Jersey Jazzman

Philadelphia Superintendent Hite: Extortionist

2013-05-22T15:59:00.001-07:00

William Hite, Philadelphia's latest superintendent, wants more money for the city's schools. And he figures the only way he can get it is to sell out his teachers:

William R. Hite Jr. knows it's a tough ask: $120 million from a state that historically views Philadelphia and its public schools "as a cesspool."

So, the superintendent figures, the only way the nearly-broke Philadelphia School District is getting the cash it needs from state coffers is to end teacher seniority.

"If we stand any chance to get money from Harrisburg, it's going to have to support something that is different from what we have now," Hite told the Inquirer Editorial Board on Thursday, adding that legislators are unlikely to support a system where "individuals get another increase just because they're remaining on the job another year." [emphasis mine]

First of all, if the teachers in Philly did give up their seniority, and Hite got all that money, how much was he planning on giving to the teachers? Because it seems to me that if their acquiescence is all that's required, they should get it all.

Think that'll happen?

Second: on behalf of Philly's teachers, I challenge Dr. Hite to present any compelling evidence whatsoever that ending seniority improves student outcomes. Just about every developed country uses seniority in its school staffing and/or compensation decisions. Eliminating seniority probably wouldn't save much money, and the unforeseen consequences may be severe, especially given how imprecise "quality-based" layoffs would be.

The truth is that Hite and Harrisburg want to end seniority not because that policy has been shown to improve student achievement; they want to end seniority because they want to dump their failures on to teachers.

The conservatives running the state have failed to provide the children of Philadelphia with the resources necessary to the run the schools; they have also failed to provide the housing, health care, public safety, economic development, and other infrastructures necessary to ensure that the city's young can grow up to lead productive lives.

They've failed because they are the puppets of a ruling class that has subverted the political system to its own ends. Governor Tom Corbett pushed Pennsylvania to spend more on prisons than on higher education. The state has led the way in expanding the growth of for-profit cyber-charters, which have been a fiscal and educational train wreck. Edu-pirates like Vahan Gureghian have paid for the campaigns of Corbett and his fellow conservative travelers; in return, they have abdicated their oversight responsibilities, allowing Gureghian to become a very rich man at the expense of the poorest children in the state.

But even worse: these politicians have refused to address the chronic poverty, immoral inequality, and regressive taxation that has crippled the Keystone State:

To be fair: Pennsylvania isn't alone. This pattern is to be found all across America: the working poor and middle class are working harder, making less, and paying more in taxes. Meanwhile, the plutocrats - like Eli Broad - spend their money training urban superintendents - like William Hite - to come into large cities and blame the shameful lot of their poor children on teacher seniority. Incredibly, they make the case that fixing all of their failures are not nearly as eliminating LIFO.

Of course, the nice thing about being a lackey to the rich is that you're never asked to sacrifice either:

IT'S NO secret that the School District of Philadelphia is facing its own fiscal cliff.

The district asked its blue-collar union to forgo wage increases and give back money to the district last summer as school closures loomed. Just two weeks ago, district officials were forced to borrow another $300 million from Wall Street to pay its bills.

So, why is the district giving out pay raises to certain groups?

The grumblings among district workers began to rise this month when word leaked that 25 nonunion employees had received salary increases since the summer.

"The environment is so negative right now. They might be sitting next to someone who got a raise," said one employee who works at district headquarters, speaking on condition of anonymity. "It doesn't do well for morale right now."

The beneficiaries of the $311,351 in increases, which average $12,454 per year, work primarily in information technology, human resources, finance and grants, and compliance. [emphasis mine]

Hite's plea for teachers to give up their hard-fought workplace protections would have a lot more credence if his central office was sharing in the pain. But that's not how the Broad-funded world of big city education works these days. The little money that these districts get flows away from the classroom and towards hacky consultants, petty bureaucrats, and incompetent "researchers" (trust me, if anyone knows about this, it's us New Jerseyans).

So even if Hite's faustian bargain was legitimate, and more money would come to Philly if teachers gave up their seniority protections, there's no guarantee that the money would wind up going to any part of the budget that would actually help kids.

If Hite wants to make his case against seniority, let him make it. But demanding that teachers cave to his demands in exchange for adequate school funding is extortion. Philadelphia's teachers have already shown they aren't going to take this crap lying down. The rest of us need to tell them we've got their backs while they continue to stand up to these bullies.

Billy Hite is our kind of guy!

Great Moments In White People Cluelessness

2013-05-21T15:48:00.000-07:00

From Matt Kramer, Co-CEO of Teach For America:

As white person, I thk role of white ppl in ed reform is a fair Q. But, I believe answer lies in allyship, not abdicating responsibility.

So please don't get so upset, black parents, when Matt sends privileged, young, white, untrained, unqualified, uncommitted "teachers" into your children's schools, even as TFA racks up a billion dollars and shoves career teachers out on to the street.

After all, he's willing to admit it's "fair" to talk about race - just so long as you agree to engage in "allyship" with him. Golly, aren't you lucky?

Once again, I am reminded of a quote from a local resident regarding the state of the schools in Newark, NJ:

“The foundations are interfering with public education and dividing our community,” says Cassandra Dock, a local resident. “Leave us alone. We don’t want white people coming in here and doing what they do — taking over. Destroy and leave.” [emphasis mine]

Ouch.

(h/t the great EduShyster)

Charter Schools = Wingnut Welfare

2013-05-21T13:02:00.001-07:00

No one who reads this blog will be at all surprised by this:

Last year, I wrote about fake Democrat Cody Bailey who had his ass handed to him by now-State Representative David Knezek. Bailey barely beat a candidate in the Democratic primary who didn’t even run a campaign and got his clock cleaned by Knezek. As I outlined in my expose, Bailey was anything but a Democrat and ran one of the sleaziest, most fact-challenged campaigns in my experience.

Imagine my (non) surprise to discover this week that Bailey, at the tender age of 22, is now the president of the Taylor Preparatory High School in ~~Grand Rapids~~ Taylor, a for-profit charter high school that opens in the fall. What qualifies Bailey to be the president of an educational institution with a lofty mission of being “a bridge to a life well lived” for high schoolers? In a word (well, two words): not much. [emphasis mine]

That's right, folks: Michigan didn't have enough money (until the last minute) to keep the public schools in Buena Vista running, but they can support a charter school run by a 22-year-old with no education training.

When Bailey ran for the Michigan statehouse, he was endorsed by StudentsFirst: that made him one of only 15 non-Republicans SF supported out of a total of 105 candidates in that cycle. After reading Bailey's story, I can't help but wonder how many of those 15 were also stealth conservatives, running as Democrats because it was the only way they could win in their districts.

Well, Bailey did his part to support Republican Governor Rick Snyder's assault on public education, and now he gets his reward: his very own charter school. What do you think the prospects are for Taylor Prep's "success"? Yeah, me too...

Mark my words: this wasn't the first, and it won't be the last time a political hack is "rewarded" this way for his fealty to the privatization cause. Charter schools are a great way to pay off cronies and fellow travelers. State education departments, if they aren't already, will soon become the new Tammany Halls, where any incompetent "reformer" can run his own school - as long as he plays for the right team.

Everybody gets a taste...

Nobody Likes Public School Destroyers

2013-05-21T04:40:00.002-07:00

Maybe he thought they were going to lay palms at his feet?

No one booed.

But the graduates of Millersville University didn't exactly cheer Gov. Tom Corbett either Saturday.

In introducing Corbett as the class of 2013's commencement speaker, Michael Warfel, chairman of the Council of Trustees, explained the difficult fiscal conditions the governor has faced, highlighting the state's looming pension crisis. He noted that Corbett has signed two budgets on time.

Warfel didn't mention education funding.

That has been a major cause of contention on campus since Corbett was announced as the speaker. Students and faculty questioned how approprate it was for the governor who twice proposed massive funding cuts for state universities like Millersville to send graduates off into the world. Petitions were signed and there was talk of protest.

As Corbett stepped to the microphone, about a dozen students turned their chairs away from the stage. Early in his speech, the governor asked the graduates to stand. A few dozen more remained seated. When it became clear Corbett wanted them to wave to their parents in the stadium, some stood, some waved from their seats, some sat motionless. One student had "Game of Loans" written on her mortarboard.

About half of the faculty members wore yellow pins reading "I support public education." A few of the professors turned their chairs as well.

The black armband protest that had been discussed on campus in the days and weeks leading up to graduation did not appear to materialize.

Cobrett's speech itself was a generic May recitation. [emphasis mine]

An empty speech from an empty man - no surprise. Corbett has been terrible, not only for Philadelphia, but for the entire state. He took piles of money from edu-pirate Vahan Gureghian, then turned a blind eye as Gureghian destroyed Chester's schools. He's allowed cyber-charters to fester across Pennsylvania, costing the taxpayers millions and children their educations. His legacy is an approval rating that's in the toilet.

And yet corporatist governors around the country - Republican and Democratic alike - seem to think the money they get from plutocrats will offset the voters' growing disgust with the anti-public school agenda. They're hoping against hope that Chris Christie is the rule, and not the exception.

Take it from a Jersey boy, folks: if Superstorm Sandy hadn't hit, Christie would be in trouble, and we'd have a contested Democratic primary to decide who gets to go after him. Christie's re-elect numbers were 44 percent before the storm; they're 71 percent after. Why were they so bad before? Because everyone was tired of his anti-teacher, anti-public schools schtick.

I suppose Corbett could hope he gets his own natural disaster...

Trust me, Tom: you need a superstorm to save you!

God Bless Oklahoma

2013-05-20T18:45:00.000-07:00

Any time a school is slammed by tragedy, we all feel a special, terrible pain.

Stay safe, everyone. Posting resumes tomorrow.

Bloomberg Blows Up the Reformy Argument

2013-05-20T14:57:00.000-07:00

When the mayor of Reformytown admits one of the fundamental arguments of the corporate reformers is wrong, that's news:

Some advice from career counselor Mayor Bloomberg: If you are a so-so high school student, steer clear of college — and learn to clear clogged drains.

Bloomberg said on his weekly radio show Friday that going to trade school to become a plumber is a better economic bet for many teenagers than obtaining an undergraduate degree.

“The people who are going to have the biggest problem are college graduates who aren’t rocket scientists, if you will, not at the top of their class,” he said.

