North Carolina: The Bigotry of GOP Candidate for Governor

By dianeravitch
March 15, 2024 //
7

The Republican candidate for Governor in North Carolina is Mark Robinson, who is currently Lt. Governor. He just won the Republican primary, which says a lot about the state party. Robinson is a Black man, and there is a long list of groups that he is denounced.

Ja’han Jones of MSNBC writes:

When it comes to Republican gubernatorial nominee Mark Robinson, the question isn’t which of his bigoted remarks to mention, but when to stop.

Since he won the North Carolina primary earlier this month, the state’s one-term lieutenant governor has faced criticism for a long litany of comments in interviews, in sermons and on social media in which he quoted Hitler, referred to LGBTQ people as “filth,”depicted Muslims as terrorists and said certain Hollywood actresses were dressed as “whores.”

Faced with questions about whether he is antisemitic, homophobic, anti-Muslim and misogynistic, Robinson, who is Black, naturally responded by arguing that, actually, he is the real victim of bigotry.

Ironically, Robinson made this allegation on a podcast hosted by right-wing provocateur Charlie Kirk, who has called George Floyd “a scumbag,” said he wonders whether Black pilots are qualified and argued that Martin Luther King Jr. was “awful.”

When Kirk asked why Robinson believes he’s such a threat to the “MSNBC crowd,” the candidate cried racism. According to Robinson, liberals are only reminding people of his extremism because they fear a Black man holding power in the Republican Party might appeal to disaffected Black voters in the Democratic Party. 

He said: 

In my case, what they really see is they see a candidate that is able to reach out to those folks, bring common sense solutions to the problems they face, and then they see someone who looks like them and ultimately what happens there is we get into office and there’s success, and all of a sudden voting dynamics in North Carolina are changing for decades. And quite possibly, it starts across the nation. They’re very afraid of that. They don’t want that to happen. They cannot have a conservative Black man at the helm in North Carolina or in any state. Because it’s gonna show the great results of what president Trump did at the national level.

(Robinson has conceded at times that he wrote posts that were “poorly worded” but claims that they were not antisemitic.) 

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As for Robinson’s supposed strategy, there’s no evidence he has any sort of broad appeal among Black voters. In his 2020 lieutenant governor’s race, his opponent won, by a large margin, all of the majority-Black counties in the state. Robinson is, however, the type of candidate Republicans like to prop up to give voters the impression that far-right ideals have valence among Black folks — Black men in particular. 

Robinson has denounced Martin Luther King Jr. as a “communist.” He’s called Michelle Obama a man and said other extremely offensive things about her. And he’s bemoaned the Civil Rights Movement because, he says, “so many freedoms were lost” during that period. So it seems highly unlikely he’ll win over a significant share of Black voters in North Carolina. Far from “Martin Luther King on steroids,” as Donald Trump has called him, he’s more like the self-hating Uncle Ruckus, of “The Boondocks” fame. 

But the fact that he’s shrouding himself in victimhood, portraying himself as some sort of Black icon under attack from leftists, suggests he recognizes that the remarks may be hurting him in the general election. And he’s looking for some way — any way — to get past them.

Categories Bigotry, Elections, North Carolina, Republicans

NPE Blasts Texas IDEA Charter Scandal!

By dianeravitch
March 15, 2024 //
39

If the biggest charter chain in Texas is under investigation for financial finagling, is it the right time to let that charter chain expand? Well, it’s Texas, so of course!

The Network for Public Education thinks that’s a rotten idea. It’s wrong. It’s unethical. so we issued this press release.

Texas Ed Department Approves Scandal-ridden Charter Chain’s Expansion

 For immediate release:

Within days of appointing conservators to manage the IDEA charter chain, the Texas Education Agency gives it the green light to expand. 

Contact: Carol Burris

cburris@networkforpubliceducation.org

(646) 678-4477

There is a major financial and ethical charter scandal in Texas, and the Network for Public Education is outraged. The same day that the Texas Education Agency (TEA) announced the appointment of a management team for IDEA charter schools following years of inappropriate spending, the charter chain submitted a request for a massive expansion that would add ten new charter campuses in Texas.

On March 6, the TEA announced it appointed two conservators to oversee IDEA charter schools following its investigation into multiple allegations of financial mishandling. Two days later, the TEA approved that expansion without public comment or meaningful notice.

