. I may have commented about this before.

About Education Cities: FUNDERS Laura and John Arnold foundation, Michael and Susan Dell Foundation, Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation, and Walton Family Foundation.

PARTNERS

“Education Cities works with leading organizations to help our members achieve their missions.”

“Bellwether Education Partners works with Education Cities on research and capacity building projects. Bellwether is a nonprofit dedicated to helping education organizations—in the public, private, and nonprofit sectors—become more effective in their work and achieve dramatic results, especially for high-need students.”

In Cincinnati, Bellwether was the recruiter for the “Accelerate Great Schools,” initiative that seemed to have appeared out of nowhere, pushed by high profile local foundations and deep pockets in the business community—all intent on marketing the need for “high quality seats” meaning you close and open schools based on the state’s weapon-ized system of rating schools. You also increase charter schools and hire TFA. (We have a TFA alum on the school board). The CEO of Accelerate Great Schools recruited by Bellwether was a TFA manager from MindTrust in Indianapolis. He lasted about 18 months and accelerated himself to a new job. http://www.cincinnati.com/story/news/education/2017/01/24/ceo-quietly-quits-school-accelerator/96997612/

“Center on Reinventing Public Education (CRPE) at the University of Washington partners with Education Cities to analyze and identify policies that create the conditions that allow great schools to thrive. Through research and policy analysis, CRPE seeks ways to make public education more effective, especially for America’s disadvantaged students.”

CRPE should be regarded as an operational arm of the Gates Foundation. It marketed the Gates “Compacts.” These are MOUs (memoranda of understanding) designed to create a “make-nice-with-your-charter schools who want to have you for lunch.” The MOUs mean that districts agree to give central office resources to charters (e.g., deals on meals and transportation) with charters promising to share their “best practices” and other nonsense. The bait to districts included $100,000 up front with the promise of more money to the district if they met x, y, z, terms of the MOU. Only few districts got extra money. Many reasons, some obvious like the departure of the people who signed the MOUs.

“Public Impact” partners with Education Cities (and Bellwether Education Partners) on research and capacity building projects. With a mission to dramatically improve learning outcomes for all children in the United States, Public Impact concentrates its work on creating the conditions in which great schools can thrive. The Opportunity Culture initiative aims to extend the reach of excellent teachers and their teams to more students, for more pay, within recurring budgets. Public Impact, a national research and consulting firm, launched the Opportunity Culture initiative’s implementation phase in 2011, with funding from The Joyce Foundation, Carnegie Corporation of New York and the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.” Current work is funded by the Overdeck Family Foundation and the Charles and Lynn Schusterman Family Foundation.”

Get past the self-aggrandizing rhetoric and you see that Public Impact is marketing 13 school turnaround models, almost all of these with reassignments of teachers and students to accommodate “personalized” something. One arm of the “opportunity culture” website is a job placement service for teachers. In prior USDE administrations, Public Impact and Bellwether worked together to get federal support for charter schools.Both have political clout.

“Thomas B. Fordham Institute partners with Education Cities to analyze and identify policies and practices that create the conditions that allow great schools to thrive. The Thomas B. Fordham Institute works to advance educational excellence for every child through research, analysis, and commentary, as well as on-the-ground action and advocacy in Ohio.”

Well, we have a pretty good idea in Ohio of how all of that pontification worked out.

Here are the cities in the foundation-led move to eliminate democratically elected school boards and fold public schools into a portfolio of contract schools that receive public funds but are privately operated. At one time the number of Education Cities was 30, then 28, now 25.

Albuquerque, NM, Excellent Schools New Mexico
Baton Rouge, LA New Schools for Baton Rouge
Boise, ID Bluum
Boston, MA Boston Schools Fund, Empower Schools
Chicago, IL, New Schools for Chicago
Cincinnati, OH, Accelerate Great Schools
Denver, CO, Gates Family Foundation, Donnell-Kay Foundation
Detroit, MI, The Skillman Foundation
Indianapolis, IN, The Mind Trust
Kansas City, MO, Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation
Las Vegas, NV, Opportunity 180
Los Angeles, CA, Great Public Schools Now
Memphis, TN, Memphis Education Fund
Minneapolis, MN, Minnesota Comeback
Nashville, TN, Project Renaissance
New Orleans, LA, New Schools for New Orleans
Oakland, CA, Educate78, Great Oakland Public Schools Leadership Center, Rogers Family Foundation
Philadelphia, PA, Philadelphia School Partnership
Phoenix, AZ, New Schools for Phoenix
Richmond, CA, Chamberlin Family Foundation
Rochester, NY, E3 Rochester
San Jose, CA, Innovate Public Schools
Washington, DC, Education Forward DC, CityBridge Education

