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Peter Greene: Arne Duncan Has Learned Nothing: He’s Taking a Victory Lap After Failing

By dianeravitch
July 31, 2018 //
34

Arne Duncan wrote a book about his seven years as Secretary of Education and is now promoting it and touting his record. You know, the record where teachers were demonized as lying to kids, kids were belittled as dummies, and parents were belittled for not embracing the Common Core.

Peter Greene read an interview with Arne and realized that he learned nothing from his experience.

He begins:

“Never mind a Secretary of Education who has never taught anything; I’m beginning to think it would be a step forward if we had a Secretary of Education who has ever learned anything.

“Arne Duncan was interviewed for the pages of US News, and the resulting piece reminds us, first, that there’s not nearly as much difference between Duncan and DeVos as some Democrats would like to believe, and second, that Duncan remain unrepentant and unenlightened about anything that happened under his watch. So join me in yelling fruitlessly at the computer screen as we walk through this trip down Delusion Lane.

“Chicken Little’s History of School

“Count Duncan as a member of the Century Club– that special group of reformsters that is certain schools haven’t changed in 100 years. Arne would also like to beat the expired equine about how “other nations out-educating, out-investing, out-innovating us.” Because, you know, we’re competing with India and China and Singapore for jobs. That’s certainly true, but at no point is it going to occur to Duncan that those countries compete by offering little or no regulation and workers who will do the job for pennies. In all the times I’ve heard the “we must change education to compete with China” refrain, not once have I heard an explanation of how education will help American workers better compete with people working under conditions we wouldn’t accept for wages we couldn’t live on. Arne wants us to now that our kids– his kids– are going to grow up in that world. And if you think Arne’s kids, raised in privilege and comfort, are going to be competing with some Chinese smartphone assembler for work, well– I have a bridge over a swamp to sell you.

“This guy. This frickin’ guy.

“Oh, and we are not in the top 10 internationally. Which– first, what does that even mean? Top 10 ranked by what? Because if, as I would guess, he means test scores, let me repeat for the gazzillionth time that we have never, ever been in the Top 10 for international test scores. Nor has Duncan ever offered a shred of evidence that being in the Top 10 of test scores translates into any sort of national achievement like higher GDP or higher standard of living or happier citizens or military might or best frozen desserts!

“Duncan’s Diagnosis and That Damned Status Quo

“Having failed to effectively define the problem, Duncan now goes on to offer his idea about the cause.

“This is not a cure for cancer, this is not rocket science. It’s total lack of political will. And I think the politics of the left and the right stand in the way of what’s best for kids.

“Well, actually, it is too rocket science. Duncan’s thesis is that fixing schools is actually quite easy; we’re just not willing to do it, because after all this time, he still doesn’t realize how complex and complicated it is to run an entire educational system. And Duncan doesn’t seem to know what he’s trying to change because he also notes “There’s a small number of political leaders willing to challenge the status quo.”

“Dammit, Arne.

“First, the status quo in education right now is the status quo you help make. Common Core, in its various bastardized forms and under its various assumed names, is the status freakin’ quo, and an ugly obnoxious one it is, too. Schools and teachers being evaluated based on bad uses of bad data generated by bad tests– that’s status quo, too. As is the draining of resources from public schools by private charterized schools. These are all problems, these are all status quo, and these are all a legacy in part of your administration.

“Second, the idea that you need political leaders to change the educational system shows a fundamental misunderstanding of how the education system (and, for that matter, the political system) works. You need teachers and education leaders and actual trained professional educators to change an educational system, yet another fact we can put on the list of Things You Don’t Understand. All these years, and you still treat teachers like the hired help, certain that your amateur insights are more important than anything they might have to say.

“Duncan also thinks we need Republicans to challenge their base, and I’m not sure where he’s coming from here, because other than a deadly aversion to the words “common core,” the GOP base is in tune with most of the Duncan program. Duncan offers Obama’s championing of merit pay as a profil;e in courage because “that’s very hard to do” and well, yes, it’s hard to do because we have lots of evidence that merit pay doesn’t work. There’s nothing courageous about standing up for a bad idea.”

I don’t think anyone told Arne that his own Department evaluated Race to the Top and concluded it was a flop.

Categories Accountability, Duncan, Arne, Education Reform, Failure, U.S. Department of Education

Angie Sullivan: Everybody Is Laughing at Nevada and Its Failing Charter Schools

By dianeravitch
July 29, 2018 //
4

Angie Sullivan teaches in a high-poverty public school in Clark County, Nevada. She writes letters to every legislator. Here is her latest:

This is who we should laugh at the hardest:

Current Nevada Legislative Leadership with hands directly on charter garbage: Nevada Senator Hammond, Nevada Assemblywoman Bilbray Axel Rod, Nevada Senator Denis, and Nevada Senator Woodhouse.

Tell Democratic Majority Leader Aaron Ford his degree in charter schools did not work.

Tell Harry Reid his relationships especially with Gulen and the airforce base charter did not work.

Tell Adam Laxalt in the Attorney General’s Office to stop protecting failing charters. Close them.

Tell former Assemblyman Pat Hickey his hands in the mess just makes him messy too.

Tell Canavero, Jana and Rebecca of NVDOE to take the charter junk science out of Nevada. Paid huge sums to create trash.

Tell the Nevada State Charter Authority to get a handle on this NOW!

Everyone laughs at Nevada.

Especially reformers who are for school choice.

For good reason.

Not responsible or accountable.

Shame on elected policy makers who took money or are involved in this garbage.

$350 million down the toilet.

Folks better be asking real teachers how to get this education job done because turning it over to a Billionaire Casino Manager Elaine Wynn or Tennis Player Andre Agassi has not and does not work. Stacking the Nevada State School Board with business folks, neoliberals, and TFA has produced garbage. No one questions any of this noticeable criminal type behavior?

Legislators better fix this during the next session. Nevada simply can not afford this.

Do you know how many Magnet Public Schools could be supported with $350 million?

This is your education legacy.

Bottom of the bottom. And then even lower.

Both sides of the aisle should own this. And the legislative session is coming up. Stop turning public schools into gutter dwelling charters. Offer unsuspecting students and parents a worse choice – is not “choice”.

Everyone should be laughing at Nevada Charters.

They are a terrifying and horrific joke.

Nevada: Time to Close Down the Worst, Least Accountable Charter Schools in America


Categories Accountability, Charter Schools, Education Industry, Failure, Privatization

Paul Thomas: New Orleans RSD mirage, Not Miracle: A Reader

By dianeravitch
July 24, 2018 //
4

Paul Thomas has gathered a reading list about the Recovery School District and claims that it was proof positive that “disaster capitalism” (Naomi Klein’s term) works.

Since Reformers have experienced failure in everything else they have attempted, the New Orleans “miracle” is their last best hope for proving the “success” of privatization. David Leonhardt of the New York Times called his one-sided review of the New Orleans “miracle” fact-based while ignoring the inconvenient facts that disproved the claims. He should read Paul Thomas’ list and try again.

Categories Accountability, Education Reform, Failure, New Orleans

Mike Petrilli: In the Face of So Many Setbacks, Where Does Reform Go From Here?

By dianeravitch
July 20, 2018 //
28

Mike Petrilli, president of the Thomas B. Fordham Institute, one of the leading advocacy groups in the Corporate Reform Movement, offers advice and consolation to fellow Reformers.

“After two decades of mostly-forward movement and many big wins, the last few years have been a tough patch for education reform. The populist right has attacked standards, testing, and accountability, with particular emphasis on the Common Core, as well as testing itself. The election of Donald Trump and appointment of Betsy DeVos, meanwhile, have made school choice and charter schools toxic on much of the progressive left. And the 2017 results from the National Assessment of Educational Progress indicate a “lost decade” of academic achievement. All of these trends have left policymakers and philanthropists feeling glum about reform, given the growing narrative that, like so many efforts before it, the modern wave hasn’t worked or delivered the goods, yet has produced much friction, fractiousness, and furor.”

Take heart, he says. The children of America need us to privatize their schools, bust teachers’ unions, and Judge their teachers by student test scores. Remember when they all laughed at NCLB, but now “we” know that it was a great success?

It’s true that NAEP scores have been flat for a decade. It’s true that charters close almost as often as they open. It’s true that the charter industry is riddled with fraud, waste, and abuse.

But stick with proven leaders like the hedge fund managers, Bill Gates, and DeVos.

Sorry to be snarky, Mike, but I couldn’t resist.

Categories Accountability, Betsy DeVos, Broad Foundation, Charter Schools, Common Core, Corporate Reformers, Democrats for Education Reform, Education Industry, Failure, Privatization, Testing, Trump, VAM, Vouchers

Gary Rubinstein: Tennessee’s $100 Million ASD Melts Down

By dianeravitch
July 18, 2018 //
13

Tennessee was one of the first states to win a grant from Arne Duncan’s Race to the Top. It won $500 million. It placed its biggest bet on an idea called the Achievement School District. The big plan was to have the state take over the state’s lowest performing schools and do a turnaround. The ASD was launched in 2012 with much fanfare. Its leader promised that the lowest performing schools would be turned around within five years. Reformers loved the idea so much that it was copied in Nevada, North Carolina, and a few other states. Most of the schools were converted to charter schools.

As Gary Rubinstein explains here, the ASD was a complete flop.

“Two years after they launched, an optimistic Chris Barbic, the first superintendent of the ASD, had a ‘mission accomplished’ moment when he declared that three of the original six schools were on track to meet the goal on or before the five year deadline. But the projected gains did not pan out and now, six years later, five out of six of the original schools are still in the bottom 5% with one of them not faring much better. Chris Barbic resigned in 2015 and his successor Malika Anderson resigned in 2017.

“The ASD was, at one time, an experiment that Reformers were very excited about. In 2015, just before Barbic resigned, Mike Petrilli hosted a panel discussion at the Fordham Institute celebrating the lofty goals of the ASD, the RSD, and Michigan’s turnaround district.

“Year after year, all the research on the Tennessee ASD has been negative (except for research that they, themselves, produced). In 2015, a Vanderbilt study found the district to be ineffective. In 2016, a George Washington study agreed. And now, as if we need any more proof, a new 2018 Vanderbilt study found that schools in the ASD have done no better than schools in the bottom 5% that had not been taken over by the ASD.”

A complete flop.

Categories Accountability, Charter Schools, Duncan, Arne, Education Industry, Education Reform, Failure, Privatization, Race to the Top

Stuart Egan: Who Is Behind the Assault on Public Education in North Carolina?

By dianeravitch
July 16, 2018 //
4

NBCT High School Teacher Stuart Egan writes here that public school enrollment in North Carolina has dropped to 81%,just as the Tea Party Republicans hoped. As public schools are starved of resources, growing numbers switch to religious schools, charter schools, virtual charters and Home schools.

Who has made this happen, in addition to the Tea Party?

“Consider the following national entities:

*Teach For America
*Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation
*Walton Family Foundation
*Eli Broad Foundation
*KIPP Charter Schools
*Democrats For Educational Reform
*Educational Reform Now
*StudentsFirst
*America Succeeds
*50CAN
*American Legislative Exchange Council
*National Heritage Academies
*Charter School USA
*Team CFA
*American Federation for Children

“They are all at play in North Carolina, totally enabled by the powers-that-be in the NC General Assembly and their supportive organizations.”

Think of it: 81% of the students in the state attend public schools, but they don’t matter!

To make matters worse, all the alternatives are worse than a well-funded public school.

North Carolina’s education is slipping into a deep hole. It is funding failure.

Betsy DeVos can add another notch to her belt unless the citizens rise up to save their schools.

Categories Betsy DeVos, Charter Schools, Disruption, Education Reform, Failure, Fraud, Funding, North Carolina, Virtual Charter Schools, Vouchers

Nevada: Time to Close Down the Worst, Least Accountable Charter Schools in America

By dianeravitch
July 9, 2018 //
4

Charter schools in Nevada are a national joke. They can fail and fail and fail, and the state doesn’t care. For charter schools, there is no accountability. CREDO Director Macke Raymond said at a national Education Writers Association meeting in 2015, directing her remarks to Ohions, who spend $1 billion annually on charters: “Be very glad that you have Nevada, so you are not the worst.” (https://www.cleveland.com/metro/index.ssf/2015/03/ohios_charter_schools_ridicule.html)

Clark County first grade teacher Angie Sullivan recently wrote to legislators and journalists:

We need to close the DeVos Charter.

Not in February. Now.

DeVos proclaimed Nevada Virtual Academy an example of success. A direct lie.

https://www.npr.org/sections/ed/2017/02/04/513220220/betsy-devos-graduation-rate-mistake

On June 25, the Charter Authority will openly discuss revoking that charter.

Click to access 180625-Notice.pdf

Flooding Nevada with K-12 ads. The for-profit charter proclaimed a success by DeVos while huge number of Nevada Virtual students are not participating, scoring well, or graduating.

Empty threats given on Governor letterhead. Who is accountable for this extreme mess?

Nothing done.

Nevada Virtual Academy is not scared of being closed. Nevada does not close failing charters or even demand regular academic data. Charters will continue to take tax payer money without being accountable. Creating the largest alternative lowest of the low performing school system in the state and possibly the nation.

______________________________

We need an Nevada Charter audit.

Given Nevada’s total disregard for charter school accountability. We are an example to the nation of the extreme distinction which occurs without any accountability.

On-line charters in particular have questionable practices.

Are students actually enrolled? When looking at on-line numbers, how can so many students be supposedly enrolled in on-line instruction but not be taking high stakes testing?

The numbers are telling. We pay. Students do not test. Students do not graduate. Those who do test are scoring lower than everyone else.

Perhaps on-line charters should only be paid for the handful of students actually participating. The tax payer should be concerned. Millions being paid for on-line student learning and it is highly questionable.

An audit should be demanded.

—————————————

Half the Nevada Charters need to be closed. If they are floundering in financial and academic failure, close them. And all campuses need to return and report, not in clumps, site by site.

Zero Failing Nevada Charters have been closed. Not even those without funds to continue – floundering in receivership and demanding money to continue in bankrupt dysfunction. Nevada throwing good money after bad. The tax payer should be disgusted with $350 million in Nevada Charter School waste.

No accountability.

No transparency.

________________________

We should all be disgusted by our political leaders.

One set of rigorous standards for Nevada Public Schools which are ironically turned into charters. Why is that a good idea? The data shows tax payer money will be misused by Nevada Charters. Nevada Charters are a national disgrace. Find a state with worse charters than Nevada. I dare you.

Thank you Nevada politicians and legislators present and former who are heavy advocates on both sides for this embarrassing disgrace. Many hold positions on charter board and groups. You are failures.

Politicians, you have made this incredible mess. I suggest you act quickly to find a remedy. I’m worried this is criminal and your fingerprints are all over it.

The Teacher,

Angie

Categories Accountability, Charter Schools, Education Industry, Education Reform, Failure, For-Profit, Fraud, Nevada, Privatization

Valerie Strauss: How Bill Gates Blew Away $575 Million on Teacher Evaluation

By dianeravitch
June 30, 2018 //
28

We have by now read about the independent Rand study of Bill Gates’ bet on Making test-based teacher evaluation the keystone of education reform. I distinctly recall Melinda Gates saying on PBS that “we now know” how to get a great teacher in every classroom in America.

Well, no, they didn’t.

The Gates put up $215 million and found willing suckers, I mean, partners to add even more of their own money to bring the total to $575 million to test the Gates’s shiny new idea.

It failed.

It exhausted the reserves of Hillsborough County in Florida, where MaryEllen Elia was Superintendent. She was fired but landed on her feet as State Commissioner of Education in New York. Believe it or not, the fiasco in Hillsborough County did not diminished her love of testing.

Valerie Strauss tells the sad saga here of Bill Gates’ latest failure.

“The six-year project began in 2009 when the foundation gave millions of dollars to three public school districts — Hillsborough County in Florida (the first to start the work), Memphis and Pittsburgh. The districts supplied matching funds. Four charter management organizations also were involved: Alliance College-Ready Public Schools; Aspire Public Schools; Green Dot Public Schools; and Partnerships to Uplift Communities Schools.

“The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation pumped nearly $215 million into the project while the partnering school organizations supplied their own money, for a total cost of $575 million. The aim was to create teacher evaluation systems that depended on student standardized test scores and observations by “peer evaluators.” These systems, it was conjectured, could identify the teachers who were most effective in improving student academic performance.”

There is a silver lining.

“In 2014, he gave a nearly hour-long interview at Harvard University, saying, “It would be great if our education stuff worked, but that we won’t know for probably a decade.””

It’s 2018.so far, nothing funded by Gates has reformed education. We have only six more years to wait, and maybe then he will invest in children’s health or something else where he has a chance of doing good work instead of messing up the schools.

Categories Accountability, Failure, Florida, Gates Foundation, Bill Gates, Teacher Evaluations, VAM

Louisiana Educator: Rand Explains Why the Obama-Duncan Teacher Evaluation Program Failed

By dianeravitch
June 28, 2018 //
16

Michael DesHotels, an experienced educator in Louisiana, explains here why the Rand study concluded that the Obama-Duncan teacher evaluation program flopped.

Gates wasted $575 million. The federal and state governments wasted billions. Thousands of teachers lost their careers and reputations. Another reformer disaster.

Unfortunately, the Obama education department had convinced most of the country to implement the same defective evaluation system at the same time before we could see the results of the study. So just like implementation of Common Core, which was also pushed upon school systems by the Gates Foundation, an expensive and time consuming teacher evaluation system was implemented without knowing if it would work. All that money and effort just drove a lot of good teachers out of the profession without improving student learning.

The new teacher evaluation system sponsored by the Gates Foundation and the Obama Race to the Top grants included basing teacher evaluations on student test scores and intensive observation of teachers using a strict rubric for teaching methods. The end result would supposedly identify the highly effective teachers as well as the ineffective ones. Then, teachers could be fired or awarded merit pay based upon their ranking in the evaluation system. Some reformers had theorized that such a system would dramatically improve student academic performance. There was even a theory that low performing students could be brought up to grade level performance by being exposed to highly effective teachers for only three successive years. It was believed that socioeconomic factors affecting student performance could be ignored by just fixing the teachers. These theories have now been proven wrong. Scapegoating teachers for problems of society just does not work, but it does drive good teachers out of the profession, and discourages bright young persons from entering the profession. Result: a serious teacher shortage.

Louisiana went whole hog on VAM (basing teacher evaluations on student test scores) and highly structured teacher observation because we were told that there were findings that proved that any student could be converted into a high academic achiever after only three years of instruction by highly effective teachers. This theory developed by Hanushek and others unfortunately was not scaleable (didn’t work) even though now our entire teacher evaluation system has been revised to supposedly identify highly effective as well as ineffective teachers. Louisiana law now bases teacher job security and even merit pay on highly dubious student performance measures. It turns out that VAM scores for each teacher are extremely unstable (and dangerously irrelevant) from year to year. It turns out that very little of a teacher’s VAM score depends on her/his performance in the classroom. Socioeconomic factors and noise in the highly imprecise VAM formulas routinely outweigh the actual performance of the teacher. In addition, teachers teaching untested subjects have a major advantage over teachers of tested subjects in winning merit pay and job security.

Here is an interesting fact about Louisiana teacher evaluation reform: Did you know that the new teacher evaluation rubric was actually designed by a person (Rayne Martin) who had never taught or evaluated teachers. Before coming to the Louisiana Education Department, Martin had worked for the Housing Authority in Chicago. She had never received teacher training or evaluation training. This is typical of most of the education “deform” we have been subjected to in the last 13 years. Unfortunately, here in Louisiana, we are still stuck with VAM and the new observation matrix for the evaluation of teachers that was developed by a non-teacher who has long left Louisiana.

So what did the Rand study find in its nationwide evaluation of VAM and the accompanying high stakes evaluation of teachers? Basically it has made no difference whatsoever in student performance nationwide. Zero results! After all that money and after the gnashing of teeth by so many thousands of teachers. We have produced however a growing teacher shortage, probably because all those potentially “highly effective” teachers found that they could make more money in jobs that did not use a form of torture to rate their performance….

Read it all!

Categories Failure, Gates Foundation, Bill Gates, Race to the Top, Teacher Evaluations, Teacher Shortage, VAM (value-added modeling)

Andre Agassi, Tennis Legend, Now Profits from Privatizing Public Education

By dianeravitch
June 22, 2018 //
32

Andre Agassi became a tennis legend as a young man. He started tennis early, having dropped out of school at the end of eighth grade to make his mark on clay courts.

Then he opened his own charter school in Las Vegas, and promised that every student would be prepared for a selective college (Agassi never completed high school). Agassi plowed $18 million into the school to assure that it had the best of everything. He told the New York Times in 2004 that he wanted his school to be a model for the nation.

Unfortunately the Agassi school was a disaster. Teachers and principals cycled in and out through a revolving door. It had six principals in its first decade. The cheerleading coach was accused of running a prostitution ring on the side. Security guards complained that the kids were out of control. The scores were about the same as the district’s, despite what teachers called “a chaotic learning environment.” (Source: Amy Kingsley, “Learning Curve,” Las Vegas Citylife, March 14, 2012).

It ended up on the state’s list of low-performing schools. At the very bottom.

What does a state do with a low-performing charter school? Turn it into a public school? Absolutely not! It was handed over to the Democracy Prep Charter chain of New York.

But the word “failure” is not in Andre Agassi’s vocabulary. Last year, he went to the big annual entrepreneur’s conference at Arizona State University to boast about the millions he was now making building new charters. And he pretends that his school in Las Vegas was a phenomenal success.

Andre Agassi, who was once the number one tennis player in the world, has helped build 70 charter schools in the past four years, educating 33,000 students. And that’s just the beginning, he told hundreds of attendees at the 2017 ASU/GSV Summit here Wednesday.

“We have $1 billion more to spend,” he said.

Agassi described his passion for education, his drive to scale up successful charter schools across the nation, and the business model he’s using to do so in an interview with sportscaster Ted Robinson.

“It took me 14 years to build one school in Clark County [Nev.] for 1,300 students,” said Agassi. That school, the Andre Agassi College Preparatory Academy, is a K-12 public charter school that educates students in a low-income neighborhood of West Las Vegas. The academy was constructed with $40 million raised by the Andre Agassi Foundation for Education

At least he has the good sense not to replicate his own failed charter school. Why bother, when he can make $1 Million for every charter school he builds and opens.

Charter schools that have been funded through the Turner-Agassi fund have included KIPP, Rocketship, Academica, Franklin Academy and Lighthouse Academies.

Agassi knows nothing about education but he knows how to turn a profit. In 2023, he bought a building in the Bronx, New York, for $4.3 Million. Five years later, in a related-party transaction, his charter building sold the site to his charter schools for $24 Million. Somebody pocketed $20 Million. Isn’t the charter industry amazing?

What a shame to see a tennis icon reduced to charter shill, profiting by hurting public schools.

Categories Accountability, Charter Schools, Failure, Nevada, Privatization
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