Throw Back Thursday - The Broad Road Show finally comes to Sacramento December 2009

Throw Back Thursday - The Broad Road Show finally comes to Sacramento December 2009

Back in 2009 I was attempting to understand what the Corporate Education Reform movement was all about. I was still trying to write about it. A piece I wrote for a local community blog was about KJ and Mr Broad and Stand UP "non-profit" (just another AstroTurf front for the privatizers as it turned out). :

    Mayor Kevin Johnson announced STAND UP; a new initiative launched on Monday. A $500,000 grant will kick-start the first phase of the new nonprofit's development. It will focus on raising academic achievement and college completion rates by advocating, supporting, and developing excellent public schools. The seed money comes from a national philanthropy group, the Eli and Edythe Broad Foundation. 

Mayor Johnson said he's looking for a new education liaison; someone who will work with STAND UP. Rumors and speculation has Michelle Rhee, lightening rod Chancellor of Washington DC Public Schools as a leading candidate. Rhee a nimble leader, has played a major role in the Education Reform movement which is currently being promoted by the Obama administration and Governor Schwarzenegger. This reform movement includes privately operated Charter schools which are opposed by teachers unions and some parent and community groups. Ms Rhee and the Mayor announced their engagement last month.

 Really, what could be better than some rich guy (billionaire) coming to town dropping a cool half million on our public schools in these times of shocking budget cuts. In Sacramento I think there are three schools of thought on that subject:

1) Stand Up
2) Sit Down
3) Shut Up]

If there are some who don’t get Stand Up, it could be that it is not certain which public schools the plan refers to, community-managed excellent public schools or corporate-managed excellent public schools.

The Sit Down community sees Stand Up as irrelevant due to the questions unanswered at St. Hope: the controversial AmeriCorps investigation, enrollment numbers and finances. Or some just don’t like KJ Local parent groups and community advocates blogs Sac Chartergate and Scusd Observer often focus on Sit Down issues.

The Shut Up people firmly believe that STAND UP is part of a vast education conspiracy as presented in “The Rise of Venture Philanthropy and the Ongoing Neoliberal Assault on Public Education: the Eli and Edyth Broad Foundation,” by Dr. Kenneth Saltman. of DePaul University

Most of the conspiracy allegations centers on Mr. Broad:  Either you think he is the coolest guy who ever lived or a diabolical capitalist sent to kill public education. Schools Matter, Perimeter Primate , Seattle Education 2010 and The Broad Report make a case for the Shut Up group with opinion, data and a lot of passion.

My best move, most surely, is to Shut Up. One thing I am sure of is that things that are happening at city hall have a lot to do with what is happening at the state capitol.

Peter Schrag of theCalifornia Progress Report stated: “This is not a tempest in a teapot. It reflects fundamental disagreements, some philosophical, some political, some mere turf fights, over the future of the state’s K-12 schools. Either the Senate bill, by Sen. Gloria Romero, a Los Angeles Democrat, or the Assembly substitute by Julia Brownley of Santa Monica, also a Democrat, which the governor threatened to veto, would have been likely to produce significant changes in the state’s school standards, in its testing program, in school transfer rules and parental rights, and in the reconstitution of failing schools.”

The point is we need to have this conversation. 

NYC Public School Parents: Yet another unconvincing report on the results of Bloomberg's school closure policies

NYC Public School Parents: Yet another unconvincing report on the results of Bloomberg's school closure policies:

Yet another unconvincing report on the results of Bloomberg's school closure policies



Yesterday, another dubious report was released by the Research Alliance, claiming better outcomes for students as a result of Bloomberg's draconian school closure policy.  A major problem with the study is that it doesn't examine the well-documented destabilizing impact of closing these schools on other large high schools nearby, as discussed in this New School report. 

Nor does the report mention the issue of soaring discharge rates at the closing schools.  In fact, the word "discharge" is never used in either the report or the technical appendix. 

