Special Nite Cap: Catch Up on Today's Post 5/28/15

SPECIAL NITE CAP 

CORPORATE ED REFORM

Bad tests by any other name are bad tests. Enough is enough. | Reclaim Reform

Bad tests by any other name are bad tests. Enough is enough. | Reclaim Reform: Bad tests by any other name are bad tests. Enough is enough.Posted on May 28, 2015by Ken PrevitiSeveral governors now find it to their political advantage to oppose Common Core State Standards, but they want to continue awarding the contracts for hundreds of millions of education tax dollars to their campaign donors who

3 by mike simpson / 1h 

South Korea, Its High PISA Scores, and Its Suicide App | deutsch29

South Korea, Its High PISA Scores, and Its Suicide App | deutsch29: South Korea, Its High PISA Scores, and Its Suicide AppHere is irony:In January 2014, the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) noted that students from South Korea were tops at “creative problem solving” on the first such Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) test:01/04/2014 – Students from

1 by mike simpson / 1h 

Time to Reform Mayoral Control

Time to Reform Mayoral Control: Time to Reform Mayoral ControlOn May 12, a Quinnipiac poll was released showing that two to one, New York City voters believe that the mayor should share control over our public schools with other elected officials. On Tuesday, Public Advocate Letitia James issued a report, calling for improvements to ensure sufficient checks and balances and more parent input in sc

1 by mike simpson / 2h 

How Kevin Johnson Destroyed A Black Mayors Group To Promote His Brand

How Kevin Johnson Destroyed A Black Mayors Group To Promote His Brand: How Kevin Johnson Destroyed A Black Mayors Group To Promote His BrandThe African American Mayors Association, led by Kevin Johnson, opens its annual meeting today in Washington, D.C. The former NBA star and current mayor of Sacramento has been the president of the association since its founding in 2013—when, as president of the

1 by mike simpson / 3h 

Jeb Bush Emailed With Education Secretary About Rick Scott's Common Core Concerns - BuzzFeed News

Jeb Bush Emailed With Education Secretary About Rick Scott's Common Core Concerns - BuzzFeed News: Jeb Bush Emailed With Education Secretary About Rick Scott’s Common Core ConcernsWhen Florida Gov. Rick Scott called Arne Duncan to discuss Common Core, Duncan turned to an unlikely adviser: Jeb Bush.Secretary of Education Arne Duncan sought — and received — advice from Jeb Bush about how to deal wit

1 by mike simpson / 4h 

This Week In Education: Thompson: How Houston's Test and Punish Policies Fail

This Week In Education: Thompson: How Houston's Test and Punish Policies Fail: Thompson: How Houston's Test and Punish Policies FailAs the normative test, sort, and punish approach to reform continues to fail, I often recall Houston'sApollo 20 experiment, designed to bring "No Excuses" charter school methods to neighborhood schools. Its output-driven, reward and punish policies failed. 

1 by mike simpson / 4h 

Christie: Dump Common Core education standards | NJ.com

Christie: Dump Common Core education standards | NJ.com: Christie: Dump Common Core education standardsPEMBERTON — Navigating New Jersey interests and a likely presidential campaign, Gov. Chris Christie on Thursday proposed dropping national Common Core education standards he once supported but have since become a lighting rod issue for Republican voters.The governor, speaking at Burlington County

1 by mike simpson / 5h 

The Unintended (and Mostly Ignored) Lesson of Common Core: Race Inequity | the becoming radical

The Unintended (and Mostly Ignored) Lesson of Common Core: Race Inequity | the becoming radical: THE UNINTENDED (AND MOSTLY IGNORED) LESSON OF COMMON CORE: RACE INEQUITYYou would be well advised to read Andre Perry’s examination of Common Core and race, carefully and possibly more than once: How Common Core serves white folks a sliver of the black experience.I would also like to draw your attentio

1 by mike simpson / 6h 

Developing Workplaces Where Teachers Stay, Improve, And Succeed | Shanker Institute

Developing Workplaces Where Teachers Stay, Improve, And Succeed | Shanker Institute: Developing Workplaces Where Teachers Stay, Improve, And Succeedby Matthew A. Kraft   John P. Papay -- May 28, 2015Our guest authors today are Matthew A. Kraft and John P. Papay. Kraft is an Assistant Professor of Education at Brown University. Papay is an Assistant Professor of Education and Economics at Brown Uni

1 by mike simpson / 7h 

Meet the Latest Secret Free-Market Group That Wants to Take Over Your Public School - In These Times