Oh, my - there are more than a few of Bloomberg's compatriots who wouldn't agree with that sentiment. Start (all emphases mine) with SecEd Arne Duncan:

In today's global economy a college education is no longer just a privilege for some, but rather a prerequisite for all. In the last year, 60% of jobs went to those with at least a bachelor's degree, and 90 percent to those with at least some college. Over the next decade, as many as two-thirds of all new jobs will require education beyond high school. Along with Vice President Biden and other senior Department of Education and Administration leaders, we have held town hall discussions around the country to stress the importance of higher education. We want to make sure that all students - regardless of income, race, or background - have the opportunity to cross the finish line.

Joel Klein:

From 1960 to 1980, our supply of college graduates increased at almost 4 percent a year; since then, the increase has been about half as fast. The net effect is that we’re rapidly moving toward two Americas—a wealthy elite, and an increasingly large underclass that lacks the skills to succeed.

Geoffrey Canada:

The only benchmark of success is college graduation. That's the only one: How many kids you got in college, how many kids you got out. Everything else is interim.

The Gates Foundation:

A college education is the gateway to the American middle class, with college graduates earning substantially more than those without a degree. But low-income students are 28% less likely to finish college than those in higher income brackets, and the education gap is widening.

Barack Obama:

President Barack Obama's assistant secretary for postsecondary education told higher education leaders gathered in Boulder on Wednesday that the country is slipping in the proportion of people with college degrees and losing its competitive edge globally.

The United States has slipped from first to ninth when it comes to the number of 24- to 29-year-olds with postsecondary degrees, said Eduardo Ochoa, a top official with the U.S. Department of Education.

Ochoa was a guest speaker at the St. Julien Hotel & Spa, addressing the higher education officials convened for the 58th annual meeting of the State Higher Education Executive Officers.

Ochoa said that Obama has outlined a goal to increase the number of Americans with postsecondary degrees from 40 percent to 60 percent by 2020.

Looks like the rest of the reformy world is out of step with the reformiest mayor in America. The truth is that Bloomberg is on to something - he just doesn't go far enough.

Rational people understand that not everyone should go to college; there are plenty of other ways talented people can have careers without earning degrees. The problem for most workers these days, however - college-educated or not - is that their wages have stagnated while America's productivity has increased.

The culprits responsible for this sate of affairs are the wealthy plutocrats - like Bloomberg - who have set up a system where nearly all the productivity gains are concentrated in the earnings of the wealthy. So it doesn't matter whether someone goes to college or becomes a plumber: no matter their career choice, they are less and less likely to have a decent middle-class life.

Further, Bloomberg and the college-pushers never want to talk about the millions of workers in America who are doing low-skill but necessary jobs while living what most other advanced countries would call an unacceptably squalid lifestyle. We need salesclerks and bricklayers and truck drivers and nurses aides and landscapers and food service workers and farmhands and all sorts of other workers. Yet these people are living paycheck-to-paycheck, with no health or dental care, little time or money for recreation, and no chance for a dignified retirement.

It's an immoral situation - and it has nothing to do with our education system. We can't continue to exploit the hard labor of millions of our fellow Americans, and then declaim that the problem is they aren't "college or career ready," when we need these people to do these jobs.

"College or career ready" is a favorite expression of Common Core guru and potty mouth David Coleman. I have to wonder: who cuts his lawn? Who pumps his gas? Who washes his dishes when he goes out to eat? Who picks his lettuce? Who will empty his bedpan when he's in a hospice bed taking his final breaths? Will Coleman's proselytizing of the Common Core gospel do anything to help the workers he relies on every day?

Those people are our fellow Americans, and they are doing necessary work. Yet no one in our little education passion plays these days ever acknowledges that this country wouldn't survive without them. And no one wants to admit that focusing on education "reform" won't do a damn thing to stop their exploitation.

I'm all for changing the system to a real meritocracy, where everyone gets access to high-quality education at the earliest age, and access to college is available cheaply to all who have the talent and the desire. I think it's fundamentally unfair that Bill Gates's and Mike Bloomberg's kids get to go to schools with small class sizes and lots of extra-curriculars, setting them up for elite college admission, while the working poor continue to send their children to testing factories disguised as schools that set them up to remain in the proletariat.

But arguing about whether college is the path to the middle class or not is a distraction. The real issue is that work of all types - professional, skilled, and unskilled - is being devalued because Gates and Bloomberg and their ilk have set up a system where the vast money of the money flows to them. Charter school expansion and the Common Core won't change that.

Making people like Bloomberg and Gates finally start paying their fair share in taxes and breaking up the monopolies in the media, however, just might.

Instead of going to college, I should have been a cowboy!

Latest "Chiefs For Change" Fail: Bowen in ME #2

2013-05-18T13:09:00.000-07:00

I just posted about Maine "Chief For Change," Stephen Bowen, and how he's had to back off on plans - written by his patron, Jeb! Bush - to fast-track for-profit virtual charter schools into the state.

Before we move on to another state and another CFC Fail, however, let's take a moment to enjoy the twisted logic of Commissioner Bowen:

Second, the Press Herald seems to feel that the new A-F grading system suffers from a fatal flaw because it does not discriminate between schools in more affluent areas of the state and those in less affluent areas. The paper seems to suggest that the department should have developed a grading system with one set of performance standards for wealthy areas and a second, presumably lower, set of standards for poorer areas.

Developing such a two-tier system was never a consideration for the administration, however, for the simple reason that we don't share the Press Herald's view that students in less affluent communities are necessarily destined, by virtue of where they live, to struggle in school.

There is, of course, a correlation, well supported in the research and illustrated by the grading system, between the income and education levels of families and the academic achievement of their children. There are also plenty of examples, however, in Maine and across the nation, of schools in very poor communities achieving extraordinary results for the students they serve.

All the negative press about how the new grading system is unfair to poor communities ignores the fact that a number of schools in poor communities across Maine earned an A or B in our grading system. Nearly 80 percent of the students attending Phillips Elementary School, for instance, qualify for free or reduced-price school lunch, yet the school earned an A for its students' high achievement. [emphasis mine]

There are layers and layers of reformy illogic to dig through here:

- If the correlation between income and education levels is "illustrated by the grading system,"how can you say for sure you're measuring school effectiveness, and not poverty levels?

Here's a tool that shows the correlation between student poverty and Maine's school grading system. The high school results:

And the elementaries (annotation mine):

It appears that Maine's school grades are strongly correlated to poverty levels for those schools.

We've seen this before:

There is a reason why over 97 percent of Florida’s lowest-poverty schools receive A or B grades, and virtually every one of the schools receiving a D or F have poverty rates above the median. It’s because schools are judged largely by absolute performance, and students from higher-income families tend to score higher on tests.

Same thing in Ohio. And Indiana (outstanding work here, as always, by Matt DiCarlo).

I suppose Bowen would argue that, because the Maine school evaluation system uses both "growth" and "absolute performance" to judge schools, it wouldn't have as strong a correlation between poverty and performance. We'll leave aside the fact that there is substantial evidence that there is a correlation between poverty and "growth" (contrary to the statements of Bowen's fellow CFC, New Jersey's Chris Cerf); the problem remains the same:

If you aren't judging schools on absolute performance to begin with, aren't you in effect admitting high-poverty schools should be judged differently than low-poverty schools?

- Outliers are not proof that causation doesn't exist. This is one of the greatest hits of reformy types like the CFCs, and it needs to be put down once and for all: the existence of an outlier does not disprove a causal effect between two variables. For example:

There is a correlation between between smoking and cancer rates.
But there are some people who smoke and don't get cancer.
Therefore, smoking doesn't "cause" cancer.

Yes, we hear it all the time from the reformy side: "correlation is not causation." But you can't just throw away mounds of inferential evidence because you found a few outliers; that's irresponsible and irrational. Even if Phillips Elementary appears to "beat the odds," that's no reason to believe that Bowen's A-F school grading system isn't biased.

Further, if you're going to investigate why an outlier outperforms its expectations, you have to be rigorous; you can't just say, "They're awesome!" and be done with it. Phillips Elementary does, indeed, do better than the school grading trend-line - the question is "how?" Is it really a superior school? Or is this the result of statistical noise or bias? Is the data used for grading not accurate or precise enough?

Bowen doesn't want to venture a guess, but maybe he should take a look at the school's demographic profile:

Special Education: 13.64%
(State Average Demographics, Grades K-8 Special Education: 13.9%)

Free/Reduced-Price Lunch: 70.7%
(State Average Demographics, Grades K-8 Free/Reduced-Price Lunch: 48.72%)

Limited English Proficiency: 0%
(State Average Demographics, Grades K-8 Limited English Proficiency: 2.15%)

Location: Phillips, Maine
Enrollment: 154

So, yes, Phillips has more kids in poverty than the average for Maine, but no kids who are LEP. And it's a tiny school - 154 kids for grades K through 8. A population that small - a school that had 13 Eighth Grade students in 2010-11 - could easily be subject to significant swings in test scores year-to-year.

Again: how did Phillips get a good grade in spite of it's large FRPL population? What can be learned here that can be broadly applied across the state? Unless and until Bowen is prepared to give a serious answer, he ought not to be holding up any outlier as proof that his school grading system is fair.

- There is very little evidence that an A-F grading system will help "failing" schools improve substantially. Earlier this week, I blogged about Matthew Ladner - writing for Jeb!'s FEE website - and his contention that research shows Florida's A-F school grading system has improved low-performing schools. I found the evidence Ladner presented, based on the NAEP, to be very weak, but he also included a reference to a paper from the Urban Institute that purports to show real gains in test scores when a school is hit with a grade of "F."

However, as one of my commenters pointed out:

Am I reading this wrong or does the Urban Institute report at best, in math, give the grading system credit for 38% of a 6 to 14% of a SD gain? So... a 2% to 5% SD gain? They're hanging their hat on that?

Go to pages 4 and 5 of the report, and you'll see my commenter is correct about the reported gains and how they were attributed to the A-F accountability system. This is very weak tea, and it's certainly not indicative of any real, practical improvements in instruction.

So, no, there's no reason to think Stephen Bowen's school grading method is fair toward schools with higher levels of poverty. There's no reason to think it will help improve Maine's schools. And there's no reason to think chanting "poverty is not destiny" over and over again is going to make the correlation between income and test scores go away.

And if there's no reason to think any of this in Maine, there's no reason to think it in any of the other little educational fiefdom's Jeb!'s Chiefs For Change have set up for themselves.

Data gives me a headache...

Latest "Chiefs For Change" Fail: Bowen in ME

2013-05-18T08:03:00.001-07:00

For the next installment of our "Chiefs For Change Fail" series, let's head up north to Maine, where the very reformy Stephen Bowen has had to confront the reality that his push for virtual learning is hardly universally popular:

A group of digital-education experts is recommending that Maine create an online directory to help school districts and teachers find, choose and write reviews of digital learning resources.

But the 17-member group's report and "digital learning strategy" is most notable for what it doesn't recommend: the sweeping policy changes advocated by former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush's Foundation for Excellence in Education, which seek to remove a range of state restrictions and limitations on how digital learning products are accessed, supervised and funded.

The six-page report, overseen and composed by Maine Education Commissioner Stephen Bowen, suggests that Gov. Paul LePage's administration has slowed its effort to implement the controversial provisions of the Bush foundation's Digital Learning Now! initiative. [emphasis mine]

Jeb!'s FEE is, of course, nothing more than a front for the education-industrial complex, especially the virtual learning sector. FEE has basically written the legislation in Maine that would have opened the floodgates to virtual schools, which have a terrible track record nationwide.

Well, unlike many other states, at least the Democrats in Maine have figured out that giving buckets of money to the Tisch family so they can slap up "schools" with no requirements for instructional time or class size is probably a losing proposition with the voters:

The nation's two largest online-education companies -- K12 Inc. and Connections Learning -- have been seeking to manage virtual charter schools in Maine, but have been rebuffed by the Maine Charter School Commission.

Virtual charter schools -- which are funded by taxpayers -- have a poor record nationally. In other states, K12 Inc. has faced investigations and the revocation of charters for some of its schools.

In party-line votes Monday, the Legislature's Education Committee recommended passage of bills that would impose a moratorium on virtual charter schools and effectively ban for-profit charter schools.

Of course, you can count on Governor Paul LePage to veto any such moratorium; after all, that's why K12 Inc. pays him the big bucks.

Unfortunately for LePage and Bowen, all that campaign money, and all that lobbying by K12, can't change the sad fact that virtual schooling is a disaster that the voters do not want to support. And they can try to back away from it now, saying they're "slowing down" because "there's more work to be done," but that won't change the fact that cyber charters suck.

If LePage and Bowen want to keep their jobs, they're going to have to decide who they are loyal to: Jeb! Bush, the Tisches, and K12 Inc....

... or the taxpayers and students of Maine.

If Bowen puts the students' needs first, how can I make any money?!

Latest "Chiefs For Change" Fail: Skandera in NM

2013-05-16T15:26:00.000-07:00

Jeb! Bush's "Chiefs For Change" are a group of state-level education chiefs that few educators, administrators, parents or public officials seem to like or trust. The reaction to their autocratic, reformy ways is a pretty good barometer of how the corporate reform movement is being received.

Thus, a new series here at the Jazzman: "Chiefs For Change" Fail. Let's begin with Hanna Skandera out in New Mexico:

DPNM Chair Sam Bregman called for Secretary-Designate Skandera to tender her resignation immediately, as unqualified, un-confirmable and for her unprecedented attempt to ignore the New Mexico State Senate and confirm herself as Secretary of the New Mexico Public Education Department.

“Governor Martinez has nominated a polarizing, partisan consultant as Public Education Secretary. Ms. Skandera is unqualified, cannot get confirmed after three legislative sessions and has set herself above the law, ignoring the authority of the New Mexico State Legislature. She has bestowed the title ‘Secretary of Education’ upon herself because she dislikes the process. This display of arrogance is a flagrant abuse of power and indicates the disdain Ms. Skandera and Governor Martinez have for the legislature and the laws of New Mexico. Ms. Skandera should resign now,” stated Chairman Bregman.

Currently, the two nominees for state cabinet departments, David Martin, Energy and Minerals and Ryan Flynn, Department of the Environment, are following state law and using secretary-designate for their job titles. [emphasis mine]

But they don't have Jeb! backing them! After all, he's a Bush! And laws are for little people...

I always told the boys: "Don't waste your beautiful mind with pesky details like the law!"

Once Again, Chris Christie Is a Massive Fraud

2013-05-15T20:04:00.000-07:00

Absolutely unbelievable:

Gov. Chris Christie has warned potential investors there is no guarantee the state will make its required pension payments in future years, an admission that underscores a looming financial crisis he and future governors face as retirement costs are expected to explode before the decade ends.

The disclosure, buried in a 156-page bond prospectus for investors, also casts doubt on one of the key commitments Christie and leading Democrats made to public employees as part of the 2011 health and pension reform: Workers would shoulder a greater share of pension costs in exchange for the state making required payments to the cash-strapped pension fund.

The Christie administration warned potential investors earlier this month that future pension payments — estimated to grow from $1.7 billion next year to about $5.5 billion by 2018 — will drain resources and "create a significant burden on all aspects of the State’s finances."

"No assurances can be given as to the level of the State’s pension contributions in future fiscal years," the prospectus reads. [emphasis mine]

Literally, lies after lies from this utter fraud of a man. Start at the header of this blog with Chris Christie's promise to teachers and other public workers from his 2009 campaign:

* I will protect your pensions. Nothing about your pension is going to change when I am governor. In fact, in order to ensure your retirement savings are safe, I believe we must prioritize the protection of pension fund dollars and investigate the cause of Jon Corzine’s large investment losses to our pension system. Currently there is a $34 billion deficit in the State’s pension fund, which threatens the retirement and lifeline of so many teachers. We must do better for our teachers, future teachers and retirees. As Governor, I will work to close unfunded liabilities and make sure our state lives up to its promises, unlike Jon Corzine. I will not raid your pension fund to cover budgetary shortfalls like previous governors of both parties have done. One of the changes I will bring to Trenton is responsible management, investment, and oversight of state pension dollars. [emphasis mine]

That was the first lie; Christie did, in fact, change teachers' and cops' and frefighters' pensions, increasing our payments and getting rid of cost-of-living increases. Then he didn't follow up on his promise to "close unfunded liabilities":

The state should be paying about $3.3 billion into the pension fund this year, but will kick in about $468 million. And in the budget for fiscal 2013, the state will only pay about $900 million of its $3 billion bill, records show.

As part of a measure that passed in 2010, the state will increase its payments by one-seventh each year over the next seven years.

Experts have compared this with a homeowner who takes out a mortgage and makes only partial payments for seven years. Then, after those seven years, the missed payments are added and the homeowner is saddled with a much bigger mortgage and higher monthly payments. [emphasis mine]

Over and over again, as Christie was selling this scam, he told public workers he was really on their side - he had to make these "tough choices" to save our pensions:

Gov. Chris Christie fought tooth and nail for reforms while his Democratic challenger State Sen. Barbara Buono voted against the bill.

“By daring to be bold and take on the risks of addressing the big issues, we are doing what was once unimaginable; saving billions of dollars for taxpayers, fixing these systems in order to save them, and providing real, long-term fiscal stability for future generations of New Jerseyans,” said Christie the day he signed the pension and health benefit reform legislation into law. [emphasis mine]

But now, when the real tough decisions have to be made, what does Christie do? Renege on his promises while talking out of both sides of his mouth:

Christie spokesman Michael Drewniak provided The Star-Ledger with several examples where identical warnings were included in previous bond prospectuses dating back to at least 2009, calling it a standard disclosure.

“The language referred to is standard disclosure language that is identical to bond offerings disclosures going back to at least 2009 and the Corzine administration,” Drewniak said. “It is because we cannot tie the hands of, or commit future legislatures or governors’ actions that we are obligated to include such language.”

Oh, I see: in other words, you don't really mean what you say in the bond documents. You admit the Christie administration is lying.

Good to know...

He said Christie is the first governor in many years to fund the pension plans. Christie agreed to begin making required payments, but phased in over seven years. His proposed budget includes $1.7 billion for pensions which would make good on the phased-in payments for the third consecutive year. Actuaries say a full payment for the next budget year should be about $4 billion.

First of all, let's say this straight up: Michael Drewniak, Christie's spokesman, is a big, fat liar:

Jon Corzine, whatever his faults, was the first governor in a decade to fund the pensions. Any reporter who doesn't call Drewniak on his horsecrap isn't doing his or her job.

More important, however, is that no one in the press seems to be interested - in this election year - in getting Christie's plan on the record, once and for all, to come up with the $5.5 billion a year he's going to need starting in 2018 to fund the pensions.

Let's face it: he has no intention of following through on this promise. Christie is going to hem and haw and tap dance and yell at "town halls" and preen and walk dignitaries around down the shore...

But what Chris Christie will never, ever do is clearly state a credible plan to make the pension payments he promised would "save" the system and "save taxpayers $120 billion." Because he doesn't have a plan.

Chris Christie may be the darling of the Morning Joe set and the NJ-101.5 crowd and his pension plan may have been beloved by the Star-Ledger editorial page. But the honest truth is that the man is a complete fraud.

Texans who knew the truth used to say that George W. Bush was "all hat, no cattle." In the same way, Chris Christie is an empty fleece.

Karen Lewis for CTU President

2013-05-14T18:20:00.002-07:00

Up until now, I've stayed out of the internal politics of teachers unions. I outlined my many reservations about the Newark contract, but I didn't feel it was right to tell teachers to vote it up or down. I had my preferences in the New York City teachers union elections as well, but I kept my mouth shut, because I didn't think I had anything to add that was helpful.

But I'm going to make an exception today: Chicago teachers, please re-elect Karen Lewis as the President of the Chicago Teachers Union.

No one has done more to make unions relevant again than Karen Lewis. The Chicago teachers strike was a wake-up call to monied corporate interests everywhere; they learned, the hard way, that organized working people are a force not to be trifled with. That strike never would have happened without the brains, skills, and resolve of Lewis.

Chicago teachers, you need someone who is going to stand toe-to-toe with the likes of the obnoxious and odious Bruce Rauner and the insufferably smug and hypocritical Rahm Enamuel. Karen Lewis has proved, time and again, that she is not in the slightest bit intimidated by these foes of the working class and Chicago's children.

Now, I'm all for a spirited campaign with a sincere debate about the record of the incumbent. Unfortunately, that doesn't appear to be what Chicago's teachers are getting:

During the contract negotiations last summer, Karen Lewis established the "Big Bargaining Team," and designed it to be inclusive. That team included Tanya Saunders Wolffe and Mark Ochoa. Today, both of them are claiming that the CTU leadership failed to negotiate a "moratorium" on school closings. But they didn't mention that during the months they were actually with the union's leadership at the bargaining table. Nor have they admitted, although they will soon have to, that it was illegal for the Chicago Teachers Union to bargain over school closings (a management right) unless CPS agreed to it, and CPS didn't. [emphasis mine]

It's really easy for these Monday morning quarterbacks to come in and complain that Lewis didn't get them everything they think they deserve. But there's little doubt, give the dysfunction of the CTU before Lewis took over, that things would have been far, far worse were she and her team not at the reins. Lewis's CORE slate has shown they can get the job done; the other side may (or may not) mean well, but they simply aren't ready for the big game.

