Charters And Vouchers Are An Excuse Not To Fix Real Issues

Paul Karrer: Schools lose with Race to the Top

A letter to my president, the one I voted for.

Your Honorable President Obama:

I mean this with all respect. I'm on my knees here and there's a knife in my back and the prints on it kinda match yours.

You're righting the wrong guys with your Race to the Top program, which provides grant money that "might" go to schools if they comply with unproven, absurd draconian "reforms" such as shuffling teachers around.

You're hitting the good guys with friendly fire.

I teach in a barrio in California. It's a public school. I have 32 kids in my class. I love them to tears. They're fifth-graders. That means they're 10 years old, mostly. Six of them are 11 because they were retained. Five more are in special education and two more should have been.

I stopped using the word parents when I talk with or about my kids because so many of them don't have them.

Amanda's mom died in October. She lives with her 30-year-old brother (a thousand blessings on him). Seven kids live with their grandmothers, six with their dads. A few rotate between parents.

Fifty percent of my 10-year-olds have visited relatives in jail or prison.

Do you and Arnie Duncan understand the significance of that? I'm afraid not. It isn't bad teaching that has taken things to the current stage. It's poverty. We don't teach in failing schools. We teach in failing communities.

It's called the ZIP code quandary. If the kids live in a wealthy ZIP code, they have high test scores. If they live in a ZIP where the people are poor, guess how they do.

We also have massive teacher turnover at my school. Now, we have no money. We haven't had an art teacher or music program in 10 years. We have a nurse twice a week.

And due to No Child Left Behind, we are punished most brutally. Did you know that 100 percent of our students have to be on grade level? That's like saying you have to get along with 100 percent of your cabinet (and unlike my kids, your cabinet gets to quit).

You lived overseas, so you know what conditions are like in the rest of the world. President Obama, I swear that conditions in my school are Third World. We had a test when I taught in the Peace Corps. We had to describe a glass filled to the middle. We were supposed to say it was half full. Too many of my kids don't even have the glass.

And then, of course, there are the gangs. They are eating my kids, their parents and the neighborhood.

One of my former students stuffed an AK47 down his pants at a local bank and was shot dead. Another one of my favorites has been incarcerated since he was 13. He'll be 27 next month. I've been writing to him for 10 years and visiting him in Level 4 maximum security—he's in chains behind bullet-proof glass—in Salinas Valley State Prison.

Do you get that it's tough here? Charter schools and voucher schools aren't the solution. They are an excuse not to fix the real issues. You promised us so much and now you want to give us merit pay based on how the kids do, no matter their circumstances?

You're making it real hard to vote with enthusiasm.

Can you pull the knife out now? It really hurts.

Paul Karrer, who teaches at Castroville Elementary School, writes about education for this page.

Professor Willingham On Obama/Duncan Bullsh*t

...The administration’s education policy has four pillars. These were outlined in that first education policy speech, and they were represented in the requirements for Race to the Top applications.

But of the four, only one could be said to have clear scientific support.

The well-supported policy initiative is an emphasis on early childhood education. Aside from ample research by developmental psychologists showing that the early childhood years are a critical time for learning, economists have conducted persuasive studies showing that early childhood intervention programs can have lasting and profound effects on at-risk kids.

Better-educated kids are more likely to be tax-paying contributors to the economy and less likely to be incarcerated or on public assistance. Thus, in the long run intervention programs for at-risk kids more than pay for themselves....

The Answer Sheet

TFA, KIPP Unsustainable According To Rick Hess

The eduformers like Gates and Broad as well as the edupreneurs like Tom Vander Ark, along with their puppet Arne Duncan, devised RTTT and in so doing made more than a couple states change their laws to get into the contest. Those laws made it easier for charter schools to get into the game, as they are supposedly the biggest part of the education solution.

Yesterday, Rick Hess admitted we can't count on TFA or charters to do the job. No shit, Sherlock.

...as much as I love TFA and KIPP, their models have an enormous appetite for hard-working, talented, passionate youth--the problem is, there's only so much of that to go around. This tends to create natural limits to their rates of growth....

Race To The Top And Other Horrors Of The Reform Agenda

I am not going to give a list of finalists for the RTTT nonsense because it turns my stomach.

I also don't want to hear from any more TFA grads that they are committed to education.

Nor do I want to hear from Arne Duncan about how poverty is going to be ignored by this administration.

I don't want to see public schools turned into marketplaces either, especially for those inclined to call themselves "Education Entrepreneurs."

Poverty is the disease.  Public schools do not have the cure; they are a symptom.

It Was Coercion, Not A Pledge

Arne Duncan didn't make states pledge to open more charter schools in order to get RTTT funds, he just coerced them, as pointed out by Valerie Strauss:

Correction on Ed Dept and charters

The Education Department’s press secretary e-mailed me to say that I was wrong when I wrote in a recent post that states wishing to win federal money in Duncan’s Race to the Top contest “had to pledge” to open more charter schools.

The spokesman, Justin Hamilton, said that the department did not require states to make such a pledge.

Hamilton is right. My mistake.

Education Secretary Arne Duncan did not ask states to “pledge” -- which is literally “a solemn promise or agreement to do” -- to open more charter schools.

Duncan has, of course, said that states that did not agree to open more charters would be at a disadvantage in the $4 billion competition. He wrote the following last year in an article published by The Washington Post, entited "Education Reform's Moon Shot:"

“The Race to the Top program marks a new federal partnership in education reform with states, districts and unions to accelerate change and boost achievement. Yet the program is also a competition through which states can increase or decrease their odds of winning federal support. For example, states that limit alternative routes to certification for teachers and principals, or cap the number of charter schools, will be at a competitive disadvantage.”

Thursday Bonus Cartoon Fun: Race To The Top Edition

Learning First Alliance Says No To ESEA

From Public School Insights:

Yesterday, the Learning First Alliance, which sponsors this site, released the following statement on competitive grant programs:

The Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA) has been a critical instrument in the federal government’s efforts to promote equity in education. The Learning First Alliance (LFA) believes equity must remain a non-negotiable goal of ESEA reauthorization. We applaud the Obama Administration’s proposal to increase federal resources for public schools in 2011. But we urge Congress to avoid provisions that could undermine, rather than support, equity.

For this reason, ESEA should not divert substantial federal resources into competitive grant programs. This strategy threatens to penalize low-income children in school districts that lack the capacity to prepare effective grant proposals. It risks deepening the disparities between rich and poor districts, effectively denying resources to the students who need them most.

Those who propose the competitive grants have good intentions, but too much focus on such grants might make the rich richer and the poor poorer. Small, rural districts can't generally afford grant writers. Foundations might be able to help in some cases, but they might also put themselves in the awkward position of essentially choosing the winners and losers.

We must be very careful never to visit the sins (or disadvantages) of the fathers upon the children. That's a very real danger if we tip the balance too far in favor of competitive grants. When the adults don't win grants, it's the children who lose out.

Race To The Top = Blackmail

A well deserved slam from FDL

Race to the Top just announced their first two grant winners, Tennessee and Delaware, yesterday.

I hope we can be honest about what this actually represents: blackmail. It forces states to change their education laws to fit particular notions about how to manage public education in America. And it does so at a time of crippling state budgets, when the Race to the Top funds mean the difference between thousands of teachers laid off or kept on the job, between class sizes expanding or shrinking. Basically, Arne Duncan and the White House are leveraging crisis to make preferred changes in education policy.

And let’s be very clear about this: the changes sought are entirely at the discretion of Arne Duncan and the Education Department. These changes include ideas typically advanced by “reformers” like charter schools, merit pay for teachers and many other “market solutions” for education. You can agree with these ideas or not; I’ve heard arguments on both sides, and it’s important to note that teacher’s unions largely agreed with the changes in Tennessee’s policies that draw the Race to the Top grant. And let’s not be naive in thinking that the federal government doesn’t leverage public money to garner preferred policies in the states all the time – that’s basically how the speed limit works.

But the metrics for winning these stimulus funds comes down to “what Arne Duncan likes about education policy.” I don’t think he’s somehow all-knowing about it, or has access to the best policy prescriptions for every school district in America. The data is not conclusive about the effects of charter schools, or merit pay, or test measurement, or any of the jumble of new ideas in the education sector. It’s just not, no matter what anyone on either side tells you. We could be experiencing “declines” relative to the rest of the world on education based purely by cultural factors and more funding for education in developing nations in Asia and elsewhere. I don’t believe we have the kind of “comparative effectiveness research” to cement that certain kinds of learning environments or school structures beat others; given all the variables, I don’t know that we ever will.

What we do know is that only one side of this debate is withholding funding until their preferred policy prescriptions are enacted. And they’re doing it at a time when the biggest obstacle to education in America in the near-term can be measured in dollars and cents. Giant budget shortfalls in the states mean layoffs for teachers and worse opportunities for students, whether your state has a cap on charter schools or not. The compassionate education policy at this time is not to shock-doctrine states into changing their ways, but in allowing them the means to survive and not fail a generation of students.

