Wayne Slater, senior political writer for the Dallas Morning News, tweeted this:
@WayneSlater Put a fork in school vouchers in Texas — ban on taxpayer money for private schools passes overwhelming in conservative TX House
I bet the rural Republicans balked at destroying their communities’ public schools.
Patrick Wolf, the “independent” evaluator of the Milwaukee voucher program remains incensed that the National Education Policy Center did not notice that he dropped the attrition rate of students in the Milwaukee voucher program from 75% to 56%.
I, the humble historian, still wonder what is so impressive about Milwaukee, one of the lowest-performing cities on NAEP. If the voucher students get the same test scores as kids in public schools, and Milwaukee is low-performing, what does that say about the efficacy of vouchers? And, I dunno, but 56% still looks like a huge attrition rate. If all those students dropped out from the voucher schools, what does it say about vouchers? But what do I know? I am far, far below Dr. Wolf.
Kevin Welner, the director of the National Education Policy Center, responds here, including a comment by Casey Cobb, who wrote the original review of the Wolf analysis for NEPC.
Welner writes:
“In a new post on Education Next, Patrick Wolf asserts that the “dust up” emerging from his first post was “avoidable.” But he never addresses the main way it could have been avoided: if he had been honest with his readers the first time around, instead of implying ignorance or wrongdoing as a cheap way to scores some points against Diane Ravitch and (to a lesser extent) NEPC.
Wolf’s new post includes no statement to the effect that he made a mistake in leading readers to believe that Casey Cobb (and therefore NEPC and Diane Ravitch) had concocted the 75% figure out of thin air. Nor, obviously, does he apologize for misleading his readers or for his baseless attacks on Cobb, NEPC, and Ravitch.
The only mistake he acknowledges was “in the form of the initial 75% program attrition figure.” That is, my colleagues incorrectly put the 75% figure in our report, and we then corrected it to 56%. That’s of course true, but what’s odd is that he doesn’t address the core issue. When he wrote the first Education Next post, why was he not honest with his readers? Why did he attack based on an argument that is, at best, misleading?
Here’s what an apology looks like, honestly and straightforwardly admitting a mistake: “Dr. Wolf, you are correct that NEPC’s editing process failed to notice the discrepancy between the 75% figure and the 56% figure. We apologize, and we will correct our postings to accurately note that the SCDP report was changed during the writing of our review.” This morning, I also reached out to our expert reviewer, Casey Cobb, who poured through his notes and drafts, forensically piecing together whatever information he could find – and he responded to me with an honest note that he’s allowing me to post below. In my view, Casey and NEPC both made mistakes in this process, but those mistakes were small and understandable – readers can decide for themselves.
But more importantly, those small mistakes in no way change or mitigate what – without some explanation – looks like a deceitful attack. Reading Wolf’s new blog, I’m left to believe that he considered Cobb and NEPC (and Ravitch) fair game since we failed to figure out the miraculous transformation from 75% to 56%. But his initial point didn’t argue that. It didn’t say, “We originally published the report using an incorrect figure of 75% attrition, and it seems that Cobb and NEPC were confused by the switch,” or even “Those credulous fools used the 75% that we’d originally posted instead of noticing that we’d changed that figure to 56%. Haha – joke’s on them.” Instead, he hid his knowledge of the source of that 75% figure and attacked us as being incompetent or deceptive.
If Wolf were driving down the road and swerved to intentionally hit a person who had slipped off the sidewalk, I dare say he couldn’t excuse his behavior by arguing that the pedestrian had wrongly left the sidewalk. Did I mention that he was responsible for greasing down the sidewalk the previous day?
Here’s the note sent to me by Casey Cobb:
It would be helpful in future reports if the SCDP and Patrick Wolf flag such corrections and identify to readers what was “updated and corrected” when they post corrections. The apparently erroneous 75% attrition figure that mysteriously turned to 56% wasn’t explicitly identified in the “corrected” report.
Yes, in my review of the originally released report, which does not indicate “draft,” or “work in progress,” or anything of that sort, I referenced what Wolf and his colleagues wrote about the 75% attrition from their sample. Then, during the process of editing and creating many drafts of my review, this “updated and corrected” report was posted on the SCDP website.
The updated report’s face page still indicates a publication date of “February 2012,” but three pages in reads, “Updated and Corrected March 8, 2012.” The website on which the report can be found still says, “Posted by UArk Dept. of Ed. Reform – February 1, 2012 – DER Publications, MPCP – Final Reports, SCDP, SCDP Milwaukee Evaluation” (http://www.uaedreform.org/updated-student-attainment-and-the-milwaukee-parental-choice-program-final-follow-up-analysis/).
I have no recollection or record of how the 56% number was captured and added. I can only surmise that I downloaded this newer version during the latter stages of my review, perhaps while traveling and using a different computer (and so needing a new copy). I obviously didn’t notice anything different, and I continued on with my review citing the new 56% figure (which, again, contained no footnote or indication of the change from 75%–that would have been helpful to those of us who are memory-challenged). Yes, this was a mistake; I certainly missed the inconsistency in the final edits of my review.
The NEPC review needs only one correction. In the current version, the Summary of the Review and Section III make reference to the 75% sample attrition rate; in Section V, the reference is made to the “updated and corrected” 56% rate. I will take responsibility for indicating via footnote that updated figure in Wolf’s revised report is now “56%.” An explanation can be added to indicate that the review took place during a period in which the Report #30 changed and that an updated version of Report #30 was posted on March 8th which did not indicate what items were corrected. Hopefully, if changes to SCDP reports occur following their original posting in the future, authors provide information on what was actually updated.
Patrick Wolf, in what can only be perceived as a patronizing tone, asks that, “While Casey Cobb is correcting his review of our report, he should also revise his charge on page 4 that, ‘Curiously, it [meaning the report] fails to state how many program-switchers there were, when they switched and in which direction, and how many graduated.’” But then he goes on to admit my statement was, in fact, true; the report does not address it. Yet he still laments that I didn’t refer readers to a journal article identified in the report as forthcoming (that is, not yet published) that speaks to this very issue not addressed in Report #30. Now we are all free to read it.
Patrick Wolf is right that the 75% vs. 56% attrition rate is not the main issue here, although either number raises questions about construct validity (what the treatment actually was). Other more substantive issues remain unaddressed by him and his colleagues. For one, explaining why it is they rely so heavily upon a .10 level of statistical significance when the industry standard is.05. And then why this is brushed off in lieu of grand summary statements of the program’s success? Perhaps adherence to commonly accepted scientific standards gave way to a desire to promote voucher-like programs.
Finally, I want to add my voice to the call for Wolf to release the Milwaukee data that he and his colleagues used, to generate their claims, so that other researchers may analyze it dispassionately – attrition rates and all.”
Read here to see the illustrated version of the Wolf attack on me and NEPC.
What do we need to protect us from future Wolf attacks? Garlic? A mirror?
Maybe just common sense and concern for the commonweal.
But what do I know. I am but a humble blogger with a doctorate in history, not a statistician.
Yesterday, Patrick Wolf published a vitriolic attack on me and on the National Education Policy Center.
This was in response to a post I had published saying that vouchers had failed in Milwaukee. They are supposed to “save minority students from failing schools,” but they do no better and sometimes worse than public schools. I cited Wolf’s evaluation, state test scores (which showed no edge for voucher students), and the fact that 75% of the voucher students in his study did not remain in the voucher schools to graduate. The 75% attrition rate appears in Wolf’s report. I did not know that he subsequently lowered the attrition rate to 56%, although that too is a pretty staggering attrition rate. I also noted that Wolf recently wrote an editorial in the Minneapolis Star-Tribune chastising his home state of Minnesota for not requiring more school choice. This caused me to question his “independence” as an evaluator of school choice, since his article advocated for more school choice. And this is why he is so angry at me.
Kevin Welner, director of the National Education Policy Center, wrote this response to Wolf:
PATRICK WOLF SHOULD APOLOGIZE
The Education Next website yesterday posted Patrick Wolf’s very personal and misguided attack on Diane Ravitch (http://educationnext.org/ravitch-blow-up-on-school-choice/). He also made inaccurate statements aimed at the National Education Policy Center (NEPC), which I direct. I will, below, extensively quote some of the vitriol, because I don’t want any of Patrick Wolf’s injudicious wrath to be lost in paraphrase. Then, after those quotes and a description of how they are false and misleading, I ask the piece’s author as well as the publishers of Education Next, to publicly apologize for the inaccurate statements about NEPC and about Dr. Ravitch.
The Education Next piece is written by Prof. Patrick Wolf of the University of Arkansas. He heads up the School Choice Demonstration Project (SCDP), and has been paid millions of dollars by several jurisdictions with voucher policies to “independently” evaluate those policies. The NEPC has, in turn, reviewed several of the publications that Wolf and his team produced. Those expert reviews show the evaluations to be reasonably well executed, but the reviewers have also consistently pointed to a pattern of presenting evaluation findings in ways that are misleadingly positive – as well as a pattern of minimizing clear limitations in the data.
This brings us to a review in 2012 of Wolf’s “Report #30” of the Milwaukee voucher program (see http://nepc.colorado.edu/thinktank/review-Milwaukee-Choice-Year-5). For the expert review, NEPC turned to Casey Cobb, who is Department Head and Professor in the Department of Educational Leadership at the University of Connecticut. He is also Director of the Center for Education Policy Analysis at UConn.
Prof. Cobb’s summary included the following:
[The report’s conclusions about improved graduation rates] should be considered alongside at least two important caveats, however. The first is a methodological concern. Roughly 75% of the original sample of 801 [Milwaukee Parental Choice (voucher) Program (MPCP)] 9th graders were not still enrolled in a MPCP high school in 12th grade. The inferences drawn about the effects of the MPCP on graduation rates compared with those in the [Milwaukee Public School (MPS)] are severely clouded by substantial sample attrition. A second concern lies in the report’s interpretation of the data. Among the most careful statistically controlled analyses, only one finding was statistically significant at conventional levels. These two limitations prevent broad conclusions being drawn about the relative effectiveness of the MPCP and the MPS on graduation and higher education continuation rates. (Emphasis added.)
This week, Diane Ravitch cited Cobb’s NEPC review, noting in particular the point about the 75% attrition. Wolf was none too pleased.
He first points to his stature as the go-to guy for people wanting their voucher programs evaluated: “I keep winning the competitions to perform the most important private school choice evaluations around the country, and regularly publish my results in the very best scientific peer-reviewed policy journals (see here, here, and here), Ravitch’s ad hominem attacks notwithstanding.”
(Regarding the ad hominem allegation here, Wolf seems to be responding to Ravitch pointing out that Wolf has publicly and vociferously advocated for vouchers, so she suggested that he might not be considered an “independent evaluator.” This doesn’t strike me as ad hominem any more than if were to suggest that his Education Next piece reads to me as smug. Readers can draw their own conclusions.)
Wolf then launches into an attack on Ravitch and NEPC, claiming that the 75% figure is incorrect. He even mocks Ravitch as innumerate and NEPC (and/or our expert reviewer) as unreliable or incompetent. Ravitch, he says, “claims that the similar Milwaukee finding of higher educational attainment from vouchers is questionable because ‘75% of the students who started in a voucher school left before graduation.’ For support, she cites a review of our study performed by the National Education Policy Center (NEPC).” He continues:
Now, professional historians cite original sources to make their claims, but, remember, we are talking about Diane Ravitch here. Is the NEPC claim credible? Let’s examine the original sources. From page 16 of our report, “the majority of students (approximately 56 percent) who were enrolled in 9th grade in MPCP were not enrolled there by the time they reached 12th grade.” Also, from page 163 of our article published in the prestigious scientific Journal of Policy Studies, “less than half (44 percent) of the original MPCP panelists examined were enrolled in a voucher school by the time they reached 12th grade.” I realize that Ravitch is no statistician but even she should know that 56 percent is not 75 percent and 44 percent is not 25 percent. It doesn’t excuse Ravitch that the factual error was first promulgated by NEPC. She should know better than to trust the accuracy of their “reviews” when primary source material clearly contradicts them.
Yesterday, after this was posted, I received an email from one of the EdNext readers, pointing me to Wolf’s critique. I immediately went to page 16 of Wolf’s report. Could we have made such a mistake?! Actually … we didn’t. Here’s what it said on page 16: “A second caveat is that the majority of students (approximately 75 percent) who were enrolled in 9th grade in MPCP were not enrolled there by the time they reached 12th grade.”
So I followed the link in the Education Next piece and downloaded the same report. Here’s what it says on page 16: “A second caveat is that the majority of students (approximately 56 percent) who were enrolled in 9th grade in MPCP were not enrolled there by the time they reached 12th grade.”
That was certainly odd. Then on third page of the pdf I’d just downloaded, I found the following: “Updated and Corrected March 8, 2012.” It doesn’t say what specifically was updated or corrected, but clearly one change was on page 16.
So here’s the timeline:
1. February 2012: Wolf and his colleagues publishes the SCDP report, stating that “approximately 75 percent” of the voucher students enrolled in 9th grade “were not enrolled there by the time they reached 12th grade.” (On February 24th, NEPC sent the report to Prof. Cobb for a review.)
2. March 8, 2012: The SCDP changes that sentence, substituting “56” for “75”.
3. April 19, 2012: NEPC publishes the Cobb review, pointing to (among other things) the 75% figure as evidence of the study’s limitations. Nobody had thought to go back and see whether Wolf or his colleagues had changed important numbers in the SCDP report.
4. April 1, 2013: Wolf attacks Diane Ravitch and NEPC for CORRECTLY quoting Wolf’s own report.
I will generously assume that, in writing this attack, Wolf had simply forgotten that he changed the 75 to a 56. In truth, every one of us makes mistakes, and our memories aren’t what they once were. Also, Wolf wasn’t first author of the SCDP report, so maybe he wasn’t privy to the change. But what makes this mistake come with such ill grace is that Wolf didn’t simply contend that NEPC or Ravitch made an error. Instead, he unloaded with an angry and self-righteous attack. His piece ends with this: “It takes a lot of doing for a person to mislead so many about so much, but apparently Diane Ravitch is up to the job.”
Considering that Dr. Wolf has, in this Education Next piece, knowingly or unknowingly misled the public about the changes in the reporting of his results, the appropriate step for EdNext and Dr. Wolf to take would be the issuance of a public apology for the attacks based on this error. As is the collegial responsibility of academics, I also call upon Wolf to release his data. A re-analysis of the SCDP data is important in light of his critique and the circumstances and errors in the public reporting of his results.
When ALEC and its faithful friends in think tanks and state legislatures promote “choice,” what do they really mean? When the Walton family and their family foundation attack public sector institutions and advocate choice, what do they really want? When they push the Parent Trigger and call it “empowerment,” who do they want to empower?
This reader left a comment in which he sees a strategy and a goal in the laws and policies pushed by ALEC, the Waltons and others intent on privatizing the public sector.
He writes:
“It is a tenet of ALEC that charter schools should be completely unregulated, unsupervised, and unaccountable. The goal is choice, not accountability or results.”
“Diane, I think the real goal is the capture of democratic government by corporations–the institution of corporatism in place of democracy. Everything ALEC wants is actually well regulated–but by and for the corporations, who co-opt government police and tax collection functions to their profit; this is often referred to as “corporatism” as used by the Italian proto-Fascists at the turn of the last century, or corporate nationalism.
“The real goal is corporate power; choice is just a canard.
“From everything we’ve seen “choice” is not the goal of these groups, it’s quite the opposite. The corporatist strategy is to convince the public to abandon traditional government services by offering a false “choice” in favor of their corporate counterparts. The choice is false, because political machinations are used to destroy the funding base for public services and the public’s faith in the ability of government to provide these services in order to drive the public to “choose” the corporatist vision. By undermining the government, corporatists like ALEC can then install their vision by claiming that the public demands a “choice” between the failed “socialist” government and the “competitive, efficient, effective free market”.
“But the reality is not that at all. The reality is a corporate-controlled governmental behemoth that looks and functions much like the old Soviet government, with corrupt corporate and government apparatchiks leeching the vast wealth of the nation while the public suffers without any recourse.”
GreatSchools.org ranks and rates the nation’s public, charter and private schools. It aims to be a consumer’s guide for parents who are shopping for a school.
I know some of those involved, and I know they mean well. But this sort of rating service, based on data and reviews, not only raises a basic question—how can you judge an establishment you have never visited or seen with your own eyes–but contributes to the marketplace mentality that is now dissolving any sense of community or support for public schools.
The rating system reinforces the data-driven perspective that keeps everyone obsessed with testing and ranking and rating. And in doing so, it promotes consumerism as parents search desperately for better rated alternatives, not knowing that the alternatives may be no better. The end result is destruction of community and loss of the commons.
This may not be the intention of those involved in the organization. But in life, intentions matter less than outcomes.
This letter came from a teacher in Texas:
Dear Dr. Ravitch:
I am not sure if you have dealt with these morons before, but I am infuriated and am writing to you to see if you can use this in your blog to educate parents nationwide.
I recently learned from my parents, that an editorial came out in our local newspaper, the Laredo Morning Times, where our local school districts both received rankings of 3 and 4 respectively, from an “Independent Organization” called “Great Schools” on a 10 point scale. Basically, the editorial cited that both districts have the worst state test results in decades as of the recent administration of the now called STARR test, previously TAKS, previously TAAS, etc, etc, ad nauseoum.
From a cursory browsing of the Great Schools Web Site, if you look at the list of supporters and funders, you see the all too familiar names of the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, the Walton Group, etc. And their officers and board members? All of them seem to be a parade for private school alumni and hedge fund managers.
I am taking advantage of our Thanksgiving holiday week, to send a letter exposing these jerks, and defending our public education system, at least at the local level, to our town newspaper. These jokers have just smeared the faculty members of mine and many other campuses by saying our districts are failing our students. On the website, you can see many ads for charter schools, K12, and many other pictures that scream privatization and school choice.
Their misleading slogan of “Involved Parents, Succesful Kids” leads site visitors to believe that they are all pro-students, when in reality, they are advertising a painful truth in our districts( Poverty and Family Violence, among many other issues that create null parent involvement) and using it as a way to convince the uneducated parents that privatization, school choice and online charters are better.
If you can offer any insight on how to draft my letter to the newspaper, your wisdom would be immensely appreciated. I am not going to let this attack on the profession I love so much go unanswered.
Yours in Education,
Just got this in the email. It was posted on Facebook:
Deborah Hohn Tonguis posted in LA Public Teachers: Our Classrooms are Not for Sale!
Here is my email response to Holly Boffy, who sent an email request to all of the Louisiana Teachers of the Year to participate in an upcoming visit by NBC. She has no shame…
From: Holly Boffy
Sent: Wednesday, March 27, 2013 9:53 PM
Subject: Unique opportunity in the New Orleans area
Dear Teachers of the Year,
If you live in Orleans or one of the surrounding parishes and are currently a classroom teacher, please email me about an opportunity to be part of NBC’s upcoming visit to our state. I’d love to have a Teacher of the Year involved in the activities.
Sincerely,
Holly Boffy
Dear Holly,
Are you talking about NBC as in “National Board Certification”?
If so, which Louisiana Teacher of the Year would like to make NBC aware that the BESE board wants to make teacher certification optional in all but public schools? That our highest education policy-making body believes that schools should not require its classroom practitioners to have any sort of education-related degree, certificate or training, much less a passing Praxis score or a state issued teaching certificate to teach in Louisiana’s fast growing charter and for-profit school industry?
Perhaps a Louisiana STOY would be proud to articulate this to NBC: that our own Superintendent of Education, John White, with whom you have aligned yourself in ALL voting on the BESE board, has publicly demonstrated that teacher education and experience DO NOT matter in the classroom, and then proved his belief by hiring a former TFA teacher with only 2 years of classroom experience to spearhead our state’s highest teacher accountability system for public school teachers, COMPASS. She now facilitates teacher evaluation training workshops. This 27 year old BESE Board approved hire is telling administrators what highly effective teaching looks like. This from someone with a 5 1/2 week “how to” course and practically no teaching experience. (http://theadvocate.com/home/4004848-125/evaluator-defends-not-renewing-own)
Maybe a former LATOY would be proud to inform NBC that our new BESE board president, Chas Roemer, another board member you have unilaterally voted in agreement with, stated publicly his wish that even more Louisiana public schools would become charters, in spite of the fact that charters do not outperform public schools.
(http://www.thenewsstar.com/article/20130207/NEWS01/130207023/BESE-president-wants-see-more-charters)
Let’s see if a highly respected LATOY would be willing to further perpetuate our state’s legacy of corruption by explaining that Chas Roemer’s sister, Caroline Roemer Shirley, is executive director of the Louisiana Association of Public Charter Schools. As a state employee, I was required to take an online ethics course that specifically forbids “the participation of a public servant or elected official in a vote on any matter in which a member or his immediate family has a substantial economic interest. ” But then again, our BESE board seems to be above the law as evidenced in its continued practice of funding non-public voucher schools with tax payer money even after the program was ruled unconstitutional.
(http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/post-politics/wp/2012/11/30/la-judge-bobby-jindal-school-voucher-program-unconstitutional/)
Holly, surely you would not encourage the good people from the National Board Certification office to visit our state and see the shameful way duly certified, highly qualified teachers are being made obsolete at the hand of our own DOE.
But then again…maybe you meant NBC as in “National Broadcasting Company”. In that case, please bring them on and place me at the top of the list, for we could use national media attention on what is happening to our state’s education system in the name of reform.
Deborah Hohn Tonguis
2009 Louisiana Teacher of the Year
“Don’t ask yourself what the world needs; ask yourself what makes you come alive. And then go and do that. Because what the world needs is people who have come alive.”
Howard Thurman
As we are learning, Tennessee legislators and education “leaders” operate in an alternate universe.
They want to cut the welfare benefits of families if their children get low test scores.
They want to attract for-profit corporations to drain taxpayer dollars out of the public schools, and never hold them accountable for bad results (see, Tennessee Virtual Academy).
They do whatever ALEC tells them because it is hard to think up new laws to help corporations all by yourself.
They are rushing to pass voucher legislation so that every family has the choice to take public dollars to a religious school, but a big thought just occurred: will Tennessee taxpayers be paying to send kids to Muslim schools?
Yes, there are Muslim religious schools in Memphis and Nashville, where most of the vouchers will go.
No law will stand up in any federal court that excludes them.
Gosh, what will those big thinkers do now?
A reader in Cleveland comments on today’s post about vouchers in Cleveland. He is responding to a comment by another reader, who defended vouchers:
“I’m from Cleveland. The vouchers worked! They raised the cost of per-pupil expenditures in our public schools and resulted in cuts to funding for arts and enrichment programs, making public schools a less desirable “choice.” See Freakenomics for their take on vouchers. That voucher students at best do more or less the same than their peers in public schools misses what I think is the most important point. The fragmenting of public funds through vouchers/charters compromises the opportunities of public school.”
Three cities have had vouchers in recent years. Milwaukee, Cleveland, and DC.
As I pointed out in an earlier post, vouchers did not improve test scores in either Milwaukee or DC.
They also failed to make a difference in Cleveland. See here also.
Voucher advocates should stop lying to poor parents.
Vouchers do not increase test scores.
They just serve to undermine public education.
Isn’t it time to pay attention to evidence?
Why so much faith-based policy?