In the report Jennifer Jennings and I wrote on the DOE's rising discharge rate between 2000 and 2007, we found this problem especially evident at the closing schools, with rates as high as 50% for the last two graduating classes at closing schools.  See this graph :

Theoretically, these students were supposed to have transferred into another high school or GED program program outside the NYC public school system, and thus were not counted as dropouts -- but probably should have been.  Indeed, a subsequent audit from the NYS Comptroller's office revealed that 15% of general ed students reported by the DOE as discharges should have been categorized as dropouts, and 20% of special ed students.  Probably an even larger percentage from the closing schools were really dropouts.

The Research Alliance was founded with $3 million in Gates Foundation funds and is maintained with Carnegie Corporation funding, which help pay for this report.  These two foundations promoted and helped subsidize the closing of large schools and their replacement with small schools; although the Gates Foundation has now renounced the efficacy of this policy.  Michele Cahill, for many years the Vice President of the Carnegie Corporation, led this effort when she worked at DOE. 

The Research Alliance has also been staffed with an abundance of former DOE employees from the Bloomberg era.  In the acknowledgements, the author of this new study, Jim Kemple, effusively thanks one such individual,  Saskia Levy Thompson: 

The author is especially grateful for the innumerable discussions with Saskia Levy Thompson about the broader context of high school reform in NYC Public School Parents: Yet another unconvincing report on the results of Bloomberg's school closure policies:

The Return of Korematsu: The Internment of Japanese Americans Still Haunts the United States - The Atlantic

The Internment of Japanese Americans Still Haunts the United States - The Atlantic:

The Return of Korematsu

Seventy years after the mass internment of Japanese Americans was upheld by the U.S. Supreme Court, the ugly ideas at the core of its decision are resurfacing.

Last week’s terrorist attack in Paris provoked a backlash among American politicians against the Obama administration’s plans to resettle Syrian refugees. They rushed to protect their constituents from potential ISIS members who could be lurking among the 10,000 refugees that the Obama administration hopes to admit into the country over the next year.

It’s natural enough to wonder, in response to the murky reports of a Syrian passport found at one of the bombing sites, about the United States’ own procedures for screening Syrian refugees. It turns out that refugees chosen for resettlement are exhaustively vetted by law-enforcement and intelligence agencies, with an average processing time of 12 to 24 months, before setting foot on U.S. soil.

But instead of seeking answers, a number of elected officials added shameful paragraphs to their obituaries in recent days. Responding to the threat these displaced men, women, and children allegedly pose, Tennessee legislator Glen Casada called for the state National Guard to “round up” all Syrian refugees in the state on Tuesday. When asked about the constitutional protections that safeguard refugees and others in the United States, Casada replied, “And you have to ask yourself, which is greater: life or due process?”

Missouri state representative Mike Moon called for a special legislative session to halt refugee resettlement and “stop the potential Islamization of Missouri.” In his letter to the state speaker of the house, Moon feared that the diversity of Islam’s adherents could be a potent weapon.

I do realize that the refugees we should be scrutinizing most is one who professes the muslim faith. Unless I’m mistaken, a practicing muslim can do whatever is necessary for the "good” of the faith — telling “fibs” is a smallpart [sic] of what they might do. And, from what I’ve seen, a practicing muslim comes in all flavors (black, white, brown, yellow — American, African, European, etc. etc.).  A “white” lie could allow an individual to pass through the vetting process.

In Rhode Island, State Senator Elaine Morgan wrote to a constituent, “I do not want our governor bringing in any Syrian refugees. I think our country is under attack. I think this is a major plan by these countries to spread out their people to attack all non Muslim persons.” She added, “If we need to take these people in we should set up [a] refugee camp to keep them segregated from our [populace].”

In Louisiana, Senator David Vitter, who appears likely to lose that state’s gubernatorial election on Saturday, intensified his rhetoric against Syrian refugees as election day draws near. Vitter tweeted on Tuesday, “Spoke w/ LA State Police. They don’t know where BR [Baton Rouge] Syrian refugee is except that he was headed to DC & no gov agency is in contact with him.” Catholic Charities of Baton Rouge, a religious nonprofit that helps refugees resettle and The Internment of Japanese Americans Still Haunts the United States - The Atlantic:

Houston’s “Split” Decision to Give Superintendent Grier $98,600 in Bonuses, Pre-Resignation | VAMboozled!

Houston’s “Split” Decision to Give Superintendent Grier $98,600 in Bonuses, Pre-Resignation | VAMboozled!:

Houston’s “Split” Decision to Give Superintendent Grier $98,600 in Bonuses, Pre-Resignation

States of attention on this blog, and often of (dis)honorable mention as per their state-level policies bent on value-added models (VAMs), include Florida, New York, Tennessee, and New Mexico. As for a quick update about the latter state of New Mexico, we are still waiting to hear the final decision from the judge who recently heard the state-level lawsuit still pending on this matter in New Mexico (see prior posts about this case here, here,here, here, and here).

Another locale of great interest, though, is the Houston Independent School District. This is the seventh largest urban school district in the nation, and the district that has tied more high-stakes consequences to their value-added output than any other district/state in the nation. These “initiatives” were “led” by soon-to-resign/retire Superintendent Terry Greir who, during his time in Houston (2009-2015), implemented some of the harshest consequences ever attached to teacher-level value-added output, as per the district’s use of the Education Value-Added Assessment System (EVAAS) (see other posts about the EVAAS here, here, and here; see other posts about Houston here, here, and here).

In fact, the EVAAS is still used throughout Houston today to evaluate all EVAAS-eligible teachers, to also “reform” the district’s historically low-performing schools, by tying teachers’ purported value-added performance to teacher improvement plans, merit pay, nonrenewal, and termination (e.g., 221 Houston teachers were terminated “in large part” due to their EVAAS scores in 2011). However, pending litigation (i.e., this is the district in which the American and Houston Federation of Teachers (AFT/HFT) are currently suing the district for their wrongful use of, and over-emphasis on this particular VAM; see here), Superintendent Grier and the district have recoiled on some of the high-stakes consequences they formerly attached to the EVAAS  This particular lawsuit is to commence this spring/summer.

Nonetheless, my most recent post about Houston was about its future school board candidates (some who won seats on the school board on November 3), who were invited by The Houston Chronicle to respond to Superintendent Grier’s teacher evaluation system. For the most part, those who responded did so unfavorably, especially as the evaluation systems was/is disproportionately reliant on teachers’ EVAAS data and high-stakes use of these data in particular (see here).

Most recently, however, as per a “split” decision registered by Houston’s new school board (i.e., 4:3), Superintendent Grier received a $98,600 bonus for his “satisfactory evaluation” as the school district’s superintendent. See more from the full article published Houston’s “Split” Decision to Give Superintendent Grier $98,600 in Bonuses, Pre-Resignation | VAMboozled!:

Inspector seeking more money to conduct audits of LAUSD charters - LA School Report

Inspector seeking more money to conduct audits of LAUSD charters - LA School Report:

Inspector seeking more money to conduct audits of LAUSD charters

The LA Unified’sOffice of Inspector General told a school board committee this week that it needs an additional $570,000 to audit charter schools, according to a recent report.

The OIG once had a staff of 83 and is now down to 57, according to Inspector GeneralKen Bramlett,whose office oversees a $7.6 million budget. The OIG not only checks charter schools to see if they meet safety and educational requirements but also investigates financial fraud, contracts and internal audits for the entire district. The office also looks at services, personnel, safety and test scores.

The cost for a basic audit of a charter school that could take three months to complete costs nearly $70,000 while a more complex audit that could last half a year costs nearly $150,000, according to a report Bramlett and his staff presented to the Budget, Facilities and Audit Committee this week. The number of audits that the office conducts each year has also fallen by half, to 6 from 12.

Board member Scott Schmerelson, who sits on the committee, pointed out that it doesn’t seem to make sense to have a reduction of investigators and number of audits when the numbers of LA Unified charter schools are increasing.

Committee chair Mónica Ratliff said, “I would love to give more money to the Office of Inspector General,” and she asked for a report next month that would explain how the extra money would help the staff.

LAUSD is responsible for conducting audits of charter schools before they are Inspector seeking more money to conduct audits of LAUSD charters - LA School Report:

I Am a Public School Teacher: Give Me All the Refugees You’ve Got! - LA Progressive

I Am a Public School Teacher: Give Me All the Refugees You’ve Got! - LA Progressive:

I Am a Public School Teacher: Give Me All the Refugees You’ve Got!

Refugees Welcome

Come into my classroom any day of the week and you’ll see refugees.

That little Iraqi boy slumped over a book written in Arabic while the rest of the class reads the same story in English. Those twin girls blinking back memories of the Bosnian War as they try to underline possessive nouns on an English worksheet. That brown-skinned boy compulsively rocking back-and-forth in his seat fighting back tears wondering when his dad is going to come home from prison.

Every day, every hour, every minute our public schools are places of refuge for children seeking asylum, fugitives, emigres, exiles, the lost, the displaced, dear hearts seeking a kind word and a caring glance.

Some may shudder or sneer at the prospect of giving shelter to people in need, but that is the reality in our public schools. In the lives of many, many children we provide the only stability, theonly safety, the only love they get all day.

And, yes, I do mean love. I love my students. Each and every one of them. Sometimes they are far from lovable. Sometimes they look at me with distrust. They bristle at assignments. They jump when redirected. But those are the ones I try to love the most, because they are the ones most in need.

I told a friend once that I had a student who had escaped from Iraq. His parents had collaboratedwith the U.S. military and received death threats for their efforts. So he and his family fled to my hometown so far away from his humid desert heartland.

I told her how difficult it was trying to communicate with a student who spoke hardly any English. I I Am a Public School Teacher: Give Me All the Refugees You’ve Got! - LA Progressive:

House, Senate ESEA Compromise Sails Through Conference Committee - Politics K-12 - Education Week

House, Senate ESEA Compromise Sails Through Conference Committee - Politics K-12 - Education Week:

House, Senate ESEA Compromise Sails Through Conference Committee

After more than a decade, Congress seems to be on the verge of leaving the almost-universally despised No Child Left Behind Act ... well, behind.

Lawmakers on the U.S. Senate education committee and more than a dozen House members—amid much bipartisan backslapping—voted Thursday 39-1 to approve a bicameral, bipartisan compromise measure that would scale back the federal role in education in the underlying Elementary and Secondary Education Act for the first time since the early 1980s. Republican Sen. Rand Paul was the only lawmaker to vote no, and did so by proxy.

The compromise gives states acres of new running room on accountabililty, while holding firm on NCLB's requirement for annual testing, and data that shows how at-risk students are performing compared to their peers. And it includes some protections for perennially foundering schools, so-called "drop-out factories" and those where poor and minority students, or students in special education and those just learning English, are struggling. 

Even before the official start of the conference, the lead negotiators, Reps. John Kline, R-Minn., Bobby Scott, D-Va., and Sens. Lamar Alexander, R-Tenn., and Patty Murray, D-Wash., came to a preliminary agreement or "framework" to jump-start negotiations. Their proposal borrows ideas from both a Republican-only measure that barely passed the U.S. House of Representatives in July, and a Senate version that cleared the U.S. Senate with big, bipartisan support a few days later. 

The agreement, called the "Every Student Succeeds Act," helped guide the conference process and formed the basis for the official compromise approved Thursday. The legislation is expected to be on the floor of both chambers shortly after the Thanksgiving recess. 

Alexander, who worked for almost a year with Murray on the rewrite, said at the start of the conference on Wednesday that there is a consensus that NCLB is a broken law. And, he said, there's a consensus on how to fix it. 

"This agreement, in my opinion, is the most significant step towards local control in 25 years," Alexander said. 

For her part, Murray stressed that the framework includes "strong federal guardrails ... so that students don't get left behind."

The compromise would also consolidate nearly 50 programs into a block grant, a big priority for Kline. And it would take direct aim at what Alexander has called the "National School Board" by prohibiting the U.S. Secretary of Education from interfering with state prerogatives on teacher evaluation, testing, standards, school turnarounds, and more.

That language is largely seen as a rebuke to Education Secretary Arne Duncan, who has flexed his executive muscle more than other secretary in history, including by calling for states to adopt teacher evaluations that take test scores into account in order to get a waiver from the mandates of the NCLB law.

But the compromise does include some key wins for the White House and Democrats, including a requirement that states turn around around the bottom 5 percent of their schools (an idea borrowed from the administration's NCLB waivers).

And it goes further on accountability than either the House or Senate bills to overhaul the ESEA.

It's an open question, though, just how much those new accountability provisions will play out given the litany of very explicit prohibitions on the secretary's authority. (Long and detailed cheat sheet on the bill below.)

So will this thing pass? Aides worked for months to reconcile the Senate version of the measure, which passed by a huge bipartisan margin in July, and the House version, which barely squeaked through with only GOP votes in July. (And that narrow House passage came only after the bill faltered due to lack of conservative support in Februrary.)

The deal has the potential to get big bipartisan support in both chambers. But it could divide Republicans in the House, where a new speaker, Rep. Paul Ryan of Wisconsin, has just stepped up to the plate. And indeed, Sen. Mike Lee of Utah took to the floor of the Senate Wednesday to complain, saying the bill was essentially already a done deal. Alexander assured him the process will be open. 

During the committee meeting, Alexander stressed that voting against the bill is a vote to continue the current Obama-eduregime: "the common-core standards, the national school board, and the waivers in 42 states."

The conference committee adopted a slew of amendments, including an amendment from Sen. Michael Bennet, D-Colo., which would allow states to set limits on testing. It also agreed to a report to study the Title I funding formula.

Sen. Richard Burr, R-N.C., who has worked for years to fix a formula he says shortchanges rural states, sounded really bummed that his language—adopted in the Senate bill—didn't make it into this final version. The compromise: The Institute for Education Sciences will study the formula.

To be sure, folks expressed angst about pieces of the preliminary agreement. Democrats are bummed about program consolidation, and some Republicans said they wished the bill scaled back the federal role even further.

But Rep. Todd Rokita, R-Ind., was happy to see there's language in the bill making it clear that the education secretary can't coerce states into adopting the Common Core State Standards. And he's glad that nearly 50 programs have been eliminated in the framework, in favor of a flexible fund state can use as they chose. He wishes the bill's spending levels were a little lower, though.

Sen. Chris Murphy, D-Conn., who worked to beef up accountability in the Senate version of the bill and ultimately was just one of a handful of senators to vote against final passage because of civil rights concerns, is happy this time around.

"We have to get this right because the accountability framework in this bill will serve as a fail-safe for how millions of historically marginalized children will be treated in this nation," he said. 

What's the early reaction from edu-advocates? 

Mary Kusler, the director of government relations for the National Education Association, said it was "a significant step to see members from both Houses come together to fix something that is fundamentally broken and hurting children's opportunity to learn." And she added, "we are looking forward to seeing final legislative language, which we hope will continue to reduce testing and the high stakes that go with it."

Many folks are biding their time until there's real language. But in comments late last week, advocates for state officials made it clear they know a lot of trust is being placed in their hands.

Kris Amundson from the National Association of State Boards of Education said that while the NCLB law might end soon, its purpose should live on in the next ESEA reauthorization.

"It's going to place tremendous responsibility on states to ensure NCLB's commitment to educating every child," Amundson said in an interview.

But the Heritage Fund, a conservative group which helped kill an earlier version of the House bill in March, is unhappy with this latest attempt. What's more, three GOP senators, Lee of Utah, David Vitter of Louisiana, and Tim Scott of South Carolina, sent a letter to the lawmakers who crafted the framework, asking for further support for school choice. 

So what's in this preliminary framework? We brought you the details, Thursday night and early Friday.

Here's your latest cheat sheet on the details of the compromise, including some new updates.

This information was garnered from an overview of the framework provided by the committee, as well as interviews with multiple sources who were briefed on the compromise, including congressional aides. (Key details are still emerging, though, because no official legislation has been released to the public or reporters.)

On Accountability

The compromise uses the Senate bill as a jumping-off point here. Quick refresher: That means states would still have to test students in grades 3-8 and once in high school in reading and math. But states would get to decide how much those tests count for accountability purposes. And states would be in the driver's seat when it comes to goals for schools, school ratings, and more. States could also incorporate other factors into their accountability systems, including access to advanced coursework, school climate, and safety. 

States would be required to identify and take action in the bottom 5 percent of schools, and schools where less than two-thirds of kids graduate. 

States would also have to identify and take action in schools where so-called subgroup students (including English-language learners and students in special education, as well as poor and minority students) are struggling. But importantly, the bill doesn't say how many of those schools states would have to pinpoint, or what they would have to do to ensure that they are helping these students achieve—the bill allows local leaders to figure all that out.

And the School Improvement Grant program would be a thing of the past. Instead, states could reserve up to 7 percent of their Title I funds to help with turnarounds and other interventions. (That's up from 4 percent in current law.)

On Opt-Outs

The bill largely sticks with the Senate language, which would allow states to create their own testing opt-out laws (as Oregon has). But it would maintain the federal requirement for 95 percent participation in tests. However, unlike under the NCLB law, in which schools with lower-than-95 percent participation rates were automatically seen as failures, local districts and states would get to decide what should happen in schools that miss targets. States would have to take low testing participation into consideration in their accountability systems. Just how to do that would be up to them, though.

Early drafts of the ESEA legislation looked complicated on accountability, one advocate said.

"Based on what I've seen, for the next [education] secretary, interpreting the new law will be like looking at a Rorschach with one eye closed and with both hands tied behind their back," said Charlie Barone, the policy director at Democrats for Education Reform, who served as an aide to Rep. George Miller of California, the top Democrat on the House education committee, when NCLB was written. 

But that complexity could actually be a boon to state and local control, especially since the compromise includes nearly all of the restrictions on the secretary's authority that were in the House and Senate versions, a GOP aide said.  

"The complexity helps," said a GOP aide who participated in the negotiations. The agreement "leaves a lot of this to states to figure out and the secretary's ability to interfere with those state decisions is astonishingly limited."

Local and Innovative Testing

 

The framework sets up a pilot project, giving a handful of states the chance to try out local tests, with the permission of the U.S. Department of Education. And importantly, these local tests aren't supposed to be used forever—the point is for districts to try out new forms of assessment (as New Hampshire is doing with performance tasks) that could eventually go statewide and be used by everyone. That way states don't get stuck with the same old assessment for years on end.

What's more, the framework allows for the use of local tests at the high school level, with state permission. So a district could in theory use the SAT or ACT as its high school test, instead of the traditional state exam.

On Programs

There's more consolidation of federal education in the compromise than there was in the Senate bill, including block granting of physical education, mathematics and science partnerships, and Advanced Placement. In fact, dozens of programs are included in the block grant, some of which, like education technology, haven't seen much funding federal in years. 

Some programs would live on as separate line items, including the 21st Century Community schools program, which pays for after-school programs and has a lot support on both sides of the aisle. 

Murray got the early-childhood investment she wanted—the bill enshrines an existing program "Preschool Development Grants" in law. But the program would be housed at the Department of Health and Human Services, not the Education Department as some Democrats had initially hoped. The Education Department would jointly administer the program, sources say. (The reason: HHS already has some early-education programs, like Head Start. Expanding the education department's portfolio was a big no-no for conservatives.) 

That new research and innovation program that some folks were describing as sort of a next generation "Investing in Innovation" program made it into the bill. (Sens. Orrin Hatch, R-Utah, and Micheal Bennet, D-Colo., are big fans, as is the administration.)

So did a wraparound services program that shares some DNA with both Promise Neighborhoods, as well as a community schools program that Rep. Steny Hoyer of Maryland, the second-ranking Democrat in the House, really likes. 

On School Choice

No Title I portability—that means that federal funds won't be able to follow the child to the school of their choice.

But the bill does include a pilot project allowing districts to try out a weighted student funding formula, which would also essentially function as a backpack of funds for kids. The program would allow 50 districts to combine state, local, and federal funds into a single pot that could follow a child to the school of their choice. It is said to be a more workable alternative to Title I portability, which looked more dramatic on paper, but which few states would likely have taken advantage of because of its complexity, experts said. Importantly with this pilot, participation would be entirely up to district officials. And the language would give them a chance to better target funds to individual school needs. 

Funding and Other Issues

No changes to the Title I funding formula along the lines of what the Senate passed that would steer a greater share of the funds to districts with high concentrations of kids in poverty. But there were some changes to the Title II formula (which funds teacher quality) that would be a boon to rural states.

There was some chatter that the bill would also incorporate changes to the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act. That's not part of the agreement. 

The framework would only "authorize" ESEA for four more years, as opposed to the typical five. That gives lawmakers a chance to revisit the policy under the next president, should they choose to do so. And its overall authorization levels are largely consistent with the most recent budget deal. 

: 

 

Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee Chairman Sen. Lamar Alexander, R-Tenn., left, and House Education and the Workforce Committee Chairman Rep. John Kline, R-Minn., talk on Capitol Hill in Washington on Wednesday before a meeting of House and Senate negotiators trying to resolve competing versions of a rewrite of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act. 

--Jacquelyn Martin/APHouse, Senate ESEA Compromise Sails Through Conference Committee - Politics K-12 - Education Week:

CURMUDGUCATION: More Evidence That Tests Measure SES

CURMUDGUCATION: More Evidence That Tests Measure SES:

More Evidence That Tests Measure SES

Want more proof, again, some more, of the connection between socio-economic status and standardized test results? Twitter follower Joseph Robertshaw pointed me at a pair of studies by Randy Hoover, PhD, at the Department of Teacher Education, Beeghly College of Education, Youngstown State University.

Hoover is now a professor emeritus, but the validity of standardized testing and the search for a valid and reliable accountability system. He now runs a website called the Teacher Advocate and it's worth a look.

Hoover released two studies-- one in 2000, and one in 2007-- that looked at the validity of the Ohio Achievement Tests and the Ohio Graduate Test, and while there are no surprises here, you can add these to your file of scientific debunking of standardized testing. We're just going to look at the 2007 study, which was in part intended to check on the results of the 2000 study.

The bottom line of the earlier study appears right up front in the first paragraph of the 2007 paper:

The primary finding of this previous study was that student performance on the tests was most significantly (r = 0.80) affected by the non-school variables within the student social-economic living CURMUDGUCATION: More Evidence That Tests Measure SES:

The Free College Problem

Allison Schrager is an economist who writes about retirement and how to hedge risk in more unconventional situations. But in this article, she addresses the question of free college and whether or not it addresses the bigger problem.

Her arguments echo several being brought up as free college emerges as a Democratic platform item.

The first, largest issue is college completion.

Poor students are far less likely to finish college than their rich counterparts. And that includes poor kids who are smart and get high scores on, well, anything. Here's a chart that lays it out:

Poor students apply to less selective schools, and their are fewer poor students who rank as high achievers (which is unsurprising since "high achiever" means "good standardized test score-getter" which we know doesn't correlate closely with poverty).

It's possible that tuition costs are part of what forces poor students out of school, and that free tuition might help. But there's also a strong case to be made that poor students take all of the problems of poverty to college with them. It's not just that it costs money to pay tuition to go to college; it costs money just to be there, to live in a lifestyle that is in many ways upper class. It's The Free College Problem

Closing Failing New York City High Schools Helped Students, Study Finds - WSJ

Closing Failing New York City High Schools Helped Students, Study Finds - WSJ:

Closing Failing New York City High Schools Helped Students, Study Finds

Critics had said decision to shut dozens of schools would hurt communitiesClosing Failing New York City High Schools Helped Students, Study Finds - WSJ:

Just another BS Report Paid For by the Privatizers



Funders

The Research Alliance’s work is made possible by a diverse group of public and private funders.  The following organizations have provided support for individual research programs, general operating expenses, or start-up funds.



Alfred P. Sloan Foundation

American Institutes for Research (AIR)

Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation

Carnegie Corporation of New York

Education Development Center,Inc. (EDC)

Ford Foundation

iMentor

Institute of Education Sciences (IES)

MDRC

New York University

Newman’s Own Foundation

Robertson Foundation

Spencer Foundation

The Fund for Public Schools

New York City Department of Education (NYCDOE)

The New York Community Trust

UChicago Consortium on Chicago School Research (CCSR)

The Teagle Foundation

The Wallace Foundation

University of Pennsylvania

Walton Family Foundation

William T. Grant Foundation

Start-Up Funders



The following funders supported planning and incubation activities for the Research Alliance:



Donors’ Education Collaborative

Carnegie Corporation of New York

John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation (MacArthur Foundation)

Ford Foundation

The Wallace Foundation

Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation

The New York Community Trust

Pyewacket Foundation

Robert Sterling Clark Foundation

Spencer Foundation

William T. Grant Foundation

Prop. 98 guarantee could reach $80B by 2020 :: SI&A Cabinet Report :: The Essential Resource for Superintendents and the Cabinet

Prop. 98 guarantee could reach $80B by 2020 :: SI&A Cabinet Report :: The Essential Resource for Superintendents and the Cabinet:

Prop. 98 guarantee could reach $80B by 2020

(Calif.) The minimum funding guarantee for K-12 schools and community colleges is expected to surge to $77.5 billion by the 2019-20 school year – marking a five-year cycle of increases that will total more than $14 billion, according to a forecast released Wednesday by the nonpartisan Legislative Analyst.

Economic uncertainties could threaten the rosy outlook but in its annual report on the general condition of the California economy and the picture moving forward over the next five years, the LAO suggested the state’s fiscal health couldn’t be much better.

In fact, “the state budget is better prepared for an economic downturn than it has been at any point in decades,” the Legislature’s chief financial adviser said.

For public education the news is also welcomed, tempered only in the sense that Gov. Jerry Brown’s efforts to pay off outstanding debts run up over the past 10 to 15 years, has reduced  – at least in part – the requirement that all new state income be shared dollar-for-dollar with schools.

Indeed, the LAO projected that the state will end the 2015-16 fiscal year with an additional $3.6 billion in revenue above the forecast used in last summer’s budget process. Although some of those unanticipated dollars will be available for spending, the lion’s share will go into the state’s new rainy day fund that was created by voters in 2014 with the passage of Proposition 2.

The analyst predicted that by the end of 2016-17, state reserves would reach close to $11.5 billion.

If the restrictions imposed by Proposition 2 have few loopholes to allow new spending, the message from the governor Wednesday shows Brown has not changed his tight-fisted approach to money management.

“The strong economy is good news for California, but the recession scenario outlined by the Legislative Analyst is a sobering reminder that we must continue to pursue fiscal discipline, pay Prop. 98 guarantee could reach $80B by 2020 :: SI&A Cabinet Report :: The Essential Resource for Superintendents and the Cabinet: