NCTQ’s teacher-education ratings deserve an F - The Hechinger Report

NCTQ’s teacher-education ratings deserve an F - The Hechinger Report:

NCTQ’s teacher-education ratings deserve an F

Why does Teach For America come out on top in NCTQ’s teacher-education ratings?

 Hey Bill, have you seen this?” I turned to Bill Gaudelli, chair of Teachers College’s Department of Arts and Humanitiesand coordinator of the program preparing social studies educators.

“What’s that?” he asked. I showed him the screen of my iPad.

“It’s the latest version of the National Council on Teacher Quality’s ratings of teacher education programs. Look!” I said. “The College’s Graduate Secondary Education programs got a D+!”

Bill rolled his eyes. NCTQ has a history of getting things wrong, at Teachers College and elsewhere. Two years ago, NCTQ rated a non-existent undergraduate teacher preparation program at Teachers College, not understanding that Barnard College, Columbia University and Teachers College are independent but affiliated institutions. Things haven’t gotten much better; in its latest report,Path to Teach, NCTQ has a listing for Columbia University, and for Barnard, but not for Teachers College—even though Columbia has no graduate programs in teacher education.

“And look at your program, Bill!” I exclaimed.

Related: The trouble with NCTQ’s ratings of teacher-prep programs

One of the dimensions on which NCTQ rates undergraduate and NCTQ’s teacher-education ratings deserve an F - The Hechinger Report:

Feds ready new regs on teacher prep programs :: SI&A Cabinet Report :: The Essential Resource for Superintendents and the Cabinet

Feds ready new regs on teacher prep programs :: SI&A Cabinet Report :: The Essential Resource for Superintendents and the Cabinet:

Feds ready new regs on teacher prep programs

(District of Columbia) Expectations are that U.S. Education Secretary Arne Duncan will release a controversial rewrite of regulations governing teacher preparation programs before leaving office in December.



The rules, under development since 2014, are in response to concerns of the Obama administration that too many teachers come into the classroom unprepared and end up leaving the profession after only a few years.



The draft regulations circulated for public comment last year drew criticism from teacher unions by putting too much emphasis on student test scores as an indicator of educator performance. Some state officials were also concerned that the changes called for in the new regulations would be expensive to carry out – probably far more than the $42 million that the Department of Education has estimated.



Duncan has called improving university and other training programs a “morale issue” as beginning teachers “too often struggle at the beginning of their career and have to figure out too much by themselves,” he said in a 2014 conference call with the press.



Among the requirements, states would need to grade training providers and survey graduates about their education. Contact would also be made with school districts hiring the new teachers to learn about how each has performed.



The rules come forward as the teaching profession is being challenged from a number of directions. With districts nationally mostly recovered from the recession, fewer college students are entering preparation programs – so much so that many districts are having trouble filling open positions.



Some experts believe the hangover from layoffs continues to plague the profession but others have said the status of the classroom educator has been damaged in recent years by criticism that teachers are to blame for poor student performance.



Although there appears little to stop the administration from issuing the new rules, opponents of the regulations have said they can do something about stopping enforcement. American Association of Colleges for Teacher Education, for instance, is calling on its members to write their representatives Feds ready new regs on teacher prep programs :: SI&A Cabinet Report :: The Essential Resource for Superintendents and the Cabinet:

CEQA ruling upends school closure plans :: SI&A Cabinet Report

CEQA ruling upends school closure plans :: SI&A Cabinet Report :: The Essential Resource for Superintendents and the Cabinet:
CEQA ruling upends school closure plans

(Calif.) A recent court decision in a case aimed at overturning the closure of two schools based on exemptions from environmental impacts should serve as a warning to other districts contemplating similar moves, according to education lawyers.

The Barstow Unified School District Board of Education cited various exemptions from the California Environmental Quality Act when it decided to close down two elementary schools and transfer the students to different campuses within the district.

“There was nothing in the record indicating that the district would limit the number of students that would be allowed to transfer to a particular receptor school,” said attorneys Harold Freiman and Kelly Rem of educational law firm Lozano Smith.

“The lesson from this case is that, when relying on CEQA exemptions, school districts and other public agencies should ensure that their administrative records contain evidence supporting any criteria set forth in the exemption,” they said.

There are two types of exemptions from the CEQA: statutory and categorical.

The plaintiff, a citizens group called Save Our Schools, argued that the district did not meet the criteria to prove that the closures and transfers were exempt from the environmental quality law. If, however, the court found the district did provide sufficient evidence, the group also alleged that the "cumulative impacts" and the "unusual circumstance" exceptions to the categorical exemption used by the district still applied.

In Save Our Schools v. Barstow Unified School District Board of Education, the categorical exemption the district cited – Class 14 – states that when students are transferred to new schools within the district, the student capacity at those sites should not increase by more than 25 percent or 10 CEQA ruling upends school closure plans :: SI&A Cabinet Report :: The Essential Resource for Superintendents and the Cabinet:

Louisiana Educator: How the Great PARCC/Common Core Scam Works

Louisiana Educator: How the Great PARCC/Common Core Scam Works:

How the Great PARCC/Common Core Scam Works

A Special Thank You!

I want to take this opportunity on behalf of thousands of dedicated educators in Louisiana to sincerely thank the four members of BESE who have courageously refused to fold to the pressure of our clueless business community to give John White a blank check to further commit educational malpractice with the futures of Louisiana school children. Thank you to:

Dr Lottie Beebe, BESE member, District 3

Mary Harris, BESE member, District 4

Carolyn Hill, BESE member District 8

Jane Smith, BESE member at large 

John White has convinced the business community and seven members of BESE that his phony PARCC scale score system really means something. But only he and his statisticians at the LDOE can interpret for us exactly what it tells us. Unfortunately for White and his Common Core/PARCC "raising the bar" scam, some of us have been using critical thinking skills long before Common Core came along.

I pointed out in this blog exactly what the scale scores for the level of "Basic" performance really means in terms of actual knowledge of the tested material in the previous post on this blog. Now lets talk a little about how the testing bosses of the PARCC consortium use these scores to muddy the water about the real performance of students on these poorly designed tests in all the PARCC states.

It is expected that all states in the PARCC Consortium and even Louisiana, which is no longer officially in the PARCC Consortium, are probably going to adopt the same cut scores using the 650-850 point scale for each of the 5 levels of achievement. But the real cut scores are to be found in the corresponding raw scores based on a set of secret conversion tables such as those we Louisiana Educator: How the Great PARCC/Common Core Scam Works:

 

Click Here to Follow Flip BESE on Facebook 

LEE P.BARRIOS FOR BESE 1 Web Site

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MIKE KREAMER FOR BESE 7 Web Site

Plutocrats in NYC Wielding Power, Buying the Airwaves, and Trashing Public Schools Again | janresseger

Plutocrats in NYC Wielding Power, Buying the Airwaves, and Trashing Public Schools Again | janresseger:

Plutocrats in NYC Wielding Power, Buying the Airwaves, and Trashing Public Schools Again

Public schools are among the primary institutions that serve the families in the 99 Percent.  As primarily middle class institutions, they are coming under attack from the One Percent, the plutocrats—both Republican and Democrats—who control the levers of power.

In a piece earlier this week the NY Times profiled 158 families across the country who have provided nearly half of all the early money that has been underwriting the campaigns of the candidates currently vying for the 2016 Presidential nominations. The reporters quote the political analyst and demographic expert Ruy Teixeira: “The campaign finance system is now a countervailing force to the way the actual voters of the country are evolving and the policies they want.”

Last week, the NY Times op-ed page printed a commentary by Thomas Edsall on the same subject.  Edsall describes the conclusions of political scientist Martin Gilens on the impact of our increasingly plutocratic system: “The majority does not rule—at least not in the causal sense of actually determining policy outcomes.  When a majority of citizens disagrees with economic elites or with organized interests, they generally lose… Gilens notes that policies popular with the middle class but not with the affluent rarely win enactment: The majority are redistributive policies including raising the minimum wage or indexing it to inflation, increasing income taxes on high earners or corporations, or cutting payroll taxes on lower income Americans.  Conversely, policies opposed by the middle-class but backed by the affluent include ‘tax cuts for upper income individuals, spending cuts in Medicare, and roll-backs of federal retirement programs’—policies that have been adopted.”

So what does all this mean for education?  One need only look at television in New York City Plutocrats in NYC Wielding Power, Buying the Airwaves, and Trashing Public Schools Again | janresseger:

Outside money turns Hartford Democratic Town Committee into a Luke Bronin slush fund - Wait What?

Outside money turns Hartford Democratic Town Committee into a Luke Bronin slush fund - Wait What?:

Outside money turns Hartford Democratic Town Committee into a Luke Bronin slush fund

Thanks to the behind-the-scenes involvement of Governor Dannel Malloy and some of Connecticut’s power elite, on Monday, July 27, 2015 the Hartford Democratic Town Committee endorsed Luke Bronin to be the Democratic Party’s nominee for Mayor rather than sticking with Democratic incumbent Mayor, Pedro Segarra.

That same day, Dorothy Bronin of Stamford and Andrew and Rita Bronin of Greenwich each wrote $2,000 checks made out to the Hartford Democratic Town Committee.

Over the following weeks, donors from Greenwich, Connecticut dropped another $15,500 into the Hartford Democratic Town Committee’s coffers.  An additional $13,000 arrived from New Yorkers, $8,000 from California donors and large donations from individuals in Nevada, Pennsylvania and Florida added at least $8,000 more.  Most of the checks were written for the maximum allowable contribution of $2,000 per person and many had already given the maximum legal amount to Luke Bronin’s campaign committee.

Although the Hartford Democratic Party reported no itemized contributions from January 1, 2015 through July 24, 2015, according to the Committee’s most recent campaign finance report that was filed earlier this week with the Connecticut State Elections Enforcement Commission, the Hartford Democrats have raised more than $84,000 raised since Party establishment refused to support the city’s incumbent Puerto Rican Mayor and replaced Outside money turns Hartford Democratic Town Committee into a Luke Bronin slush fund - Wait What?:

Schooling in the Ownership Society: Byrd-Bennett, 'a foot soldier in the march towards privatization'

Schooling in the Ownership Society: Byrd-Bennett, 'a foot soldier in the march towards privatization':

Byrd-Bennett, 'a foot soldier in the march towards privatization'

Ian Belknap is a writer and performer living in Chicago. He hits the nail on the head with this opinion piece in Crain's, "Framing education as a business attracts the wrong people".

While the leading candidates in both parties spend their valuable debate time extolling the virtues of capitalism (...what built the greatest middle class in the history of the world.” -- Hillary Clinton), Belknap points out what should be obvious by now. The push towards privatization of public education has been a disaster.

What got him going was the indictment of Chicago schools CEO Barbara Byrd-Bennett.

Byrd-Bennett's woes are rooted in her greed, yes (and her tone deafness to irony—"tuition to pay and casinos to visit?"... But she has also acted as a foot soldier in the decades-long march toward privatization and misapplying the precepts of business to the complex (and in many cases generations-long) problems facing our schools.

Her downfall, writes Belknap,  "may be read as the logical extension, and, one hopes, Schooling in the Ownership Society: Byrd-Bennett, 'a foot soldier in the march towards privatization':

Teacher Judgment vs. Family Authority - Bridging Differences - Education Week

Teacher Judgment vs. Family Authority - Bridging Differences - Education Week:

Teacher Judgment vs. Family Authority

Deborah Meier continues her conversation with Harry Boyte. To read their full exchange, please visit here.

Dear Harry and friends,

I'm leaving my house for the airport at 3:30 am flying from Albany to California. So, quick thoughts on your story about your father-in-law's hospital experience.

I hate hospitals. I hope I can go to some less prestigious small hospital where I know they won't mistake me for someone else and ... cut off the wrong leg, etc. And I want a place where those I love can keep an eye out for me and whose views are taken seriously if I'm not in a position to explain myself forcefully. 

I think institutions should be "more like" families—but just the good ones. A dilemma right there.

I conducted a workshop on pre-kindergartens at the Progressive Education Network conference in Brooklyn yesterday. I was arguing that pre-kindergartens should be more like families and less like institutions; teachers should mimic the family as a learning place more than parents should mimic school classrooms. I think schools can't avoid institutional characteristics and many are potentially dangerous for young and old alike especially for those who can least explain or defend themselves, and do not have what we were calling effective "agency."

Dilemma two. How can we go about describing public institutions in ways that are sufficiently minimal but also in keeping with advancing democracy? For young children I think it essential that the school and the family be connected loosely, as equals. But what "equals" means is not always clear to me!  How do we decide when we can't all agree on everything? Who is the "we"? Isn't making compromises not part of democratic life?

I'm least inclined to compromise about my 4-year-old. We're one of the few nations that permits Teacher Judgment vs. Family Authority - Bridging Differences - Education Week:

Bill Gates: Too Many Schools Use Teacher Evaluation For Personnel Decisions, Not As Tool For Improvement : Columns : ISchoolGuide

Bill Gates: Too Many Schools Use Teacher Evaluation For Personnel Decisions, Not As Tool For Improvement : Columns : ISchoolGuide:

Bill Gates: Too Many Schools Use Teacher Evaluation For Personnel Decisions, Not As Tool For Improvement

Bill Gates defended the use of student test scores in teacher evaluations, arguing that schools can use it to help teachers improve. He said too many schools use teacher evaluations for personnel decisions, and not as a tool for teacher development.

Bill Gates said Thursday in a speech at his foundation's headquarters in Seattle that addressing education is more difficult than working on global health. He also defended the use of student test scores in teacher evaluations, explaining that it is among the several indicators that schools should use to help teachers get better

"Many systems today are about hiring and firing, not a tool for learning," Gates said.

"Test scores, of all the evaluation elements, is perhaps the most controversial," said Gates. He added that too many school systems use teacher evaluations for personnel decisions, and not for teacher development.

While the Microsoft founder said he believes that test scores are "a critical element of these systems," he said they do not tell which skills must be improved. "They are simply numbers," he added.

The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation has pledged hundreds of millions of dollars into K-12 education. The foundation had also influenced federal and state policy to recognize teacher evaluation, charter schools, and the Common Core education standards.

When it comes to global health, Gates said Thursday that "every year is better than the last."

"When we come up with a new malaria vaccine, nobody votes to undo our malaria vaccine," he said. "So it's pretty steady progress."

However, Gates said K-12 education becomes less predictable when politics enters the scene.

"Because of its complexity, the relationship to management, how labor is one, you can introduce a system ... and people say, 'No, we'd rather have no system at all, completely leave us alone,'" he explained.

"That's a real possibility, if you don't nurture these systems and getBill Gates: Too Many Schools Use Teacher Evaluation For Personnel Decisions, Not As Tool For Improvement : Columns : ISchoolGuide:

Barbara Byrd-Bennett co-defendants plead not guilty in kickback scheme - Chicago Tribune

Barbara Byrd-Bennett co-defendants plead not guilty in kickback scheme - Chicago Tribune:

Barbara Byrd-Bennett co-defendants plead not guilty in kickback scheme

An education consultant with long ties to the Emanuel administration pleaded not guilty Wednesday to charges he promised Chicago Public Schools CEO Barbara Byrd-Bennett hundreds of thousands of dollars in bribes for steering lucrative no-bid contracts to his firm.

The arraignment of Gary Solomon, co-owner of SUPES Academy, came one day after Byrd-Bennett admitted wrongdoing in the same federal courtroom and agreed to testify against Solomon if necessary.

Also pleading not guilty on Wednesday were Solomon's partner, Thomas Vranas, as well the two companies both ran, SUPES and Synesi Associates, another education consulting business.

Solomon's attorney, Shelly Kulwin, has previously said his client did not anticipate going to trial, a signal that he likely will eventually plead guilty in the case. Kulwin said Solomon had cooperated fully with federal authorities since the beginning of the investigation, including turning over emails and other documents before they were subpoenaed.

An indictment returned last week accused Solomon and Vranas of arranging to pay Byrd-Bennett as much as $2.3 million in kickbacks and other perks in exchange for her using her influence to award more than $23 million in no-bid contracts to SUPES, where she had previously worked as a consultant.

In a December 2012 email, Solomon, who also ran a search firm that helped the Emanuel administration select Byrd-Bennett as chief of the schools, assured her that trust accounts had been set up in the names of two of her young relatives, each funded with $147,000, federal prosecutors alleged. The cash would be hers once she stepped down from her public post and rejoined his firm.Barbara Byrd-Bennett co-defendants plead not guilty in kickback scheme - Chicago Tribune:

What You Need to Know about the Walton Family Foundation | Diane Ravitch's blog

What You Need to Know about the Walton Family Foundation | Diane Ravitch's blog:

What You Need to Know about the Walton Family Foundation

This study of the Walton Family Foundation was published in 2012 by the National Committee for Responsive Philanthropy.

It provides a history of the family fortune and a description of the Walton family and its political interests.

Helen Walton, widow of the founder Sam Walton, has supported Planned Parenthood, but otherwise the foundation donations have gone primarily to charters, vouchers, and other conservative causes. The family also donates generously to political campaigns, and most of its donations go to conservative Republican candidates.

Walmart has its admirers, but as the report shows, it has been sued for its treatment of workers, women, and immigrants. It is, of course, nonunion. Furthermore, when it opens a new Walmart in a community, it wipes out family-owned businesses.

One of the most startling statistics in the report is from Iowa, where the opening of a Walmart was soon after followed by the closing of hundreds of local grocery stores, hardware stores, building supply stores, variety stores, shoe stores, and clothing stores.

This is a report worth reading.What You Need to Know about the Walton Family Foundation | Diane Ravitch's blog:

Who’s Who in the Privatization Movement: The Foundation World | Diane Ravitch's blog http://bit.ly/1Qx7EL4

Board of Education signs off on $40M in charter school loans

Board of Education signs off on $40M in charter school loans:

Board of Education signs off on $40M in charter school loans

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The Indiana State Board of Education on Wednesday endorsed a plan to divvy out as much as $40 million in loans in the 2015-16 school year through a controversial new state program to fund charter schools.

At least 12 charter schools have requested $25 million in loans through a program enacted in the state budget that began in July. In all, the state legislature approved $50 million in loans, but the state board voted to save $10 million of that money for the next school year.

At Wednesday’s meeting, the state board moved quickly to approve the distribution formula with limited discussion.

However, John O’Neal, of the Indiana State Teachers Association, said the program is a significant amount of money and leads him to question whether it’s the best use of tax dollars.

“Should we be giving that much money to schools that have D and F grades? Or brand new charters that don’t have grades at all?” O’Neal asked.

The number of charter schools applying for a loan could grow. The deadline to do so is at the end of the month.

The state board set a mechanism to approve loans that will rely on a school’s Board of Education signs off on $40M in charter school loans:

Fed corruption probe targets Corporate Education Reform Corruption In Detroit, Chicago, Fresno

Fed corruption probe targets DPS, EAA officials:

Fed corruption probe targets DPS, EAA officials

The FBI has launched a corruption investigation involving Gov. Rick Snyder’s K-12 reform district and Detroit Public Schools, the latest blemish for districts struggling with low test scores, falling enrollment and funding shortfalls.

FBI agents are investigating multiple officials from DPS and the Snyder-created Education Achievement Authority to determine if contracts were awarded to vendors who paid kickbacks, sources told The Detroit News.

According to a document obtained through the Freedom of Information Act, one target of the investigation is Kenyetta “K.C.” Wilbourn, ex-principal of the authority’s Mumford High School.

The investigation indicates federal agents are mining a new vein of alleged corruption in a city that has endured multiple federal prosecutions of former Detroit city officials, including ex-Mayor Kwame Kilpatrick, pension trustees and public school officials, in recent years.

Wilbourn, 40, of Harper Woods was seen as a rising star, a 4-foot-11-inch turnaround specialist at Denby High School with a “GUCCI1” personalized license plate and a 2007 Maserati. She abruptly resigned last fall after FBI agents searched her home.

“I thought she was going to be the next person to run EAA. She was that sharp,” said former DPS and EAA contractor Andrew Rio, who consulted on athletic projects. He is not involved in the investigation.“It breaks my heart, but money makes people funny.”

The corruption investigation surfaced one day after The News reported that former DPS official Barbara Byrd-Bennett, who pleaded guilty to defrauding the Chicago school system, is facing scrutiny over her tenure in Detroit.

Federal authorities alleged that as CEO of the Chicago Public Schools, Byrd-Bennett steered $23 million in no-bid contracts to two education firms in return for $2.3 million in bribes and kickbacks.

No one has been charged with a crime during the ongoing investigation involving Fed corruption probe targets DPS, EAA officials:

Big Education Ape: Ex-CPS chief Barbara Byrd-Bennett pleads guilty, tearfully apologizes to students - Chicago Tribune http://bit.ly/1G3FRBJ

Big Education Ape: Teachers union asks board to suspend Hanson, other top officials | Fresno Bee http://bit.ly/1NJiIHk

China vs USA: The Education Factory War - Yahoo News

China's latest building binge: the education factory - Yahoo News:

China's latest building binge: the education factory

GUIYANG, China (Reuters) - Three decades ago, Chinese cities began turning rural land into industrial parks to attract foreign investors. Today, a new kind of project is blooming in China's countryside: the vocational education park.

Cities around China are carving out tracts of land for school parks - dubbed "education factories" - designed to train hundreds of thousands of students.

Fuelling their drive are generous government subsidies and targets to increase the number of skilled workers, part of Beijing's push to redirect China's economy away from its investment-led past toward a more innovative, high-tech future.

But the expansion comes even as many existing vocational schools are struggling to live up to their promise.

"You can build as much as you want, but unless you get good teachers, good curriculum and a system that assesses and rewards high performing schools with more resources, it's just going to be a waste of money," says Scott Rozelle, co-director of the Rural Education Action Program at Stanford University and the author of many papers on vocational education in China.

There is no question China needs to raise skill levels. Wayne Zhang, who runs a home decor products factory in northeastern China, says that finding skilled workers - in order to increase capacity or make more complex products - is increasingly hard. Of the 100 such staff he set out to hire last year, he has only been able to find 60.

View gallery

A view shows streets and school buildings inside the campus of the Guizhou Machinery Industry School …

As of 2010, just 24 percent of China's workforce had attended at least some upper secondary school, compared with an OECD average of 74 percent, according to a study published by the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies at Stanford University in February.

As the labor force shrinks and ages, China also needs to coax more productivity out of each worker. Worker training could help avoid the so-called "middle-income trap" and, in theory, narrow a widening income gap that threatens social stability.

OUT OF STEP

Lanzhou, capital of central Gansu province, reportedly expects to attract more than 30 schools and 150,000 students to its vocational school park opening in 2017. Ganzhou, in southern Jiangxi province, has been reported to be building a vocational school district which hopes to have at least 10 vocational schools and more than 100,000 students when it opens in 2018. Yunnan, China's latest building binge: the education factory - Yahoo News:

Online news site Deadspin has its sights set on Sacramento Mayor Kevin Johnson - Sacramento Business Journal

Online news site Deadspin has its sights set on Sacramento Mayor Kevin Johnson - Sacramento Business Journal:

What is Deadspin and why is it gunning for Kevin Johnson?

Why is Sacramento Mayor Kevin Johnson suddenly under siege, mostly over news that isn't new? The answer is something called Deadspin -- a hard-hitting online site that has pummeled him with a dozen stories over more than a year.

The latest blow came last week after Deadspin posted a police video linked to a well-known 1996 sexual misconduct accusation against Johnson. That prompted ESPN on Monday to delay releasing "Down in the Valley," a documentary about the effort Johnson led to keep the Sacramento Kings in town.

And it raised new questions about his political future, with one Democratic party leader on Tuesday calling for Johnson to step down.

What is Deadspin, and why does it have its sights set on Johnson?

The site is owned by Gawker Media, whose other titles include the namesake New York online tabloid. Deadspin serves a lively brew of stories about sports, sex, scandal and pop culture — including show-business figures like the Kardashians. And it has apparently found an audience for stories questioning Johnson's behavior, though he hasn't been in the NBA for 15 years.

The company isn't shy about promoting its work, hiring New York PR firm Goldin Solutions to draw the attention of local news organizations to its stories about Kevin Johnson.

But Deadspin editor-in-chief Tim Marchman was more reticent when asked to explain the remarkable persistence of its coverage of a long-retired basketball player. "The motivation of the coverage should be self-evident," he said, declining to comment further.

Journalist Dave McKenna has penned 12 Deadspin articles about Johnson. The first, headlined “ The man who helped bring down Donald Sterling is an asshole, too,” published on May 2014 and reviewed past charges of Johnson's inappropriate business practices and sexual conduct.

One year later, McKenna followed up with a 4,448-word piece headlined " How Kevin Johnson destroyed a black mayors group to promote his brand," which detailed the mayor's takeover of the National Conference of Black Mayors.Online news site Deadspin has its sights set on Sacramento Mayor Kevin Johnson - Sacramento Business Journal:

Of School Reform 1.0 versus 2.0 :: Frederick M. Hess

Of School Reform 1.0 versus 2.0 :: Frederick M. Hess:

Of School Reform 1.0 versus 2.0 

My school reform friends get frustrated with me because they think I'm a naysayer. Why? They note that I've long been a critic of anachronistic salary schedules, tenure laws, school districts, licensure regimes, and the rest. They wonder how I can think that and then criticize so many attempts to impose new evaluation systems, licensure arrangements, pay models, and turnaround strategies. The fact that they're befuddled is a measure of just how easy it is for us to talk past each other when it comes to school improvement.

They're right that I'm eager to disassemble big pieces of yesterday's "one best system." But I've never understood why that means we ought to rush to impose a new "one best system." Given that schooling is the most human of endeavors, and that successful educational ventures therefore depend hugely on commitment and fidelity of execution, I'm inclined to give educators, entrepreneurs, parents, and problem-solvers a whole lot of elbow room to devise, refine, and grow their solutions.

For instance, insisting that states or districts use this observational protocol or that reading and math weighting when it comes to teacher evaluation is not only a subjective call that deserves a lot of scrutiny at best, but also wind up hindering the emergence of smart school and staffing models that don't happen to conform. (Example: blended or differentiated staffing models in which teachers don't own 28 students for a year turn out to be hugely incompatible with the kinds of teacher evaluation we've seen adopted in Florida or New York.) In Teacher Quality 2.0, Mike McShane and I argued that these kinds of 1.0 reforms have a place but that we need to take great care that they don't squelch version 2.0. I think we have fallen far short on that front.

I get why my friends are frustrated with my stance. It's the same issue that cropped up last week when I wrote about Duncan's tenure at the Department of Education. Many reformers believe that the status quo is unacceptable and that there's no time to allow for a messy cacophony of stops and starts. I get that. It's not an unreasonable view. But, for reasons I spell out at length in The Same Thing Over and Over, I think it misdiagnoses the problem and leaves us stuck with schools, systems, and structures that generally aren't equipped to fulfill our ambitions.

Anyway, this simple disagreement about how prescriptive we should be and how focused we ought to be on imposing the "right solutions"— versus how willing we should be to dismantle the old regime and let educators, entrepreneurs, and communities feel their way forward— represents a giant fault line in the reform community. How can we incrementally improve an anachronistic system while providing lots of room for Of School Reform 1.0 versus 2.0 :: Frederick M. Hess:

Charter Schools Transferred from Hostile Work Environment - Rhino Times

Charter Schools Transferred from Hostile Work Environment - Rhino Times:

Charter Schools Transferred from Hostile Work Environment

It may sound like bureaucratic mumbo jumbo, but moving the North Carolina Office of Charter Schools out from under the state’s Department of Public Instruction (DPI) and placing them under the State Board of Education was celebrated by charter school advocates across the state.

The legislature approved the move this session – which charter schools had been requesting – and Gov. Pat McCrory signed the change into law.

The reason charter school supporters were in favor of the change is that it takes charter schools out from under the control of the Democrats who oppose charter schools and places them under the control of the Republicans who favor charter schools.

The DPI is run by State Superintendent June Atkinson, who is a Democrat elected statewide.  Neither she nor her department like the idea of public schools that don’t have all the state and local bureaucracy controlling their every move.  

The State Board of Education is made up of members of the elected Council of State, including Lt. Gov. Dan Forest, who is an outspoken supporter of charter schools, and eight members appointed by McCrory, also a supporter of charter schools.  Atkinson is on the State Board of Education but is seriously outnumbered by the Republican members.

Debbie Clary, a former North Carolina state representative and state senator who is now a lobbyist on behalf of charter schools, said that the move from the DPI to the State Board of Education was the most important legislative action this past session involving charter schools.  Clary said that the Department of Public Instruction does not show support for charter schools and that it is very hard for the Office of Charter Schools to work under an organization that does not support them.

Clary also said, “If DPI had their way, they would turn public charters into just what we have in traditional public schools, and eliminate choice for parents.”

One charter school supporter gave an example of such a roadblock related to money the state appropriates to schools.  DPI distributes that allotment.  The supporter said that DPI has been known Charter Schools Transferred from Hostile Work Environment - Rhino Times: