CURMUDGUCATION: DeVos, Class Size, and the Reformistan Bubble

CURMUDGUCATION: DeVos, Class Size, and the Reformistan Bubble

DeVos, Class Size, and the Reformistan Bubble

I almost feel sorry for Betsy DeVos. Her two big news breaks this week are not entirely her fault.

First, there's the Special Olympics fiasco. It appears that the budget office made the hugely unpopular cut, and DeVos stood by it like a good soldier, right until Donald Trump threw her under the bus and canceled the cuts (that were never going to get past Congress). But now DeVos is the one who gets to carry that policy albatross around her neck, right next to her grizzly-shooting merit badge, even though she did previously, in fact, give Special Olympics her own salary.

Okay, but that's the last time I'm going under that bus for you.

Then there's the business of students benefitting from higher class sizes. Make no mistake-- this was awful and stupid and just all-around bad (though by no means the worst thing to come out of her mouth at the hearings). But it's not really fair to hang this one on DeVos-- the idea of the super-teacher crammed into a room with a gazillion students has been on reformsters' preferred policy list for at least a decade.

I wrote about this almost exactly four years ago ("Super Sardinemasters: Paying More To Teach More"), then as now leaning on the work of Leonie Haimson at Class Size Matters.

The big class with a great teacher idea seems to have made its public mainstream debut in a 2010 Bill Gates speech to the CCSSO. Not surprisingly, Arne Duncan was shortly thereafter talking it up.

We spent billions of dollars to reduce class size,” Duncan told ABC’s Andrea Mitchell in 2011, when CONTINUE READING: CURMUDGUCATION: DeVos, Class Size, and the Reformistan Bubble

CURMUDGUCATION: ICYMI: Snowy Relapse Edition (3/31)

CURMUDGUCATION: ICYMI: Snowy Relapse Edition (3/31)

ICYMI: Snowy Relapse Edition (3/31)

The weather outside is, in fact, frightful. So here's a list of things to read inside today.

Teen Boys Ranked Their Female Classmates Based On Looks, And The Girls Weren't Having It

It's a great story, in part because it's about working the issue out, not just getting somebody in trouble.

Small District Reaps Big Profits With Chart Fees

There are a lot of things wrong with California's charter system; here's an explainer for one of them. Are you a small district with money problems? Become a popular charter authorizer and you can make a bundle.

The Digital Expansion of the Mind Gone Wrong

Daniel Willingham looks at three areas where technology was going to make education so much better-- and why none of them lived up to the hype.

Experts Call for an End To Online Preschool

Please.

NJ Tax Money Disappearing Into Charters

A look at charter fraud and waste in the Garden State.

Six School Voucher Myths

A quick debunking of some common voucher talking points.

Trump, DeVos. Special Olympics

The NYT breaks down the wheels within wheels of this massive cluster


Betsy DeVos Told Us Her Real Plan


All Special Olympics and class sizes, Nancy Bailey picks out the most concerning DeVosian quote that tells us what she wants to do.

The Single Most Telling Sentence

If Bailey tells us what DeVos wants to do, Valerie Strauss picks out the sentence that explains why she wants to do it. This is probably my top DeVos hot take of the week.

School Freedom Plans Aren't About Schools Or Education

Leon Galis with a pretty good explanation of why some reformsters and public ed defenders don't seem to be on the same planet.

A Parkland Teacher Speaks Out   

One of the most shameful failures of any school system-- public, private or charter. A teacher talks about the follow-up failure after the murders. I'm sorry I have to send you to the 74 to read this, but schools have to do better.

Don't Cry Over the Death of Arizona's Charter Reform Bill. It Was a Joke.

Well, that's disappointing.

Charter Schools Are Closing, But DeVos Wants More  

USA Today ran this piece, and it doesn't even include a quote from Mike Petrilli.

How One Couple Made Charter Millions

If you want a specific example of how California's lax charter oversight allows fraud, waste and profiteering, here's a perfect example from the LA Times.CURMUDGUCATION: ICYMI: Snowy Relapse Edition (3/31)

DeVos, Class Size, and the Reformistan Bubble

by Peter Greene / 22min

I almost feel sorry for Betsy DeVos. Her two big news breaks this week are not entirely her fault. First, there's the Special Olympics fiasco. It appears that the budget office made the hugely unpopular cut, and DeVos stood by it like a good soldier, right until Donald Trump threw her under the bus and canceled the cuts (that were never going to get past Congress). But now DeVos is the one who get

ICYMI: Snowy Relapse Edition (3/31)

by Peter Greene / 1h

The weather outside is, in fact, frightful. So here's a list of things to read inside today. Teen Boys Ranked Their Female Classmates Based On Looks, And The Girls Weren't Having It It's a great story, in part because it's about working the issue out, not just getting somebody in trouble. Small District Reaps Big Profits With Chart Fees There are a lot of things wrong with California's charter sys

YESTERDAY

Is CTE Good News Or Bad News

28by Peter Greene / 1d

In the last two decades of education reform, a great deal of emphasis has been put on sending high school graduates to college. President Obama in his 2009 State of the Union address proclaimed that by 2020 America would " once again have the highest proportion of college graduates in the world" (though he hedged that a bit by later saying simply that everyone would need some kind of post high sc

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100+by Peter Greene / 1d

Put this on my list of Things I've Noticed Since Retiring From The Classroom. In a teaching day, every single second counts. Teachers squeeze the clock till it screams. Five minutes left in the period? Just enough time to review the main concept from yesterday. Three minutes between classes? More than enough time to pee and swing by the office to pick up my mail. Twenty-five minute lunch period? I

MAR 29

What Did We Learn From DeVos Hearings This Week?

300+by Peter Greene / 2d

So during Betsy DeVos's terrible horrible no-good very bad week of hearings, what did we learn? Opposition Parties Matter This is the third budget in which DeVos tried to zero out Special Olympics. The third. So why so much fuss this time around? Perhaps because somebody made her go before Congress and explain herself (or not) in some exchanges that made for insta-viral hits. Just imagine what it

MAR 28

What To Look For In A Teacher School

38by Peter Greene / 3d

Robert Pondiscio just reviewed a new NCTQ book for high school students about how to become a teacher. I haven't seen the book, so I'm in no position to comment on it, but it does remind me that we don't spend nearly enough time talking about teacher prep, not from a policy point of view, but the point of view of high school students who want to end up teaching some day. I am not the person to co

MAR 26

The Red Flags In Kamala Harris's Pay Raise Proposal

50by Peter Greene / 4d

I was so determined not to get into the 2020 election this early, dammit. But the Kamala Harris teacher pay raise proposal hit my screen this morning, and there I was on twitter. I've addressed the larger concerns with the proposal here , but there are other concerns that are less interesting to the Forbes audience. When I read the Harris op-ed in the Washington Post, I thought, "Hmmm. Well...." W

Education Scholarship Tax Credits and Undercover Boss: Feeling Good While Fixing Nothing

48by Peter Greene / 4d

You remember Undercover Boss. The mostly-reality show shows a high-level executive putting on a disguise and going out into the trenches of the company. There, they'll meet real employees--often employees with touching hard luck stories. At the end of the episode, the boss meets the employees and metes out a sort of justice--"You get a car, you get a college fund for your kid, you get retraining,

MAR 25

I Will Not Like The Democratic Nominee

70by Peter Greene / 6d

And you probably won't, either. The Trump Presidency is going to be the gift that keeps on giving, and we'd all better start adjusting now. 2016 was a disorienting mess, a confluence of so many surreal elements that we could all be a little fuzzy-headed. But 2020 will be time for cold, hard reality, and Democrats and public education voters had better start adjusting now so we don't get sidetracke

OK: Bogus School Efficiency Report

63by Peter Greene / 6d

EPIC charter schools are boasting about the results of a new efficiency study of Oklahoma schools, and there are so many layers of deep-fried baloney here it takes a minute or two to dig through them. But when charter boosters start talking about "accountability" and "transparency," this is the kind of bullshit that makes their claims less than believable. The very top layer is the least important

MAR 24

ICYMI: My Brother's Birthday Edition (3/24)

by Peter Greene / 7d

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MAR 23

Goodhart's Law And The BS Test

49by Peter Greene / 8d

When discussing the problems of test-based accountability, we've long used Campbell's Law as the go-to framer of the related problems. For the absolute top of the field, get a copy of The Testing Charade by Danielk Koretz . Campbell's law is not very pithy, but it illuminates beautifully: The more any quantitative social indicator is used for social decision-making, the more subject it will be to

Stop Talking About Student Achievement

200+by Peter Greene / 8d

If I told you that my student had achieved great things in school this year, what would you imagine I meant? Maybe she started reading longer books with heavier vocabulary and deeper themes. Maybe she not only read them, but spent time thinking about the ideas they contained. Maybe she improved her technical facility and musicality when playing her flute. Maybe she conducted an impressively compl

MAR 22

Foolish Canadian Grit

35by Peter Greene / 9d

Proving that dumb knows no national boundaries, Ontario's Education Minister Lisa Thompson this week defended the plan to increase class size by making this observation : This woman. "When students are currently preparing to go off to post-secondary education, we're hearing from professors and employers alike that they're lacking coping skills and they're lacking resiliency," Thompson told CBC Rad

MAR 21

TN: Taxation Without Representation

21by Peter Greene / 10d

Tennessee's Governor Bill Lee has set a brick on the gas pedal of the school privatization bus, and that bus is driving right through the powers of democratically elected school boards. Lee's very first budget proposal was unveiled at the beginning of the month, supported by Lee's deep, insightful observation "Choice is good." The budget has big money for vouchers; Lee is going with the education

What Education Reformers Get Wrong

81by Peter Greene / 10d

Hard to believe that it took until now for a big voice in the reformster world to write a post entitled " What education reformers believe, " but last week Mike Petrilli (Fordham Institute) did the job. It's not entirely thorough (we'll get to