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Jeff Bryant: The Charter School Myth is in Deep Trouble

By dianeravitch
October 21, 2016 //
29

In this post, Jeff Bryant reviews the current backlash that is blocking the path of the charter industry.

For most of the past 20 years, we have been fed a steady diet of propaganda about charter schools and their magical power to “save poor kids from failing public schools.” The original founders of the charter movement wanted charter schools to collaborate with public schools, to help solve problems that public schools couldn’t solve, and to be partners. They are no longer collaborators or partners; instead they see themselves as competitors, trying to seize “market share” and drive public schools out of business. The founders did not dream that their idea would give birth to an avaricious industry that would generate for-profit schools, schools with draconian discipline, and schools that fought against any accountability.

One thing is now clear: charter schools do not have a secret formula to “save poor kids from failing public schools.” When they accept the same students, they do no better and often do much worse (on standardized tests) as compared to their “failing schools.” Many circumvent this problem by choosing the students they want and excluding those they don’t want. In some states and cities, the charters are failing far worse than the public schools they replaced. Hardly a day goes by without another story of a scandal, financial or academic, in the charter industry. This is not surprising when there is so little oversight, accountability or transparency associated with the charter schools. You need not look far to find examples of nepotism, conflicts of interest, graft, fraud, misappropriation of funds, and self-dealing.

For years, the public has been unaware of what the charter industry was up to. But as the industry became more ambitious, more aggressive, and more avaricious, the public is catching on. That is why Question 2 in Massachusetts, funded by out-of-state billionaires, is in trouble; that is why Amendment 1 in Georgia, which would allow the state to take control of struggling public schools, is in trouble. The billionaires are pumping in more money to deceive the public, but school boards, PTAs, school committees, teachers’ groups, and parents are spreading the word, door to door, without the billionaires’ help.

The loss of taxpayer money on schools of unknown quality is bad enough. What is far worse is allowing the profiteers and free-market ideologues to privatize an essential democratic institution.

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

A Warning to the People of Georgia about the New Orleans Myth

By dianeravitch
October 16, 2016 //
6

Parents, students, educators and other citizens are invited nvited to learn about the hoax of Amendment 1on the ballot. It is an effort by the far-right to change the Georgia state constitution to allow the state to take over schools with low test scores and give them to charter corporations. Tea Party Governor Nathan Deal says it is for the poor minority kids, whom he wants to “save.”

Please join civil rights activists to learn more about Amendment 1 and the myth of the New Orleans miracle.

perfect-storm-9-28

Categories Accountability, Charter Schools, Education Reform, Fraud, Georgia, Hoax, New Orleans

Carol Burris on the Charter Mess in California: Part 3

By dianeravitch
October 15, 2016 //
19

Carol Burris is writing a four-part series about charter schools in California. She recently traveled to California to visit charter schools. She found it difficult to get information on certain charter schools, because some are not located in the district that authorized them. Transparency and accountability appear to be non-existent. A recent newspaper series about the online charter K12, Inc., demonstrated that it makes a handsome profit while delivering poor education. But the state has taken no action.

Public money meant for public schools is freely handed out to charters with no supervision or oversight.

She learned about a charter school called WISE, and it sounded good on paper:

The Wise Academy is tucked away on a Girl Scout camp on the Bothin Youth Center in Fairfax, Calif. Its students attend classes in yurts and barns. Wise, which stands for Waldorf-Inspired School of Excellence, follows the curriculum taught in Waldorf private schools — its students garden, enjoy a games class, and celebrate All Souls Day and Michaelmas.

Students must apply to attend, and its preliminary application makes it clear that parents are supposed to pony up cash. The full application demands that families provide all sources of income. The school’s donate button has a default donation of $2,000. A cash-strapped parent would quickly infer that their family “need not apply.”

How many students attend Wise Academy and how well do they achieve? For the taxpaying public, that is a mystery.

You cannot find this K-6 charter school, which has been in operation for three years, on the state’s Education Department website. Rick Bagley, the superintendent of the Ross Valley School District in which Wise is located, was never informed of its presence as required by law.