And if you need further proof that the plutocrats are afraid of Lewis, simply look at the fawning treatment Lewis's opponent has received from corporate media shills like the Chicago Tribune and Fox News. For me, that alone is enough reason to vote for Lewis.

Chicago teachers, I hope you understand how lucky you are to have this woman as your local's president. I hope you understand how many teachers outside of Chicago wish they had a strong labor leader willing to stand up for their rights. I hope you appreciate what Lewis means to the rest of us outside of Chicago. I saw Lewis speak to a group of teachers in New York City, and it was like watching a rock star; she is that beloved, and she is that good.

Do yourself a favor, Chicago: vote Karen Lewis and the CORE slate this Friday.

ADDING: Like me, Fred Klonsky wishes he taught in Chicago, if only so he could vote for CORE.

Think-Tanky Thinking

2013-05-14T04:40:00.002-07:00

Dr. Matthew Ladner is undoubtedly a very smart guy. I'm sure that's why Jeb! Bush's Foundation for Educational Excellence pays him to write blog posts that bolster Jeb!'s preferred policies:

I had the opportunity to discuss A-F school grading with a thoughtful skeptic yesterday. Sadly my doubting Thomas remained a skeptic at the end of our discussion. I showed him data about the trend for improving grades in Florida, and he produced data to show improving fuzzy labels from his state. I told him that Florida’s progress is confirmed by improving NAEP data, whereas his state has flatlined on NAEP over the last decade despite improved state scores. He wasn’t buying it.

My failure to persuade however got me to thinking about the Trial Urban District Assessment NAEP data. I ran the proficiency numbers for free and reduced lunch eligible students in all the districts and found the following for 4th grade reading:

Note that the top 3 performers all operate under an A-F school grading system Hillsborough (Tampa), Miami-Dade and New York City (NYC has operated under A-F longer than any non-Florida district). Obviously there are plenty of other factors at play than school grading, but note that a poor child in Tampa is almost six times more likely to be reading at a proficient level than a poor child in Detroit.

Everyone got the premise? See, Florida (thanks to Jeb!) and New York City (thanks to mediocre-at-best former chancellor Joel Klein) grade their schools - we're not talking about the kids, but the schools - on an A to F scale. And while Ladner generously grants that maybe a few other things matter in student achievement than school-level accountability systems, he clearly believes we have strong evidence here that the A-F school grading system improves student learning.

Let's set aside any doubts we may have that the National Assessment for Educational Progress gives us evidence, by itself, of the efficacy of any particular educational policy. Let's not worry about the big demographic differences between these school districts. We'll even throw away the fact that Ladner chided his "thoughtful skeptic" for not paying attention to growth in scores, while he himself uses evidence that is merely cross-sectional.

Let's, instead, play around with the data a bit: you know, just for kicks. We'll start by going to the source, the NAEP Data Explorer. Can we replicate Ladner's chart, showing the reading proficiency rates for students eligible for Free and Reduced Price Lunch (FRPL) on the NAEP?

OK, it appears we can; we know we're using the same data set. To make things easier, I've highlighted Ladner's three "top performers" - the districts that use A-F school report cards - in red.

Now, Ladner only refers to reading scores in his post (for 4th and 8th grade, the two main grade levels reported by the NAEP). But the NAEP has two major tests: reading and math. How did the three A-Fers do?

Not quite as clear-cut now, is it? New York City is at the top, but Tampa took a hit, and Miami suffered a big drop. But hold on...

We're looking at proficiency rates for the NAEP; there are two problems with this. The first is that the definition of "proficiency" for this test is quite high; it's a mistake to equate it with the layman's definition of "proficiency," or the way the term is used on state-level tests. The second is that proficiency rates don't tell the entire story about a school district's performance. A proficiency rate is just a cut score: two districts with the same proficiency rate could have very different average raw scores.

Instead of proficiency rates, let's look at the average raw scores:

NYC moves down, and Ladner's hypothesis looks increasingly less likely. Of course, in Florida the A-F system is a statewide policy. How does the entire state fare against other states?

(I marked New York in red for consistency, but keep in mind that the A-F school evaluation system is not a statewide policy there; A-F is only used in New York City.)

One more issue: we're conflating Free Lunch eligibility with Reduced Price Lunch eligibility. That's a no-no; Free Lunch is a deeper level of poverty, and that matters when measuring student achievement on tests. The NAEP has some issues with disaggregating FRPL data (use caution when approaching the scores of the states with asterisks), but here are those scores when looking only at Free Lunch, and not Reduced Price Lunch, eligibility:

And so now we come to the heart of the matter: the burden of proof. Because it's one thing to play around with numbers and pose questions and even publish your musings; I do it all the time. That's good clean fun and a great way to put off mowing the lawn.

But that's not what Ladner is doing here. Instead, he's attempting to provide ammunition to those - like Jeb!'s FEE and Michelle Rhee's StudentsFirst - who insist that A-F school report cards are a necessary policy change. And since he's taking the affirmative position, the burden of proof falls to him. He can't just pick and choose data that suits his fancy; he has to have a response to legitimate counterarguments, especially when they are based on the same data set he uses.

In this case, I don't think he'll have a response.

This, my friends, is a prime example of think-tanky thinking: define the policy you want first, pick the data you need to bolster your case, and simply ignore the counterarguments.

Again, I'm sure Matthew Ladner is a very smart guy. But when you live by the data, you gotta die by the data.

But I wanna pick my own data!

ADDING: Ladner cites a report by the Urban Institute to further back up his claims about the efficacy of A-F school reports. A critical review of this report, however, calls into question some of its claims. I recommend this review, written by - I can't believe this - Damien Betebenner.

Yeah, that Damian Betebenner. Ironical, ain't it?

What's REALLY Happening In Newark's Schools?

2013-05-13T18:18:00.001-07:00

I've already written about Tom Moran's pig-headed view of Newark's charter schools, as demonstrated in his op-ed piece in Sunday's Star-Ledger.

Let me address something else from the article:

This council has a long history of crazy behavior. It pays itself the highest council salaries in the state, and each member is entitled to a free car, as well. One councilman compared the charter school movement to the Tuskegee experiments when black men were secretly infected with syphilis to study the progress of the disease. When a council meeting last year broke down in chaos, police had to spray mace to restore order. [emphases mine]

First of all, black men were NOT secretly infected with syphilis in the Tuskegee experiment; they already had syphilis, and were left untreated. This is a myth that has been repeated by prominent people many times.

The idea that "police had to spray mace to restore order" is not something everyone at the meeting would agree with. That aside, Moran doesn't mention why some council members were upset: they felt Mayor Cory Booker was pulling a fast one in a literal back-room deal. I'm no expert on Newark's politics, so I'm not about to say Booker was in the wrong. But the notion that things only get heated in Newark politics because everyone involved, save Booker, is "crazy" strikes me as more than a little paternalistic.

There is a common notion floating around the punditocracy that the state of New Jersey has been forced to act and take over Newark's schools because the city is dysfunctional. No one seems to notice, however, that the state has now run the district for nearly two decades. Just what are the results of this takeover?

The schools have been underfunded for years now under the Christie administration, even as the state constitution precludes Newark from finding alternative sources of revenue for its schools.
Superintendent Cami Anderson was appointed by NJ Education Commissioner Chris Cerf, who himself is unelected, with no meaningful community input. Her lack of experience in running urban districts is, to the minds of many, disturbing.
Anderson closed neighborhood schools in favor of (non-replicable) charter expansion against the wishes of the elected School Advisory Board.
Under Anderson, the district has moved backwards in its quest to regain local control.
Newark's schools have become a money funnel for cronies of Commissioner Cerf and Mayor Booker. Booker's most lavish backers, the Tisch family, have a vested interest in virtual charter expansion in Newark.
The policies of the district are being dictated by a billionaire, Eli Broad, who lives 3000 miles away and bad-mouths the students of Newark.
Another West Coast billionaire, Mark Zuckerberg, has thrown money around Newark to disenfranchise the local community and to push policies that seem designed primarily to improve his public image.
Newark's parents have filed a suit challenging civil rights violations through school policies.
Newark's students have walked out of class in protest of state-imposed budget cuts.
Newark's teachers are calling for an audit of the district, tired of the lack of transparency from Anderson's administration.

Is it any wonder that people in Newark are angry? Does Tom Moran or anyone else think white suburban parents would sit by quietly while these injustices were visited upon their schools?

New Jersey may well have been right to step into Newark back in 1995. But they also should have implemented a plan to move Newark back to local control, just like the affluent suburban districts. The fact that Newark remains under the thumb of the state is a testament to the failure of state control.

It's not "crazy" to be angry about the state's long-term occupation of Newark's schools; in fact, I'd say it's crazy to not to be angry.

It doesn't bother me!

Tom Moran's Pig-Headed Ignorance

2013-05-12T08:14:00.002-07:00

What do you do when someone in a position of influence refuses to see a basic truth over and over again? Like, for instance, the Star-Ledger's op-ed page editor Tom Moran, here speaking about Newark's charter schools:

The best charter schools have waiting lists that stretch into the thousands. The council wants [Superintendent Cami] Anderson to block any expansions — and even bar the charter schools from even using empty classrooms in district schools.

And so we have yet another piece by Moran that implies that Newark's charters are "succeeding," without acknowledging the most basic fact about these schools:

Charter schools in Newark are not replicable on a large scale because they do not serve the same students as public schools.

I have explained this to Moran over and over and over and over and over again. I know for a fact he reads this blog (one day, maybe I'll tell the story of how I know this), yet he refuses to acknowledge the argument. The closest he's ever come was in a piece where he, once again, sang the praises of Anderson for doing things she hadn't yet done.

And if he doesn't want to listen to a crazy teacher-blogger, that's fine; how about a leading education researcher who has written about the segregation and attrition found in Newark's charters over and over and over and over again.

Sometimes even with pretty pictures that a child could understand!

As Bruce Baker says:

Misinformed charter punditry doesn’t help anyone. It doesn’t help the public to make more informed decisions either about choices for their own children or about policy preferences more generally. It also doesn’t help charter operators get their jobs done and it doesn’t help those working in traditional public schools focus on things that really matter. [emphasis mine]

That is exactly right, and it is a clarion call for Tom Moran - the man in charge of the op-ed page for the most widely-read newspaper in the state - to start stepping up his game. If Moran wants to make a counterargument, let him make it.

But this pig-headed, willful ignorance about what's really happening with Newark's charter schools has got to end.

Star-Ledger Editorial Board.

No One Trusts Jeb!'s "Chiefs For Change"

2013-05-11T05:26:00.000-07:00

"Chiefs For Change" is a reformy group of state-level education leaders supported by Jeb! Bush*, the former Florida governor and current industry shill. They are pushing an agenda of test-based teacher evaluation, "revamped" school report cards, and charter expansion.

So how is the awesome leadership of the "Chiefs" being received by local school districts, educators, and elected officials? [all emphases mine]

Hanna Skandera, New Mexico:

In an unusual joint meeting Thursday of the Albuquerque and Rio Rancho school boards, members of both boards raised concerns about the costs, logistics, timeline and fairness of the state’s new teacher evaluation system.

No formal action was taken at the meeting, which consisted mainly of discussion. But board members did reach a consensus that administrators will draft a joint resolution to be sent to the Public Education Department. The boards will each meet separately to discuss and approve the resolution in the coming weeks.

It is still unclear exactly what the resolution will say, but, based on the board’s discussion, it will most likely ask [ACTING! Just because she doesn't say "acting" doesn't mean that she isn't! - JJ] state education chief Hanna Skandera to consider giving the districts more flexibility in how and when they implement the system. The resolution will likely ask Skandera or representatives from the Public Education Department to sit down with the districts and collaborate on a teacher evaluation plan that all are comfortable with.

[...]

Schlichte identified himself as a Republican and a supporter of Gov. Susana Martinez, but was sharply critical of the governor’s education reform program as a whole, and teacher evaluations in particular.

“I believe we’re being experimented on by an inexperienced practitioner,” he said.

Chris Cerf, New Jersey:

School administrators in New Jersey districts that tested a new ways to evaluate teachers are bullish on the changes, but teachers remain skeptical, according to a report from Rutgers University.

[...]

The Rutgers study found that 74 percent of administrators in the test districts felt the new evaluations gave accurate assessments of teachers. But just 32 percent of teachers felt the same way.

There were also gaps in perceptions between teachers and administrators about whether the new efforts offered meaningful feedback or had positive impacts on their own, their colleagues' or their school's professional development.

More Cerf:

State officials released “performance reports” on every New Jersey public school Wednesday, saying new categories for student growth, absenteeism, success in advanced courses and other measures will give parents more information than the report cards of the past — and create more pressure for schools to improve.

Some educators applauded the new format, but many complained the reports contained too many errors, misleading categories and unfair school-to-school comparisons.

State Education Commissioner Chris Cerf – who acknowledged the reports have mistakes — has made overhauling their format a major project in his efforts to improve schools. While he intends to intervene aggressively in failing schools, he said parents, boards and superintendents elsewhere should use this data to find ways to address weaknesses in their districts.

[...]

North Jersey superintendents were in an uproar last month when they saw draft versions of the reports. Many found inaccuracies in the number of students taking Algebra I in middle school, Advanced Placement exams and PSAT tests — indicators that feed in to the summaries showing whether students are on the path toward college. Education Department officials said in some cases districts submitted wrong information to the state database, and in some cases errors came from third parties such as the College Board.

John White, Louisiana:

A 14-minute telephone conversation that was recorded by an employee of the Louisiana Department of Education (DOE) has revealed a plan hatched between State Superintendent John White and State Rep. Alan Seabaugh (R-Shreveport) to “tweak” DOE’s Value Added Model (VAM) teacher evaluation plan in a way to keep changes from being public or necessitating policy change with the Board of Elementary and Secondary Education (BESE).

The date of the recorded conversation is unclear but a flurry of emails within DOE in mid-October of 2012 and again in mid-March of this year centered around changes to the VAM plan so the telephone conversation most probably took place a few days prior to the October interoffice communications.

After White agreed to make changes in the VAM—also known at the DOE as Compass—as suggested by Seabaugh, the employee who recorded the conversation over a speaker phone was heard to whisper to a co-worker that White “chewed my ass out” after she had earlier made similar suggestions to tweak VAM.

[...]

“Tweaking the formula was my initial suggestion,” Seabaugh agreed, “not addressing it legislatively.”

“I didn’t want to open the formula up to such scrutiny (unintelligible),” White said.

“I don’t care how you fix it,” Seabaugh said, adding that teachers had been calling his office and sending him emails and that they were “absolutely livid.”

More White:

Louisiana legislators grilled Commissioner of Education John White about the state’s decision to approve the largest number of voucher students (315) for a small religious school that lacked facilities or teachers. Many questions were raised about the state’s failure to do any site visits to ascertain the readiness of the school to accept new students. Questions were raised about the school’s tuition, which is less than what the state plans to pay out (and may be very much less, making the voucher program a windfall for the school).

White must have been embarrassed because he immediately started backtracking and claimed that the list of schools approved by the state was not really final (news to everyone) and that the state planned to do due diligence.

Tony Bennett, Florida:

Teachers in Florida filed a lawsuit in federal court Tuesday, claiming the state’s new teacher evaluation system is unfair because it partly rates their job performance on test scores of students they don’t know and subjects they don’t teach.

The lawsuit — backed by local teachers unions and their parent organization, the National Education Association — marks the first time teachers have brought a legal challenge to new evaluation systems that base compensation and job security on student scores.

[...]

When rolling out new teacher evaluation systems, school districts have faced a predicament: How do you judge teachers who educate students in grades that are not tested or in subjects the tests don’t cover? How do you use math and reading scores to evaluate an art teacher?

Officials in Florida, Tennessee and the District decided to evaluate those teachers by using test scores of other teachers’ students.

The Florida complaint cites the case of Kim Cook, a 22-year educator who teaches first grade at W.W. Irby Elementary in Alachua County. Because Irby is a school for children in kindergarten through second grade, its pupils are too young to take the state’s standardized test, known as the Florida Comprehensive Assessment Test.

When it came time to rate the Irby teachers this year, the local school board decided that Cook and other teachers would be judged by the test scores of all fourth- and fifth-grade students in another elementary school.

“I never met or instructed the students at Alachua Elementary,” said Cook, one of seven teachers who are plaintiffs in the lawsuit.

The fourth- and fifth-graders at Alachua did not perform well on the standardized tests. Since 40 percent of Cook’s evaluation depended on those test scores, she was initially given an “unsatisfactory” rating at the same time her colleagues honored her as Teacher of the Year.

Stephen Bowen, Maine:

A week and a half of tension that began to mount last week with the release of an A-through-F grading system for public schools culminated Friday evening with Education Commissioner Stephen Bowen attacking Senate President Justin Alfond for delaying action on a sweeping teacher evaluation plan that has been under development for more than a year.

Alfond freely admitted he held the measure up because he and other Democratic leaders wanted to see what education initiatives Bowen and Gov. Paul LePage would unveil late in the legislative session on the heels of what Alfond called months of secrecy around destructive education initiatives by the administration.

[...]

“Because the governor and this commissioner have been so secretive and non-transparent with their education agenda, we felt it was only smart to ensure everything was on the table, like the A-through-F grading system, before we took up this bill,” said Alfond, referring to letter grades that the LePage administration gave all Maine schools last week. “We’re really glad we did that because we can now see so many elements of the department’s plans coming through.”

[...]

“This is the commissioner unfortunately following the governor and making everything political and everything into a lobbying effort,” said Alfond. “When it’s convenient for Commissioner Bowen to support education, he turns on the switch and when he wants to weaken the education system, which he has done repeatedly over the past week, he just throws a blind eye toward teachers and schools. It’s unfortunate that he is so political as a commissioner of education.”

Janet Barresi, Oklahoma (h/t to the always terrific Bob Sikes):

You need a scorecard to keep track of the outrages coming out of state Superintendent of Public Instruction Janet Barresi's office.

The latest is that Barresi has been traveling the state telling anyone who would listen that authors of a new report critical of the controversial A-F grading system for schools have privately recanted.

That, the authors say, is untrue. "I have no idea where that idea on the part of the superintendent came from," said senior project coordinator Patrick Forsyth, professor of education and co-director of the Oklahoma Center for Education Policy at the University of Oklahoma in Tulsa. "We are perplexed by that and don't know what to make of it."

[...]

The Legislature approved the A-F grading system but Barresi's department wrote the rules and imposed them with virtually no input from local school officials. Most local superintendents and principals don't oppose a grading system, but they want it to be consistent, fair and transparent.

A report by senior researchers at OU and OSU concluded that the grading system is "neither clear nor comparable."

It looks as if Barresi is traveling the state telling groups what she wants them to hear - that the report's authors are privately recanting their published work.

That's poppycock.

Barresi is a loose cannon whose dedication to Oklahoma public education continues to come into question. Look for a scapegoat for this latest foul-up.

Deborah Gist, Rhode Island:

The overwhelming majority of Rhode Island’s public school teachers do not want Gov. Lincoln Chafee to extend Education Commissioner Deborah Gist’s contract, according to a poll released Tuesday by the state’s leading teachers unions.

The survey of 402 teachers shows 85% of those asked believe Gist’s contract should not be renewed. The poll also found that 73% of teachers find Gist to be “somewhat ineffective” or “infective” and another 82% feel less respected than they did when Gist was hired in 2009.

“For too long Commissioner Gist has spoken of her support among classroom teachers,” Frank Flynn, the president of the Rhode Island Federation of Teachers and Health Professionals said in a prepared statement. “We decided to put that notion to an independent test. This survey found that she is not supported by classroom teachers. In fact, there is overwhelming evidence that her leadership is almost universally rejected.”

More Gist (h/t Diane Ravitch):

The truth is that the NECAP wasn’t designed to be a graduation test, and this was obvious from the very beginning. It has been coerced into the role not because it was good for kids, but because it was cheaper than designing a dedicated graduation test. The features that make it a bad graduation test are objectively true facts about the test and its design. Neither editing technical documentation, committee-hearing filibusters, or cutting off public comment at Board of Education meetings will change those facts.

I have no doubt at all that the commissioner can fend off challenges from the public over these matters, indefinitely. But reality will — as it usually does — have the last word. And children will pay the price. The question for Board of Education members, legislators, school administrators, teachers, and parents is which side they want to be on.

Kevin Huffman, Tennessee:

Nashville Democrats are piling on Tennessee Education Commissioner Kevin Huffman for his decision not to attend this afternoon’s special Metro school board meeting where controversial state charter authorizer legislation will be the focus.

A Friday letter signed by Democratic Reps. Sherry Jones, Mike Stewart, Jason Powell and Darren Jernigan expresses “disappointment” over Huffman’s unwillingness to visit Metro’s Bransford Avenue boardroom at the invitation of the board.

“Your office is less than four miles from those of the school board, which has simply requested an opportunity to have a conversation about recent press reports suggesting that the legislation poses extreme financial risks for our county,” the letter reads. “Participating in such a discussion would seem to us to be a matter of common courtesy, in addition to an important part of your job.”

More Huffman:

Over at WPLN, Daniel Potter has a story about the number of teacher retirements doubling in the last five years.

More Tennessee teachers are heading for the exits. Since 2008 the number is up by more than a thousand — nearly doubling — to a total last year of almost 2,200. Exactly why is a bit of a mystery.

Some teachers see it as a response to a couple years of politically charged upheaval in state education policy. But state officials say it’s not so clear-cut, and even go so far as to argue higher turnover has an upside.

You can already see the root of the silliness in these two paragraphs. Teachers are retiring. Teachers say that it's because of job upheaval. It would seem logical to believe teachers about why they're retiring or thinking about retiring. But no, our silly state asks us to ignore teachers' own statements about why they retire, and instead accept that those teachers are mistaken or lying or ... I don't know ... ignorant of their own motivations. The state can tell us the real truth: "The uptick in retirements might have less to do with shifting policy, says Education Commissioner Kevin Huffman, and more to do with the economy."

But, wait! It gets better. Because not only is Huffman going to try to sell us on his ability to know teachers' minds better than they know them themselves, Huffman is going to try to tell us all this retirement is a good sign — saying that "our lowest-performing teachers were retiring at twice the rate of our best-performing teachers.”

Twice the rate! Wow, that sounds like great news. Except Potter looks at the actual numbers, not the rate, and finds we're losing more good teachers than bad.

But it’s worth comparing more than just rates. In terms of real people, last year more top teachers retired — 129 of them, compared to 96 from the bottom. So even though 5s retired at a lower rate, there were still far more of them gone. State officials argue the rate is a more telling comparison, since in 2012 there were 6,704 teachers with 5s on the 1-to-5 scale, while 1s totaled just 2,644.

So, what conclusion are we to draw from our little state-to-state tour of the "Chiefs'" fiefdoms? How about this:

Jeb! Bush's "Chiefs For Change" are perhaps the most disliked, unaccountable, overly political, and untrusted public officials in the country.

Heckuva job, Jebbie!

Where did I find all these clowns?

*Why do I call him "Jeb!"?

Believe it or not, we called him "the smart one"!

Bill Gates's Ridiculous TED Talk, Part III: Shanghai Surprise

2013-05-10T17:45:00.000-07:00

Let's get back to Bill Gates's astonishing talk at the latest TED conference about teacher evaluation. In Part I and Part II of this series, I challenged one of Gates's primary assertions: that "over 98% of teachers just got one word of feedback: 'Satisfactory.'"

There's simply no reason to believe this patently absurd statement is true; I find it amazing that Gates would make this claim without the slightest bit of hesitation. I can only hope he is challenged one day to provide a source - but I'm not holding my breath waiting.

Let's go on to another part of the speech. Thanks to Diane Ravitch, we now have a transcript of this video, which appears to be an abridged version of the live speech. I mention that because we can't be entirely sure, based on this excerpt, of the full context of Gates's words. Still, I found this next statement remarkable:

Let’s look at the best academic performer: the province of Shanghai, China. Now, they rank number one across the board, in reading, math and science, and one of the keys to Shanghai’s incredible success is the way they help teachers keep improving. They made sure that younger teachers get a chance to watch master teachers at work. They have weekly study groups, where teachers get together and talk about what’s working. They even require each teacher to observe and give feedback to their colleagues.

The clear implication here is that Shanghai's success in international testing is due to their teacher evaluation policies. I'm not about to say that there isn't anything we can learn from Shanghai, but it seems to me that what Gates is talking about here already happens in the United States.

Take younger teachers watching masters: isn't that the exact definition of student teaching? Aren't "study groups" another name for "department meetings"? Aren't peer observations already used in many districts, sometimes in the form of collegial visits?

Since Gates's theory seems awfully facile, I did a little digging into Shanghai's education system. The OECD - the folks who sponsor the best-known international test, the PISA - recently published an analysis of Shanghai's educational reforms:

China has a long tradition of valuing education highly. This began with the civil examination system, established in 603 AD, which was also exported to Japan and Korea later in the 7th century. It was a very competitive yet efficient system for selecting officials, and was known for its rigor and fairness. These examinations evolved over many dynasties before their abolition in 1905.

The system had three tiers of examinations, at county, provincial and national levels. There were variations, but the general mode was basically an essay test, where the candidates were confined for days in an examination cell, fed with good food, and required to write essays of political relevance. To do this, they had to be familiar with the classics, basically the Four Books and Five Classics, and refer all arguments to these works – hence the requirement for “rote- learning”. Good calligraphy and writing styles were also part of the basic requirements. The final level of selection was usually held in the examinations department, which was often part of the imperial organisation. Whoever gained the appreciation of the emperor, who was virtually the chief examiner, would be the champion, followed by a few runners-up. These winners were appointed to various official posts according to their examination results. [emphasis mine]

So there's a cultural predilection toward an education based on standardized tests - and rote learning - in China. Read the entire chapter if you're interested; it's fascinating. But this analysis is still missing the most necessary concept for understanding Shanghai's testing success:

The hukou system:

FOR MORE THAN half a century, the hukou (household registration) system in China has segregated the rural and urban populations, initially in geographical terms, but more fundamentally in social, economic, and political terms. It is the foundation of China’s divisive dualistic socioeconomic structure and the country’s two classes of citizenship. Under this system, some 700–800 million people are in effect treated as second-class citizens, deprived of the opportunity to settle legally in cities and of access to most of the basic welfare and state-provided services enjoyed by regular urban residents. To an individual, hukou status is an important ascribed attribute in determining one’s social and economic circumstances. The existence of such an overt discriminatory state institution is starkly incompatible with a rapidly modernizing China, aspiring to great power status. [emphasis mine]

That's Kam Wing Chan from the University of Washington. When Shanghai's "miracle" test scores were published back in 2009, Kam was one of the few scholars to understand how to interpret those scores within the context of Shanghai's extreme economic segregation:

Even more important, but far less-known, is that in Shanghai, as in most other Chinese cities, the rural migrant workers that are the true urban working poor (totaling about 150 million in the country), are not allowed to send their kids to public high schools in the city. This is engineered by the discriminatory hukou or household registration system, which classifies them as "outsiders." Those teenagers will have to go back home to continue education, or drop out of school altogether.

In other words, the city has 3 to 4 million working poor, but its high-school system conveniently does not need to provide for the kids of that segment. In essence, the poor kids are purged from Shanghai's sample of 5,100 students taking the tests. The Shanghai sample is the extract of China's extract. A fairer play would be to ask kids at Seattle's private Lakeside School to race against Shanghai's kids. [emphasis mine]

Guess where Bill Gates's sends his own kids? To his alma mater: the Lakeside School.

Heh...

Apparently, to its credit, the Chinese central government has tried to break down the barriers to education that hukou has erected for urban poor children. Local interference and bureaucracy, however, have conspired to keep Shanghai's schools economically segregated:

Under normal circumstances, children inherit their hukou classifications from their parents at their time of birth, and migrant parents are often living in cities without the proper urban hukou necessary for access to state services such as health care and education.44 Once born with rural hukou classification, these migrant children will similarly face problems accessing state services in urban areas. To frame the scale of this issue, it is estimated that approximately 19 million migrant children are currently living in China’s cities.45 A journalist reporting on migrant children noted:

Chinese children are entitled to a state education, but not all of them get one. And the tens of millions born to migrant workers . . . are among the most vulnerable, owing to a registration system that divides the country’s citizens into rural and urban dwellers, and dictates their rights accordingly.46
Migrant children face difficulties accessing state education for several reasons. Urban public schools often receive no additional funding from the central government for these children, so many of them are turned away even if their parents can afford to pay the exorbitant “donations” some schools charge to admit migrant children who meet the designated criteria.47

Many migrant families turn to private schools to educate their children, but local governments consistently demolish these institutions in the name of urban development.48

There's some preliminary research that suggests that these Chinese urban private schools perform far worse than the public schools. Again, the de-centralization of the Chinese government seems to have created a system where migrant children living in cities are denied access to Shanghai's "high-performing" public high schools. And hukou is only part of the problem:

Educational success or stagnation in China can hinge on one issue, tuition. High school tuition costs about $450 per year, a big chunk of a paycheck for a minimum-wage worker in Shanghai, who earns $164 a month.⁸

To be fair: according to the authors here, Shanghai actually does better in attempting to address inequality than many other Chinese cities. Still, that only means they are the best of the worst.

Shanghai is a city where the working poor cannot send their children to local high schools. And the international comparisons that put Shanghai at the top of the world - the ones Bill Gates frets about - are based on high school scores.

Has any one of the many people paid to tell Bill Gates these things ever thought to bring this matter up? Or have they figured out he would rather not be bothered with these pesky details?

Better do a search for "hukou" on Bing...

ADDING: The best-known comparison of international test scores for elementary students is probably the Trends in International Mathematics and Science Study (TIMSS). Download the 2011 report and look at the list of participants on page 2. Notice who's missing?

Shanghai. I would very much like to see the results of an administration of the TIMSS for 4th and 8th Grades for Shanghai, including all of the immigrant children denied adequate education under the hukou system. I doubt the province would look nearly as "miraculous" then.

Bill Gates's Ridiculous TED Talk, Part II

2013-05-10T04:34:00.002-07:00

As I blogged before, Bill Gates's talk at TED about teacher evaluation was patently absurd. Gates actually said this:

(1:06) Until recently, over 98% of teachers just got one word of feedback: "Satisfactory."

That is an amazingly ignorant statement on its face. Does Gates really believe teachers get "one word of feedback" in their evaluations? Seriously?

We live in a world where powerful people like Gates are allowed to make audacious statements like this without any vetting: who has the brass to ask Gates to give his source for such an obviously ridiculous claim? The TED people didn't think it was worth their while to demand that Gates back up his clam with a citation - so I had to go digging...

My best guess as to where Gates got this ridiculous claim is from what has become the Rosetta Stone of reforminess: The Widget Effect, published by Michelle Rhee's former playpen, The New Teacher Project. Turn to page 12:

These data often stand in sharp relief against current levels of student achievement. For example, in Denver schools that did not make adequate yearly progress (AYP), more than 98 percent of tenured teachers received the highest rating—satisfactory.16 On average, over the last three years, only 10 percent17 of failing schools issued at least one unsatisfactory rating to a tenured teacher. [emphasis mine]

Did Gates get his claim from here? Dear lord, let's hope not - it would be astonishingly ignorant for Bill Gates to make the claim that "98% of teachers just got one word of feedback" on the basis of a think-tanky, un-vetted study about a small sub-section of Denver's "failing" schools.

I've been combing through the Gates MET Project's website to find another citation for Gates's claim. So far, I've found nothing: TNTP's report is all I can find. But perhaps the fine folks at the Gates Foundation will help me out...

What is the source for Bill Gates's claim that "Until recently, over 98% of teachers just got one word of feedback: 'Satisfactory.'"?

Under any reasonable standard, Gates has an obligation to provide proof for his claim. What is your source, Mr. Gates? Show us the research that backs up your assertion. As a working teacher, I would dearly love to see what has informed your opinions about my chosen career.

I've got lots of research right here! Just waiting for Windows 8 to reboot...

Education Privatizers LOVE Steve Fulop

2013-05-09T18:03:00.003-07:00

Leave it to PolitickerNJ to write an important story, yet skip all the meaningful facets:

Following up on his endorsement of Steve Fulop, Bishop Reginald Jackson did a robocall tonight for the Jersey City mayoral candidate.

"Steve is the only candidate with a real jobs plan for Jersey City residents," Jackson said in the robocall to targeted voters. "Steve will also work to clean up the dirty streets and end political corruption at city hall."

Jackson urges residents to vote for Fulop, "a real Democrat." [emphasis mine]

Let's fill in a few relevant details, shall we? Starting with the woman Jackson is married to, who happens to be the CEO of the reformy outfit Excellent Education for Everyone (E3):

Christy Davis Jackson, award winning entrepreneur, author, motivational speaker and attorney, has been tapped by Fortune 100 companies, non-profit organizations and small businesses alike to develop, manage and execute strategic, leadership and diversity management programs to increase company performance.

As President and CEO of E3, Christy’s leadership and management skills have helped energize the Urban Education Reform and School Choice movement. She understands the value of a quality education and is leading the charge to see to it that every child in New Jersey’s receive’s an excellent education. [emphasis mine]

E3 has been at the forefront of the choice "movement" in New Jersey for years; Davis Jackson, the controversial wife of Reginald Jackson, is currently E3's CEO. Reginald gave up his position on E3's board when Christy took over as CEO, but his fellow member of the Black Ministers Council, Therman Evans, has stayed on to chair the board of E3.

Of course, the BMC is deeply involved in charter school expansion and voucher cheerleading. Reginald bragged on how he was able to get charter applications from his fellow BMC members approved by the NJDOE; his political connections to the Christie administration and the NJDOE were no doubt helpful.

The most (in)famous of these charter applications was brought forward by Pastor Amir Khan, who sought to open a charter school in Cherry Hill. The community fought hard against this charter and eventually stopped Khan's plans. As I've said before, I don't understand why men of the cloth are so anxious to open up secular charter schools. Khan, caught in a moment of candor, gave us a clue:

Khan already operates an approximately 85-student private school on the property.

But the opening of the larger charter school is essential to the church's plan to buy the land from the diocese, he said.

"We were anticipating the charter school to get additional income to carry us," he said. [emphasis mine]

Oh, my...

Jackson and the BMC are also big voucher pushers; they supported a lawsuit brought last year by E3 and others that would have forced Camden's already underfunded school district to come up with money for school vouchers (the lawsuit was dismissed).

So there isn't a reformier couple in the Garden State than the Jacksons - and they are backing Fulop as mayor of New Jersey's second largest city. Remember, Fulop was the one who orchestrated the secret meeting with Education Commissioner Chris Cerf to install Cerf's preferred superintendent. Fulop has also been working hard to get slates of candidates elected to the JCBOE that are loyal to him, using money from David Tepper, the sugar daddy of B4K, New Jersey's reformiest lobbying outfit.

Why is Fulop paying all this attention to the schools? And why would Fulop align himself with an education privatizer like Jackson?

Perhaps Jersey City voters ought to ask themselves these questions when they go to the polls.

Preferred by school privatizers throughout New Jersey!

Bill Gates's Ridiculous TED Talk, Part I

2013-05-09T04:26:00.000-07:00

I didn't even have to go two minutes into this spiel by Bill Gates before he laid out a whopper so large it's simply stunning:

(1:06) Until recently, over 98% of teachers just got one word of feedback: "Satisfactory."

That is astonishingly wrong. No teacher I've ever heard of ever got a one-word evaluation. Every principal I've ever worked for has written multiple pages about my teaching when doing my summative evaluation. Principals are, in fact, required to give meaningful feedback to their teachers; if they don't, they are derelict in their duties. All good school leadership programs require training in teacher evaluation.

Folks, you know I usually give gobs of links in my posts. But I feel stupid trying to add them here. Do any of you reading this actually think principals simply give one word of feedback to 98% of teachers in their evaluations? Do you really think this is how schools work? Does Gates?

There are only two reasons for anyone to make such a transparently incorrect statement: ignorance or mendacity. I'll give Gates the benefit of the doubt and just say his lack of experience with America's public schools must have rendered him hopelessly clueless.

I'd suggest he spend some time getting himself up to speed. It might be better, however, if he gave up on interfering in public education and instead focused his efforts on fixing Windows 8...

Soon, I'll make public education as good as Windows 8!

ADDING: Dear lord, Gates's talk may be the freakin' stupidest thing I've ever heard. He uses Shanghai as role model for teacher training, because the students do so well. But it never occurs to Bill that Shanghai is one of the most economically segregated cities in Asia, if not the world. Has he never heard of the hukou system?

More in a bit.

What's In a Name? Only Jeb! Bush Knows.

2013-05-08T19:36:00.002-07:00

Hanna Skandera is now the head chief of Jeb Bush!'s reformy group, Chiefs For Change. And she's decided to celeberate by snatching up a title that was not conferred on her by law:

Hanna Skandera, one of most controversial figures in state government, has given herself a new title.

Even without the New Mexico Senate's vote of approval, Skandera is calling herself secretary of public education.

It would seem a not-so-subtle dig at a Democrat in the Senate who waited two years to schedule Skandera's confirmation hearing, then never held a vote on it.

Now, publicists in Republican Gov. Susana Martinez's administration and Skandera herself have stopped referring to her as "secretary-designate" of education. The designate title is for cabinet members still awaiting a confirmation vote by the Senate.

Skandera, 39, has been running the state Public Education Department for almost 2 1/2 years. Rules Committee Chairwoman Sen. Linda Lopez, D-Albuquerque, finally called Skandera for a confirmation hearing this year.

Lopez accepted 10 hours of public testimony and committee debate about Skandera, but then recessed the confirmation hearing without any vote on Skandera's nomination.

Lopez said she wanted more documents related to Skandera's performance and management of the Public Education Department. Her decision meant that the full 42-member Senate could not vote on whether Skandera should stay on the job or be removed from office. [emphasis mine]

Cheeky, huh? And I'm not the only one who thinks so. Now here's what's funny about this...

One of Skandera's most prominent fellow "Chiefs For Change" is NJ Education Commissioner Chris Cerf. Since Newark remains under state control after nearly two decades, Cerf is the de facto tsar* of the city's schools. And the Commissioner was not happy when the elected schools advisory board members decided to change their titles:

The board also passed resolutions Tuesday to change its official name from Newark Public Schools Advisory Board to Newark Board of Education and to prevent students from facing disciplinary action for protesting conditions in their schools.

However, the board has no authority to change its name, Morgan said. State education officials will continue to refer to the board as the Newark Public Schools Advisory School Board, she said. [emphasis mine]

So I guess the rules are this:

- If Jeb! Bush likes you, you can call yourself what you want, regardless of what elected officials say.

- But if one of Jeb!'s proteges doesn't like you, you can't call yourself what you want, even if elected officials say otherwise.

Because Jeb!, I guess, knows better than people who were actually elected to office. Everyone OK with that?

I am!

ADDING: I lived in Florida when Bush ran for his second term as governor. His campaign slogan was: "Jeb!" Ever since then, I always think of Jeb with the added "!"

* Latin-Russian metaphor!

Charters = Wal-Mart

2013-05-08T17:15:00.000-07:00

Laura Waters - a local school board president herself - does not want to give local boards veto power over charter schools expanding into their districts. To make her case, she badly mangles a metaphor:

Education Sector notes that school boards “are often hostile to charter schools, which compete with them for students, funds, and prestige,” adding that “state charter laws that allow only local school boards to authorize charters,” with no appeals process, “can result in very few charter schools in that state.” A cynic would say that this is Assemblyman Diegnan’s intention. After all, giving school boards sole authority to grant approval for new local charters is like giving Wal-Mart sole authority to grant approval for new local merchandisers. Taking it one step further -- consigning such approval to a local referendum -- is a political calculus, not an educational one. [emphasis mine]

Let's take a moment to appreciate how Waters has actually flipped the Wal-Mart analogy on its head. Because it's not local school boards that are most like the big box retailer; it's the charter schools.

There's a lot of controversy about the actual effect of Wal-Mart on a local economy, but there's little debate that an effect actually exists. You simply can't put a huge national retailer into a community and not expect changes, good or bad, to happen.

It's the same with charters. Their cheerleaders will try to convince you that charters have no impact on local public schools because education funds are "dedicated to children, not districts." But charters are, in fact, funded by their sending districts. And because those districts have fixed costs, and because charters tend to not take the children who are most expensive to educate - ESL students, special education students, children in poverty, etc. - the revenues that local districts must give to charters have an impact on the feeding schools. It's foolish to pretend otherwise.

Given that, who else beside the local schools authority should have the final say about charters? Who else has the responsibility to protect the interests of the children in their schools? And why should local school boards have to sit by and dish out money to support schools over which they have no say?

The notion that Wal-Mart makes local businesses better through competition is simply silly; same with the effect of charters on public schools, which, unlike charters, must take all comers. Waters has this totally backwards; yet she seems to think the policy allowing charters to be granted without consent of local school boards is grounded in research:

Critics of our 14-year-old charter school law are buttressed by various national research organizations that evaluate state charter school legislation and find ours lacking. The National Alliance of Public Charter Schools (NAPCS), for example, ranks New Jersey 31st out of 42 states with charter school laws.

We lose points on funding inequities between traditional (district) and independent (charter) public schools and a certain lack of transparency. Most critically, New Jersey relies on a single entity to authorize new charters (the education commissioner), despite mounds of data that proves that effective laws invest “multiple authorizers” with approval authority. [emphasis mine]

"Mounds of data"? From whom? From NAPCS, which is basically a charter industry shill? Hunt around the website for a while and see if you can find "mounds of data" that confirm a positive benefit for multiple authorizers of charter schools. The best I could find was in the charter school "model law" created by NAPCS; however, it contains no research backing up the contention that multiple authorizers lead to better educational outcomes.

Now, I suppose we could debate what makes a charter law "effective." It seems to me an "effective" law would be one that produces better academic results, for charters and for the total public school population. The NAPCS "model law" report cites Alexander Russo, Nelson Smith, The Fordham Institute, Louann Bierlein Palmer, and others: but none show any positive outcomes that come from denying local school districts the authority to have veto power over charters. (In fact, glancing at these policy briefs, I get the sense that the case they make for charter expansion is rather weak.)

In truth, the NAPCS Model Law Database is like so many other think-tanky education policy "report cards": the rankings are based on what the think tank wants, but not on what they can show actually works with research. So let's not pretend for a second that there are "mounds of data" that show authorizer expansion will be great for New Jersey; those mounds are a figment of Waters' imagination. That includes her citation of the Center for Education Reform: they make the case that multiple authorizers lead to more charters, but they don't show that the charters - or all of the schools - do any better.

Which is the entire point of giving local school boards veto power over charters: they are best positioned to understand whether a charter is needed in their school district. As I've said many times, I am not against all charters: I started my career at a charter. But no one should expect a school district to allow a charter to come into their community to the detriment of the students who will not be attending the school.

And if you think your school board is too anti-charter, there's a simple solution: run yourself. Why, you could even run in Lawrence, NJ - where Laura Waters serves - and explain to your constituents the many benefits of having a charter in your community...

Coming soon to Lawrence, NJ?

Jazzman Takes 5

2013-05-05T20:32:00.000-07:00

Musical and teaching obligations, folks. No blogging this weekend; light blogging for the coming week, most likely.

Enjoy the many fine blogs to your left until that that time when St. Digby, Patron Saint of Snark, releases me from my real life.

Every NJ Teacher MUST Read This

2013-05-03T18:14:00.003-07:00

You may want to send the kids out of the room before you click on this link: intellectual beat-downs like this can be frightening to small minds:

I was reviewing the past few days of news coverage on NJ teacher evaluations and came across the following quote, which was not-so-amazingly left unchallenged:

Cerf said research shows test scores are “far and away” the best gauge of teacher effectiveness, and to not use test score data would be “very anti-child.”

http://www.nj.com/news/index.ssf/2013/05/state_board_of_education_adjus.html

Here’s a reporters’ guide to follow up questions….

Mr. Cerf… can you show me exactly what research comes to that conclusion? (this should always be the immediate follow up to the ambiguous “research shows” comment)

Exactly how is “far and away” measured in that research?

And what is meant by “best gauge of effectiveness?”

That is, what is the valid measure of effectiveness against which test scores are gauged? (answer… uh… test scores themselves)

That is, of course, Professor Bruce Baker deconstructing the latest pile of cant from NJDOE Commissioner Chris Cerf. You owe it to yourself to read the entire thing, and then ask yourself a question:

Why would any New Jersey educator or parent or elected official or journalist or citizen believe anything that comes out of the NJDOE these days?

Oh, golly, do I sound overheated? Gosh, forgive me. It's only my freakin' career...

Accountability begins at home.

Computerized Testing Disaster Preview

2013-05-03T12:32:00.001-07:00

It's going to be so freakin' awesome when we finally get all the kids taking all those Common Core and PARCC and state-level standardized tests on computers! Because - considering they must all take them at the same time - what could possibly go wrong?

School testing came to a halt statewide early Monday because the CTB/McGraw-Hill testing company servers in New Jersey crashed around 9 a.m., state education officials said.

In the last week of Oklahoma's April testing window, the outage has raised rescheduling concerns among school officials across the state.

"We're working with (McGraw) very closely" to resolve the problems, said Sherry Fair, spokeswoman with the state Department of Education.

School districts were advised to cancel online testing because of the server crash, although some students in a few schools somehow were able to complete tests.

The outage affected Oklahoma Core Curriculum tests for grades three to eight and end-of-instruction tests for students up to grade 12, officials said. [emphasis mine]

Golly, a computer problem caused by thousands of users accessing servers at the same time. Who could have predicted?

A few online tests have alternates available. But a state Education Department official told schools most incomplete tests will be invalidated and require pencil-paper testing.

Educators have little faith that McGraw could get paper tests to schools by Friday, particularly since the company was late in providing them before testing in the first place.

"I think it goes without saying that a company bidding on high-stakes testing should have the technology infrastructure to avoid outages such as this," said Joe Slitzker, information technology director at Sapulpa Public Schools.

Read the whole thing. McGraw-Hill sounds like a clown show operation. And what happens when the problems are at the client end - when the schools' computer network is the problem?

Here in New Jersey, the DOE is pushing on-line testing hard. They seem to think it will work just fine; but how would they know? And where is the backup plan when something like what happened in Oklahoma inevitably happens here? Because there's no doubt what happened in Tulsa is not an isolated incident:

School districts across several states are rescheduling high-stakes tests that judge student proficiency and even determine teachers' pay because of technical problems involving the test administrators' computer systems.

Thousands of students in Indiana, Kentucky, Minnesota andOklahoma have been kicked offline while taking tests in recent weeks, postponing the testing schools planned for months and raising concerns about whether the glitches will affect scores.

"There's been pep rallies and spirit weeks all getting ready for this. It's like showing up for the big game and then the basketball is deflated," said Jason Zook, a fifth-grade teacher at Brown Intermediate Center in South Bend, Ind.

Many frustrated students have been reduced to tears and administrators are boiling over, calling the problems "disastrous" and "unacceptable" at a time when test results count so heavily toward schools' ratings under the federal No Child Left Behind law. In places such as Indiana, where former Gov. Mitch Daniels approved changes tying teachers' merit pay to student test scores, the pressure is even greater.

Nice job, Mitch: enjoying your new office, you massive, wimpy hypocrite? Of course, it was just so absolutely critical that teachers' pay get tied to test scores, even if the incompetent Daniels and his minion, Tony Bennett, couldn't set up a system that works. Now Bennett's gone and Glenda Ritz has to clean up his mess.

She won't be alone for very long, though: these thoughtless decisions will plague our schools for years - and that plague has already spread to states all over the country. The reformies' blind faith in technology isn't going to save their agenda; it's actually going to make things far, far worse.

I'm sorry, Dave, but I'm afraid I can't administer these tests...

Cerf and NJDOE: In Way Over Their Heads

2013-05-02T14:15:00.002-07:00

I'm searching around for a word that best describes my reaction to the latest bit of cant from NJ Education Commissioner Chris Cerf; my best response is "pathetic":

After first proposing that scores would amount to 35 percent of a performance evaluation for math and language arts teachers in grades 4-8, Cerf yesterday said that total would be trimmed to 30 percent for next year.

In addition, he said only the scores of students who had been enrolled with a given teacher 70 percent of the year would be applied to his or her rating. The previous level was 60 percent. [emphasis mine]

Seriously?

The notion that this little bit of mucking around with percentages makes up for the vast, serious problems with AchieveNJ, the new teacher evaluation system, is an act of enormous self-deception on the Commissioner's part. Does he really think this matters? Does he really think his critics will pipe down after being thrown this crumb?

As I've explained many times, it just doesn't matter if the test scores count for 50% or 10% or 90% of a teacher's evaluation: some of the evaluation, all of the decision. The NJDOE has tried to gloss over this inconvenient fact, but playing with numbers isn't going to make the problem go away. Cerf's silly proposals only serve to highlight, once again, that no one in charge of making New Jersey's education policies under Chris Christie seems to have any idea of what they are doing:

“There was a feeling that 35 percent was too much, and reducing it by 5 percent made sense,” said Arcelio Aponte, the board president, after the meeting. “Based on the many discussions we had on this, I think 30 percent is a fair number.” [emphasis mine]

Oh, I see: we're now making decisions based on our "feelings." Gosh, how nice. But maybe we should also consider the "feelings" of the teachers who will have to labor under this innumerate, illogical system of evaluation, huh? Or the students who will have their teachers' livelihoods in their small hands?

Of course, the NJDOE has a defense they use when caught making policy based on their "feelings"; they whip out the Gates MET study:

The only dissent on the board came from Ronald Butcher, who ended up abstaining in the otherwise unanimous vote. He said afterward that the research backing the use of student test scores in general and “student growth percentiles” in particular was inconclusive.

Cerf and others on his staff have repeatedly pointed to a recently completed Measures of Effective Teaching (MET) Project that tracked more than 3,000 teachers and backed the use of test scores in measuring their practice, along with classroom observations and student surveys

But that project has its detractors as well, and Butcher after the meeting said he hopes there will be a further airing of the different points of view.

”This is not just about New Jersey, but in other states, too, where there are concerns,” he said. “If you look at the research, there are some issues with it. The MET study is just one study, and there is a lot of research calling it into question.” [emphasis mine]

That's exactly right - it's ONE study. I'll spend some time soon looking at the critics of MET; however, even if it was universally well-regarded, ONE study is hardly enough evidence to make wide-scale policy changes that force high-stakes personnel decisions for schools.

But there's an even bigger problem with NJDOE constantly referring to MET: it says nothing about Student Growth Percentiles (SGPs), the method used in AchieveNJ! The MET report looks at Value-Added Models (VAM) in teacher evaluation, but we aren't using VAMs in New Jersey; we're using SGPs. Using MET to justify their policies is an indication of gross ignorance or willful deception from NJDOE.

I'm sorry to have to report this, but AchieveNJ is a disaster in the making. Of course, it was doomed from the start: appointing unqualified people to a task force on teacher evaluation while ignoring the voices of educators and researchers is a sure way to develop a system that lacks any credibility with the stakeholders. But this is what Chris Christie wanted, and Chris Cerf is going to give it to him. Cerf can make a feeble attempt to change the numbers and try to cover up the stench, but it won't help; the rot runs down to the core.

At some point, Cerf's NJDOE is going to have to deal with the pitiable truth that they are in way over their heads. We can only hope that the damage these sadly ill-informed bureaucrats do to the teaching profession isn't permanent.

Accountability begins at home.