These cities have been targeted by national and local non-profits for capture by promoters of choice, charters, and tech. This is a national effort designed to make school “reform” look like it is a local initiative, inspired by generosity and driven by civic values and “partnerships” in combination with “forward thinking” associated with a chamber of commerce campaign. Look at the names of these initiatives; New Schools, Education Forward, Comeback, Renaissance, and so on. Marketing market-based and corporate managed education is the aim and it is sought by pushing the idea that established public schools are failures

Categories Accountability, Charter Schools, Corporate Reformers, Education Industry, Education Reform, Privatization

Peter Greene: The End Game of the Privatization Movement

By dianeravitch
December 28, 2017 //
46

Jennifer Berkshire pointed Peter Greene to a paper published by the libertarian Heartland Institute in 2002, nearly 18 years ago. It lays out the goals of the privatization movement very clearly. The main goal was nothing less than the elimination of public schools in America, replaced by a free-market system. The paper was written by Joseph Bast, the president of the Heartland Institute.

Whenever you hear someone refer to public schools as “government schools,” you can be sure you are in the presence of a free-market zealot.

“Bast expresses a childlike faith in the magic of the marketplace. “Privatization is so effective it typically costs a private firm half as much as the government to produce a product or service of similar (often superior) quality.” It’s a cute notion, for which he offers zero evidence. What was clear even in 2002, but what Bast never acknowledges, is that privatization allows private operators to hoover up a big pile of tax dollars that would otherwise have gone to the public sector. But Bast belonged to the Cult of Competition, believing that competing schools would reward schools that please parents, stimulate parent involvement, be more efficient, and penalize failure. None of these things are related to the goal of providing a high quality education for every single child in America, but then, that’s not his goal.

“Bast had some clever (if not reality-based) ideas about how vouchers would satisfy many reformy constituencies. For instance, by setting voucher amounts below current per-students spending levels, vouchers would lessen the taxpayer cost. Because, I guess, the private schools would accept the low voucher amount. Because when I tell the dealer that I can’t afford a Porsche, he just says, “Well, then, I’ll just lower the price to what you would like to pay.” Because that’s how free market competition works…

“His big vision?

Pilot voucher programs for the urban poor will lead the way to statewide universal voucher plans. Soon, most government schools will be converted into private schools or simply close their doors. Eventually, middle- and upper-income families will not longer expect or need tax-financed assistance to pay for the education of their children, leading to further steps toward complete privatization. Vouchers could remain to help the truly needy.

“Use the poor to get vouchers started. Shut down public education entirely. Let the wealthy go back to their exclusive top-tier schools, and set up some cheap ones for everyone else. Boom. No public education, and no forcing taxpayers to pay a bunch of money to educate Those People’s children…

“If you take nothing else from this piece, remember this– for many of the most ardent voucher supporters, school vouchers are not a destination, but just a stop-gap, something that will have to do until they can finally move on their real goal– the complete dismantling of public education in this country, replaced with a loose system of unaccountable, unregulated private schools. That fully privatized system, not a voucher system, is the goal. Keep your eye on the ball.”

Heartland Institute is supported by the DeVos family, the Koch brothers, and all the usual rightwing foundations.

Categories Betsy DeVos, Billionaires, Corporate Reformers, Education Industry, Education Reform, Koch Brothers, Privatization

A Great Story of Courage And Survival

By dianeravitch
December 24, 2017 //
9

I enjoyed reading this story. I think you will too. It appeared in the National Geographic. It is about a man who fell overboard, was surrounded by sharks and other dangerous creatures, yet managed to survive. What was it? Character. Courage. Hope. Faith. All of the above.

https://news.nationalgeographic.com/2017/12/alone-lost-overboard-brett-archibald/

At first, I wondered, does this have anything to do with education?

Yes, I answered myself. We are swimming in shark-infested waters. The sharks want to destroy our public schools. They want to replace teachers with machines and call it “personalized learning.” They want to test our children until they cry. They want to monetize education and put their investment on the New York Stock Exchange. They want to take the money meant for public schools and distribute it to private schools, religious schools, for-Profit schools, and vendors of schlock. They want the public to pay money to schools that discriminate against children of certain groups, practices that are against our civil rights laws. The sharks don’t care about civil rights laws, although they claim to be the leaders of “the civil rights issue of our time.” They don’t care about children either. Don’t ever believe a shark. They lie.

We will survive. We will not let the sharks devour what matters most to us. We will prevail.

Categories Character, Corporate Reformers, Courage, Education Industry, Privatization

Carol Burris: The Malicious Reformer Assault on Public Schools in Indiana

By dianeravitch
December 22, 2017 //
6

Indiana was once renowned for its public schools, which were beloved community institutions. Then rightwing zrepublicans took control of the state, and the result was disruption, chaos, and community division. Instead of working together to improve their public schools, the public was enticed to pursue private choices, all under the false promise of “reform.”

Carol Burris went to Indiana, visited schools, met educators, and has written a three-part series about the corporate attack on public education in the Hoosier State. At the center of destruction are two men: Mitch Daniels, the former governor who is now president of Purdue (a soft landing he engineered), and Mike Pence, the pious evangelical who is now Vice-President.

Here is part 1 of Carol’s gripping story of the attack on public education in Indiana.

“Entire public school systems in Indiana cities, such as Muncie and Gary, had been decimated by funding losses, even as a hodgepodge of ineffective charter and voucher schools sprang up to replace them. Charter school closings and scandals were commonplace, with failing charters sometimes flipped into failing voucher schools. Many of the great public high schools of Indianapolis were closed from a constant churn of reform directed by a “mindtrust” infatuated with portfolio management of school systems.

“When I asked who was most responsible for the downward spiral of public education in the state, the answer was always the same: Mitch Daniels, Indiana’s 49th governor.”

Categories Accountability, Charter Schools, Corporate Reformers, Education Industry, Indiana, Privatization

Sinclair Media is Spreading Rightwing Propaganda Against Public Schools, And Coming to a Station Near You

By dianeravitch
December 22, 2017 //
15

This is a truly frightening story.

Far-rightwing media giant Sinclair Broadcasting has won approval from the FCC to buy Tribune Media. It will control the news feed into 72% of all homes, writes Jaisal Noor reporting from Baltimore.

Jaisal Noor writes:

“The Trump administration’s FCC recently changed local media ownership rules, paving the way for Sinclair Broadcasting to buy Tribune Media for $3.9 billion dollars. When the deal goes through, Sinclair has access to 72 percent of households nationwide. The Hunt Valley-based Sinclair is the largest distributor of local news in the country, and forces its stations to run commentary from pundits such as former Trump aide Boris Epshteyn and frequently offers up news with an unabashed, pro-administration spin (“Did the FBI have a personal vendetta in pursuing the Russia investigation of President Trump’s former national security adviser Michael Flynn?”).

“While Sinclair consolidates its grip on the nation’s local TV market, in Baltimore, Sinclair is ramping up its local coverage with Project Baltimore on local affiliate Fox45, which aims to “save” Baltimore schools by bashing them. Project Baltimore’s propaganda is subtler than Sinclair’s employing click-bait headlines, skewed statistics, and half-truths to push a narrative that portrays Baltimore schools as beyond redemption and casts Project Baltimore as coming to the rescue.

“Its austere logo, in red, white, and blue offers up the tagline, “Save Our Schools.”

“Although Project Baltimore launched in March, recent stories have gone viral raising its profile and influence. A Nov. 8 report from Chris Papst titled “13 Baltimore City High Schools, zero students proficient in math” reported that over a dozen Baltimore City High Schools had zero students proficient in the math PARCC test—a test that’s part of the Common Core curriculum, aimed at evaluating students and teachers. Project Baltimore’s story was picked up by national right-wing outlets such as Breitbart and Fox News.

“While Papst’s reporting is technically accurate—13 city schools do indeed have no students that are math proficient—the story does not mention that in 2016 some of the highest performing schools in other parts of the state (including Montgomery County’s elite Walt Whitman High School) also have few if any students who scored proficient. Also not mentioned is that the PARCC test is not aimed at measuring achievement, rather measuring proficiency with Common Core curriculum. More than half the states administering the PARCC test have stopped using it due to concerns over the effectiveness of the test in measuring academic achievement and the burden it places on students. The test is also usually given on computers, which many Baltimore students lack access to at home or in their classrooms.”

Categories Accountability, Baltimore, Common Core, Corporate Reformers, Education Industry, Privatization, Testing
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