The New Network for Public Education

Huck/Konopacki Labor Cartoons

 A new anti-reform education reform movement is taking shape: The Network for Public Education. 

Led by Diane Ravitch, Anthony Cody, Leonie Haimson and other lefty ed reformers, the NPE is calling for an end to privatization schemes; increased funding; assessments that are used to inform instruction, not to penalize schools, students and teachers, among other reforms; community control; teacher autonomy; and a host of other reforms..

As far as reformist movements go, the NPE’s initial platform seems like a reasonable start. However, when examined more closely, it’s hard to tell what the NPE is actually demanding or how it intends to achieve its goals. For example, what do they mean by “democratic control?” One parent, one vote? One teacher, one vote? School Site Councils, (which are essentially advisory and subservient to school boards)? The abolition of school boards (representative democracy) to be replaced by some sort of direct democracy? Workers councils led by employee delegates who are recallable at any time by their colleagues?

Currently, most public schools already have some sort of democratic control (e.g., school site councils, PTAs and elected school boards), but these are heavily influenced by moneyed interests and politics and provide the actual stakeholders (e.g., parents, teachers, students) only nominal influence over decisions that affect students’ learning conditions and teachers’ working conditions.

Similarly, what do they mean by providing resources “that students need” or “equitable funding?” Bringing the poorest schools on par with the wealthiest schools is a pretty mild demand, considering that even the best-funded schools do not have sufficient resources. Creating equity from peanuts just means that all schools receive a paltry share of the peanuts.

Perhaps it would help to set some benchmark goals, like one nurse for every 250 students; class sizes that never exceed 25:1 in the secondary grades and never exceed 15:1 in the elementary grades; free preschool for all, and generous, ample funding, rather than “equity” from the pittances we currently receive. Likewise, how about mandatory wages and benefits that are not only adequate for supporting school employees in the communities where they work, but that are actually generous and allow a degree of luxury and security?

The NPE argues that there should be more emphasis on early childhood education because the achievement gap begins before kindergarten and early childhood education can help mitigate this. However, preschool and Head Start, alone, cannot erase the pre-K achievement gap, because this gap is a direct product of poverty. Will the NPE also fight for programs and initiatives that close the wealth gap and reduce poverty, since this is the number one cause of low student achievement and will continue to hinder children’s academic success, regardless what happens in the classroom?
 
NPE calls for the evaluation of teachers by professionals, not by unreliable test scores, yet they say nothing about who these professional should be. As long as evaluators continue to be site administrators there will be an inherent bias that can lead to good teachers being disciplined or fired and incompetent or corrupt teachers being promoted. These professionals should be highly trained, objective outsiders (ideally teachers, themselves), who evaluate teachers blindly. Furthermore, the evaluations should be used to support professional growth, not to punish teachers for petty infractions or to fire them for being union organizers, student advocates or higher paid veterans.

Lastly, while NPE opposes profiteering off of public education, they have not yet indicated whether they expect this to wither away through voting and protesting, or if they recognize it as an inevitable product of education’s role in capitalism. All the other problems they criticize stem from this relationship. Even without the transfer of tax dollars from public school budgets to private charter schools, tech companies and test and textbook publishers, there will continue to be an incentive by the state to spend as a little as possible on education and keep its employees under tight control (e.g., accountability schemes, limitations on unions and strikes).

Ultimately, even with a more coherent and specific plan, NPE, like all other liberal/reformist initiatives, will at best only be able to reduce the problems they identify with public education, since all of these problems have capitalism, itself, at their root. For example, when teaching is no longer tied to wages, the problem of administrators firing teachers (or giving them bad evaluations) for being union organizers, student advocates or higher paid veterans would cease to exist. There would no longer be a need for high stakes tests, since there would no longer be a motivation for sorting students by ability in order to track them into wage work versus management. Schools could be funded rationally, based on their actual needs, rather than being held hostage to a system designed to make the wealthy even wealthier by reducing social spending to the bare bones. Perhaps most importantly, in addition to practical skills (e.g., critical thinking, reading, writing, math) teachers could start teach what students themselves want to learn, fostering creativity, curiosity and an intrinsic love of learning.