Scandals involving IDEA include the following:

The charter chain obtained nearly $300,000,000 from the U.S. Department of Education to expand to 123 schools. Following an audit, the Department is now demanding that IDEA return $28 million to be paid using Texas taxpayer dollars.

NPE President Diane Ravitch has been following the charter chain’s scandals for years. “The IDEA charter chain has a long-established reputation for spending millions on luxury items for its leaders while paying executives private-sector salaries. The grifting at public expense must stop. When one Houston school received failing grades, TEA took over the entire district. In this case, TEA appointed a conservator from another charter chain and then approved IDEA’s expansion in a shady insider deal.”

According to Network for Public Education Executive Director Carol Burris, “The scandals involving this federal Charter School Program (CSP) recipient are breathtaking. As shocking as seems, it is possible this new expansion of the corrupt IDEA charter chain will be financed through CSP grant money. We all foot the bill.”

The Network for Public Education is a national advocacy group whose mission is to preserve, promote, improve, and strengthen public schools for current and future generations of students.

                                                                   ###

Network For Public Education

Mailing Address:

Network for Public Education
PO Box 227
New York City, NY 10156

Email:
info at networkforpubliceducation.org

Phone:
(646) 678-4477

Categories Accountability, Charter Schools, Corruption, Education Industry, Ethics, For-Profit, Fraud, Funding, Texas

Kentucky: GOP Passes Bill to Nullify Parts of State Constitution to Allow Vouchers

By dianeravitch
March 14, 2024 //
7

State Senator Tina Bojanowski, teacher and legislator (@TinaforKentucky), tweeted:

KY House passes HB2, a bill to change our Constitution to allow vouchers and charters by creating an amendment that allows future legislation to disregard SEVEN sections of our Constitution.
@kyhousedems

Categories Budget Cuts, Disruption, Education Industry, Extremism, Funding, Kentucky, Republicans, Vouchers

Joel: Unions Create “Good Jobs”

By dianeravitch
March 14, 2024 //
16

Joel, our reader who often comments on economic issues, is a union electrician, now retired. Here he weighs in on the subject of “good jobs.”

Joel writes:

Most of what Americans call good Jobs never existed. What existed was good Unions which made bad Jobs good. And that only for a brief period of time. From the 1930s thru the 1960s.

In 1906 Upton Sinclair described Meat Packing as “The Jungle.” By the 50s it was a desired job that could let the holder buy a house, go on vacations and send a child to a State School. The blood and stench washed off in the shower after 8 hours. Henry Ford was not a benevolent innovative mogul of American industry who paid his workers more so they could buy his product as the myth goes. The Nazi loving antisemite could not get skilled carriage builders to work on the monotonous assembly lines of his Model T. He had to raise wages.


The assembly line took the skills out of manufacturing. Far easier and cheaper to find a worker able to put the left front wheel on all day than one who can craft a carriage from soup to nuts. Ford after the most violent resistance to Unions was the last Auto maker to be Organized in the 40s after his thugs got featured on the front page of the Detroit Press brutally beating Union organizers. They seem to have missed a roll of film when the Press Photographer handed them his Camera. Having thrown the roll away before being stopped.

Unions grew from 5% of the private sector workforce in the mid to late 1920s before the Great Depression and the NLRA. Grown to between 31 -33% in the early 50s. Which essentially meant most larger firms. And if a firm was not organized there was a Union knocking on the door that forced them to treat Workers with some degree of respect. With better wages benefits and conditions. All this started changing in the late 40s after Taft Hartley eviscerated the NLRA. Almost immediately Corporations started moving Manufacturing to the Anti Union South. Turning the manufacturing Belt of the North into the Rust Belt from Lowell Ma. and Binghamton NY to Milwaukee Wisconsin. A time when Robbie the Robot was only in a Movie and on Lost in Space. That long before Foriegn Competition and out sourcing work. It took 30 years to move the American manufacturing Industry away from the North to the Non Union South. It took 10 years to move much of it out of the country to even lower priced more abusive Countries with no Labor Standards. A different issue was found in Coal mining where strip mining decimated the Unions. Of course the UMW under short sighted and criminal thugs like Tony Boyle had fought the environmentalists opposed to it. No major mine in WV is now Union. The state once the home of the UMW is now Right to Work.

But what about those “White Collar ” Jobs. Jobs that may require a College degree. C.W. Mills in the very early 50s postulated that because the Jobs required selling services and themselves. White collar workers felt more self reliant than Blue. Viewed themselves as individuals with valuable skills that others did not posses. Skills to be marketed to the highest bidder. So who needs a Union. With some disdain he also notes that, that ethos got them lower pay and benefits. An Electrical Engineer often paid less than the Electricians he handed the prints to. Possibly one day acquiring a management position. Most often not.

Through the 60s the presence of strong Unions always knocking on the door was a check on Corporate treatment of White Collar workers. The attitude from the CEO of IBM as he addressed the Public or a Shareholder meeting . “Here at IBM we are a family here to serve our Employees, our Costumers , the Public and our Shareholders.”

As Unions were eviscerated workers Blue and White collar were taken out of the stump speech as well as Costumers and the Public. Jack Welch said in the mid 80s “tell the Unions the Future of GE is in Mexico”. By 2006 IBM was dropping their defined benefit pension for White collar Workers and later taking away the matching 401k, capping it at 5%. The age of shareholder primacy was born as Unions disappeared. Back to under 6% of the private sector workforce.

Categories Economy, Equity, Unions

RBG Award Goes to Odd List, Including Musk and Murdoch!

By dianeravitch
March 14, 2024 //
25

When I learned about this list of honorees, I thought it was a joke. It’s not.

An award named for Justice Ruth Bader Ginsberg, an icon of liberalism and feminism, will be presented to a surprising list of men and women by the Opperman Foundation at the Library of Congress.

The Hill posted this story:

A prestigious honor named after liberal Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg and originally established to recognize “women of distinction” is being awarded this year to a surprising group of multiple genders that includes Rupert Murdoch, Elon Musk and Martha Stewart, among others.

The Ruth Bader Ginsburg Leadership Award, also known as the RBG Award, will be presented by the Dwight D. Opperman Foundation at an April 13 gala at the Library of Congress, ITK can reveal.

In addition to conservative media mogul Murdoch, Tesla CEO and X owner Musk, and lifestyle guru Stewart, the award will be given to actor Sylvester Stallone and financier Michael Milken.

First established in 2020 as a recognition solely for women, previous recipients of the RBG Award have included Queen Elizabeth II, singer Barbra Streisand and fashion designer Diane von Furstenberg.

But this year, organizers expanded the award named after the liberal leader of the Supreme Court to include “trailblazing men and women” who “have demonstrated extraordinary accomplishments in their chosen fields.”

Dwight D. Opperman Foundation chair Julie Opperman said in a statement that Ginsburg “fought not only for women but for everyone.”

The Supreme Court justice, a champion of women’s rights, died in 2020 at 87.

“Going forward, to embrace the fullness of Justice Ginsburg’s legacy, we honor both women and men who have changed the world by doing what they do best,” Opperman said.

Who are Murdoch and Musk “fighting for”?

Categories Civil Rights, Democracy, Humor, Hypocrisy, Ignorance

Tom Ultican: “Learning Loss” Bunkum, Debunked

By dianeravitch
March 14, 2024 //
5

Tom Ultican left private industry to teach physics and advanced mathematics in San Diego public schools. He has become a specialist in dissecting phony attacks on public schools. In this excellent post, he takes a look at “learning loss,” a favorite subject of reformers. Of course, students did not learn as much during the pandemic as they would have if they were in classrooms daily. It was hardly surprising that in the wake of a once-in-a-century worldwide health crisis, students’ lives were disrupted.

Ultican writes:

Crazy pants Eric Hanushek claims COVID “learning-loss” could cost American students $31 trillion in future earnings. He burst onto the education world’s conscientiousness with his 1981 paper, claiming “there is no relationship between expenditures and the achievement of students and that such traditional remedies as reducing class sizes or hiring better trained teachers are unlikely to improve matters.” This played well with billionaires from the Walton family but had no relationship with reality. Likewise, his January 2024 “learning-loss” claims were straight up baloney.

Learning-Loss Reality

In the summer and fall of 2020, NWEA, McKinsey, CREDO and others produced unfounded analysis of looming learning-loss disaster caused by school closures. Since there was no data, summer learning-loss was used as a proxy, a bad one. In 2019, Paul von Hippel’s investigation threw great doubt on the 1982 Baltimore study that powerfully supported summer learning-loss belief. He showed using modern testing analysis, learning-loss was doubtful and in some cases, students gained during the summer. This data, used to trumpet a national education crisis, had no validity.

Unfortunately, billionaire-financed organizations, out to undermine public schools, do not care.

From March 2020 to February 2021, almost a half-million people died of COVID-19. There were no vaccines or Paxlovid type drugs. Refrigerator trucks stored dead bodies and more than 2 million Americans were hospitalized, some on ventilators for months. Schools were closed; unemployment jumped to 15%, murder rates shot up by 30% and fear was rampant.

In this environment, teachers heroically switched to online education.

K-12 students lost parents, became isolated from friends and visited family members in hospitals. Many kids struggled with online classes over inadequate internet feeds, parents were losing jobs and children could not visit grandparents.

Of course the rates of learning decreased but less than one might expect.

NEAP Data Explorer Graphs

The National Assessment of Education Progress (NAEP) 8th grade data graphs above show a modest decrease in both math and reading scores between 2019 and 2022. Reading fell by three points and math by eight points on a 500 point scale. I do not see catastrophe in these declines because given the context of the pandemic they strike me as rather small, with no signs of pending economic collapse.

Students have been out of school for months with medical or other reasons. I and others with this experience can testify that we were able to recover quickly. Claiming learning-loss disaster from COVID shutdown does not make sense.

Another interesting result from the 2022 NAEP test data comes from Commissioner Peggy Carr of the National Center for Education Statistics. She said, “There’s nothing in this data that tells us there is a measurable difference in the performance between states and districts based solely on how long schools were closed.”

To add further weight, New York Times opinion writer David Wallace-Wells wrote:

“In New York City, the nation’s largest school district, schools reopened in September 2020. There, average scores for reading fell by about a point for fourth graders and improved by about a point for eighth graders; in math, fourth-grade scores fell by nine points (statewide scores fell by 12) and eighth-grade scores fell by four points (statewide scores fell by six). In Los Angeles, the second-largest district, schools stayed closed through January 2021. There, average scores actually improved in fourth-grade reading, eighth-grade math and eighth-grade reading, where they improved by a robust nine points (to 257 from 248). Scores fell only in fourth-grade math (to 220 from 224).”

This January, the New York Times interactive posted “Students Are Making a ‘Surprising’ Rebound From Pandemic Closures”, based on a joint project from Stanford and Harvard Universities. The executive summary states:

“Despite the lack of improvement during 2022-23 on assessments provided by NWEA and Curriculum Associates, we find that student achievement did improve between Spring 2022 and Spring 2023: in fact, students recovered approximately one-third of the original loss in math (0.17 grade levels out of the 0.53 grade levels decline from 2019-2022) and one quarter of the loss in reading (0.08 grade levels out of the 0.31 grade level decline from 2019-2022). Such improvements in grade levels in a single school year mean that students learned 117 percent in math and 108 percent in reading of what they would typically have learned in a pre-pandemic school year. These gains are large relative to historical changes in math and reading achievement on the National Assessment of Educational Progress.”

George Bush’s Secretary of Education, Margaret Spelling, says, “We’re slowly recovering, but not fast enough.” That is from the woman who claimed 100% of America’s students would be above average by 2014. Without being a statistician, it never rang true to me. Her failure to recognize the great work of public schools says she has an agenda…

Learning-loss is not the big danger facing America’s students. The real danger is the likes of McKinsey, NWEA, CREDO and research leaders like Eric Hanushek.

Categories Education Industry

Cameron Vickrey: Why You Should Send Your Children to Public School

By dianeravitch
March 14, 2024 //
10

Cameron Vickrey is communications and development director for Fellowship Southwest; she previously worked for Pastors for Texas children. She is a pastor, her father was a pastor, her husband is a pastor. She believes in separation of church and state. She believes in the importance of public schools. She does not want to impose her views on others.

She wrote recently:

Any time you are quoted on Twitter, you have to brace yourself for the subsequent comments. Especially if Pastors for Children is the one quoting you.

Their Twitter account is a favorite of trolls (education reformers, neo-libertarians and Christian nationalists) who believe that God is not in the public schools and the only way forward is to tear it all down.

So, I knew there would be pushback when I said this, and it was referenced in a tweet: “If you can, send your children to public schools … because it’s not just about my kids, it’s about what’s good for all kids.”

The replies were predictable and entertaining, although plenty were also disturbing.

Some comments satirically quoted what Jesus definitely did not ever say, like: “‘Let Romans indoctrinate your children.’ – Jesus.” Or, “‘Send your kids to government schools so they will worship the state.’ – Jesus.”

These don’t bother me. Their absurdity speaks louder than any rebuttal would. But there were two Twitter comments that I do want to address.

This one, although asked in the manner of how the Pharisees questioned Jesus, warrants an honest reply: “What is your spiritual justification for this?”

Without knowing exactly to what this question refers, I’m going to assume it’s the claim that as Christians, we should send our children to public school.

Theologically, I believe that God loves every child equally and abundantly. We have denied some children their share of this abundant life by hoarding privileges like education.

If I really believe, and I do, that God loves other peoples’ children the same way that God loves my children and wants the same abundance for their lives, then I should make sure my desire for my children’s success doesn’t come at the expense of someone else’s children.

Now, how could where I send my kids to school ever affect another child’s success or opportunity?

Unfortunately, at least in Texas, public schools are paid for by property taxes and distributed largely by something called average daily attendance funding. So, if you live in a neighborhood with lower property tax rates and lower cost of housing, that school will receive a smaller share of the public education dollars from the state.

Now, there are work-arounds to this, called recapture (a.k.a Robin Hood). But there are many inequities that haven’t been addressed in our funding system, and it’s simply obvious to anyone driving around that the wealthier the neighborhood is, the nicer the school is.

If that school is lower-income, lower-performing or simply hasn’t had a renovation bond passed on their behalf in a few decades, then it’s likelier that families who are zoned there and can opt out will do so.

Because schools receive a certain number of dollars per child counted present each day (or an average of the days), if your child isn’t counted there, then the school is missing out on that money. And if, instead, your child is attending a different public or charter school, that money goes with them.

It’s especially tough for schools who see a mass exodus of students across a few years, like when a shiny new charter school opens nearby. The neighborhood public school might lose a few students from each of their classrooms, but not enough to consolidate classes or reduce any overhead costs.

Essentially, their income is reduced while their expenses stay the same, and they are financially pinched. When a school is financially pinched, it has to cut enrichment programming, the same programs the new charter schools often advertise — like fine arts, gardening or STEM — thereby lowering the quality of that schools’ education.

So, yes, it really does matter to other children which school you choose.

Let’s say you are now with me in supporting our neighborhood public schools. That brings me to the next tweet I want to address: “Any church that follows God doesn’t hesitate to call out the demonic forces within public education. Public Education seeks to separate children from God at almost every turn. Millstones for thy necks.”

Although it is very tempting to accept this challenge and call out the demonic forces within public education, which I absolutely can do [hint: candidates for school boards who don’t seem to care about education], I am going to try to follow Jesus and resist.

God is in all schools with all children. If you are wondering, here’s where I’ve specifically seen God in neighborhood public schools:

  • God is in the kindergarten teacher who nurtures the little ones and patiently listens to their endless commentary on life.
  • God is in the fifth-grade teachers who play guitar, build robots and order class snakes for their students who are otherwise not as engaged.
  • God is in the elementary school that also serves as the regional school for the deaf and hard of hearing, and in the hearing-kids who learn sign language to talk with their classmates.
  • God is in the schools when nearby church members participate in mentoring programs and form friendships with kids who don’t have very many adult role models.
  • God is in the schools when volunteers come to deliver food for the weekend to kids who can’t otherwise depend on food being in their home.
  • God is in the middle school girl who makes room for a new student at her lunch table.
  • God is in the discussions that happen in middle and high school English and history classes, where kids learn to listen to one another and respect each others’ opinions.
  • God is in the moment of silence observed at the beginning of each day after the pledges of allegiance, when many children bow their heads to pray.

If you still believe that God isn’t in the public schools, then maybe that’s exactly where God is calling you to go.

Categories Charter Schools, Democracy, Equity, Ethics, Funding, Religion, Separation of church and state, Supporting public schools, Teachers, Texas

Mary Trump: The Hilarity of the Robert Hur Hearing

By dianeravitch
March 13, 2024 //
33

I watched clips of yesterday’s hearings about the report of Robert Hur, who was selected by Merrick Garland to be Special Counsel to investigate Biden and documents found in his home and offices. The big takeaway from his voluminous report was that he considered Biden’s memory to be weak and that a jury would treat him as a kindly old man with a poor memory.

Republicans wanted to use the hearings to demonstrate that Biden is senile. Democrats wanted to use the hearings to show that Trump has a worse memory than Biden and that—unlike Biden— he willfully retained top-secret documents and refused to return them.

Hur resigned from the Department of Justice the day before the hearing and hired a Trump insider to represent him.

Mary Trump includes in her post the video introduced by Eric Swalwell. It shows Trump in numerous gaffes, memory lapses, and moments of incoherence. Trump later claimed all the clips were generated by AI.

Not included is the question posed by Eric Swalwell that was shown last night on Laurence O’Donnell’s MSNBC show. Swallwell read the transcript of Hur’s interview and quoted it. At one point, the transcript says, Hur observed that Biden had “a photographic memory” of the layout of his home. Not a sign of a poor memory. Apparently the transcript portrayed Biden differently than Hur’s report.

One of the Republicans read the dictionary definition of senile and asked Hur if he believed Biden was senile. Hur did not.

The question I kept wondering was why Merrick Garland thought that it was a good idea to select a trusted Trump appointee to investigate Biden.

Categories Bias, Democrats, Elections, Justice, Republicans, Trump

The Do-Nothing Congress Has Done Nothing

By dianeravitch
March 13, 2024 //
3

You may have noticed that very few bills have been passed by Congress this past year. As of mid-December, only 27 bills made it through to enactment. That’s due to fractured control—a Democratic President, a Senate controlled by Democrats, and a House of Representatives controlled by a slim Republican majority. And in the House, the Republicans are bitterly split between angry members of the so-called Freedom Caucus and traditional Republicans. The Freedom Caucus is prepared to grind everything to a halt unless they get what they want.

Axios offered a chart showing that this is the least productive Congress since at least 1989. In a typical year, Congress passed between 300-400 laws. Open the link and see the stunning chart.

NPR explained:

Congress was in the news a lot this year, but mostly it was not for passing legislation. It left us wondering what they did actually manage to get signed into law. So we’ve called NPR congressional reporter Eric McDaniel, who has tracked it all. Hi, Eric.

ERIC MCDANIEL, BYLINE: Hey there.

SHAPIRO: All right. Underneath all of the fracas about the House Speaker and George Santos and on and on, was there much legislating happening?

MCDANIEL: No, basically not. I mean, there were only 27 bills passed through both chambers in the first year of this Congress, including three crisis bills, I guess I’d call them. These are the big ones, two short-term extensions of funding to keep the government open and one to raise the U.S. government’s borrowing limit – you may have heard it called the debt ceiling – essentially so the government could pay the credit card bills for the money Congress had already directed it to spend. So these are must-do stuff. But other than that, I mean, they named some Veterans Affairs clinics. They commissioned a commemorative coin for the 250th anniversary of the Marine Corps and not much else – way behind even previous years of divided government.

SHAPIRO: So you’re saying not only was the number of laws passed very low, but the laws that were passed were not exactly consequential. Why was this so much less productive than other times government has been divided between the parties?

MCDANIEL: Look. I mean, there are a couple ways to look at that, right? The first is divided government. Like we said, they do less. There’s a Democratic president, a Democratic Senate and a Republican House. That means it’s hard to get all three sets of relevant folks to agree.

But the problem’s a lot deeper than that. I mean, in a lot of ways, the House is working the way that you’d expect it to, given the incentives that are involved. State lawmakers often draw congressional districts, the places that representatives represent, in a way that maximizes their own party’s advantage. I mean, I imagine people have heard that called gerrymandering, and it helps to create a system in which just 30 of the 435 House districts really have a say in who represents them in Congress by the time the general election rolls around. Many of the other 400-whatever seats are decided by party primaries way earlier in the year, often just by the voters from that party. That means these places are set up to elect the most partisan person possible rather than lawmakers who have to win the support of lots of different kinds of people. And as you might imagine, that makes compromise and legislating really, really hard.

SHAPIRO: Well, if the system is designed to disincentivize compromise and make it unlikely that voters will punish people for being unproductive, that suggests Congress, in the years to come, is not likely to be much more productive than it’s been this year.

MCDANIEL: Yeah, I think that’s right. I mean, voters often can’t punish people because of the way these elections are decided. And it means that Congress won’t change without systemic reform. There’s good news, though, right? A lot of places are already trying things that can help. California uses a nonpartisan top-two primary system. That means voters pick between the top two most popular candidates no matter which party they’re from. Alaska uses something called ranked-choice voting, which lets voters rank their preferences rather than just picking one person. And that helps to find consensus picks and really reduces the incentives for candidates during the election season to attack each other. There’s also bigger changes on the table, like proportional representation. And I should say none of these actually require changes to the U.S. Constitution.

SHAPIRO: Well, that’s hopeful that there are some possible changes and improvements in the works. In the meantime, what does 2024 look like for Congress? What is likely to pass even this divided House and Senate?

MCDANIEL: Yeah, that’s all long-term stuff. In the near term, Senators are working on something that we’ve talked about on this show before, a foreign aid/national security deal. So they’re looking at aid to Ukraine, aid to Israel, aid to the Indo-Pacific – think Taiwan – and U.S. immigration reform. So senators have been negotiating over the holiday season, and as soon as they get back, both the House and the Senate have to deal with government funding deadlines to keep the government open. They’re trying to pass 12 budget bills for a full year, actual spending. But we could see more short-term resolutions. Those deadlines are January 19 and February 2.

Categories Democrats, Elections, Extremism, Republicans

Jan Resseger: The Stupidity of Ranking and Rating Schools by Test Scores

By dianeravitch
March 13, 2024 //
17

Jan Resseger writes here about the failure of ranking and rating schools by test scores and other metrics. These rankings cause parents to flee low-rated schools, making them even more segregated by income and race. If “reformers” intended to help struggling schools, they didn’t. They made it harder for those schools to improve.

She writes:

Here is the lead in a story in the Washington City Paper (Washington, D.C.) that describes not only  how public school ratings and rankings work in the nation’s capital but also their impact in every public school district in the United States.  Read this carefully:

“Before the pandemic shut down D.C. schools, each public school, like each student, got a report card. Every fall the school report card included a STAR rating, from one through five. The rating was based on a formula designed and used by the Office of the State Superintendent of Education (OSSE), D.C.’s education agency. Federal law requires OSSE to identify the ‘bottom 5 percent’ of District schools, so that they can receive additional funding. In effect, OSSE’s STAR Framework ratings used a measurement of need to indicate a measurement of quality.  And as a measurement of quality, the formula failed.” (Emphasis is mine.)

The author of the commentary is Ruth Wattenberg, who formerly served on the Washington, D.C. State Board of Education (SBOE). She explains that the 2015 federal education law, the Every Student Succeeds Act—the version that replaced the 2002, No Child Left Behind Act—requires all states to assign school ratings which are said to be a measure of need for the bottom 5 percent of “struggling” schools. However, in a place like Washington, D.C. with universal school choice, while ESSA requires states to rate schools to target the bottom scorers for improvement, parents use the ratings as an advertisement for the best schools in the system—perhaps the only evidence some parents consider as they choose a school for their children.

The ratings are always understood by the general public as a measure of school quality.

In a large city school district, when parents choose a school according to the ratings, these measures help resegregate the school district by income and race. Wattenberg explains: “In D.C., where families can choose to send their kids to any public school in the district, this flawed rating system is especially consequential. ‘Many kids have left their neighborhood schools’ because of the ratings, says Sheila Carr… grandparent of current D.C. students… A small exodus can trigger budget, staffing, and program cuts that have the potential to drive more families away from a particular school, triggering yet more cuts.  A decade ago Carr remembers, this meant multiple school closings. Although DCPS (D.C. Public Schools) has avoided more closures recently, enrollments at some schools are way down. Anacostia High School enrolls just 287 students.”

Across metropolitan areas where numerous suburban school districts surround the central city, the ratings redline the poorer and most segregated school districts and encourage anybody who can afford it to seek the the school districts with the highest ratings: the homogeneously white and wealthy exurban school districts.

Across the states, legislatures and departments of education have developed their own rating systems to comply with the federal mandate, but these systems almost always feature each district’s aggregate standardized test scores, which have been documented to reflect primarily family income.  Wattenberg explains the research she and her colleagues explored as they set out to redesign their rating system: “One expert showed us how high-poverty schools disproportionately got low ratings, even when test scores reported that their students had learned more than average. Education researcher and D.C. public school parent Betsy Wolf concluded that ‘our accountability system measures family income more than it measures school quality.’ Based on these findings, the SBOE resolved in 2022 that the rating system was ‘fundamentally flawed’ and recommended eliminating it… Education and poverty expert Sean Reardon says that average test scores ‘are the results of all the opportunities kids have had to learn their whole lives, at home, in the neighborhood, in preschool and in the school year.  So it’s misleading to attribute average test scores solely to the school where they take the test.’”

Apparently in Washington, D.C. the board came up with a new system that is not likely to be much better: “At the SBOE’s early January meeting, some parents’ hopes of pushing to revamp the report cards faded. OSSE surfaced its new report card, and, instead of labeling schools with stars, the new proposal assigns each school a number, one to 100, called an ‘accountability score.’ The number will still be highlighted on each school’s online profile and on the central School Report Card, where it will be among the first and primary impressions of a school that parents will see.  The formula that produces the new accountability score, while slightly revised and less toxic, is still biased against low-income schools. It is still the same formula OSSE uses to identify the neediest schools for the U.S. Department of Education.”

Wattenberg adds: “Less biased data on school quality measures educational practices and conditions known to promote student learning, such as teacher retention and the extent to which a school offers instruction on a variety of subjects, including social studies, science, and the arts, rather than an overly narrow focus on math and reading (which is what end-of-year tests focus on). Survey data showing student perceptions, such as the extent to which students feel academically challenged and supported is also an effective metric.”

From a parent’s point of view, the new summative grade tells no more about the teachers or the curriculum or students’ experiences at school.  It is really no different than the five star rating system Wattenberg remembers in Washington, D.C.’s previous system.  Here in Ohio, where I live, we have a five star system, which is no better than the A, B, C, D, F system we had before we got the new five stars.  In Washington, DC,  the new 1-100 rating number Wattenberg describes being earned by each school will only cue up competative parents to go for the highest rated schools in a giant competition. Most people choosing a school on the basis of the ratings will not be able to discern how the metric balances all the variables in each school or whether the rating really say anything about what is happening at the school.

Having attended school in a small Montana town, where we all went to the same middle school and high school, and having parented two children who attended our neighborhood elementary and middle school and came together at our community’s only high school here in a Cleveland, Ohio inner suburb, I prefer the old and more radical solution to the whole problem of school choice driven by metrics published in the newspaper or school report cards. In fact, for the majority of families in the United States, neighborhood schools are still the norm. A system of neighborhood schools embodies the idea that parents’ responsibility is to help their children embrace the opportunities at the school where they are assigned.

As parents when my children were in elementary school, we used the PTA meetings as places to strategize about how we could better support innovations and special programs to make school more fun and challenging for all the students.  A district-wide school support agency in our community provides a tutoring program for students who need extra help, and there is a community supported, district-wide music camp for a week in June when the high school orchestra director and his staff, along with a raft of graduates from the high school music program, help students from across the middle schools to prepare for joining the high school band and orchestra.  People from across the school district turn out for the concert that culminates the summer music camp.

This kind of community involvement connects parents with the community’s public schools in a qualitative way.  When people engage personally with a school, the teachers and the students, parents can learn so much more about a school than any metric can expose.

At the very least, it is time for the U.S. Department of Education to stop demanding that states rate and rank their public schools.  Wattenberg is correct that the ratings—a measurement of need—are misinterpreted by the press and misunderstood by the public as a measurement of quality.

Categories Accountability, Competition, Disruption, District of Columbia, Duncan, Arne, Education Industry, Equity, Ethics, Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA), NCLB (No Child Left Behind), Obama, School Choice, Segregation
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