The state has thus far refused to monitor charter schools or hold them accountable.

A bill that would have banned for-profit charters in California was vetoed by Gov. Jerry Brown in 2015. An additional bill, which would have prevented financially troubled districts from authorizing charters in other districts, was vetoed by Brown last month. The president of the California State Board of Education, Michael Kirst, worked as a K12 consultant, before his appointment by Brown.

Categories Accountability, California, Charter Schools, Corporate Reformers, Education Industry, For-Profit, Fraud, Privatization

A Brief Report from Massachusetts, Ground Zero of the Charter Fraud

By dianeravitch
October 14, 2016 //
17

I am on the train returning from Wellesley to New York City, after Pasi Sahlberg’s brilliant performance last night. I say “performance” because he didn’t give a conventional lecture. He used a multi-media platform to entertain, interact, and inform the audience. He began his talk by posing a mathematical question, which appeared on the screen behind him. He urged the audience to add the numbers, out loud, simple whole numbers, as they appeared on the screen. Many of us showed how easily we were fooled by what we thought we saw. How easily we draw false conclusions. That was his introduction to a performance that included film clips, music, data, and exposition. If you have a chance to invite him to your state or organization, I urge you to do so. He is amazing. As soon as I have the video link, I will post it.

In talking to parents and teachers during my visit, I learned that all those millions from hedge fund managers, billionaires, and union-busters are now showing up as television commercials blanketing the state with lies. Earnest “parents” explain in the commercials that they are voting for Question 2–the approval of more privately run charter schools–because they “support” public schools, they want to “help” public schools. They do not explain that passage of Question 2 means that neighborhood public schools will be closed and replaced by corporate-controlled charter schools. They do not explain that more money for charter schools means less money for public schools. They do not explain that those who vote for Question 2 are voting to cut the budgets of their own public schools.

It is a low, misleading, dishonest campaign. Why are the “reformers” dishonest? Simple. If they told the truth, the public would overwhelmingly reject their goal of privatizing public schools and turning over control to out-of-state corporations. This is the billionaire-funded propaganda campaign that dare not speak its name.

Corporate reform refuses to be truthful. It wraps itself in self-righteous lies about promoting civil rights and closing the achievement gap. Destroying a democratic institution is not promoting civil rights. Creating colonialist “no excuses” charter schools that exclude or kick out low-scoring students does not promote civil rights or reduce the achievement gap. Making a fetish of standardized testing guarantees that the “achievement gap” will never close because the standardized tests are designed to produce achievement gaps that never close.

Where do the “reformers” find the white teachers willing to enforce the harsh discipline of no-excuses schools and impose unquestioning compliance on nonwhite children? Very likely, these teachers attended progressive private or public schools. Did they learn the value of conformity and obedience in TFA training or at the Relay “Graduate School of Education”?

As Alan Singer wrote on Huffington Post, Massachusetts is now ground zero in the battle for public education. It may be the most liberal state in the nation. It is far and away the most successful state school system, as measured by the National Assessment of Educational Progress. If the billionaires can persuade the people of Massachusetts to turn over a dozen schools a year from here to eternity, they can do it anywhere. After all, what’s a couple of million dollars to the Waltons, whose family wealth exceeds $130 billion? If the billionaires can hoax the people of Massachusetts for only $15 million, what state will be outside their reach? You can be sure that the charter industry won’t stop in Boston and the small cities of the state. They have their eyes on the suburbs, too.

What happens on November 8 will matter to the future of public education in America.

Will the corporate reformers pull the wool over the eyes of the public? Will their deceptions and lies cover up their goal of undermining one of our most important democratic institutions?

Or will the grassroots actions of parents and teachers strip away their evasions, lies, and propaganda and demonstrate that the public schools of the Bay State are not for sale? Not at any price.

Categories Charter Schools, Corporate Reformers, Democracy, Education Industry, Fraud, Hoax, Massachusetts, Privatization

UPDATE: Unmasked! The Pro-Charter Blogger in Massachusetts

By dianeravitch
October 11, 2016 //
62

UPDATE: Marc Kenen, the executive director of the Massachusetts Charter School Association and also the author of ballot Question 2, which would expand the number of charter schools in the state, has written to say that this post is untrue. I have no way of knowing who “Nat Morton” is since he or she will not reveal his/her identity. “Nat Morton” is a passionate advocate for charter schools who posted comments here frequently. If Marc Kenen is not “Nat Morton,” I apologize. Someone writes a blog and calls him/herself “Nat Morton,” and I implore that person to give their true name so readers can judge their credentials and their authenticity. I will also ask Marc Kenen to stop writing insulting comments to this blog, as such comments are not permitted.

Knowing this background: I leave the original post intact but warn readers that the identity of “Nat Morton” is unknown, and I can’t be certain who he/she is, other than that it is not me. Beyond that, I can’t know until “Nat Morton” removes his/her mask.

The original post began here:

Reader Christine Langhoff in Massachusetts sent the following comment about a blogger who has frequently written on this blog to defend charter schools, support Question 2 to permit more of them, and to flout his superior research abilities.

“A Boston parent, exchanging emails with (G)Nat Morton, received a digital file from Gnat in support of his arguments. But he forgot to use his nom de plume, and revealed himself as Marc Kenen, executive Director of the MA Charter School Association and also the author of ballot Question 2.

“http://www.masscharterschools.org/about-us/staff

“Kenen has not denied that Nat Morton is his avatar. Further, Stephen B. Ronan is the only person I have ever seen refer to Nat Morton’s blog, and in any forum where the one appears,the other is apt to chime in. This leads me to conclude that Kenen is Gnat is Ronan.

“I find it difficult to enage seriously with someone who would defund our excellent public schools when he is not even willing to own his perspective publicly by using his own name as he advances the cause of the privatizers. And if there’s any question whether the ballot question is designed to defund our schools, it’s worth noting that Boston City Councilor Tito Jackson made this point in the Askwith Forum at Harvard on Sept. 27 regarding Question 2. He asked Kenen directly why he had not written a funding mechanism into the proposal. Start at 1:12:00 (It’s apparent in the video that Kenen bears more than a passing resemblance to his Nat Morton avatar.)

“https://youtu.be/XCsZZ-J7mcU

“https://gseweb.harvard.edu/news/16/09/more-charter-schools-massachusetts-vote-and-national-debate”

So there you have it: the leading advocate of Question 2 (more charters) pretends to be an independent researcher but is in fact a paid employee of the state charter association. Why not give your name and affiliation and let people make their own judgment? This is redolent of the charter movement itself, which pretends to be about helping poor kids but attracts funding from Wall Street, right wing politicians, and others whose real goal is privatization, not helping improve schools for all children.

Our national goal is equal educational opportunity, not a free-market of winners and losers. Privatization does not advance equal educational opportunity. It exacerbates inequality, just like any free market.

Categories Accountability, Charter Schools, Corporate Reformers, Education Industry, Fraud, Hoax, Massachusetts, Privatization

Daily Kos: Paul Ryan’s Critique of Trump’s Misogyny is Equally Misogynistic

By dianeravitch
October 10, 2016 //
18

Reader Ellen Lubic drew my attention to this excellent analysis of Congressman Paul Ryan’s rejection of Donald Trump’s lewd, crude remarks about women.

I must that that when I read his comments online in an instant bulletin from CNN, I found them offensive. I was driving with friends to the airport in Las Vegas on my way home from a National Parks vacation, and I read his remarks out loud. He said, “Women are to be championed and revered, not objectified.”

My reaction? What? I don’t want to be put on a pedestal, championed and revered like a fragile piece of pottery. I just want to be treated the same as everyone else.

But this writer said it much better, because she knows the lengths Paul Ryan and Gus party have gone to take away women’s rights.

Excuse me? Who are you, Paul Ryan? One of King Arthur’s men? A knight of the Round Table declaring fealty to the Code of Chivalry?

Let’s get one thing straight. You are not my knight in shining armor.

I don’t need to be “championed” by you. And I certainly don’t want to be “revered” by you. As to your assertion that women should not be “objectified”? GTFO. The entire modern Republican party does nothing but objectify women. You deny our humanity daily. You have made it your number one mission to reduce us down to our uteri and said you, and you alone, control what happens to our bodies.

You hold entire hearings about women’s issues without inviting a single woman. When you do deign to allow women to speak, you condescend to, brow beat and aggressively attempt to shame them. You have launched a single-minded assault on the ability of poor women in this country to obtain healthcare. Championed our employer’s rights over our own when it comes to our private healthcare decisions. You have legislated that our doctors lie to us and rape us with ultrasound wands. In Texas, you played God by keeping a dead woman artificially “alive” so that she could serve as an incubator. In Indiana, your new hero, Mike Pence, legislated that women had to deliver aborted or miscarried fetal blood and tissue to funeral homes for burial or cremation and crusaded to severely punish women for having miscarriages in the first place.

And what about you, Paul Ryan? How have you personally “championed” women? Was it in 1998 when you said that women should be criminally prosecuted for terminating pregnancies? When you tried to prevent women serving overseas in our military from having abortions in U.S. military hospitals even when they paid for it out of their own pockets? How about when you worked with Todd Akin to narrow the legal definition of rape to “forcible rape”? Or maybe it was in 2009 when you co-sponsored the “Sanctity of Life” Act which declared a fertilized egg a “person” and outlawed abortions, most forms of contraception and in-vitro fertilization? The numerous times you have voted to defund Planned Parenthood? In 2011 when you supported the “Let Women Die Bill” that allowed hospitals to refuse to terminate pregnancies even when the woman’s life was in danger?

Was it when you opposed the Lily Ledbetter Fair Pay Act? Opposed paid family leave?

When. When have you ever “championed” women, Paul Ryan?

Donald Trump may be a crass misogynist who thinks women exist for his own pleasure but you, Paul Ryan, are just as bad if not worse. You don’t respect us. You seek to be master over us and I, for one, could do without your paternalistic brand of “championing”.

Read this great post and open the links. Hypocrisy through and through.

Categories Fraud, Politics, Trump

Georgia: Governor Deal to African-American Ministers: “Trust Me.”

By dianeravitch
October 10, 2016 //
21

Governor Nathan Deal of Georgia is pushing a constitutional amendment to allow the state to take over low-scoring public schools. He calls it an “opportunity school district” and points to New Orleans and the Tennessee Achievement School Districts as models. He brought called together a group of African-American ministers and asked for their support.

Here is the response from one of the attendees, who knew that neither New Orleans or the Tennessee ASD had helped the neediest students. Governor Deal couldn’t answer his questions, because the ALEC model legislation doesn’t explain why cessation of democracy helps schools or what to do after privatizing the schools and giving them to corporations.

Here is the report by Rev. Chester Ellis:

Governor’s Ministers Summoning Meeting was a School Takeover Sales Pitch
By Rev. Chester Ellis 912-257-2394
Pastor of St. Paul Missionary Baptist Church in Savannah, Georgia

Governor Nathan Deal is working hard to sell the voters on what he calls an Opportunity School District. But this is an opportunity that Georgia should not take.

Recently, The Governor made a pitch to twenty-nine African American ministers in the basement of the mansion. No media was present. But I was one of those ministers.

If Amendment One was about education and opportunity for our communities and children, we could at least hold a logical discussion about evidence-based solutions. As a retired educator and community activist, it is very clear to me that his Opportunity School District is not about education or the community. He has no plan or roadmap to improve schools.

Gov. Deal was looking for our support. He stated, “I need your help.” But we left with more questions than we had answers. It truly is a takeover, and one whose extent is clear to very few voters.

I was disappointed. I thought the Governor would be able to lay out his plan in detail to us. But, what I got from the Governor is he’s making it up as he goes. There’s really no plan. At best, it was guesswork.

Bishop Marvin L. Winans, who has a charter school in Detroit, was the first to speak to us. Brother Winans is a minister and an award winning Gospel singer. He does not live in Georgia. Marvin talked about why he had established his school in Detroit and why he thought it was a good idea that the Governor was willing to do something to help failing schools. But we didn’t have a chance to dialog with him, ask questions or shed light on anything here in Georgia for him. He left for a concert, almost as quickly as he appeared!

Afterwards, the Governor followed with a spiel about why he thought he needed to take over the schools and why the Black clergymen needed to be in support of Amendment 1, The Opportunity School District. He then opened the session up for questions.

I asked him, what is the student to teacher ratio per class of all the schools on your list for takeover? He said he did not have the answer to that question.

My rationale for asking that question was that research tells us ideal pupil to teacher ratio should be 18 to 1, and the further schools and classrooms go past that recommended ratio, the more they are setting students up for failure. Districts need resources to address that problem. The A plus Act of 2000 provided such resources. In fact, this Governor has taken more resources from our public schools. The governor added that he needed to do more research on that issue, so I invited him to do that and gave him some websites he could Google.

I also asked the Governor if all of the schools that are having trouble, as defined by him, are predominately African American schools. He replied, not so much, but that when they looked at schools that were failing they looked at schools that were in a cluster. And that the ministers summoned to the meeting were invited more for being in those identified clusters of schools.

One of my colleagues asked the Governor for the specifics of his Opportunity School District plan. Deal replied that he was using different models, and two of the models he mentioned were the Louisiana Recovery School District and the Tennessee Achievement School District models. Then the question was raised about both of those state’s backing away from the models because they failed to accomplish their achievement goals. In fact indicators prove that New Orleans is worse off now The Governor replied, “We are going to look at what they did wrong, and correct their mistakes so that ours will be right. You know, we have to do something, we are willing to try this and then if it doesn’t work, we are willing to work on what doesn’t work and straighten it out.” The problem with the Governor’s logic is that he is asking the voters to change the state’s constitution. We can’t back up if the voters do that!

The Governor says OSD is a “plan in the works”. . So I urged the Governor to use Massachusetts as a model rather than one from Tennessee or Louisiana, which have both failed.

According to a recent article in Education Week, scholars at the Atlanta-based Southern Education Foundation and Philadelphia-based Research in Action organization found that some states are proposing to mimic “opportunity school district” takeover models despite evidence that prototypes of these models have gone awry. The esteemed Education Week reports that imitating these models are not an appropriate prescription for providing support for schools that needs it.

Massachusetts put their plan in place with on the ground, in the classrooms education practitioners. . Legislators met with them and applied the educator’s advice and professional know how. They set out on a course working together and didn’t change the course until they got the results they were striving for. They are now one of the celebrated and better school systems in the country. I asked the Governor, why didn’t his planners and plans look at that type of successful model?

He replied, “It’s because of demographics.” I responded that clearly Massachusetts doesn’t look like Georgia but education isn’t rocket science …..It requires an understanding of what you are working with. I also referenced just one of many of our state’s successful public school model, Woodville Thompkins High School in Savannah. I’m a graduate of that school and I have worked since 2006 with that school and the community. As a result it is an award winning school in many disciplines.

For the last two years, Woodville-Tompkins Technical and Career High School has had a 100 percent Graduation rate. They have also been cited as being one of the top 30 programs worldwide in Robotics. There is a way to turn schools around and it doesn’t require a Constitutional Amendment. I don’t see the need. It takes a little elbow grease and total involvement from parents, community and legislators to sustain evidence based solutions and models that are already working.

I don’t buy the Governor’s program or plans. He’s selling the public on a quick fix. I think the Governor has some friends who see education as a carte blanche card; something they can make money off of. It’s about the money, not about the children. The legislation doesn’t even define what a failing school is. The Governor has spent little or no time educating the public on the thirteen pages that compose all of the little devils in his plan per Senate Bill 133. He is spending lots of time though, selling his plan.

The Governor is a lame duck, yet he’s asking citizens to trust him blindly and give him all the power over their schools, public property, pocketbooks and children by changing the constitution.

I thanked the Governor for inviting me, but I told him before I left that there are too many uncertainties and too many unanswered questions to go before my congregation and say we should support this. I’m not comfortable with the Governor’s answers or his solutions. His Opportunity School District has no facts and no plans to improve schools. This is an opportunity that citizens can’t afford to take. It is all about the money. It’s just that simple.

Categories Accountability, ALEC, Charter Schools, Corporate Reformers, Democracy, Education Industry, For-Profit, Fraud, Georgia, New Orleans

Civil Rights Activists Ask the Candidates: Where Do You Stand on K-12 Education?

By dianeravitch
October 9, 2016 //
5

Before the second debate tonight, the Journey for Justice asks the candidates to respond to these questions:


NEWS RELEASE MEDIA CONTACT: Jaribu Lee
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

(773) 548-7500
October 8, 2016
info@j4jalliance.com

Education activists release statement ahead of second presidential debate: “Will the next president be tone deaf…”
​

CHICAGO – Today, Jitu Brown, national director of the Journey for Justice Alliance (J4JA) released the following statement ahead of the second presidential debate in St. Louis on Sunday, September 9th. Thousands of African American and Latino parents, students and activists have challenged both Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump (and third-party candidates) to release their K-through-12 public education platforms, as well as identify how, if elected, they will work to end federal education policies that have destabilized communities and hurt students of color:

“As parents, students and residents of communities impacted by corporate education interventions in 24 cities across this nation, we are dismayed by the omission of public education as an issue during this presidential election season. Public education repeatedly polls as a top tier issue, but has been largely ignored by both major and third party candidates,” said Brown.

“Will the next president be tone deaf to the tremors from the ground? As a national network of grassroots community organizations across America, we have seen first-hand a determined resistance to failed, top-down corporate education interventions that cannot be ignored; Title VI civil rights complaints filed in 12 cities, thousands of people in determined protest against school closings, sit-ins and traffic blockades, students occupying the superintendent’s office in Newark, a 34-day hunger strike to save a neighborhood’s last open-enrollment high school in Chicago, the rejection of punitive standardized test across the nation and from those who wish to be the leader of the free world; silence.

“The next president must base their advocacy in relationship with people’s lived reality, not corporate relationships. When a mother cries in Detroit because her child’s school is being closed, or students walk-out by the thousands in Boston, Chicago, Detroit, Camden and Newark, Baltimore and Philadelphia; it matters. The next president must understand that the United States ranks 19th in the world in public education among OECD countries but when you remove poverty we are number 2. The next president must have the courage to stare down inequity in public education with a commitment to hear the voices of the people directly impacted. The next president must understand that we do not have failing schools in America, as a public we have been failed,” he continued.

“We are asking the next president to meet with the Journey for Justice Alliance and adopt our education platform. Include J4J on your education transition team so that public policy can be rooted in our lived experiences, not someone’s opinion of our communities. We were disappointed that the vice-presidential candidates said nothing about public education in their October 4th debate. We want to hear from both candidates on October 9th about their education agenda. Will they be honest about the harm inflicted on our communities by school closings and the unwarranted expansion of charter schools? Will they acknowledge that the “illusion of choice” must be erased by the reality of strong, high quality neighborhood schools within safe walking distance of our homes? We will be watching.”

​###

The Journey for Justice Alliance (J4J) (www.j4jalliance.org) is a national network of inter-generational, grassroots community organizations led primarily by Black and Brown people in 24 U.S. cities. With more than 40,000 active members, we assert that the lack of equity is one of the major failures of the American education system. Current U.S. education policies have led to states’ policies that lead to school privatization through school closings and charter school expansion which has energized school segregation, the school-to-prison pipeline; and has subjected children to mediocre education interventions that over the past 15 years have not resulted in sustained, improved education outcomes in urban communities.

Journey For Justice Alliance
4242 S. Cottage Grove
Chicago, IL 60653
773-548-7500

Categories Accountability, Civil Rights, Closing schools, Corporate Reform, Democracy, Discipline and Suspensions, Education Industry, English Language Learners, Equity, For-Profit, Fraud, Funding, Inequality, Injustice, Poverty, Privatization, Race

Cathy O’Neil: The Fallacy of VAM as “One of Multiple Measures”

By dianeravitch
October 8, 2016 //
28

Cathy O’Neil has written s new book called “Weapons of Math Destruction: How Big Data Increases Inequality and Threatens Democracy.” I haven’t read it yet, but I will.

In this article, she explains that VAM is a failure and a fraud. The VAM fanatics in the federal Department of Education and state officials could not admit they were wrong, could not admit that Bill Gates had suckered the nation’s education leaders into buying his goofy data-based evaluation mania, and could not abandon the stupidity they inflicted on the nation’s teachers and schools. So they say now that VAM will be one of many measures. But why include an invalid measure at all?

As she is out on book tour, people ask questions and the most common is that VAM is only one of multiple measures.

She writes:

“Here’s an example of an argument I’ve seen consistently when it comes to the defense of the teacher value-added model (VAM) scores, and sometimes the recidivism risk scores as well. Namely, that the teacher’s VAM scores were “one of many considerations” taken to establish an overall teacher’s score. The use of something that is unfair is less unfair, in other words, if you also use other things which balance it out and are fair.

“If you don’t know what a VAM is, or what my critique about it is, take a look at this post, or read my book. The very short version is that it’s little better than a random number generator.

“The obvious irony of the “one of many” argument is, besides the mathematical one I will make below, that the VAM was supposed to actually have a real effect on teachers assessments, and that effect was meant to be valuable and objective. So any argument about it which basically implies that it’s okay to use it because it has very little power seems odd and self-defeating.

“Sometimes it’s true that a single inconsistent or badly conceived ingredient in an overall score is diluted by the other stronger and fairer assessment constituents. But I’d argue that this is not the case for how teachers’ VAM scores work in their overall teacher evaluations.

“Here’s what I learned by researching and talking to people who build teacher scores. That most of the other things they use – primarily scores derived from categorical evaluations by principals, teachers, and outsider observers – have very little variance. Almost all teachers are considered “acceptable” or “excellent” by those measurements, so they all turn into the same number or numbers when scored. That’s not a lot to work with, if the bottom 60% of teachers have essentially the same score, and you’re trying to locate the worst 2% of teachers.

“The VAM was brought in precisely to introduce variance to the overall mix. You introduce numeric VAM scores so that there’s more “spread” between teachers, so you can rank them and you’ll be sure to get teachers at the bottom.

“But if those VAM scores are actually meaningless, or at least extremely noisy, then what you have is “spread” without accuracy. And it doesn’t help to mix in the other scores.”

This is a book I want to read. Bill Gates should read it too. Send it to him and John King too. Would they read it? Not likely.

Categories Accountability, Corporate Reform, Data, Education Industry, Failure, Fraud, Teacher Evaluations, VAM (value-added modeling)

Trump’s Business Ventures: Hype, Spin, Lies

By dianeravitch
October 6, 2016 //
23

The New York Times reviewed Trump’s business ventures over the recent past. Each was announced as the biggest, the best, the greatest, the most.

https://www.google.com/amp/mobile.nytimes.com/2016/10/07/us/politics/donald-trump-business-deals.amp.html

Hype, spin, lies. Like his promises to being back jobs lost to automation or to countries where workers make a few dollars a day.

“When Donald J. Trump unveiled his new online travel booking venture, GoTrump.com, he said in a promotional video in 2006 that customers would “love everything I put on this site.” “There’s nobody better,” he added. “There’s nobody even close!”

“A few months later, ground was broken for Trump Tower Tampa, a project he said would “redefine both Tampa’s skyline and the market’s expectations of luxurious condominium living.”

“And when he signed a long-term deal with the fledgling U.S. Pro Golf Tour that summer to become a partner on a new championship series, he proclaimed that “there is no doubt the talent level is among the highest in the world.”

“The travel venture never took off. The tower in Tampa, Fla., was not built. And the golf championships? Mr. Trump withdrew as the tour fell apart.

“Moving past a disastrous period that led to a loss on paper of more than $900 million — possibly freeing him from federal income taxes for years — Mr. Trump became a one-man factory of big ideas, churning out a constant stream of projects and promises. Together they fed the image of Mr. Trump as an American Midas, the foundation of his argument for why he would make a great president.”

”

Categories Fraud, Trump
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