Presidential Debates and Education

In a nutshell: both presidential contenders want more sticks and fewer carrots. Both want more testing and less thinking for students, more privatization,  and more work and weaker unions for teachers.

Obama wants more Race to the Top (RttT), which he has mischaracterized as a grassroots initiative since states write their own grants, with their own reform proposals. However, the Obama administration has made it abundantly clear that states will not receive a penny unless they adopt the Common Core Standards (CCS), continue using high stakes exams for students and make their scores on these exams a major part of teacher evaluations, and significantly increase charter schools.

Considering that virtually every state has had budget deficits over the past three to four years, while cities have seen continuing depressed housing markets and lower property tax revenues, school districts and state departments of education are all desperate for any handouts they can get. Under these circumstances, RttT is really a stick in carrot’s clothing. The federal government has flatly refused to bail the states out of their fiscal crises while, at the same time, exacerbating them by reducing its own contributions to many programs the states and feds had previously funded jointly. A second Obama presidency is unlikely to change any of this.

Obama claimed that his “reforms” have already resulted in academic gains. However, there is no way to prove that his “reforms” had anything to do with the slight increases in test scores seen in some states. Many were already showing improvements in test scores before he took office. Most are still seeing high numbers of schools failing to meet their Adequate Yearly Progress targets under NCLB. According to the Los Angeles Times, Diane Ravitch said that Obama’s RttT has “thus far improved nothing.”

So how would a Romney presidency differ from an Obama one on education?

For teachers and students there would be little change, except probably even less revenue to keep the schools from sinking further. Romney wants to “simplify” the structure of the Department of Education, which likely means shrinking it, as well as its budget. While the feds contribute only a modicum of support for schools, even this would likely dwindle under Romney.

Romney has also criticized Obama’s stimulus plan, but not because it was too little or too weak, which it was. In fact, Obama’s stimulus plan did provide one-time only money to states that helped reduce the number of teachers that had to be laid off. Yet even with the stimulus, California still had to lay off thousands of teachers and many of those it could keep had to be jettisoned once the stimulus funding ran out.

What Romney didn’t like was that some of the token amount of income tax he actually paid to the feds was spent to pay those selfish, lazy teachers to educate the impoverished inner city rabble instead of subsidizing his business investments. Under a Romney presidency, there is virtually no chance of another stimulus, and certainly not one that would fund teacher salaries.

Sci. Am., Do Your Homework

The August issue of Scientific American published an editorial by their board of editors titled, “Stand and Deliver.” In the editorial, they perpetuate the myth that Jaime Escalante was a paragon of teaching who should be emulated across the nation and that this will catapult the U.S. ahead of its trading partners in Science, Technology, Engineering and Math (STEM) education. To their credit, they do argue for increased funding, better professional support, improved social status, and better supplies and equipment for math and science teachers. However, they also replicate the same bad “science” of the Ed Deformers and pundits who blame poor educational outcomes on the quality of teaching, contrary to the data.

Here is my response, published on their website today:

Escalante was no model of good teaching. He verbally abused his students and couldn’t even replicate his own educational “experiment” after moving to Sacramento.¹ Contrary to the myth, he did not convert random low income, math challenged students into calculus stars overnight. Students were recruited and had to spend years and summers taking special classes to prepare for it.² Even with this additional support, students still needed considerable time outside the school day to succeed, with Escalante holding unpaid clinics on weekends and after school.

Also, the Escalante model is not sustainable. Teachers are not paid well for the hours they are contracted to work and most already put in considerable extra unpaid hours preparing lessons, and tutoring. Expecting them to give up evenings and weekends is unreasonable.

U.S. students do perform poorly compared with peers in many developed nations. However, the reason is that we have the highest rate of childhood poverty of any industrialized nation. Over 20% of U.S. children are poor, compared with less than 4% in Finland. Our middle class students outscore students in nearly every other country.³

Poor children are more likely to suffer low birth weights and malnutrition, which lead to cognitive impairment and learning disabilities. Iron-deficiency anemia is twice as common among poor children.⁴ 10% of poor students have dangerous levels of lead in their blood, which can impair intelligence.⁵ Lack of healthcare causes poor children to be absent 40% more often than affluent kids.⁶ In one study, high school drop-outs averaged 27.6 absences per year, while graduates averaged only 11.8.⁷ Likewise, 41% of students who changed schools frequently were below grade level in reading and 33% were below grade level in math, compared to 26% and 17% for those who remained at the same schools.⁸

The achievement gap is already in place well before children have even started school. Cognitive scores of children entering kindergarten were 60% higher for affluent kids than for those in the lowest income group.⁹ Similar results have been observed among children as young as three.¹⁰ 

Better tools, higher pay and greater support are necessary to attract and retain the best teachers. However, as long as we ignore the socioeconomic factors that contribute to academic success, we will continue to see poor educational outcomes compared with other developed nations. Indeed, even conservative researcher Eric Hanushek believes that only 10% of student achievement is attributable to their teachers, while Dana Goldhaber attributes 60% of student achievement to factors outside of school, like family and income.¹¹

¹Pyle, Amy. 1998. “Escalante’s Formula Not Always the Answer.” Los Angeles Times, May 4.

²Jesness, Jerry. 2002. “Stand and Deliver.” Reason, July.

³Krashen, Stephen, Ph.D. 2011. “USA Today Gets It Wrong.” Schools Matter, July 18.

⁴Brooks-Gunn, Jeanne, and Duncan, Greg J. 1997. “The Effects of Poverty on Children.” Children and Poverty, Vol. 7, Number 2, Summer/Fall

 ⁵CDC Lead  Prevention

⁶ Rothstein, R. (2002) Out of Balance: Our Understanding of How Schools Affect Society and How Society Affects Schools, the Spencer Foundation.

⁷Alexander, K.L., Entwisle, D. R., and Kabbani, N. 2001. “The Dropout Process in Life Course Perspective: Early Risk Factors at Home and School.” Teachers College Record.

⁸Barton, P. E. 2003. “Parsing the Achievement Gap.” Educational Testing Service.

⁹Burkham, D. and Lee, V. 2002. “Inequality at the Starting Gate: Social Background Differences in Achievement as Children Begin School.” Economic Policy Institute, September 1.

¹⁰Hart, B., and Risely, T.R. 1995. “Meaningful Differences in the Everyday Experience of Young American Children.” Strategies for Children.org.

¹¹Ravitch, Diane. 2011. “The Myth of Charter Schools.” The New York Review of Books, January 13.

10 Things Charter Schools Don't Want You To Know (About How lousy they really Are)

Here is an amazing reposting from Chaz' School Daze, of an article originally published yesterday, in the Wall Street Journal, by Sarah Morgan.

The Things That Charter Schools And Their Supporters Don't Want The General Public To Know.

Now that the unqualified Cathie Black is expected to become Chancellor on January 3rd we can expect her to follow in the footsteps of Joel Klein and be a strong supporter of the ever increasing Charter Schools as an alternative to the local public schools. This means more neighborhood schools will have reduced funding as Tweed allocates more of their scarce resources to the Charter Schools at the Public school's expense. What is very interesting are that Charter Schools have very serious problems that they hide from the general public. Some quite serious and are ignored by the pro-Charter School education reformers. Let's look at some of these issues closeup. A must read is what Smart Money published, an Article called "10 Things Charter Schools Won't Tell You". Many of the statistics come from the article.

1.Many Teachers Are Inexperienced And Not Certified:

Believe it or not, many teachers who are offered teaching positions in Charter Schools are not certified. Furthermore, once they achieve certification they leave for the local school district teaching positions.

According to data from the National Center for Education Statistics, charter school teachers are, on average, younger and less likely to hold state certification than teachers in traditional public schools. In a 2000 survey, 92% of public school teachers held state certification, compared to 79% of charter school teachers. A 2008 survey found that 32% of charter school teachers were under the age of 30, compared to 17% of traditional public school teachers. Charter schools often recruit from organizations like Teach for America that provide non-traditional paths into the profession and are known as the "two year wonders" because they do their two year obligation and leave., More-experienced teachers who already have jobs in traditional public schools may have little incentive to give up the protection of tenure, pension, and health benefits to work in a Charter School.

Relying on relatively untrained, inexperienced staff may have a real impact in the classroom. “A lot of them don’t have classroom management skills,” says May Taliaferrow, a charter-school parent.

2. Large And Constant Teacher Turnover:

Another fact deliberately ignored by the pro-Charter School reformers is the high teacher turnover in most Charter Schools. In some cases the entire teaching staff could turnover within a five year period!

As many as one in four charter school teachers leave every year, according to a 2007 study by Gary Miron, a professor of education at Western Michigan University, and other researchers at the Great Lakes Center for Education Research and Practice. That’s about double the typical teacher turnover rate in traditional public schools. Charter schools typically pay teachers less than traditional public schools do, and require longer hours, Miron says. Meanwhile, charter school administrators earn more than their school-district counterparts, which can also make teachers feel underpaid, he says. The odds of a teacher leaving the profession altogether are 130% higher at charter schools than traditional public schools, according to a 2010 study by the National Center on School Choice at Vanderbilt University. That study also found that much of this teacher attrition was related to dissatisfaction with working conditions.

3. Charter Schools Are Always Trying To Skim The Best Students And Will Advertise For These Students:

The Charter Schools will do just about anything to get "good students" to go to their school and will send out flyers to the parents of these students to get them to attend their school.

Walking around New York City, it’s impossible to miss the ads on buses and subways for the Harlem Success academies, Haimson says. The school is legally required to reach out to at-risk students, and it has been opening new schools over the past couple of years. However, some schools elsewhere have gone beyond marketing. A charter school in Colorado gave out gift cards to families that recruited new students, and another school in Louisiana gave out cash.

4. Charter Schools Discourage Students With Disabilities & English Language Learners From Applying:

Another well-kept secret is that the Charter Schools don't want students with disabilities, discipline problems, attendance issues, or English language learners.

Six-year-old Makala was throwing regular tantrums in school, so her mother, Latrina Miley, took her for a psychiatric evaluation, eventually ending up with a district-mandated plan that stated the girl should be taught in a smaller class where half the students have special needs. The charter school’s response, Miley says, was to tell her she could either change her daughter’s educational plan, or change schools. She moved Makala to a nearby public school – where, she says, teachers have been more effective at managing her daughter’s behavior issues. The school says it can’t talk about specific cases.

Critics say charter schools commonly “counsel out” children with disabilities. While a few charter schools are specifically designed to serve students with special needs, the rest tend to have lower proportions of students with special needs than nearby public schools, according to a review of multiple studies conducted by the University of Colorado’s Education and the Public Interest Center. Charter schools also appear to end up with students whose disabilities are less expensive to manage than those of public school students. A Boston study, conducted by the Massachusetts Teachers Association, found that 91% of students with disabilities in the city’s charter schools were able to be fully included in standard classrooms, compared to only 33% of students with disabilities in the traditional public schools.

5. The Charter Schools counsel out students who struggle Academically:

To keep up with the propaganda that Charter Schools have a greater percentage of graduates than the local public school, the Charter Schools counsel out low-preforming students so that they do not count in the percentages.

For all the hype about a few standout schools, charter schools in general are not producing better results than traditional public schools. A national study by the Center for Research on Education Outcomes at Stanford found that while 17% of charter schools produced better results than neighborhood public schools, 37% were significantly worse, and the rest were no different. (Not that public schools are perfect, as many parents know.

A host of other studies on charter school outcomes have come up with sometimes contradictory results. As with traditional public schools, there are great charters – and some that are not so great. “There’s a lot of variation within charter schools,” points out Katrina Bulkley, an associate professor of education at Montclair State University who studies issues related to school governance. “In fairness to organizations that are running high-performing schools, many of them are very frustrated with the range of quality, because they feel that it taints charter schools as a whole,” Bulkley says.

6. Charter Schools Do Not Preform Any Better Than Public Schools:
Despite the propaganda by the pro-Charter School supporters that the Charter Schools provides better educational opportunities, the reality is quite different.
For all the hype about a few standout schools, charter schools in general are not producing better results than traditional public schools. A national study by the Center for Research on Education Outcomes at Stanford found that while 17% of charter schools produced better results than neighborhood public schools, 37% were significantly worse, and the rest were no different. (Not that public schools are perfect, as many parents know.

A host of other studies on charter school outcomes have come up with sometimes contradictory results. As with traditional public schools, there are great charters – and some that are not so great. “There’s a lot of variation within charter schools,” points out Katrina Bulkley, an associate professor of education at Montclair State University who studies issues related to school governance. “In fairness to organizations that are running high-performing schools, many of them are very frustrated with the range of quality, because they feel that it taints charter schools as a whole,” Bulkley says.

7. Where Does The Money Come & Go?:

Unlike public schools where all the money has to be accounted for, the Charter School funding can be a mystery.

An investigation by Philadelphia’s City Controller earlier this year uncovered widespread financial mismanagement among the city’s charter schools, including undisclosed “related party” transactions where friends and family of school management were paid for various services, people listed as working full time at more than one school, individuals writing checks to themselves, and even a $30,000 bill from a beach resort charged to a school.

Financial scandals have come to light in schools around the country, but what’s more troubling, says advocate Leonie Haimson of Class Size Matters in New York City, is that charter schools have opposed state audits of their finances. The New York Charter School Association won a lawsuit against the state comptroller last year, with the court ruling that the legislature had violated the state constitution when it directed the comptroller to audit charter schools. Charter schools in the state are already overseen and audited by at least two other agencies, Murphy says. “We have never objected to being audited, being overseen, and being held accountable. In fact, this organization has come out in favor of closing low-performing charter schools,” he says.

Walking around New York City, it’s impossible to miss the ads on buses and subways for the Harlem Success academies, Haimson says. The school is legally required to reach out to at-risk students, and it has been opening new schools over the past couple of years. However, some schools elsewhere have gone beyond marketing. A charter school in Colorado gave out gift cards to families that recruited new students, and another school in Louisiana gave out cash. Talking about bribing?

Are Charter Schools really better than the neighborhood public schools? No they are not.

Merit Pay Does NOT Work

See the following snippet from Diane Ravitch's blog: Merit Pay Fails Another Test

Few people realize that merit pay schemes have been tried again and again since the 1920s.

Belief in them waxes and wanes, but the results have never been robust.

Now we have the findings of the most thorough trial of teacher merit pay, conducted by first-rate economists at Vanderbilt University's National Center for Performance Incentives. Many people expected that this trial would show positive results because the bonus for getting higher scores was so large: Teachers in the treatment group could get up to $15,000 for higher scores.

After a three-year trial, the researchers concluded that the teachers in the treatment group did not get better results than those in the control group, who were not in line to get a bonus. There was a gain for 5th graders in the treatment group, but it washed out in 6th grade.

Bottom line: Merit pay made no difference. Teachers were working as hard as they knew how, whether for a bonus or not.