Pearson and Testing Buddies Try to Shut the Barn Door (But the Info Is Already Out) | Alan Singer

Pearson and Testing Buddies Try to Shut the Barn Door (But the Info Is Already Out) | Alan Singer:

Pearson and Testing Buddies Try to Shut the Barn Door (But the Info Is Already Out)

PineappleGate continues

In response to one of my recent posts on Common Core and high-stakes assessments, I received an email asking, "Why are Pearson tests so bad?"

The short answer to this question is actually provided by the now defunct Pearson Foundation on their "Five Things I've Learned" website. Pearson Foundation claimed to present "great examples of the best in education" from "education leaders devoted to improving the fortunes of others through learning." One "leader" highlighted isAndreas Schleicher, a data collection specialist with the OECD, the organization that develops the international PISA tests in collaboration with Pearson. The tests are used to compare performance by students from different counties and justify calls for increased high-stakes testing in the United States.

In the posted interview, either Schleicher or Pearson let the cat out of the bag. According to Schleicher, "The skills that are easiest to teach and test are also the skills that are easiest to digitize, automate and outsource."

Educational decisions should not be about what is best for students, what is most important to know, or what promotes active citizenship in democratic societies. Decisions are made based on what is easiest to test, digitize, and outsource. Schleicher does not say it outright, but the implication for a company like Pearson is clear. Educational decisions should be based on what is most profitable - for them!

The longer answer is the way Pearson and its testing buddies, groups like Stanford University's SCALE, the American Association of Colleges for Teacher Education (AACTE), New York State Education, and the federal Education Department, try to ignore or silence critics who have the audacity to raise questions about the validity of their testing programs. They make inflated claims for the value of their products, diligently buy-off supporters in academia and the press, and the rest of us are supposed to remain quiet. Anyone who wants to participate in the design of better tests is required to sign a non-disclosure agreement to ensure that they cannot participate in open discussion about what they are selling.

Pearson is now under federal investigation for inappropriate contact with Los Angelesschool officials prior to being awarded a lucrative contract. Its now defunct not-for-profit foundation agreed to pay a $7.7 million fine in New York State for providing perks to school officials, including free trips to "conferences" where Pearson promoted its products.

Pearson's influence is also spread in other ways. It is a major exhibitor at national educational conferences sponsored by American Educational Research Association,ASCD, the National Science Teachers Association, and the National Council for the Social Studies, helping to fund the conferences and distributing swag to participants. Pearson also provides workshops and speakers for these conferences, advertises in their publications, and invites prestigious and influential speakers to participate in Pearson-sponsored events.

I guess, or hope, I have become so much of an irritant, Pearson and its testing buddies do not want me at their shows. Actually they do me a favor. I do not really want to speak at their conferences or serve on their committees. But I cannot resist applying, to find out what they are up to.

I was not really surprised when my offer to keynote or conduct a workshop at the SCALE edTPA conference in October 2014 or to evaluate teacher certification tests for Pearson and Testing Buddies Try to Shut the Barn Door (But the Info Is Already Out) | Alan Singer:

No profit left behind - Stephanie Simon - POLITICO

No profit left behind - Stephanie Simon - POLITICO:

No profit left behind

In the high-stakes world of American education, Pearson makes money even when its results don’t measure up.

By Stephanie Simon

The British publishing giant Pearson had made few inroads in the United States — aside from distributing the TV game show “Family Feud” — when it announced plans in the summer of 2000 to spend $2.5 billion on an American testing company.

It turned out to be an exceptionally savvy move.

The next year, Congress passed the No Child Left Behind Act, which mandated millions of new standardized tests for millions of kids in public schools. Pearson was in a prime position to capitalize.

From that perch, the company expanded rapidly, seizing on many subsequent reform trends, from online learning to the Common Core standards adopted in more than 40 states. The company has reaped the benefits: Half its $8 billion in annual global sales comes from its North American education division.

But Pearson’s dominance does not always serve U.S. students or taxpayers well.