Meet the Latest Secret Free-Market Group That Wants to Take Over Your Public School - In These Times: Meet the Latest Secret Free-Market Group That Wants to Take Over Your Public SchoolThe Center on Reinventing Public Education (CRPE) has been an invisible player in the free-market education reform movement.This story originally appeared at The Progressive.Don’t look now, but there’s something cre

1 by mike simpson / 7h 

Pay to Prey: Governors Facilitate the Predatory Outsourcing of America's Public Services | PR Watch

Pay to Prey: Governors Facilitate the Predatory Outsourcing of America's Public Services | PR Watch: Pay to Prey: Governors Facilitate the Predatory Outsourcing of America's Public ServicesMaggots, drug smuggling, sex with inmates. As if the news were not already bad enough, shocking new allegations of a murder-for-hire plot are emerging from Michigan as the media digs deeper into that state's fai

1 by mike simpson / 7h 

What the heck is going on with Wisconsin public education? - The Washington Post

What the heck is going on with Wisconsin public education? - The Washington Post: What the heck is going on with Wisconsin public education?What is the Wisconsin Legislature trying to do to public education in Republican Gov. Scott Walker’s state?State Superintendent Tony Evers has gone on record accusing lawmakers of moving toward new legislation “that erodes the basic foundation of Wisconsin’s p

1 by mike simpson / 9h 

Report: US Kids Are Poorer Than They Were Decades Ago | PopularResistance.Org

Report: US Kids Are Poorer Than They Were Decades Ago | PopularResistance.Org: Report: US Kids Are Poorer Than They Were Decades AgoNote: Childhood poverty has risen for every major racial group since 2008, according to a National Center for Education Statistics report released Thursday.  Do not expect major candidates for the presidency to mention this, as their campaign donors expand their wealt

1 by mike simpson / 9h 

As Mississippi delivers bad news to 5,600 third graders, stressed-out parents say there must be a better way - The Hechinger Report

As Mississippi delivers bad news to 5,600 third graders, stressed-out parents say there must be a better way - The Hechinger Report: As Mississippi delivers bad news to 5,600 third graders, stressed-out parents say there must be a better wayWill holding back thousands of third-graders boost student performance in Mississippi?ROLLTON, Miss. — In the weeks leading up to Mississippi’s new third-grade

1 by mike simpson / 10h 

Award-Winning Teacher Fired for Reading an Allen Ginsberg Poem - The Daily Beast

Award-Winning Teacher Fired for Reading an Allen Ginsberg Poem - The Daily Beast: Award-Winning Teacher Fired for Reading an Allen Ginsberg PoemDefenders of Connecticut teacher David Olio say one mistake shouldn’t have cost him his job. But why is the work of a towering figure of 20th-century American poetry out of bounds?It was the kind of moment teachers covet. An advanced AP English class focus

1 by mike simpson / 10h 

Mayor Mike Duggan: Return Detroit schools to Detroiters

Mayor Mike Duggan: Return Detroit schools to Detroiters: Duggan: Return Detroit schools to Detroitershere's no shortage of plans to restructure Detroit's schools, but until now we hadn't heard definitively from Detroit Mayor Mike Duggan, the public official most directly accountable to Detroiters.That changed Wednesday night at the Detroit Regional Chamber's Mackinac Policy Conference,when Duggan

1 by mike simpson / 10h 

Why are so many states replacing Common Core with carbon copies? - The Hechinger Report

Why are so many states replacing Common Core with carbon copies? - The Hechinger Report: Why are so many states replacing Common Core with carbon copies?Getting a fresh set of standards should be easy in a state where Common Core is opposed 39 percent to 51 percent, right?Louisiana is poised to join the roster of states putting the Common Core standards under review. But in states that have scuttl

1 by mike simpson / 10h 

The High School Where Students Wear Scrubs - NationalJournal.com

The High School Where Students Wear Scrubs - NationalJournal.com: The High School Where Students Wear ScrubsA Sacramento public high school blends work-based learning, medical science, and academics for a new generation of vocational education.At Arthur A. Benjamin Health Professions High School (HPHS), students wear scrubs to class. They use algebra to calculate dosages. They study books like The

