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Charles Blow is one of the columnists in the New York Times that I usually count on to challenge the conventional wisdom and to speak up for the powerless.
Sadly, in this column, he parrots the conventional wisdom and voices the opinions of the elites.
Imagine, he calls the Broad Foundation a “reform” organization. The readers of this blog know the Broad Foundation as the source of malicious policies that are privatizing public schools and destroying communities. Some of the worst, most arrogant leaders in US education have been “trained” by the unaccredited Broad Academy. The foundation issued a guide on how to close schools that is a Bible for the corporate reform movement.
As for the international test scores, Blow should not have relied on Time magazine’s Amanda Ripley. He should have looked at the Rothstein-Carnoy study, which demonstrates that the PISA results were misleading, or the recent article in the UK Times Educational Supplement, where test experts maintained that the scores on PISA are “meaningless,” or considered the more recent TIMSS test, where American students did very well. Or read the chapter in my new book on the myths and facts about international testing.
Why in the world would he enthuse about the Common Core tests, which widened the gaps in New York between affluent and poor, between black and white, between English language learners and native speakers, between children with disabilities and those without? Common Core has no evidence to support its claims. As we see it in action in New York, we see that it is deepening the stratification of society and falsely labeling two-thirds of the state’s children as failures.
The corporate reform assault on American public education rests in large part on the international test called PISA (Programme in International Student Assessment), where US students rank well behind other nations and have only middling performance. Of course, the critics who brandish these mediocre scores never admit that they are heavily influenced by the unusually high proportion of students living in poverty, and that American students in low-poverty schools score as well or better than the highest performing nations. To do so would be an admission that poverty matters, and they reject that idea.
But what if the PISA tests are fundamentally flawed? So argues testing experts in this article in the (UK) TES.
It turns out on examination that the results vary widely from one administration of the test to another. Students in different countries do not answer the same questions. And there are serious technical issues that experts debate.
The article asks:
“But what if there are “serious problems” with the Pisa data? What if the statistical techniques used to compile it are “utterly wrong” and based on a “profound conceptual error”? Suppose the whole idea of being able to accurately rank such diverse education systems is “meaningless”, “madness”?
“What if you learned that Pisa’s comparisons are not based on a common test, but on different students answering different questions? And what if switching these questions around leads to huge variations in the all- important Pisa rankings, with the UK finishing anywhere between 14th and 30th and Denmark between fifth and 37th? What if these rankings – that so many reputations and billions of pounds depend on, that have so much impact on students and teachers around the world – are in fact “useless”?
“This is the worrying reality of Pisa, according to several academics who are independently reaching some damning conclusions about the world’s favourite education league tables. As far as they are concerned, the emperor has no clothes.”
The article cites the concerns of many testing experts:
“Professor Svend Kreiner of the University of Copenhagen, Denmark, has looked at the reading results for 2006 in detail and notes that another 40 per cent of participating students were tested on just 14 of the 28 reading questions used in the assessment. So only approximately 10 per cent of the students who took part in Pisa were tested on all 28 reading questions.
“This in itself is ridiculous,” Kreiner tells TES. “Most people don’t know that half of the students taking part in Pisa (2006) do not respond to any reading item at all. Despite that, Pisa assigns reading scores to these children.”
“People may also be unaware that the variation in questions isn’t merely between students within the same country. There is also between-country variation.
“For example, eight of the 28 reading questions used in Pisa 2006 were deleted from the final analysis in some countries. The OECD says that this was because they were considered to be “dodgy” and “had poor psychometric properties in a particular country”. However, in other countries the data from these questions did contribute to their Pisa scores.
“In short, the test questions used vary between students and between countries participating in exactly the same Pisa assessment.”
Professor Kreiner says the methodology renders the results “meaningless.”
“The Rasch model is at the heart of some of the strongest criticisms being made of Pisa. It is also the black box within Pisa’s black box: exactly how the model works is something that few people fully understand.
“But Kreiner does. He was a student of Georg Rasch, the Danish statistician who gave his name to the model, and has personally worked with it for 40 years. “I know that model well,” Kreiner tells TES. “I know exactly what goes on there.” And that is why he is worried about Pisa.
“He says that for the Rasch model to work for Pisa, all the questions used in the study would have to function in exactly the same way – be equally difficult – in all participating countries. According to Kreiner, if the questions have “different degrees of difficulty in different countries” – if, in technical terms, there is differential item functioning (DIF) – Rasch should not be used.
“That was the first thing that I looked for, and I found extremely strong evidence of DIF,” he says. “That means that (Pisa) comparisons between countries are meaningless.”
Please, someone, anyone, send this article to Secretary Arne Duncan; to President Obama; to Bill Gates; and to all the other “reformers” who want to destroy public education based on flawed and meaningless international test scores.
Please read
the series of blog posts by Dr. Julian Vasquez Heilig of
the University of Texas on the subject of Chile, vouchers, social
segregation, and inequality.
Chilean researcher Alvaro Gonzalez Torrez has read the
posts about Chile and thinks the solutions are too timid. Here are
his suggestions for what is needed to get free of free-market
ideology:
“I’ve been following the series of three blog posts about
Chile, being a Chilean ed researcher myself. I believe Waissbluth’s
contribution to the blog opens a debate of international relevance
by showcasing the Chilean example in the context of a global
advance of neoliberal policies in education (what Pasi Sahlberg
calls ‘GERM’).
I agree with the (dreadful) diagnosis offered by
Mario Waissbluth in terms of the consequences of neoliberal and
market policies in school education: high social segregation and
low attainment in schools, plus a weakened public image of public
education and the teaching profession.
Sharing the diagnosis,however, I do believe Waissbluth’s (and Educación 2020’s) proposals
to revert this situation would fall short to produce the necessary
changes. I don’t think this is the place to get in a detailed
argument, but I would say that Chile’s problems won’t be solved by
employing ‘market tools’ and ‘special funds’ as change levers.
There’s a need for more radical responses to address the radically
grim scenario of Chilean school education. The idea is to break
free from the neoliberal principles underpinning the Chilean school
system (market, choice, privatisation) that have turned education
into a commodity.
To do so, it isn’t enough to think that ‘we can
play the game better’ than the people that came before us, and use
neoliberal strategies to improve education quality (which is, in my
opinion, what people from the Concertación thought in the
90s).”
Chile is the poster nation for free market education reform.
Dictator Pinochet installed Milton Friedman’s free market ideas into education. Chile has vouchers, and it also has vast income inequality. Vouchers have destroyed free public education.
Now Chile has an angry student movement demanding free public education and an end to privatization.
To learn about the damage wrought by the free market in Chile, watch this documentary. you will learn about the Chilean student movement.
Watch and learn where the free market policies of the Koch brothers, Arne Duncan, ALEC, the DC think tanks, the Gates Foundation, the Walton Family Foundation, the Broad Foundation, Tom Corbett, Michelle Rhee, Joel Klein, Scott Walker, and other free-market extremists are taking our nation.
This is the third and final post about Education in Chile by Professor Mario Waissbluth, which he wrote for this blog to help us understand a system that took Milton Friedman’s advice and relied heavily on testing and choice.
Chile´s Education (III): A necessary change of course.
In my two previous columns I described the Chilean political, economic and educational model. In short, growth with inequity and segregation, which is showing serious signs of being questioned in its roots… in the streets.
In this context, can the educational model change its course, given the fact that, constitutionally, Congress is almost by definition tied up in two halves, therefore giving to both sides veto power over major changes?
If the November election is won by the same coalition which invented the present model, I am afraid that the change of course will be microscopic, if any. After all, they are the proud parents of this by now grown baby, and their ideological faith in it is blind. Evidence does not matter. If, on the other hand, the center left coalition wins the election (more likely), they have shown sufficient public repentance with their omissions, so that there is more ground for hope… depending on the results of the simultaneous election in Congress, which in the end will define the depth and feasibility of the transformations.
Our Foundation, Educación 2020 (www.educacion2020.cl) published in April a document called “The educational reform that Chile needs”, which in essence presents a middle course, hopefully acceptable to both aisles in Congress. The more radical students call it “yellow”, the “tea-partyists” call it “marxist”. Such is life. Our proposals are based on eight strategic pillars, designed to change course gradually, from what Hargreaves and Shirley have named as “the 2nd way” (in this case ultra-pure, skimmed and distilled, far worse than the US and British models) not towards a “Finnish 4th Way” (politically and culturally impossible) , but towards a middle course, something like a “3.5 Way”.
The eight pillars, each having a set of short, medium and long term proposals, are:
1. A program for the reconstruction and appreciation of the teaching profession, at the pre-school and school level.
2. 350.000 new spaces of high quality preschool openings, free and non-selective, from ages 1 to 5.
3. Rebirth of public education, to transform it into a formidable competitor of private education in every district, regardless of its socioeconomic composition.
4. Rebirth of technical education at the high school level, where close to 45% of kids study in the utmost decay of quality and motivation.
5. Use market tools and special funds to “perforate” market competition and promote collaboration amongst all types of schools, teachers and principals.
6. Gradual but steady moderation of the “command and control” bureaucracy and the teaching to the test abuse.
7. Radical innovation in the teaching models being taught in Schools of Education, to bring them from the XIX to the XXI century.
8. Last but not least, the hardest one from the ideological viewpoint: slow down and reverse segregation as much as possible, by gradual elimination and control of financial segregation (i.e. charging fees to parents in state subsidized schools), gradual elimination of profit in the school system, and serious prohibitions regarding selection, skimming and early expulsion of the less promising students.
This reform would require approximately 1.5% of GDP in additional public expenditure, not from one year to the next, but gradually over 6 years, thus reaching levels closer to OECD standards. Wish us luck.
As corporate reformers demand a free-market system, where charters and vouchers are easily available, and schools compete for students, it is wise to take note of Chile. Chile is the one nation that implemented Chicago economist Milton Friedman’s ideas into its education system, at the behest of military dictator Pinochet.
This is a comment by a teacher who studied in Chile:
“I was studying abroad in Chile in 2011 during the second round of student protests. I was surprised by the low academic level of the somewhat prestigious university I was attending. At one point, I offered to collaborate with a group of students in my physics class. About half the class was repeating the course, and we were all struggling. I had been watching free MIT lectures online, which had helped me understand some of the content of the class. On the other hand, I was still struggling with the format of the class and was barely passing. I offered to explain some of the concepts in Spanish using the MIT videos, if they would help me to do better in class. No one took me up on my offer. In fact, they seemed confused by the proposal. One girl responded, “But we don’t have to understand physics, we just have to get the right answers on the test!”
“My semester was cut short by the country-wide “strike” of college students, and with nothing else to do and no way to know when classes might resume, I spent a lot of time marching and talking with students. I was teargassed by faceless policemen in swat outfits during a peaceful protest. I watched students defend themselves in the only way possible–by throwing rocks at the police force’s armored trucks. I ran from burning rubble in the streets, and crossed a picket line to take final exams so that I could leave the country with credits to take back to the US.
“But what frightened me most about the protests (and what frightens me now, now that I am going into my first year as a public school teacher) was the realization that the Chilean students did not even know how to fight for their educational rights. Many students’ education was so poor and so undemocratic that they could not form an effective civil rights movement. Over and over, I watched them make basic mistakes that caused them to be ignored or ridiculed by the government, media, and middle and upper class citizens. The protests eventually ended with no tangible improvements for the students. If the US eventually gets to the point that Chile is currently at, there may be no way to reverse it.”
This is the second is a series of three articles written by Professor Mario Waissbluth of Chile for this blog. In this series, he describes the school system in Chile, which is based on testing and choice.
Chile´s Education (II): The results of the most neoliberal system in the world
Yesterday I described the Chilean economic and educational system. Now I shall explore its good and ugly results.
Unleashing market forces generated steady growth in per capita income since 1985 until now. As compared with Latin America, this index was the same in 1990, but today Chile’s is 50% higher. Similarly, the UNDP’s Human Development Index is far above that of the region, although well below the average OECD value.
Under Pinochet, the number of people below the line of poverty skyrocketed, beyond 40% of the population. However, since 1990 it has come down to 13%, thanks to more redistributive policies. So, why complain? Maybe Milton Friedman was right after all.
Nicanor Parra is our most prestigious living poet. He summed up Mr. Friedman´s error: “There are two loaves of bread. You eat two, I eat none. Average consumption: one loaf per capita”. Our income inequality Gini index is awful (0.52), and the tax structure does not help much in correcting it (0.50). The line dividing the poorest from the richest 50% of the population is a daily income of US$ 8 dollars a day… and from there down to US$ 2 dollars a day for the poorest 10%.
The children in the lower half are, on the average, getting out of high school without understanding what they read. They are admitted with no selection to for-profit low-quality universities or institutes, dropping out without a college degree in about 50% of the cases, and heavily indebted after this. This is the powder keg that exploded in 2011 and the firestorm has not stopped until today.
It should be said that, as in the economy, in education there have been some promising results. Attendance to basic school, high school and tertiary education is similar to the OECD average. PISA results have shown one of the best improvements in the world from 2000 to 2009, although, strangely, the internal testing system does not show any significant improvement in the average or in the inequality of results. Public spending in education is 4% of GDP, as compared with 6% in the OECD countries.
Things look ugly in the teacher´s staffroom. Their average salary is 40% that of engineering, law, business or medical careers. 40% of them drop out from schools before 5 years. Morale is generally low, confrontation with authorities is high, especially in the public sector which has been under attack for 30 years, by action and/or neglect. Teaching to the test, taken to the extreme, is making robots out of children and teachers. The best proof is that the very expensive Chilean private schools show international results well below the OECD average.
As a professor in one of the best and most selective public universities in the country, I can attest that 50% of my students are not capable of drafting an understandable two page essay on anything. They spent 12 years in school, training to answer multiple choice sheets, speedily forgotten to open brain space for next year´s new payload of material… which meant little to them.
The worst part, by far, is the social and academic segregation of Chilean schools, the worst in the world after Macao, according to PISA statistics. Thanks to market competition and generalized skimming practices, 21% of our children attend socio-culturally integrated schools, compared with 35% in Latin America, 46% in OECD countries, and above 50% in Finland or Canada. Educational apartheid.
In the low income academic ghettos it will be almost impossible to improve results, no matter how much money is poured into them. Even worse, Chilean education has enhanced segregationist and individualistic attitudes in all levels of society. This is steadily undermining social cohesion, to the point that it will be difficult to regain social peace, no matter which the next coalition in power is.
Mario Waissbluth (www.mariowaissbluth.com) has a PhD in engineering from the University of Wisconsin, Madison (1974). Currently he is a professor at Universidad de Chile and President of Fundación Educación 2020, an advocacy movement for equity and desegregation of the chilean school system (www.educacion2020.cl). His soon to be published book, with Random House (in spanish) is “Change of Course: A new way for Chilean education”.
This is the first of three posts written by Professor Mario Waissbluth about education in Chile. I invited him to contribute to the blog, because Chile represents our future if we continue our present course of action towards a market system built around the principles of testing and choice.
Chile´s Education (I): The most pro-market system in the world
Mario Waissbluth
This is the first of three columns on the contradictory condition of the Chilean educational system.
Today, I shall describe the political, socioeconomic and educational model.
Tomorrow, I will show the evidence and results of 35 years of for-profit hyper-privatization, and extreme teaching to the test.
Finally, I will provide some ideas for the necessary change of course, to alleviate the damage caused by the most segregated school structure in the OECD (after the small city-state of Macao).
Following Pinochet’s military coup in 1973, Chile started the most extreme neoliberal experiment in the world. No exaggeration here. The Tea Party would pale with envy. Designed by the Chilean disciples of Milton Friedman, the so called “Chicago Boys”, it was applied systematically (with the help of a bayonet) from 1973 until its replacement by a center left coalition in 1990.
This coalition basically continued extreme right policies – though with more social spending – because of cleverly designed constitutional constraints, plus an army keeping discrete and courteous watch from its quarters. Quite a few center-left politicians also acquired a taste for the wines of deregulated free market. Since the 2010 presidential elections, the very same group of Chicago boys and girls have been in power. Not their sons. The very same ones. Young Pinochet’s aides are today’s cabinet members and senators.
The basic principle of the model in education, health, pensions, and whatever you might think of, is subsidiarity: minimal role of the state, minimal regulations, low taxes. You take care of your family and that’s it. If you can pay for your education, health, or pensions, you do it. If you cannot, you don’t, and the state provides you with inexpensive and low quality services or protection.
Chile beats the hell out of the US in income concentration. Considering capital gains, the richest 1% takes 30.5% of the pie, as compared with 21% in the US, 11% in Japan and 9% in Sweden.
Public school enrollment has dropped (and keeps dropping) from 80% in 1980 to 37% today. Aside from 7% of students in fully private schools, public and private institutions compete for the coveted per capita voucher.
Now, get this: two thirds of the 56% of private voucher (charter) schools are for profit, and they can charge on top of it to parents. Therefore, the richest ones mix their sons with their socioeconomic peers, the middle class with the middle class, and so on down to the poorest which go mostly to free public schools. Subsidiarity by the book. Until now, anyone can set up a for-profit subsidized charter school anywhere, without any quality requirements whatsoever.
Teacher training also became fully unregulated. Today some universities and institutes “sell college degrees” (for a profit) to students who do not understand what they read when they enter to Schools of Education, and generally do not understand what they read when they obtain their college degree. National certification and examination of teachers is, of course, voluntary. Freedom. Freedom. The market will solve everything.
On the other hand, compulsory curriculum is extremely detailed. Therefore, teachers in Chile have 1700 class-hours per year, as compared with an average of 700 in the OECD countries. And testing… oh… you will envy it. Standardized national testing with consequences such as school closures (guess which) and bonus payments: it is applied in grades 2, 4, 6, 8, 10, and 11. Later on, admission to the university is based almost exclusively on the results of… a national standardized test. Teaching to the test motivates all sorts of cheating in the tests, plus plenty of academic skimming to get better test results, the very basis of school competition.
The students exploded first in 2006, then with more force in 2011 and 2013. They are questioning not only the educational model, but also the Constitution and Mr. Friedman’s legacy in full.
Tomorrow I shall describe the results of 35 years of pro-market, fully deregulated economic policy and education. The law of the jungle, but with cannibals. Some of the results are good. Most stink.
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Mario Waissbluth (www.mariowaissbluth.com) has a PhD in engineering from the University of Wisconsin, Madison (1974). Currently he is a professor at Universidad de Chile and President of Fundación Educación 2020, an advocacy movement for equity and desegregation of the chilean school system (www.educacion2020.cl). His soon to be published book, with Random House (in spanish) is “Change of Course: A new way for chilean education”.
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