The Obama Administration wants to extend the Race to the Top program for the 2011 budget. And that’s their prerogative. But let’s not pretend that’s a decision entirely borne out of a desire for students to reach their educational goals. No, that would look more like giving schools what they need to maintain their current effort.

h/t JH

"Reason" Not An Administration Value

Over at The Answer Sheet, Valerie Strauss kicks Duncan and Obama, deservedly, in the teeth:

...
Duncan uses a lot of jargon too, but it is easy to understand what he is trying to do with education: expand charter schools, increase student standardized testing, link teacher pay to test scores and close down the nation’s lowest-performing schools.

Unfortunately, what is not easy to understand is why President Obama's education secretary is pushing those initiatives. This administration was supposed to bring some reason back into education reform after the failed era of No Child Left Behind.

But from the looks of it, Secretary Duncan may be taking on a race to somewhere even worse.

...

Mike Rose On RTTT: It's Just So Disheartening

Mike Rose questions RTTT:

Race to the Top of What?, Part II

The results of the first round of competition for Race to the Top funds came in last week, and my home state of California wasn’t one of the lucky 16. This failure has caused much consternation. After all, Secretary of Education Arne Duncan paid special attention to California, and Governor Schwarzenegger and the legislature engaged in serious political wrangling to clear the way: we removed our cap on charter schools and removed the firewall between teacher evaluation and student test scores. Secretary Duncan praised these moves. Yet we didn’t make the cut. Some states that didn’t go as far (like New York and Kentucky) were among the early winners. God knows how the decision was made, though that will be revealed in April – presumably not April 1. So California policy makers are trying to decipher the tea leaves to gear up for the next competition.

It was interesting to read the commentaries that followed the decision. Lots of puzzling and head-scratching – both in California and elsewhere – and some finger pointing: mostly at teachers unions and recalcitrant districts that didn’t sign onto the state’s plan. But I didn’t read any commentaries that raised more basic questions.

I don’t for minute want to deny that California (as do the other states) desperately needs the money. And I wish we were still eligible. But this whole “race” business, this fevered competition pitting state against state is public policy madness, a pretty unenlightened way to think about the public good.

Hardly anyone in the mainstream media is pointing out that Race to the Top itself is flawed policy filled with contradiction. The Department of Education stresses the importance of “research-based” and “data-driven” education policy. Yet so much of what it champions – and has been promulgating through the carrot of Race to the Top dollars – is not built on a solid research base. Take charter schools, which the Department characterizes as “engines of innovation.” A number of research studies demonstrates the kind of variability one finds in many public school districts: there’s some good charters, some bad ones, and lots that fall in between. (See Jeffrey Henig’s wonderful Spin Cycle for a balanced summary.)

Or consider the politically popular proposal to link teacher evaluation to student test scores. Again, the research complicates this seemingly straightforward move. As I’ve pointed out in previous blogs, research from a number of sources (including an economist on the President’s Council of Economic Advisors) raises doubts about both the technical aspects as well as the practical outcomes of evaluating teachers through student scores.

Another discordant feature of Race to the Top (and of NCLB before it) is the way it stresses the importance of good teaching while disparaging, even insulting, the current teaching force. The initiative embodies a terribly reductive model of teacher motivation and development, a one-dimensional, punitive one: teachers don’t try hard enough and the way we’ll make them try harder is to tie their professional awards to test scores.

Hand-in-glove with the above is the absence in Race to the Top language of much deep, on-the-ground knowledge of classrooms, of teaching and learning. The thin understanding of the act of teaching and the teaching profession is a case in point.

So, no wonder the results of the Department’s March 4th announcement are confusing. You’ve got a contradictory, flawed policy embodied in a high-prize competition. The Department of Education noted that the decisions were based on a complex point system. Perhaps it will be released in April. That release might clarify the confusion about the awards. Or it might reveal an elaborate machinery of compliance. And remember, it was an elaborate and contradictory machinery of a different sort that characterized NCLB.

Bottom Line: It’s just so disheartening. School boards are faced with further reducing the number of days in school or closing schools to make their budgets. Teachers are getting laid off. Tuition rates are going up in colleges, and colleges are cutting classes. And here we are with our local policy makers arranging and rearranging the bits and pieces of reform around an uncertain racetrack, getting ready for one more sprint to the top.

Morton Kondrake Is A Moron

Mo touts the debunked Sputnik nonsense as well as the school-as-business model. He does not mention Diane Ravitch and her recent conversion from NCLB supporter to NCLB abolitionist. Kondrake is just another tool for big business and the oligarchs.

It has been nearly 30 years since the landmark “A Nation at Risk” report launched the education reform movement and still, as Obama noted last month, American eighth-graders rank ninth in the world on international math tests and 11th in science.

A work force report by the Business Roundtable warned that the U.S. is the only major industrialized country with a younger generation that has a lower level of high school achievement than the older generation and is second to last in college completion.

And, as Obama pointed out Monday speaking to the America’s Promise Alliance, a third of U.S. children fail to graduate from high school — including half of all minority children — condemning most of them to a life of poverty and huge cost to society.

It's the teachers, right? Wrong. Every study ever conducted to see what has had the biggest impact on a child's education points to SES (socio-economic status). Period. There is not one bit of evidence to support the craziness that is RTTT, value-added measures of teacher effectiveness, longer school days/years, more homework or any of the other crap being touted.

We need to do the right thing for our kids. We should teach them how to think, not what to think. This requires students who are ready. Let's make sure they have food, health care, a decent place to live, a job for their parent(s) and teachers who are free to do what they do best--teach.

RTTT Fun With Applications

Rick Hess has a fun post excerpting some of the RTTT application nonsense. What a terrible thing RTTT is, and so full of crap. Here is just one example of what you can find in one of these applications:

• Ohio boasts of its "Simple, yet bold, long-term aspirations." These admirable goals include "a near-100%" high school graduation rate with schools teaching at internationally competitive standards, elimination of achievement gaps, and higher-ed completion rates "that are among the highest in the nation and world." Are reviewers supposed to reward that simple, bold vision...or dismiss it as puffery?

I Get Emails

I got this unsolicited email from Allison who works for Pepsi, I guess.

The problem with her contest to come up with world-changing ideas to fix education is that it perpetuates the notion that there is a fix we can put into schools to rescue "education." Well, that is simply misguided nonsense.

This contest, like RTTT (Race To The Top), pits schools against schools, districts against districts, states against states, and ultimately children against monied interests.

Advertising, branding, marketing and hype are not what America needs. We need clear, concise, precise conversations about some difficult realities that are creating such intractable problems.

Save your contests for the sports bar. Schools and children (not to mention teachers) deserve better.

Hi there,

I’m stopping by to let you know about a program that Pepsi recently launched called the Pepsi Refresh Project, where the company will be giving up to $1.3 million in grants monthly to fresh and new ideas. One category is solely dedicated to education, so I thought this would be something you'd be interested in learning about!

The Pepsi Refresh project is a crowd-sourced granting program where the public submits and votes on ideas, in various categories, that can change the world. Pepsi is investing more than $20 million this year to fund great ideas, big and small, that moves the community forward and allows ideas to turn into reality! They’re looking for people, businesses, and non-profits with ideas that will have a positive impact. Ideas can be submitted monthly. The ideas with the most votes will receive grant funding. Look around your community and think about how you want to change it.

Even more exciting is that Demi Moore and Kevin Bacon are part of the Pepsi Refresh Launch Grant Challenge. They’ve released videos with their ideas to refresh the world and are asking Americans to decide which idea they’d like to see implemented. Take a look at their thoughts on the Pepsi Refresh Facebook page and vote for your favorite: http://bit.ly/bPpqyK

Thanks so much! If you prefer that I not contact you for promotions like this, please let me know and I'll remove you from my outreach list!

-Allison

The Duncan/Obama Eduagenda Starting To Falter?

Louisiana Board Member Quits Over Growing Federal Imprint


One of Gov. Bobby Jindal's appointees to Louisiana's board of education abruptly resigned yesterday in protest over what she says is a troubling federal influence on the state's K-12 policies.

In her resignation letter to the Republican governor, Tammie McDaniel wrote that by serving on the board she was "complicit in supporting federal policies that I genuinely oppose," according to the Associated Press.

Her resignation signals a growing chorus of state officials who are publicly expressing their disenchantment with the K-12 initiatives of the Obama administration.

Louisiana's public schools, led by state Superintendent Paul G. Pastorek, are widely viewed as one of the strongest contenders in the $4 billion federal Race to the Top competition. But McDaniel, a former principal and teacher, fundamentally disagrees with the state's efforts to shape its K-12 policies according to guidelines laid out by the Obama administration in RTTT and other federal initiatives.