5 by mike simpson / 10h 

Teachers Union Sounds Alarm Over Use of Hamden Student Data | NBC Connecticut

Teachers Union Sounds Alarm Over Use of Hamden Student Data | NBC Connecticut: Teachers Union Sounds Alarm Over Use of Hamden Student DataThe Hamden school system turned over data to an education research group and leaders with one of Connecticut's largest teachers' unions say the group is worried about how it will be used."We’re very very concerned about the rights of students and parents of

by mike simpson / 10h 

How to make standardized tests fairer - The Washington Post

How to make standardized tests fairer - The Washington Post: How to make standardized tests fairerThe standardized testing onslaught that has dominated public schools in recent years — and a growing resistance movement by parents, students and educators — has persuaded some states to review the load of  K-12 assessments with an eye toward eliminating exams deemed unnecessary. In fact, some states

1 by mike simpson / 11h 

NCES Releases The Condition of Education 2015

The Condition of Education 2015:The Condition of Education 2015 The American education landscape is shifting.More U.S. school-age kids live in poverty and need English-language services, according to a report released Thursday by the National Center for Education Statistics.Enrollment in public schools is up, including in charter schools that have grown in popularity. At the same time, smaller num

36 by mike simpson / 11h 

Rauner paying education czar $250k from agency that funds autism, epilepsy services | Chicago

Rauner paying education czar $250k from agency that funds autism, epilepsy services | Chicago: Rauner paying education czar $250k from agency that funds autism, epilepsy servicesSPRINGFIELD — Gov. Bruce Rauner has defended his practice of paying top dollar to high-level state employees, saying he was willing to take the arrows to lure good people to government.But records obtained by the Chicago S

1 by mike simpson / 11h 

YESTERDAY

Choosing Democracy: These Students Want an Education

Choosing Democracy: These Students Want an Education: These Students Want an EducationChildren and young adults need to see themselves in the curriculum.  Students, particularly students of color, have low levels of attachment to our communities, to  California and U.S.  civics messages in significant part because the government institution they encounter the most- the schools- ignore the students

1 by mike simpson / 1d hide  //  save

Special Nite Cap: Catch Up on Today's Post 5/27/15

SPECIAL NITE CAP CORPORATE ED REFORMCURMUDGUCATION: A Voucher By Any Other NameCURMUDGUCATION: A Voucher By Any Other Name: A Voucher By Any Other NameThe New York legislature is getting ready to look at Education Tax Credits again. I know this because advocates are busy pushing it on twitter, including and most especially the Catholic Schools of New York. "We need your help to pass the educa

2 by mike simpson / 1d 

Bad tests by any other name are bad tests. Enough is enough. | Reclaim Reform

Bad tests by any other name are bad tests. Enough is enough. | Reclaim Reform:

Bad tests by any other name are bad tests. Enough is enough.

Posted on May 28, 2015by Ken Previti

Several governors now find it to their political advantage to oppose Common Core State Standards, but they want to continue awarding the contracts for hundreds of millions of education tax dollars to their campaign donors who can manufacture new brand versionsof the same state mandated testing swindle. Bad tests by any other name are bad tests.

Chris Christie in New Jersey, Bobby Jindal in Louisiana, and Scott Walker of Wisconsin are busy peeling the old labels off of the extremely lucrative and totally unnecessary high stakes tests and materials (online programs, texts, teacher training, etc.) that were never Bad tests by any other name are bad tests. Enough is enough. | Reclaim Reform:

South Korea, Its High PISA Scores, and Its Suicide App | deutsch29

South Korea, Its High PISA Scores, and Its Suicide App | deutsch29:

South Korea, Its High PISA Scores, and Its Suicide App

Here is irony:

In January 2014, the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) noted that students from South Korea were tops at “creative problem solving” on the first such Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) test:

01/04/2014 – Students from Singapore and Korea have performed best in the OECD PISA first assessment of creative problem-solving. Students in these countries are quick learners, highly inquisitive and able to solve unstructured problems in unfamiliar contexts.

85,000 students from 44 countries and economies took the computer-based test, involving real-life scenarios to measure the skills young people will use when faced with everyday problems, such as setting a thermostat or finding the quickest route to a destination. …

“Today’s 15-year-olds with poor problem-solving skills will become tomorrow’s adults struggling to find or keep a good job,” said Andreas Schleicher, acting Director of Education and Skills at the OECD. “Policy makers and educators should reshape their school systems and curricula to help students develop their problem-solving skills which are increasingly needed in today’s economies.”

The test is supposed to demonstrate the ability to solve everyday problems. South Korea students fared well on the test. Then comes OECD director Andreas Schleicher suggesting the “reshaping” of “school systems and curricula to help students develop their problem solving skills.” The implication is that educational systems like South Korea are to be emulated.

Not hardly.

Schleicher fails to note that one of South Korea’s greatest problems involves the rate at which its teens are committing suicide– and it is connected with the pressures of school.

As NPR reporter Elise Hu notes in her April 15, 2015, article entitled, The All-Work, South Korea, Its High PISA Scores, and Its Suicide App | deutsch29:

Time to Reform Mayoral Control

Time to Reform Mayoral Control:

Time to Reform Mayoral Control

On May 12, a Quinnipiac poll was released showing that two to one, New York City voters believe that the mayor should share control over our public schools with other elected officials. On Tuesday, Public Advocate Letitia James issued a report, calling for improvements to ensure sufficient checks and balances and more parent input in school governance. We agree.

We belong to NYC Kids PAC, an organization of experienced parent leaders and advocates that recently released an education report card for Mayor Bill de Blasio. Despite numerous pledges made during his campaign to be more transparent , more accountable, and to empower parents, we found that the mayor has not fulfilled many of his promises in these areas. Our findings provide convincing evidence that the current system of mayoral control needs to be reformed.

The grades the Mayor received were decidedly mixed, ranging from “A” and “A-“ on cell phones, school closings, and arts education; to a “B” on testing; and a “D” on co-locations, parent engagement and special education. He received an “F” on class size, transparency and accountability, and diversity.

Mayoral control has also led to little actual progress in student learning. Class Size Matters analyzed the change in student test scores on the NAEPs, the most reliable of all standardized exams, given by the federal government to a random sample of students in the ten largest school districts. When gains in student test scores since mayoral control are disaggregated by race, ethnicity, and economic status, it is apparent that New York City schools come out second to last in improved performance.

While it is often argued that under the previous system there was waste and corruption, in February the Department of Education proposed a $650 million contract be given to Computer Consultant Services, a company that had been involved in a kick-back scheme just a few years ago. A special investigator had found that the company defrauded the DOE of millions of dollars by inflating its billing. Only after the Panel for Educational Policy approved this new contract and the media raised a ruckus did City Hall cancel it.  

The city’s education budget is no more transparent than under Bloomberg, according to the Independent Budget Office. Freedom of Information requests are responded to no more quickly, and the DOE still refuses to provide accurate figures on how many kids are housed in trailers, including thousands of high school students and hundreds of students with disabilities who attend classes in these substandard structures. A task force appointed by the DOE made recommendations in December to improve the accuracy of the school utilization formula used to assess overcrowding, but these proposals have still not been released.

In January, the DOE claimed in court that School Leadership Teams, composed of half Time to Reform Mayoral Control:

How Kevin Johnson Destroyed A Black Mayors Group To Promote His Brand

How Kevin Johnson Destroyed A Black Mayors Group To Promote His Brand:

How Kevin Johnson Destroyed A Black Mayors Group To Promote His Brand

The African American Mayors Association, led by Kevin Johnson, opens its annual meeting today in Washington, D.C. The former NBA star and current mayor of Sacramento has been the president of the association since its founding in 2013—when, as president of the Atlanta-based National Conference of Black Mayors, he declared the older group bankrupt and resigned from it.

The NCBM was a historically significant but poorly-managed organization. By the time Johnson walked away from it to start the competing AAMA, it was crippled. This produced litigation now sitting in county and federal courthouses in the state of Georgia, in which remaining members of the NCBM accuse Johnson of first scheming to seize control of the group, then destroying it.

The filings allege that Johnson covertly organized a public/private consortium to launch what he called a “coup” against the NCBM. It was a study in overkill. His army included three public-sector PR firms plus his own mayoral communications staff, a law firm that boasts about its prominent role in the charter school industry, and his wife, the charter-school activist Michelle Rhee.

For all his side’s might, Johnson’s mission was a disaster. As soon as the old group’s old guard fought back, Johnson changed his goal from taking over NCBM to abolishing it. Then he started a clone organization. His first act upon founding AAMA was to install himself as president. His new group’s mission statement claims “AAMA was founded on the principals of transparency and accountability.” Johnson probably meant “principles,” but either way, there’s lots of evidence that Johnson viewed “transparency” as the enemy of his campaign. The story of his NCBM debacle features so much Machiavellian scheming, in fact, that even seasoned Johnson watchers are awed.

Kevin Johnson and Michelle Rhee at the Kentucky Derby, 2013. Photo via Getty

---

“It’s raw ambition,” says John See of the American Federation of Teachers, a longtime opponent of pretty much everything Johnson and Rhee stand for. “If you want to be a big shot someday, this is the kind of planning you have to do. But you don’t want to put it on paper and have it get out.”

Unluckily for Johnson, the litigation means the details of his failed mission, and allegations of fraud, forgery, and fondling, are getting out. Those cases are pending. But NCBM veterans, How Kevin Johnson Destroyed A Black Mayors Group To Promote His Brand:

Sacramento BEE M-I-A? Sacramento Mayor Kevin Johnson’s election as president of NCBM affirmed by judge. http://bit.ly/1J63nho

Jeb Bush Emailed With Education Secretary About Rick Scott's Common Core Concerns - BuzzFeed News

Jeb Bush Emailed With Education Secretary About Rick Scott's Common Core Concerns - BuzzFeed News:

Jeb Bush Emailed With Education Secretary About Rick Scott’s Common Core Concerns

When Florida Gov. Rick Scott called Arne Duncan to discuss Common Core, Duncan turned to an unlikely adviser: Jeb Bush.

Secretary of Education Arne Duncan sought — and received — advice from Jeb Bush about how to deal with Florida Gov. Rick Scott’s concerns about Common Core, emails obtained by BuzzFeed News show.

Bush advised Duncan that Scott, “fearful of the rebellion” brewing around the program, “[w]ants to stop using the term common core but keep the standards,” but couldn’t name “specifics [sic] things that the federal government is doing or perceived to be doing” that he found objectionable.

The exchange, which took place in the morning of Sept. 23, 2013, begins with an email (“Subject: Gov Scott”) to Bush from Duncan’s private account. It reads simply: “Is calling me. Any advice?”

Just over an hour later, Bush replies from the air:

I am on a plane.

He is fearful of the rebellion. Wants to stop using the term common core but keep the standards. Wants to get out of PARCC. I asked him if he had specifics things that the federal government is doing or perceived to be doing. He didn’t have them when I spoke to him last thursday evening.

Duncan replies: “Thanks.”

The very same day, Scott issued a press release detailing his plan “[t]o protect Florida from the federal government’s overreach in education policy.”

Scott’s release included an announcement that he was withdrawing Florida from the Partnership for Assessment of Readiness for College and Careers (PARCC) — a group of states building tests based on the Common Core standards — just as Bush had warned.

“Since leaving office, Gov. Bush has focused on reforming education, state by state, through the education foundation he established that is committed to improving education for every American child,” a spokesperson for Bush told Jeb Bush Emailed With Education Secretary About Rick Scott's Common Core Concerns - BuzzFeed News:

Big Education Ape: Christie: Dump Common Core education standards | NJ.com http://bit.ly/1QdxFgS

Big Education Ape: Why are so many states replacing Common Core with carbon copies? - The Hechinger Report http://bit.ly/1QdBSRD

This Week In Education: Thompson: How Houston's Test and Punish Policies Fail

This Week In Education: Thompson: How Houston's Test and Punish Policies Fail:

Thompson: How Houston's Test and Punish Policies Fail

As the normative test, sort, and punish approach to reform continues to fail, I often recall Houston'sApollo 20 experiment, designed to bring "No Excuses" charter school methods to neighborhood schools. Its output-driven, reward and punish policies failed.  It was incredibly expensive, costing $52 million and it didn't increase reading scores. Intensive math tutoring produced test score gains in that subject. The only real success was due to the old-fashioned, win-win, input-driven method of hiring more counselors.

The Texas Observer's Patrick Michels, in Politico's Houston's Learning Curve, surveys the failures and successes of Superintendent Terry Grier and Houston schools, and he reveals a pattern that is even more bifurcated than I'd anticipated.  Michels finds no evidence that Grier's test-driven accountability has benefitted students, but he describes the great success of constructive programs that build on kids' strengths and provide them more opportunities.

Michels describes Grier as "a data-driven risk-taker who’s part task-master, part cheerleader [who] said he’s not about to give up, even after six long years at HISD’s helm." Under Grier, 900 teachers have been exited using an evaluation system that holds teachers accountable for test score growth. Moreover, his value-added pay for performance plan has cost Houston $136 million in bonuses in the last three years.

If Grier is correct and test score growth is valid for holding individuals accountable, then surely he also should be fired. NAEP reading scores have barely increased since 2002, and remain below the average of major urban areas.  In the all-important metric of 8th grade reading, Houston has been flat since 2007, even as other major urban districts increased those scores. Plus, Education Week'sStephen Sawchuk reports that Grier now seeks to cut "the $14 million bonus-pay program to just $2 million, a far cry away from the $40 million a year it once gave out."

With the help of local philanthropies, however, Houston has introduced a wide range of humane, holistic, and effective programs. Michels starts with Las Americas Newcomer School, which is "on This Week In Education: Thompson: How Houston's Test and Punish Policies Fail:

Interview With Terry Grier

A plainspoken leader takes Houston ISD in innovative directions—and holds all parties accountable. 

By Alexander Russo

Christie: Dump Common Core education standards | NJ.com

Christie: Dump Common Core education standards | NJ.com:

Christie: Dump Common Core education standards

PEMBERTON — Navigating New Jersey interests and a likely presidential campaign, Gov. Chris Christie on Thursday proposed dropping national Common Core education standards he once supported but have since become a lighting rod issue for Republican voters.

The governor, speaking at Burlington County College in Pemberton, declared Common Core is "simply not working." Christie wants to assemble a team to develop a state-based group to develop "new standards right here in New Jersey, not 200 miles away on the banks of the Potomac River."

The speech is Christie's first policy speech delivered in New Jersey and his fourth such speech since taking concrete steps toward a presidential campaign. The first three speeches – which included topics such as national security and economic growth – were given in the early presidential voting state of New Hampshire.

"It's now been five years since Common Core was adopted and the truth is that it's simply not working," Christie said.

"It has brought only confusion and frustration to our parents and has brought distance between our teachers and the communities where they work," he said. "Instead of solving problems in our classrooms, it is creating new ones."

The statement comes five years after New Jersey became one of the first states to adopt Common Core, which are national standards that outline skills every child should learn at each grade level. Christie voiced his support for the standards early in his first term.

"We are doing Common Core in New Jersey and we're going to continue. And this is one of those areas where I have agreed more with the President than not," Christie said in August of 2013 at an education conference of the KIPP Public Charter Schools. "I think part of the Republican opposition you see in some corners in Congress is a reaction, that knee-jerk reaction that is happening in Washington right now, that if the president likes something the Republicans in Congress don't. If the Republicans in Congress like something, the president doesn't."

But as public concern over the standards grew, Christie's stance changed. He issued an executive order last year to create a commission to study Common Core and in February he said he had "grave concerns" about the standards.

Currently, Christie declared it's time "to do something different" in New Jersey and accused Washington D.C. and President Obama of pulling "education away from our neighborhoods."

Christie called for his "point-by-point review" of state standards to be completed by the end of the year. It will measure state standards and provide recommendations for instructional practices, he said.

"It is time to have standards that are even higher and come directly from our communities," Christie said.

However, Christie stopped short of calling for an end to Partnership for Assessment of Readiness for College and Careers, or PARCC, testing in New Jersey.

"This will in no way affect our efforts to continue effective testing and measurement of our students through the PARCC test," Christie said.

"We must continue to review and improve that test based on results, not fear or speculation. I will not permit New Jersey to risk losing vital federal education funds because some would prefer to let the perfect get in the way of the good," he said. "We Christie: Dump Common Core education standards | NJ.com:

The Unintended (and Mostly Ignored) Lesson of Common Core: Race Inequity | the becoming radical

The Unintended (and Mostly Ignored) Lesson of Common Core: Race Inequity | the becoming radical:

THE UNINTENDED (AND MOSTLY IGNORED) LESSON OF COMMON CORE: RACE INEQUITY

You would be well advised to read Andre Perry’s examination of Common Core and race, carefully and possibly more than once: How Common Core serves white folks a sliver of the black experience.

I would also like to draw your attention to two key points that may get lost in the provocative and powerful crux of Perry’s piece:

I simply can’t manufacture the passion for or against curricula reboots or changes that eventually must happen. I’m sure there’s someone still lobbying for Home Economics as a required course, but gladly most have progressed. The researcher in me can’t argue against wanting a better means to measure educational performance nationwide. However, having the ability to compare performances among groups hasn’t brought educational justice to black and brown students[emphasis added]. Still, I know that kids overcome….

As Sen. Lamar Alexander-Tenn., chairman of the Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor and Pensions, and Sen. Patty Murray, D-Wash. rewrite No Child Left Behind, they must consider giving teachers the freedom to teach while providing consequences to those districts and schools that don’t provide the education all students deserve [emphasis added].

Finally, I want to make two responses to Perry’s piece—with the caveat that I am not suggesting my perspective is better but that I have held nuanced differences with some of the important issues Perry is raising.

First, unlike Perry, I do not support Common Core because I do not support any standards changes as well as the inevitable high-stakes testing standards-based reform produce because—as Perry himself notes above—standards and high-stakes testing have not (and will/can not) create the equity in education all children deserve.

And finally, I am an advocate for the inverse of what Perry has scathingly recognized about the backlash against The Unintended (and Mostly Ignored) Lesson of Common Core: Race Inequity | the becoming radical:

Developing Workplaces Where Teachers Stay, Improve, And Succeed | Shanker Institute

Developing Workplaces Where Teachers Stay, Improve, And Succeed | Shanker Institute:

Developing Workplaces Where Teachers Stay, Improve, And Succeed

by Matthew A. Kraft   John P. Papay -- May 28, 2015

Our guest authors today are Matthew A. Kraft and John P. Papay. Kraft is an Assistant Professor of Education at Brown University. Papay is an Assistant Professor of Education and Economics at Brown University. In 2015, they received the American Educational Research Association Palmer O. Johnson Memorial Award for the research discussed in this essay. 

When you study education policy, the inevitable question about what you do for a living always gets the conversation going. Controversies over teachers unions, charter schools, and standardized testing provide plenty of fodder for lively debates. People often are eager to share their own experiences about individual teachers who profoundly shaped their lives or were less than inspiring.

A large body of research confirms this common experience – teachers have large effects on students’ learning, and some teachers are far more effective than others. What is largely absent in these conversations, and in the scholarly literature, is a recognition of how these teachers are also supported or constrained by the organizational contexts in which they teach.

The absence of an organizational perspective on teacher effectiveness leads to narrow dinner conversations and misinformed policy. We tend to ascribe teachers’ career decisions to the students they teach rather than the conditions in which they work. We treat teachers as if their effectiveness is mostly fixed, always portable, and independent of school context. As a result, we rarely complement personnel reforms with organizational reforms that could benefit both teachers and students.

An emerging body of research now shows that the contexts in which teachers work profoundly shape teachers’ job decisions and their effectiveness. Put simply, teachers who work in supportive contexts stay in the classroom longer, and improve at faster rates, than their peers in less-supportive environments. And, what appear to matter most about the school context are not the traditional working conditions we often think of, such as modern facilities and well-equipped classrooms. Instead, aspects that are difficult to observe and measure seem to be most influential, including the quality of relationships and collaboration among staff, the responsiveness of school administrators, and the academic and behavioral expectations for students.

School Context and Teacher Turnover

Schools are complex organizations. Classic studies by Dan Lortie and Susan Moore Johnson, based on intensive observations and interviews, bring to life the “constellation” of organizational features that shape teachers’ and students’ daily experiences.

In recent years, large scale teacher surveys have provided researchers with new data to quantify these organizational features. These data have revealed that the high rates of teacher turnover we observe in schools that serve large populations of low-income and minority students are largely explained by the poor working conditions in these schools – not the students they serve. Figure 1 demonstrates how, in Massachusetts, teachers are over three times more likely to report intentions to transfer away from a school with poor working conditions (bottom percentiles) than one with strong working conditions (top percentiles). The finding that teachers’ views of their working conditions are strong predictors of whether or not they stay in a school has been replicated in a wide range districts and states, including Massachusetts, as we show in the figure below, as well as California, North Carolina, New York City, and Chicago.

School Context and Teacher Development

In supportive schools, teachers not only tend to stay, but they also improve at much greater rates over Developing Workplaces Where Teachers Stay, Improve, And Succeed | Shanker Institute:

Meet the Latest Secret Free-Market Group That Wants to Take Over Your Public School - In These Times

Meet the Latest Secret Free-Market Group That Wants to Take Over Your Public School - In These Times:

Meet the Latest Secret Free-Market Group That Wants to Take Over Your Public School

The Center on Reinventing Public Education (CRPE) has been an invisible player in the free-market education reform movement.

This story originally appeared at The Progressive.

Don’t look now, but there’s something creepy coming toward you, and it wants to take over your public school system. Sure, it’s connected—through all-important grants—to many of the big names in today’s education reform movement (Gates, Walton, Broad), but most people have probably never heard of it.

This “education reform powerhouse” is the Center on Reinventing Public Education, which goes by the acronym CRPE—or “creepy.” How fitting. While there are many individuals and organizations on the front lines of the free-market education reform movement—from Teach for America, to Education Secretary Arne Duncan, to the Recovery School District in New Orleans—CRPE has not been publicly outed. Instead, it has steadily carved out an influential role for itself behind the scenes. In fact, CRPE operates in a manner that is strikingly similar to ALEC (the American Legislative Exchange Council), the secretive, powerful group funded by the Koch brothers and a large roster of corporations. Here’s a look at how the two organizations work:

1. Member networks: Both CRPE and ALEC have a “secret club” component, through their member networks. With ALEC, the members are state legislators. With CRPE, they are school districts from across the United States (there are currently thirty-nine of them).

2. Network meetings: Both CRPE and ALEC host member network meetings or conferences, where a common philosophy (based on a distinct rightwing ideology) is honed, articulated, and shared.

3. Model legislation: Both CRPE and ALEC create sample, model policies (CRPE) or “cookie-cutter bills” (ALEC) for the districts or legislators who are part of their member networks.

4. Free-market funders: Like ALEC, CRPE is funded by very wealthy, free-market-focused special interests, including the Walton Foundation.

One difference is that ALEC has been around since the early 1970s while CRPE is a more recent concoction. University of Washington political science professor Paul T. Hill founded the group in 1993, just as the “accountability” movement in public education was taking off, and it is housed at the University of Washington-Bothell. CRPE is affiliated with the university, but Hill explains, “Our work is funded through private philanthropic dollars, federal grants, and contracts.” And, although CRPE describes itself as engaging in “independent research and policy analysis,” in 2011 the Center for Media and Democracy’s Source Watch website tagged the group as an “industry-funded research center that … receives funding from corporate and billionaire philanthropists as well as the U.S. Department of Education.”

While Hill may not be well known nationally, he is no shrinking violet when it comes to agenda-driven policy work. Beyond CRPE, he has been affiliated with the right-leaning Hoover Institute and its Koret Task Force on K-12 Education, which focuses on vouchers and other market-based, privatization-centered reforms for public schools.

And that right-leaning stamp is all over CRPE, which has built a network of “portfolio school districts” from New York City to New Orleans and beyond. It promises to run these districts like a stock portfolio. Under this model, schools are to become more “autonomous,” and districts will be decentralized for a more “hands-off” approach. In an eighteen-month portfolio implementation guide that CRPE provides school districts, a suggested strategy for the first two months is to “announce the district will replace five schools with charter schools.” Schools will be closed for such failures as “negative labor-management relations.”

Many people in progressive-minded Minneapolis would be shocked to know that the Minneapolis public school system has been part of the CRPE network since 2010 (thanks to a makeover, led, for free, by consultants from the global consulting firm McKinsey and Company). Today, this shadowy organization is on the verge of completely overhauling the public school district’s entire operation.

Anyone needing proof should look no further than the 2013 CRPE meeting for Portfolio Network members that was held in Seattle. A video from that meeting lays bare the competitive, resource-scarce mindset behind CRPE, and it even uses the Minneapolis public schools—albeit superficially—as a test case for the presentation.

The video—available on YouTube as “Dollars and Sense Accountability”—offers attendees lots of suggestions for how schools can expand their limited pots of money. The assumption always seems to be that schools just need to do more with less, so the suggestions are pragmatic. They include encouraging schools to grow their enrollment (the presenter, Marguerite Roza, who now works for CRPE, recommends pushing schools on this, because they’ll always say they’re too full). CRPE also suggests paying teachers extra to teach more kids, and pitting schools against one another in a battle for resources. All of this is based around a central question: What does it look like when a district starts to view schools like businesses?

To begin, Roza praises Minneapolis for its “enormous cooperation,” because the district has offered its data for use as an example of how to view schools “in terms of cost and outcomes.” Roza then shows participants a graph, where Minneapolis school sites (unnamed) are splayed out according to how much money they spend in comparison to how “high performing” they are. Before she delves in too deeply, however, Roza makes one point very clear: “I hope when you leave this session, you realize that the money part of the equation has to be part of the accountability bit, so you have to start connecting the spending and the outcomes together,” she says.

Throughout the video, it becomes clear that what Roza means is that the ideal school is one which spends less money but gets high test scores. It also becomes clear that, to Roza, and by extension CRPE, kids and schools are mere widgets in the Hunger Games-like landscape of school finance that CRPE promotes.

At one point, Roza points to the graph full of Minneapolis examples and says, “Look at the relationship between spending and Meet the Latest Secret Free-Market Group That Wants to Take Over Your Public School - In These Times:

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