POLITICO examined hundreds of pages of contracts, business plans and email exchanges, as well as tax filings, lobbying reports and marketing materials, in the first comprehensive look at Pearson’s business practices in the United States.

The investigation found that public officials often commit to buying from Pearson because it’s familiar, even when there’s little proof its products and services are effective.

The North Carolina Department of Public Instruction, for instance, declined to seek competitive bids for a new student data system on the grounds that it would be “in the best interest of the public” to simply hire Pearson, which had done similar work for the state in the past. The data system was such a disaster, the department had to pay Pearson millions extra to fix it.

Administrators at the University of Florida also skipped competitive bids on a huge project to build an online college from scratch. They were in a hurry. And they knew Pearson’s team from a previous collaboration. That project hadn’t been

Read more: http://www.politico.com/story/2015/02/pearson-education-115026.html#ixzz3RMZ41aqQ

Teacher Anon: PARCC Test is Just a Spoiled Child - Living in Dialogue

Teacher Anon: PARCC Test is Just a Spoiled Child - Living in Dialogue:



Teacher Anon: PARCC Test is Just a Spoiled Child 

 By Anonymous Actual Teacher (AAT), Maryland, Feb. 10, 2015

Does everyone remember having to deal with spoiled classmates or spoiled kids in the neighborhood when they were younger? Maybe other parents looked the other way when the little angel would throw a fit to get her way. Well, we hope you can use that experience to help get ready for upcoming PARCC assessments.

The PARCC assessments have evolved into the spoiled child rewriting the rules for a birthday party. She tells the children what to wear, what to buy her for presents, gives little advance notice to prepare, and tells the children, “By the way, I don’t want to have a party – we are having brunch.”

As a teacher preparing students for PARCC assessments, we are told that the PARCC assessments won’t allow certain special education accommodations. So apparently the folks at the US Department of Education who monitor special education compliance are either okay with this or in the dark with this. So our district notified staff in mid-January, via meetings and trainings attended by administrators, test coordinators, ESOL teachers, and special education staff, that we need to hurry up and put temporary changes into children’s official documents on special education just for the purpose of the PARCC assessments.   Spoiled child 1, School Districts and Special Education Law, 0.

If your child was read to before, maybe not now! Spoiled child gets her way. If your child was able to use a calculator before, maybe not – new criteria! Too bad, students with disabilities! PARCC staff must know best, without norming data available for how children with disabilities will do, PARCC mandates that this happens. Go back and read your invitation again. It’s all there. The PARCC website has information on accommodations. Usually, test sites don’t contain that – the state departments of education have an accommodations manual on their site.   Spoiled Child 2, State Department of Education and Children with Disabilities, 0.

Let’s follow the process – States adopt Common Core, states do away with their state tests, Common Core requires new testing, PARCC offers new testing, PARCC decides (and their director apparently has little or no special education experience, based on her bio on the DC Board of Education web site) that some accommodations for students with disabilities simply won’t be allowed. What this decision is based on is questionable, since obviously there is no norming data or scientific research on this in terms of PARCC assessing what it purports to assess – or why wouldn’t states already have eliminated those Teacher Anon: PARCC Test is Just a Spoiled Child - Living in Dialogue:

New Orleans' All-Charter School System Is Struggling, But Bobby Jindal Wants It To Be A Model | ThinkProgress

New Orleans' All-Charter School System Is Struggling, But Bobby Jindal Wants It To Be A Model | ThinkProgress:

New Orleans’ All-Charter School System Is Struggling, But Bobby Jindal Wants It To Be A Model

BY ALICE OLLSTEIN POSTED ON FEBRUARY 9, 2015 AT 12:23 PM UPDATED: FEBRUARY 9, 2015 AT 8:12 PM

Louisiana Governor and likely presidential candidate Bobby Jindal (R) released his new “roadmap” for reforming K-12 education Monday morning, focusing on the importance of deregulating and privatizing public schools and holding up New Orleans’ all-charter Recovery School District as a model for the nation.

“I’m proud we’ve increased the number of charter schools, nearly doubling them,” Jindal told an audience on Capitol Hill. “I get so frustrated when people tell us to wait for incremental gains. We have seen remarkable gains.”

But new data calls the supposed gains into question. Most of the class of 2014 graduating from the 100%-charter New Orleans Recovery School District scored so low on the national ACT test that they didn’t meet the minimum requirements for Louisiana’s colleges.

According to numbers crunched by Louisiana public school teacher and doctor of statistics Mercedes Schneider, just over 6 percent of high school seniors in the Recovery School District scored high enough in English and Math to qualify for admission into a Louisiana four-year college or university straight out of high school. Five of the district’s 16 high schools produced not a single student who met these requirements.

The district’s test scores were extremely low prior to Hurricane Katrina and the charter school conversion, but despite Jindal’s claims of “remarkable gains,” there has been only a 2 point improvement in New Orleans’ Recovery School District ACT scores since 2005. The class average is now 16.4, one of the lowest in Louisiana. There was a 0.6 decline statewide.

The minimum requirement for a scholarship to a two-year Louisiana college is 17, while a high school graduate must score a 20 to be eligible for a four-year college scholarship. The number of Recovery district students who qualify has increased since the charter takeover, but remains in the low teens.

Besides the rapid conversion from public to charter schools, Jindal also touted his controversial voucher program, which steers taxpayer dollars to private, religious and even for-profit online schools.

“The single most important thing we did was to let the dollars follow the kids instead of the other way around,” he said on Capitol Hill Monday morning. “Instead of having a ‘one size fits all’ approach, we should accept that every child is different and the people who know best are the moms and dads.”

In 2013, the Justice Department took Jindal’s voucher program to court, arguing that it was making racial segregation worse in the state’s schools. In 2014, a judge ruled to allow the program to continue, but the federal government is closely monitoring its impact on segregation and could sue again in the future.

Others have raised concerns about the quality of education at the private schools receiving voucher-funded pupils. A Mother Jones investigation revealed that some Louisiana schools were teaching that humans and dinosaurs walked the earth together, that the KKK did helpful community organizing, and that dragons were real. Others used textbooks that characterized 1960s anti-war protesters thusly: “They went without bathing, wore dirty, ragged, unconventional clothing, and deliberately broke all codes of politeness or manners.”

Additionally, in the text of his plan, Jindal acknowledges that the rapid change was only possible after Hurricane Katrina destroyed the city and its schools. “New Orleans’ New Orleans' All-Charter School System Is Struggling, But Bobby Jindal Wants It To Be A Model | ThinkProgress:

By Any Dreams Necessary, Malcolm X and the Problem of High Stakes Testing | Yohuru Williams

By Any Dreams Necessary, Malcolm X and the Problem of High Stakes Testing | Yohuru Williams:

By Any Dreams Necessary, Malcolm X and the Problem of High Stakes Testing

Imagine a child whose father is no longer in the home. His mother's debilitating illness forces him and his siblings into foster care. Imagine that same child, coming from abject poverty; exposed to violence and the juvenile justice system early, he enters a world socially and culturally foreign to him. He becomes the target of daily aggressions and micro aggressions and deals with the oppressiveness of low expectations. He is denied the one, best opportunity for success available to him - a good education.

While this describes the experience of scores of black and brown youth, both native and immigrant in inner cities across the United States today, it was also the experience of Malcolm X.

February 21, 2015 will mark the 50th anniversary of the assassination of the fiery orator and icon of the Black Power Movement. His early life mirrors that of many young people now. Although the parental absenteeism he suffered did not come as a result of the high rate of incarceration among Black and Latino fathers or the social and economic alienation often experienced by women of color, there are profound similarities that make his life a cautionary tale about the dangers of corporate education reform and high stakes testing. Malcolm's entire life was a repudiation of the underlying tenets of corporate education reform and the testocracy that threatens a whole generation of American youth.

Violence and racism punctuated Malcolm's early life. Born in Omaha, Nebraska in 1925, he reported that the Ku Klux Klan murdered his father. Later, his mother, struggling to maintain a household of seven children, was committed to a mental institution. As a result, Malcolm and his siblings entered the foster care system. In the seventh grade, Malcolm earned an expulsion from school for a minor prank that in today's highly punitive school culture would likely have resulted in a similar penalty. As punishment, authorities transported him to a juvenile home in the nearly all-white community of Mason, Michigan to await a transfer to reform school. Malcolm was given a second chance when the family in charge of the detention home allowed him to stay with them and enrolled him at nearly all-white Mason Junior High School. In this well-funded institution with lots of attention from his teachers, Malcolm thrived, not only earning straight A's but also winning election as the president of his class.

This touch of academic success inspired Malcolm to think big. In his autobiography, he recalls his encounter with his English teacher Mr. Ostrowski who had been one of his biggest supporters. "I had gotten some of my best marks under him," Malcolm recalled, "and he had always made me feel that he liked me." Although Ostrowski clearly recognized Malcolm's talent, he nevertheless discouraged him from aspiring to anything beyond the rigid bounds determined by his racial caste.

Thus, when young Malcolm confided his desire to be an attorney, Ostrowski was firm. "Malcolm, one of life's first needs," he soberly advised, "is for us to be realistic. Don't misunderstand me now," he continued. "We all here like you, you know that. But By Any Dreams Necessary, Malcolm X and the Problem of High Stakes Testing | Yohuru Williams:

Helen Gym announces run for Phila. City Council

Helen Gym announces run for Phila. City Council:


Helen Gym announces run for Phila. City Council

JULIA TERRUSO, INQUIRER STAFF WRITER

LAST UPDATED: Monday, February 9, 2015, 6:28 PM
POSTED: Monday, February 9, 2015, 4:44 PM

Helen Gym is no stranger to speaking before elected officials - sometimes rather loudly. Now she's vying for a seat at their table.


Gym, a Democrat, announced her candidacy for a City Council at-large seat at a lively rally Monday at the Ethical Society Building on Rittenhouse Square in which she mostly focused on education.

A former elementary schoolteacher, she has become a fiery advocate for public education funding and a frequent critic of city policies surrounding it.

Gym, 47, the mother of three children in Philadelphia public magnet schools, entered the race with the endorsement of the Philadelphia Federation of Teachers, who have also pledged to donate the maximum $11,500.

"We will support her campaign with the same energy and commitment that she has shown when it comes to high-quality education in Philadelphia," the union's president Jerry Jordan said at Monday's announcement.

Gym's three children introduced her to a cheering crowd of about 200 following comments from Rev. Mark Tyler of Mother Bethel African Methodist Episcopal church. In a city where there is no elected school board, "the next best thing is putting Helen Gym on City Council," Tyler said.

Gym joined a growing list of Democratic at-large candidates hoping to take one of five seats up for grabs, including the one vacated by former Councilman James Kenney.

The Democratic incumbents are Blondell Reynolds Brown, William K. Greenlee, W. Wilson Goode Jr. and Ed Neilson. Republican at-large Councilmen David Oh and Dennis O'Brien are also running for reelection.

In addition to Gym, the roster of nonincumbent Democratic candidates so far includes: Paul Steinke, former manager of Reading Terminal Market; former Councilman Frank Rizzo Jr.; George Matysik, the director of government affairs at Philabundance; Isaiah Thomas, professor and former candidate; Sherrie Cohen, an attorney with the Tenant Union Representative Network; Tom Wyatt, a partner at Dilworth Paxson law firm; and Jenne Ayers, a Yale law student and daughter of former Fire Commissioner Lloyd Ayers.

Gym, a University of Pennsylvania grad, was named one of the 75 most influential people in the city by Philadelphia magazine in 2014. She founded Parents United for Public Education, which seeks more funding and resources for

Read more at http://www.philly.com/philly/news/politics/20150210_Helen_Gym_announces_run_for_Phila__City_Council.html#z7Udf2VJrwyW2zcS.99

Education advocate and fellow education blogger Helen Gym Is Running for City Council! | EduBloggers

Education advocate and fellow education blogger Helen Gym Is Running for City Council! | EduBloggers:

Education advocate and fellow education blogger Helen Gym Is Running for City Council!

jonpelto / 19 mins ago

Great news from Philadelphia…. Philadelphia: Helen Gym Is Running for City Council

More information as it becomes available.  Diane Ravitch ported the following earlier today;

Helen Gym, the articulate and tireless parent advocate for Philadelphia public schools, is running for City Council.

Here is a 30-second video of Helen.

She has already been endorsed by the Philadelphia Federation of Teachers.

Here is the speech she delivered at 5 pm today.

Helen Gym: Campaign Announcement
February 9, 2015

I stand here filled with gratitude to see so many of you here. I have given a lot of speeches over the years but it is a lot easier to give a speech about an injustice that must be fought, or students who need to be supported than it is to talk about… myself. But standing here, seeing so many friends and so many people that I respect, calms my nerves a little a bit, and makes me realize how lucky I am, and how lucky we all are, to live in a city with communities like this one.

Although I have lived here for almost thirty years, I wasn’t born in Philadelphia. I grew up in Ohio, the daughter of Korean immigrants. We didn’t have much, but I was fortunate enough to grow up in a neighborhood that had public parks where I could play, a public library where I could read, a public rec center where I could swim, and most importantly, public schools where I got a great education. That education formed me, like it formed so many of you. It unlocked the possibilities of the world. It was a social contract, and it influenced how I think about the possibilities, not just the limitations, of government throughout my life.

I moved to Philadelphia for college, met and married a wonderful man, and immersed myself in this city. I taught at Lowell Elementary School in Olney. I joined amazing organizations in this city – like Asian Americans United. I became a mother and started raising my three children in this city, and I worked alongside so many amazing mothers and fathers dedicated to re-envisioning our public schools.

I helped found the Philadelphia Public School Notebook, to raise up their voices as well as those of teachers, school staff and students. I helped found a school that breathed life into culture and practices that value multilingualism, community and served many immigrant families. I founded Parents United for Education advocate and fellow education blogger Helen Gym Is Running for City Council! | EduBloggers:

No two fingerprints are alike. Children have more individual differences than their fingerprints do. | Reclaim Reform

No two fingerprints are alike. Children have more individual differences than their fingerprints do. | Reclaim Reform:

No two fingerprints are alike. Children have more individual differences than their fingerprints do.

Posted on February 9, 2015by Ken Previti

You are the parent. Be the parent you want to be.

No two fingerprints are alike.

Your child is forced to comply with state mandated, high stakes tests that label each one for life in order to profit a few multinational corporate investors and the legislators they finance.

Children have more individual differences than their fingerprints do.

REFUSE. OPT OUT. PROTECT YOUR CHILD. #defendchildren

How? Go to United Opt Out for state-by-state letters and directions.

Dov Rosenberg for President of the Durham Association of Educators!

Dov Rosenberg

for President of the Durham Association of Educators!

Yes! I am running for President of the Durham Association of Educators! Let's focus on how local assessments & performance tasks are created, more support for the arts and literacy, technology implementation that supports instruction, better communication from our association, and sustainable energy practices that will save our district money.

Click here to Follow Dov Rosenberg on Facebook

Learning from Failure | John Thompson

Learning from Failure | John Thompson:

Learning from Failure

 Most innovations fail. And like NPR Planet Money's Adam Davidson explains, "life span of innovations has never shorter, meaning that failure happens more quickly." So, it is not too soon to start to contemplate of the obituaries of the contemporary school reform movement.

Professor Emeritus Larry Cuban's first draft of the history of "thirty years of market-driven and donor-supported school reform," is particularly prescient. Although vestiges of reform "will be quietly incorporated into public schooling," Cuban guesses that "contemporary policymakers and philanthropists who have invested much time, energy, and monies into these market-driven reforms ... will not break out the champagne for these remnants."

He concludes reforms such as "evaluating teachers on the basis of test scores, ending tenure and seniority, calling principals CEOs, and children learning to code will be like tissue-paper reforms of the past (e.g., zero-based budgeting, right- and left-brain teaching) that have been crumpled up and tossed away."

I read Cuban as saying that 1990s-type reforms were not doomed. Standards-based reforms produced incremental gains and, back then, charters had potential as laboratories for experimentation. Reformers were too impatient, however, demanding "transformational" change. They doubled down on standardized test-driven, competition-driven policies that are deserving of their place in the ash can of history.

Reformers should have listened to Cuban and other historians of education. Now, they have a second chance to reflect on where they went wrong. The New York Times Magazine special edition, Failure, (and its contribution by Davidson) could help accountability-driven reformers transition from their simplistic test, sort, and punish mandates to a science-based, humanistic reform era.

Failure is not shameful. For instance, the most-heralded innovations of the 1990s have largely failed to live up to their hype. Big Data did not put an end to the ups and downs of business cycles. The Human Genome Project has not yet yielded the health benefits it promised. As Kemia Malekvilibro explains, DNA sequencing's promise of a "golden road to pharmaceutical riches as target-based drug discovery has often proved to be more of a garden path."

So, data-driven school reformers were not alone in discovering that the world is far more complex than they believed. But, they have followed a path that is very different Learning from Failure | John Thompson:

Finding the Keys to School Funding in your Pocket | Cloaking Inequity

Finding the Keys to School Funding in your Pocket | Cloaking Inequity:

Finding the Keys to School Funding in your Pocket

Have you ever lost your keys? I did recently. I searched everywhere. I looked in the cushions of the sofa (always the most likely spot). I looked in yesterdays jeans (second most likely spot). I thought perhaps they might even be in my dirty laundry— so shirts— and other things— began flying through the air as I went through the hamper (I have history of finding them here too). I thought maybe they might have been lost in the bed covers so I tossed them aside (guilty). I thought maybe I might have left them in the car in the ignition (have done this many times before). Suffice to say that I tore the house apart. Misplacing your keys also happens at the most inconvenient times, the morning when you really urgently need to be somewhere to get something done or have an appointment. After an hour of looking high and low for my keys, and silly and stupid as this sounds, I found my keys in the pocket of the suit jacket I was wearing. Which was insane! All this time I had been looking everywhere, and the keys were in a very obvious place. It occurred to me this morning that this experience is an allegory for school funding.

I travelled to San Antonio Texas last week to serve as a panelist for the Intercultural Development Research Association’sJose A. Cardenas School Finance symposium held at Our Lady of the Lake University. The specific topic of the symposium was the weighted funding approach utilized in many state school finance systems and to “examine the amount of supplemental funding that is required to effectively implement appropriate services for English Language Learners at the secondary level.”

I understand if ELLs are not typically on your radar, but stay with me because there is a broader, more general argument to be made here about school funding. First, there is this:

It’s very clear from the data that states are unequally provisioning education. It’s on purpose because policymakers are determined that some children will be provisioned with a high quality education and then at the same time ration that opportunity for the poor. They say that money doesn’t matter for a high quality education, but what they actually mean is that money only matters for the education of the wealthy and not for the poor. In other words, throwing money at education for wealthy kids is okay, but not poor kids. Have you ever wondered what the funding situation looks like for high performing versus low performing schools? Since money “doesn’t matter” there should be no Finding the Keys to School Funding in your Pocket | Cloaking Inequity:

‘You have made us the enemy. This is personal.’ — 7 N.Y. Teachers of the Year blast Cuomo - The Washington Post

‘You have made us the enemy. This is personal.’ — 7 N.Y. Teachers of the Year blast Cuomo - The Washington Post:

‘You have made us the enemy. This is personal.’ — 7 N.Y. Teachers of the Year blast Cuomo

Seven New York State Teachers of the Year have written an open letter to Gov. Andrew Cuomo, blasting his new proposed education reforms that, among other things, link half of a teacher’s evaluation to student standardized test scores. Rich Ognibene, 2008 New York State Teacher of the Year, said in an e-mail that he wrote the first draft and six others contributed to the effort because “we were deeply hurt by the governor’s proposed education reforms.”

Writing and signing the letter along with Ognibene are Ashli Dreher, 2014 New York State Teacher of the Year; Katie Ferguson, 2012 New York State Teacher of the Year; Jeff Peneston, 2011 New York State Teacher of the Year; Marguerite Izzo, 2007 New York State Teacher of the Year; Steve Bongiovi, 2006 New York State Teacher of the Year; and Liz Day, 2005 New York State Teacher of the Year. The letter has been published in theAlbany Times Union and, with permission from the authors, I am publishing it here.

Dear Governor Cuomo:

We are teachers. We have given our hearts and souls to this noble profession. We have pursued intellectual rigor. We have fed students who were hungry. We have celebrated at student weddings and wept at student funerals. Education is our life. For this, you have made us the enemy. This is personal.

Under your leadership, schools have endured the Gap Elimination Adjustment and the tax cap, which have caused layoffs and draconian budget cuts across the state. Classes are larger and support services are fewer, particularly for our neediest students.

We have also endured a difficult rollout of the Common Core Standards. A reasonable implementation would have started the new standards in kindergarten and advanced those standards one grade at a time. Instead, the new standards were rushed into all grades at once, without any time to see if they were ‘You have made us the enemy. This is personal.’ — 7 N.Y. Teachers of the Year blast Cuomo - The Washington Post:

Reckhow and Tomkins-Stange Document How Gates and Broad Money Got Everyone "Singing from the Same Hymnbook" - Living in Dialogue

Reckhow and Tomkins-Stange Document How Gates and Broad Money Got Everyone "Singing from the Same Hymnbook" - Living in Dialogue:



Reckhow and Tomkins-Stange Document How Gates and Broad Money Got Everyone "Singing from the Same Hymnbook"

 By Anthony Cody. 

Researchers Sarah Reckhow and Megan Tomkins-Stange have released a paper titled “Singing from the Same Hymnbook”: Education Policy Advocacy at Gates and Broad.

The paper was shared last Thursday at a fascinating event hosted by the American Enterprise Institute. The event was a forum, called “Is the ‘new’ education philanthropy good for schools? Examining foundation-funded school reform.” While the panels were a bit weighted with inside players, and did not include a single actual educator, there is some useful information here, starting with the research by Reckhow and Tomkins-Stange.

I have been writing about the widening influence of the Gates Foundation since it became apparent around 2010. But Gates officials have been reluctant to acknowledge their influence, pointing out that their grants are a small fraction of the total amount spent on K12 education in the US. This paper should clear up this confusion for once and for all.

The authors use several different methods to investigate Gates and Broad influence, as they explain:

First, we collected data on grant distributions at each foundation. Second, we analyzed the testimony of foundation-funded witnesses in Congressional hearings. Third, we drew upon an original set of interviews with foundation officials, conducted between 2010 and 2012, to contextualize and extend our analysis.

Here is what they discovered:

 We find that after 2008, Gates and Broad deliberately pursued funding strategies that prioritized federal policy and advocacy initiatives, sometimes in partnership with one another through purposeful convergence.i Specifically, we find that since 2008, Gates and Broad shifted funds from local education groups to national advocacy organizations and from discrete project-based initiatives to systemic reform efforts. We also show that Congressional testimony on teacher quality by Gates-funded and Broad-funded grantees has increased over time, indicating that these foundations have identified this strategy as a source of significant policy influence.

Finally, we demonstrate that the foundations utilized two distinct strategies within their advocacy funding efforts. First, the foundations closely aligned themselves with high-level officials at the federal Department of Education. Second, they funded a broad range of education interest groups that provided testimony to policymakers, disseminated research, and promoted a common set of policy goals. We argue that these targeted strategies led to a dominant narrative emerging within policy debates regarding teacher quality, specifically the concept of “value-added” teacher evaluation.

I first wrote about this strategy back in 2011, in an essay entitled “Bill Gates’ Big Play: How Much Can Reckhow and Tomkins-Stange Document How Gates and Broad Money Got Everyone "Singing from the Same Hymnbook" - Living in Dialogue: