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New Mexico: A Pro-Public School Democrat Is Running for Governor

By dianeravitch
August 12, 2018 //
11

Democrats in New Mexico chose a strong candidate for Governor, Lujan Grisham, a member of Congress who supports teachers. She and her Republican opponent agree on two things: Dump PARCC and scrap the broken test-based teacher evaluation system.

The current Governor Susanna Martinez has been a disaster for public schools and teachers. She hired a non-educator, Hannah Skandera, who had previously worked for Jeb Bush, to impose the “Florida model” of high-stakes Testing for students and teachers and choice. The state remains at the very bottom of NAEP. Skandera’s successor has doubled down and a court injunction has blocked his efforts to penalize teachers for low scores. This in a state with staggeringly high levels of child poverty.

Politico reported on this race:

EDUCATION SPOTLIGHT ON NEW MEXICO GOVERNOR’S RACE: Poor education outcomes, low teacher pay, high unemployment rates and an active education funding lawsuit are just some of the problems facing the next governor in the Land of Enchantment.

— It’s not surprising, then, that education has become a key issue in the race for the governor’s mansion between two sitting members of Congress representing the state: Republican Rep. Steve Pearce and Democratic Rep. Michelle Lujan Grisham.

— Right off the bat, New Mexico’s next governor will become entangled in a legal battle over funding of the state’s public schools. A state district court judge ruled last month that New Mexico’s students are “caught in an inadequate system” in need of improvement — a ruling the state has appealed. As in Washington and Kansas, funding lawsuits often present yearslong challenges for state leaders, who must figure out how to boost funding for schools to the pleasure of the courts. When the parties become caught in appeals, a resolution can take even longer.

— Lujan Grisham has said that should she be become the state’s next governor, she would cut the fight short by “immediately” halting the state’s appeal of the ruling, according to local reports. “New Mexico’s public education system is broken and underfunded,” she said in a statement. Among Lujan Grisham’s campaign promises is a proposal to boost teachers’ starting salaries to $40,000 from the current $36,000.

— Pearce, meanwhile, stopped short of making such a commitment on the school funding case. “This ruling underscores the importance of my plan to reform education. The old way is broken,” Pearce said in statement to Morning Education through a spokesman.

— Among Pearce’s goals is to “diversify” the sources of education funding to make schools less reliable on the oil and gas industries. He also hopes to support an expansion of school choice, including “charter schools, magnet schools, e-schools and homeschooling,” according to his campaign website. He wants to return more “day to day management decisions to the local school districts and/or charter schools,” and institute per-pupil funding.

— Universal preschool and the funding stream for such a program have divided the candidates. Lujan Grisham has made preschool access one of her marquee issues and is proposing to fund its expansion through $285.5 million over five years from the state’s Land Grant Permanent Fund, she told the New Mexican . That fund culls fees from the extraction of natural resources from state lands. But Pearce isn’t keen on tapping into those funds and has not made preschool expansion a priority. “I’m very nervous about beginning to dip into that permanent fund until you have solutions,” Pearce told local station KRQE.

— Both candidates are in agreement on two things: teacher evaluations and PARCC. The Common-Core-aligned standardized test was created through a consortium of more than 20 states in 2010. New Mexico remains one in a handful of states to still administer it, but both Pearce and Lujan Grisham want to scrap it. “The PARCC test seems to be especially ineffective,” Pearce told KRQE. “My initial reaction is we should find a better way to measure our students.” Lujan Grisham’s education plan calls for “dropping the PARCC test in favor of less intrusive testing.”

— Both candidates have also said they would overhaul the state’s controversial teacher evaluation system. Lujan Grisham, who has the backing of teachers unions, would reform teacher evaluations “to focus on more holistic measures of progress.” Pearce said recently that after conversations with teachers, local school officials and others, it has become clear that “the current system has crushed the spirit of many talented educators and contributed to our state’s teacher shortage,” according to the AP.

Categories Accountability, Education Reform, Florida, New Mexico, Poverty, Privatization, Testing, VAM (value-added modeling)

Arne Duncan, the Secretary of Education Who Pays No Attention to Evidence and Never Learns from Experience

By dianeravitch
August 8, 2018 //
53

Politico reports that Arne Duncan stubbornly clings to his belief that teacher quality can be measured by test scores and lashes out at those who disagrees. This despite the fact that several states have dropped it, several courts have suspended or ended it, and it worked Nowhere. Of course, his boook went to print before the release of the RAND-AIR study of the total failure of the Gates $575 Million program to use Arne’s VAM approach. But, the study is out, and you would think he might backtrack. But no.

Also, before the recent finding that the effect of the LA publication of teacher ratings meant that the richest families scooped up the teachers with the highest scores and the poorest kids got those with the lowest scores. And Arne forgot, but we won’t, Roberto Riguelas, the LA teacher who committed suicide after his rating was published. The LA ratings, by the way, we’re made up at the request of the LA Times and had many flaws.

Duncan accuses Lamar Alexander of “lying” or wanting to cover up poor teacher performance, but Alexander was right. The feds have zero authority to foist half-baked—and in this case, harmful and expensive—ideas on the states.

“HOW ARNE DUNCAN SEES ‘LIES’ IN EDUCATION: Arne Duncan, one of the most outspoken Education secretaries to hold the job, is out with an incendiary new book about the “lies” he says the public is fed about education and student potential.

— Duncan’s 200-plus-page read, “How Schools Work,” published Tuesday, tells how the former secretary attempted to dispel these “lies” and sell education reform while at the helm of both the Chicago Public Schools and the Education Department. The book is peppered with anecdotes spanning decades, some of them very critical of other education players. A few of the highlights are below; more from your host here.

— ‘Bare-knuckle politicking’: That’s how the Chicago native describes multiple interactions with elected officials and his attempts to “insulate” his education reform work from “political attack” and “stay above the political fray.”

— Senate HELP Chairman Lamar Alexander (R-Tenn.) figures in one anecdote. Duncan says that he was left “stunned” when Alexander refused to back the administration’s pursuit of policies that tied teacher evaluations to student test scores and higher standards. “This was the Tea Party talking, pure and simple. It was as if he’d been captured,” he writes of Alexander, also a former Education secretary, and governor of Tennessee. “Senator Alexander’s stance was one of the least principled things I’d ever heard from a politician, and it showed zero political courage.”

— Alexander said in a statement to POLITICO that Duncan came to Washington to “create a national school board” and that he came to reverse that trend. “Arne and I have a difference of principle, not politics. I believe that teacher evaluation is the holy grail of education and, as governor, helped Tennessee become the first state to pay teachers more for teaching well. As U.S. Education Secretary, I challenged every state to create voluntary national education standards and accountability systems. But I told Arne on the first day he walked into my office that Washington, D.C., has no business telling states how to evaluate teachers and what education standards to set,” Alexander said.

— ‘Teacher accountability was the third rail’: That’s how Duncan described the controversy he faced around the issue, not just from Alexander, but also from teachers unions and Democrats. He writes he was “shocked” that, when conceiving the Race to the Top grant program, he found states like California and Wisconsin banned school districts from using student test scores to measure teacher effectiveness.

— “What was the lie at the center of these laws?” Duncan writes. “Was it that good teaching was immeasurable? Or was it that some teachers … preferred to claim that they couldn’t help the kids who most desperately needed their help?”

— The idea that teacher quality is the most important variable remains up for debate — a recent report on a Gates Foundation initiative that attempted to prove as much claimed its effort was largely unsuccessful. But in his book, Duncan remains committed to the idea. “The simple fact is that quality teaching matters more than anything,” he writes.”

Categories Accountability, Duncan, Arne, Education Reform, Lies, Stupid, Teacher Evaluations, Testing, VAM (value-added modeling)

Ohio: A Great New Organization Has Been Launched to Fight Privatization, Theft, and Greed

By dianeravitch
August 7, 2018 //
19

I learned from Bill Phillis’s posts about a great new organization that has just been launched in Ohio.

If you live in Ohio, join it.

The organization, called Public Education Partners, was inspired by Jan Resseger’s post: https://janresseger.wordpress.com/2016/07/05/my-public-education-platform/

Every candidate running for public office, whether school board, state legislature, the governorship, or Congress should be asked to take a stand: Do you support this platform?

Preamble to PEP’s Public Education Platform

The Ohio Constitution (Article VI, sections 2 and 3) requires the state to secure a thorough and efficient system of common schools and provide for the organization, administration and control of the system. School district boards of education have the constitutional and statutory responsibility to administer the educational program. Boards of education have the fiduciary duty to ensure the educational needs of all resident students are met in an equitable and adequate manner.

The state’s first obligation is to ensure that a thorough and efficient system is established and maintained. The state has no right under the Ohio constitution to fund alternative educational programs that diminish moral and financial support from the common school system. Ohio’s system of school was declared unconstitutional more than two decades ago, yet since that time $11 billion have been drained from the public school system for publicly- funded, privately-operated charter schools. This egregious flaw in state policy must be addressed.

Jan Resseger of Cleveland Heights has aptly defined state and local responsibility for education as follows:

A comprehensive system of public education that serves all children and is democratically governed, publicly funded, universally accessible, and accountable to the public is central to the common good.

The education platform premised on the constitutional responsibility of the state of Ohio as stated in the preamble is:

A comprehensive system of public education that serves all children and is democratically governed, publicly funded, universally accessible, and accountable to the public, is central to the common good.
~Jan Resseger

Ohio Public Education Platform

This education platform is premised on the constitutional responsibility of the state of Ohio:

 Provide adequate and equitable funding to Ohio school districts to guarantee a comparable opportunity to learn for ALL children. This includes a quality early childhood education, qualified teachers, a rich curriculum that will prepare students for college, work and community, and equitable instructional resources. https://drive.google.com/file/d/1WLdVez25ZjDzzd2irSUwUggj-GflNQuO/view?usp=sharing

 Respect local control of public schools run by elected school boards. There are different needs for different schools of different sizes, and each local school board knows what its students, families, and community values. http://www.nvasb.org/assets/why_school_boards.pdf

 Reject the school privatization agenda, which includes state takeovers, charter schools, voucher schemes, and high-stakes testing. The school privatization agenda has proven to be ineffective at bringing efficiency and cost savings to our schools. https://www.alecexposed.org/wiki/Privatizing_Public_Education,_Higher_Ed_Policy,_and_T eachers

 Do away with the state takeovers of school districts imposed in House Bill 70. State takeovers of school districts (HB 70), followed by the appointment of CEOs with power to override the decisions of elected school boards and nullify union contracts, is undemocratic, unaccountable, and without checks and balances. http://www.reclaimourschools.org/sites/default/files/state-takeover-factsheet-3.pdf

 Promote a moratorium on the authorization of new charter schools while gradually removing existing charters, which take funding and other valuable resources from public school districts. Charter schools remove funds and other resources from public school districts and need to be phased out. For-profit charter schools should be eliminated – tax dollars should never be transferred into private profits. https://knowyourcharter.com/

 Eliminate vouchers and tuition tax credit programs. Voucher schemes take desperately needed dollars out of education budgets and undermine the protection of religious liberty as defined by the First Amendment. https://educationvotes.nea.org/2017/02/08/5-names- politicians-use-sell-private-school-voucher-schemes-parents/

 Encourage wraparound community learning centers that bring social and health services into Ohio school buildings. These wraparound services ensure that the public schools are the center of the neighborhood, and they include health, dental, and mental health clinics, after school programs, and parent support programs. Cincinnati Public Schools has a very successful program: https://www.cps-k12.org/community/clc

 End the test-and-punish philosophy, and replace it with an ideology of school investment and improvement. The tests have narrowed the curriculum to the tested subjects. If national standardized testing is to continue, testing should be limited to the federal minimum guidelines, and there should be no state standardized tests beyond those mandated by ESSA. https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/answer- sheet/wp/2017/01/06/how-testing-practices-have-to-change-in-u-s-public- schools/?utm_term=.45d28f77dcb0

 Remove high stakes mandates from schools, and abolish the practice of punishing schools, teachers, families, and students for arbitrary test scores. Do away with mandatory retention attached to the 3rd Grade Reading Guarantee and high school end-of-course state tests. If parents choose to opt their children out of testing, no one should be penalized. http://www.fairtest.org/sites/default/files/Dangerous-Consequences-of-high-stakes- tests.pdf

 Restore respect for well-trained, certified teachers, and return educator evaluation systems to locally elected school boards. Dismiss Teach for America, which is funded by the Eli Broad Foundation and the Walton Family Foundation. https://progressive.org/public-school-shakedown/went-wrong-teach-america/

Eliminate the practice of judging teachers by their students’ scores – research has proven it unreliable. http://www.fairtest.org/sites/default/files/TeacherEvaluationFactSheetRevisionJanuary201 6.pdf

Categories Charter Schools, Corporate Reformers, Education Industry, Ohio, Privatization, School Choice, Supporting public schools, Testing, VAM (value-added modeling), Virtual Charter Schools, Vouchers

Peter Greene: If You Had $575 Million to Spend on School Reform, What Would You Do?

By dianeravitch
July 12, 2018 //
41

Peter Greene is flummoxed by the idea that Bill Gates leveraged his giving to persuade several districts and charter chains to spend a total of $575 million on a failed experiment to evaluate teachers by student test scores.

The experiment flopped.

He asks, what would you do if you had $575 Million to improve schools. Not that. He reminds readers that this is a lost opportunity cost. If you do X with that discretionary money, you are giving up the chance to do Y, which has real research behind it.

What is the Gates Foundation lacking? Common sense.

Categories Accountability, Education Reform, Gates Foundation, Bill Gates, Teacher Evaluations, VAM (value-added modeling)

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)

Humor: Testing Expert James Popham Spoofs “Tractable Teacher Evaluation”

By dianeravitch
June 12, 2018 //
18

 

If you think that VAM is a scam, you will enjoy this. 

It is a hilarious spoof of the junk now sold to schools.

James Popham is one of the nation’s most knowledgeable testing experts.

In this video, he offers a deal you can’t refuse.

He is selling products to evaluate teachers, from the Tractable Teacher Evaluation Company.

If you are familiar with the value-added model, you will enjoy his “Value Added Mystery Measure,” which he describes as “completely incomprehensible.” Methinks he had William Sanders secret formula TVAAS in mind.

Categories Education Reform, Testing, VAM (value-added modeling)

Breaking News:Cynthia Calls for Repeal of Cuomo’s Failed Teacher Evaluations!

By dianeravitch
April 26, 2018 //
21

 

This just in! Cynthia Nixon calls for repeal of test-based evaluation of teachers. This law was passed to meet the non-evidence-based demands of Race to the Top. It has been a complete failure in New York. The American Statistical Association said in 2014 that individual teachers should not be evaluated by the test scores of their students. Highly flawed and inaccurate!

 

For Immediate Release
April 26, 2018
Contact: press@cynthiafornewyork.com

Cynthia Nixon Calls for Repeal of Cuomo’s Failed APPR Teacher Evaluation System

Diane Ravitch joins other educators in launching ‘Educators for Cynthia’ to elect a bona fide public education advocate who prioritizes learning, not testing in New York schools

BUFFALO, NY — On the eve of the New York State United Teachers Representative Assembly in Buffalo, Cynthia Nixon, candidate for governor, called on Andrew Cuomo today to immediately repeal the teacher evaluation system he championed. Known as the Annual Professional Performance Review (APPR), Cuomo’s teacher evaluation system relies on high-stakes testing to evaluate teachers. Education historian Diane Ravitch and dozens of New York educators are rallying behind Cynthia Nixon’s demands with the launch of Educators for Cynthia. Signers include teachers, principals, school board members, superintendents, SUNY and CUNY professors, and former NYSUT statewide officers.

At the time APPR was enacted, Cuomo described it as “one of the greatest legacies for me and the state.” But it helped spur 25 percent of parents to opt out of state tests and was roundly denounced by educators and advocates. Cuomo has since tried to distance himself from the APPR, but it remains on the books, including requirements for additional standardized tests that serve no educational purposes other than to grade teachers.

“A couple years ago Andrew Cuomo described teacher evaluation based on high stakes testing as one of his greatest legacies, now he is hoping that parents and teachers have forgotten all about it,” Cynthia Nixon said. “Enough of the delays and excuses Governor Cuomo, it is time to repeal the APPR now.”

“Cynthia Nixon has a vision that will put education on the right track by refocusing New York schools on the dignity of teaching and the joy of learning,” said Diane Ravitch, education historian. “She will provide the resources our children need to succeed. Andrew Cuomo’s policies have disrespected teachers as a profession and undermined the education of our children.”

The “Educators for Cynthia” group cites additional education reform priorities Cynthia supports including: providing students a rich and balanced curriculum rather than one oriented around standardized tests; ensuring equitable school funding by fully funding Foundation Aid; and delivering fair and full funding for SUNY and CUNY to expand opportunity and improve quality.

“Our public school teachers must be treasured and lifted up for the hard work they do every day in the classroom educating our children. Instead, Andrew Cuomo has vilified and punished teachers, underfunded our neediest schools and deprived students of the educational opportunities and social and emotional supports they need, and placed SUNY and CUNY on a starvation diet which undermines the quality of higher education and decreases opportunities for students who need a leg up,” Cynthia said. “As governor I will make public education from pre-K through college a top priority, our children and our future depends on it.”

“Andrew Cuomo is the king of test and punish education reform,” said Marla Kilfoyle, a teacher in the Oceanside Schools. “He insisted that teachers had to be evaluated based upon standardized tests even though all the evidence said it was bankrupt idea. He has refused to repeal his own failed policy and Cynthia Nixon is a breath of fresh air. She has a strong record on standing up for our public schools and teachers and I am proud to support her.”

Anyone interested in joining Educators for Cynthia can do so at http://cynthiafornewyork.com/educators.

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Categories Cuomo, Andrew, Education Reform, Race to the Top, Teacher Evaluations, VAM (value-added modeling)

Mercedes Schneider: Raising Test Scores Is Not the Purpose of Teaching or Education

By dianeravitch
December 2, 2017 //
11

Mercedes Schneider discusses a study that was reported in Education Week. The study concluded that teachers from alternative certification programs such as Teach for America get students to produce test scores there are “marginally” better than traditionally trained teachers.

Mercedes thought this was a dumb study, although she didn’t use that word. Producing higher scores, even “marginally” higher scores is not a good measure of teaching. Getting higher scores from students is not, she writes, the same as proving a high-quality, well-rounded education.

“The fact that the JCFS meta-analysis finds that teachers trained via alt cert programs have students with slightly higher test scores than those trained in traditional teacher prep programs does not surprise me.

“What does surprise me is that the JCFS researchers not only fail to question the validity of measuring teacher job performance using student tests; they promote the idea as a means to gather useful data.

“It also surprises me that the JCFS researchers do not question the degree to which student test scores represent authentic learning. They do comment on “student achievement in the U.S.” as “still below average, in comparison to the rest of the world,” but they do not carry that thought further and question how it is that the US continues to be a major world power despite those “still below average” international test scores….

“There is a reason that no national testing company would dare include with its student achievement tests a statement supporting the usage of these tests to gauge teacher effectiveness: Measuring teachers using student tests is not a valid use of such tests, and no testing company wants to be held liable for this invalid practice.

“Certainly the pressure is on traditional teacher training programs to focus on the outcome of teachers-in-training “raising” student test scores and to use those test score outcomes as purported evidence that the teacher-in-training is “effective.” May they never reach the ultimate cheapening of pedagogy and reduce teacher education to nothing more that test-score-raising.

“Are teacher alt cert programs little more that spindly, test-score-raising drive-thrus lacking in lasting pedagogical substance? There’s an issue worthy of research investigation.

“What price will America pay for its shortsighted, shallow love of high test scores? Also worthy of investigation– more so than that of the ever-increasing test score.”

Categories Alternate Route To Certification, Research, Teach for America, Teachers and Teaching, Testing, VAM (value-added modeling)

Study: The More Weight Given to VAM, the Lower Teacher Evaluation Ratings

By dianeravitch
November 12, 2017 //
13

A new study of teacher evaluation finds that the more that value-added test scores count, the lower teachers are rated.

“Among the most important findings from this new study: When value-added scores are incorporated into evaluations, the ratings tend to go down. And the more weight a system puts on value-added scoring, the lower the scores are likely to be, the study showed.

“That’s because value-added scores tend to be relative measures, explained Kraft. Value added is generally “designed to just compare you to your peers,” he said. “Everybody can’t be good with value added.”

“On the other hand, with classroom observation scores, everyone can be excellent, he said.

“And that leads to a huge caveat in all of this: As it stands, despite the variation in systems, almost all teachers across the country continue to get positive ratings.

“That’s largely because observation scores make up the meat of most teacher evaluation systems, said Kraft. And as we know from previous research, principals tend to rate their teachers highly.”

Categories Research, Teacher Evaluations, VAM (value-added modeling)

Laura Chapman on Bill Gates’ Hubris, Ignorance, and Folly

By dianeravitch
October 22, 2017 //
54

A couple of days ago, Bill Gates said he has a new plan to reform education. As I pointed out in a post, Bill Gates is batting 0 for 3. He dropped $2 Billion into breaking up large high schools and turning them into small schools. He started in 2000, didn’t see a big jump in test scores, and backed out in 2008. Then, having decided that the answer to high test scores was to punish teachers whose student scores didn’t go up, he pushed value-added Assessment, partnering with Arne Duncan and Race to the Top. Thousands of educators were fired and many schools were closed based on Gates’s fancy. That lasted from 2008 until now, and it has been written into state law in many states, although it has distorted the purpose of education and created massive demoralization among teachers and a national teacher shortage. Then he funded the Common Core, in its entirety. It is his pedagogical Frankenstein, his personal belief that education should be completely standardized, from standards to curriculum to teacher education to teacher evaluation. Speaking to the National Board for Certified Teachers a few years ago, he praised standardization and talked about the beauty of standard electrical plugs. No matter where you live, you can plug in an appliance and it works! Clearly, that was his metaphor for education. What did he spend on the creation and promotion of the Common Core? No one knows for sure, but estimates range from $200 Million to $2 Billion.

There is one other massive Gates failure that I forgot to mention: inBloom. This was a $100million investment in data mining of students’ personally identifiable data. Several states and districts agreed to turn their data over to inBloom, which wipould use the data as its owners chose. Parents got wind of this and launched a campaign to stop in loom. Led by Leonie Haimson of New York and Rachel Stickland of Colorado, parents besieged their legislators, and one by one, the state’s and districts pulled out. InBloom collapsed.

We don’t know how much money Gates has poured into charter schools, but we imagine he must be disappointed that on average they don’t produce higher scores than the public schools he disdains. He bundled millions for a referendum in Washington State to allow charter schools, the fourth such referendum. Despite Gates’ swamping the election with money, the motion barely passed. Then the State’s highest court denied public funding to charter schools, declaring that they are not public schools because they are not governed by elected school boards. Gates and his friends tried to oust the Chief Judge when she ran for re-election, but she coasted to victory.

As you see, he is actually 0 for 5 in his determination to “reform” the nation’s public schools.

But he is not deterred by failure!

So what is the latest Gates’ idea?

Laura Chapman explains here:

“At the Meeting of the Council for Great City Schools October 19, 2017, Gates said:

“Today, I’d like to share what we have learned over the last 17 years and how those insights will change what we focus on over the next five years.”

“I think that Gates has learned very little about education in the last 17 years. He is still fixated on “the lagging performance” of our students on what he regards as “the key metrics of a quality education – math scores, English scores, international comparisons, and college completion.

“Gates wants his narrow definition of “quality education” to be accepted as if the proper doctrine for improving schools and also ensuring the “economic future and competitiveness of the United States.”

“Gates wants faster progress in raising test scores, and high school graduation rates. He seems to think that “constraints and other demands on state and local budget” actually justify his plans to “ increase high school graduation and college-readiness rates.”

“Gates takes credit for funding for the deeply flawed + Measures of Effective Teaching project (MET), claiming that it showed educators ”how to gather feedback from students on their engagement and classroom learning experiences . . . and about observing teachers at their craft, assessing their performance fairly, and providing actionable feedback.” The $64 million project in 2007 tried to make it legitimate for teachers to be judged by “multiple measures” including the discredited VAM, and dubious Danielson teacher observation protocol http://nepc.colorado.edu/newsletter/2013/01/review-MET-final-2013 Gates learned nothing from that micromanaging effort.

“Gates funded and promoted the Common Core. He says: “Teachers need better curricula and professional development aligned with the Common Core.”He remains committed to the ideas that “teacher evaluations and ratings” are useful ways “to improve instruction,” He thinks “data-driven continuous learning and evidence-based interventions,” will improve student achievement. This jargon is meaningless.

“Gates said: Overall, we expect to invest close to $1.7 billion in US public education over the next five years.“…“We anticipate that about 60 percent of this will eventually support the development of new curricula and networks of schools that work together to identify local problems and solutions . . . and use data to drive continuous improvement.

“Don’t be deceived by the “public education” comment. Gates wants to control public schools by dismantling their governance by and for the public. By “networks of schools” Gates means “innovation districts” where persons employed by private interests can control educational policy under the banner of “collaboration” or “partnership.”

“Gates offers several examples of networks. One is CORE, a so-called “partnership” of eight large urban school districts in California: Fresno, Garden Grove, Long Beach, Los Angeles, Oakland, Sacramento, San Francisco and Santa Ana,

“CORE stands for “California Office for Reform in Education CORE a non-governmental organization, based in San Francisco, funded by the Stuart Foundation, William and Flora Hewlett Foundation, S. D. Bechtel, Jr. Foundation (Stephen Bechtel Fund); and Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. Here are some other things you should know about CORE.

“CORE was created in order to bypass the California State Board of Education and Race to the Top accountability, by marketing its new “School Quality Improvement Index.” This index includes social-emotional learning and school climate indicators in addition to California requirements—test scores, graduation rates, and the like.
Participating CORE Districts are bound to the terms of a memorandum of understanding, signed only by each district superintendent. This MOU specifies that the district will use: CORE-approved school improvement ratings based on existing and new indicators, a CORE-approved teacher and principal evaluation process with professional development plans, CORE-specific teacher and principal hiring and retention policies with cross-district sharing data—including results from teacher/student/parent surveys of school climate and student self-assessments of their social-emotional skills.

“The final rating for each school in a CORE district is a complex web of weightings and transformations of scores into performance and growth measures: 40% of the overall rating for school climate/social emotional indicators and 60% for academics.

“An autonomous “School Quality Oversight Panel” nullifies oversight of these districts by the State Board of Education. This “oversight” panel has CORE supporters recruited from The Association of California School Administrators, and California School Boards Association, California State PTA. The main monitors/promoters of this scheme are actually two panel members: Ed Trust West and the Policy Analysis for California Education. Bot of these organizations are sustained in large measure by private funding.

“Ed Trust West is funded by the Bloomberg Philanthropies, State Farm Companies, and these foundations: Bill & Melinda Gates, Joyce, Kresge, Lumina, Wallace Foundation, and the Walton Family. The Policy Analysis for California Education (PACE) is based at Stanford University, with participation by the University of California – Berkeley, and the University of Southern California. PACE is a conduit for grants from USDE and from the David and Lucille Packard Foundation; Evelyn and Walter Haas, Jr. Fund; S. D. Bechtel Jr. Foundation; Walter and Elise Haas Fund; and The Walter S. Johnson Foundation.

“School ratings developed by the CORE Districts flow directly to GreatSchools.org —a marketing site for schools and education products. GreatSchools.org is funded by the Gates, Walton, Robertson, and Arnold Foundations. Add the Friedman Foundation for Educational Choice, the Bradley Foundation, Goldman Sachs Gives, New Schools Venture Fund. and 15 other foundations.“GreatSchools.org in a non-profit in name only. GreatSchools.org sells data from all states and districts. For a fee, it will push users of the website to particular schools. Buyers of the data include Zillow and Scholastic.

“I think that the CORE District model illustrates how the private takeover of education is happening. Policy formation and favored school practices are being determined by the wealth and the peculiar visions non governmental groups with deep pockets. In the CORE Districts, this work is aided and abetted by superintendents who are eager for the money and the illusion of prestige that comes from permitting private funders to determine educational policies and practices.

“Gates’ speech to members of the Council of the Great City Schools also includes the example of Tennessee’s LIFT Education as a “network” that is worth replicating.

“LIFT Education enlists educators from 12 rural and urban districts across the state to promote the Common Core agenda and Teach for America practices. Participants in LIFT Education are convened by the State Collaborative on Reforming Education —SCORE. The SCORE website says participants in LIFT have spent the last year and a half collaborating on high-quality early literacy instruction, focusing on building knowledge and vocabulary by piloting knowledge-rich read-alouds in early grades.

“The LIFT/SCORE alliance provides a governance structure for insisting that teachers follow the Gates-funded Common Core. Teachers are given an instructional practice guide that is also a teacher evaluation rubric from Student Achievement Partner, authors of the Common Core. https://lifteducationtn.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/07/LIFT-Instructional-Practice-Guide-K-5-Literacy.pdf

“This LIFT/SCORE non-governmental network is the result of private wealth channeled to superintendents who have outsourced the “coaching” and compliance monitoring for the Common Core literacy project to the Brooklyn-based The New Teachers Project (TNTP). In effect, TFA coaching and systems of data-gathering are present in all of the LIFT/SCORE districts.

“SCORE, the State Collaborative on Reforming Education has been funded since 2010 by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, so far $10,623,497 including multiple years for operating support. Add a 2012 grant to SCORE as sponsor of a Chiefs for Change Policy Forum for district leaders so they would be “ambassadors for education reform.” The bait for the LIFT/SCORE network thus came from Chiefs for Change–Jeb Bush’s baby, unfriendly to public education.

“Gates says: “Over the next several years, we will support about 30 of these networks (e.g.., CORE, LIFT) and will start initially with high needs schools and districts in 6 to 8 states. Each network will be backed by a team of education experts skilled in continuous improvement, coaching, and data collection and analysis.””

“Our goal is to work with the field to ensure that five years from now, teachers at every grade level in secondary schools have access to high-quality, aligned curriculum choices in English and math, as well as science curricula based on the Next Generation Science Standards.”

“What else is in the works from the many who would be king of American education?

“We expect that about 25 percent of our funding in the next five years will focus on big bets – innovations with the potential to change the trajectory of public education over the next 10 to 15 years.” What does Gates means by “big bets?” He expects to command the expertise and R&D to change the “trajectory” of education. He will fund translations of “developments in neuroscience, cognitive psychology, and behavioral economics” in addition to “technology-enabled” approaches in education.

“There is money left for more.

“We anticipate that the final 15 percent of our funding in the next five years will go to the charter sector. We will continue to help high-performing charters expand to serve more students. But our emphasis will be on efforts that improve outcomes for special needs students — especially kids with mild-to-moderate learning and behavioral disabilities.”

“This proposal sounds like Gates wants to cherry pick the students with “mild to moderate learning and behavioral disabilities,” send them to Gates-funded charter schools to bring their scores up, then claim success where everyone else has failed. This same strategy is being used in “pay-for performance” preschools. Gates sounds like he expects to have a free-hand in ignoring the Individual with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA). Evidently he wants the “flexibility” to ignore IDEA that he believes to be present in charter schools.

“Bill Gates is still fixated on the idea that his money and clout can and will attract other foundations and private investors. He still holds on to the mistaken idea that “what works” in one community or state can be “scaled up,” and REPLICATED, elsewhere. He is ignorant of the history of education and efforts to replicate programs. He is trapped in an industrial one-size-fits-all model of education.

“Gates ends with this: “Our role is to serve as a catalyst of good ideas, driven by the same guiding principle we started with: all students – but especially low-income students and students of color – must have equal access to a great public education that prepares them for adulthood. We will not stop until this has been achieved, and we look forward to continued partnership with you in this work in the years to come.”

“Beware of billionaires who want to partner with you.

“Gates still seems to think that students, especially low income students, can and will be successful if they have “ equal access to a great public education.” He remains ignorant of the abundant research that shows schools alone are not responsible for, or solutions to, institutionalized segregation and poverty–the main causes of serious disadvantage among low-income students and students of color.

“Gates has grandiose plans. All are focused on privatizing education and selling that snake oil as if it is authentic support for public education.“

Categories Bush, Jeb, Charter Schools, Common Core, Corporate Reformers, Data and Data Mining, Failure, Gates Foundation, Bill Gates, John King, Privatization, Teacher Evaluations, VAM (value-added modeling)
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