Education Links

"In this post, I address two examples of what I consider statistical smoke and mirrors (in one case coupled with false imagery) used in recent years to re-frame debates over economic and educational "equality" - toward a "post-urban" and "post-racial" domestic policy agenda."

"Value Added Models (VAMs) are irresistible. Purportedly they can ascertain a teacher's effectiveness by predicting the impact of a teacher on a student's test scores. Because test scores are the sin qua non of our education system, VAMs are alluring. They link a teacher directly to the most emphasized output in education today. What more can we want from an evaluative tool, especially in our pursuit of improving schools in the name of social justice? Taking this a step further, many see VAMs as the panacea for improving teacher quality. The theory seems straightforward. VAMs provide statistical predictions regarding a teacher's impact that can be compared to actual results. If a teacher cannot improve a student's test score in relatively positive ways, then they are ineffective. If they are ineffective, they can (and should) be dismissed (See, for instance, Hanushek, 2010). Consequently, state legislatures have rushed to codify VAMs into their statutes and regulations governing teacher evaluation. (See, for example, Florida General Laws, 2014). That has been a mistake. This paper argues for a complete reversal in policy course. To wit, state regulations that connect a teacher's continued employment to VAMs should be overhauled to eliminate the connection between evaluation and student test scores. The reasoning is largely legal, rather than educational. In sum, the legal costs of any use of VAMs in a performance-based termination far outweigh any value they may add.1 These risks are directly a function of the well-documented statistical flaws associated with VAMs (See, for example, Rothstein, 2010). The "value added" of VAMs in supporting a termination is limited, if it exists at all."

"New York's charter school advocates have poured millions of dollars into electing a State Senate hospitable to their agenda items for the upcoming legislative session. Now, those leaders are beginning to craft their legislative priorities, which will include eliminating the state's cap on charter schools, increasing funding for established charters, and establishing more accountability measures for district schools and teachers."

"Why are school districts paying millions in "finder's fees" to an organization that places people without education degrees to teach in urban schools-even where applications from veteran teachers abound?"

"New York state has the most racially and economically segregated schools in the country, according to a report released by the Civil Rights Project at the University of California, Los Angeles last year."

"Charter schools promised new education innovations. Instead, they produced scam after new scam"

"Gov. Andrew Cuomo's forthcoming State of the State address is expected to focus on what can be done to improve public education across the state. If he is serious about the issue, he will have to move beyond peripheral concerns and political score-settling with the state teachers' union, which did not support his re-election, and go to the heart of the matter. And that means confronting and proposing remedies for the racial and economic segregation that has gripped the state's schools, as well as the inequality in school funding that prevents many poor districts from lifting their children up to state standards."

"Why have those defending public education had such an uphill fight in crafting a compelling counter to the mainstream message that "public education is broken"? How can we break through this monotonous monopoly of thinking with an alternative message? As Noam Chomsky points out, the mainstream political discourse in America is largely shaped by media outlets under complete corporate control."

"Republicans are hatching an ambitious plan to rewrite No Child Left Behind this year - one that could end up dramatically rolling back the federal role in education and trigger national blowouts over standardized tests and teacher training. NCLB cleared Congress in 2002 with massive bipartisan support but has since become a political catastrophe: The law's strategy for prodding and shaming schools into improvement proved deeply flawed over time, and its unintended failures have eclipsed its bright spots. Today, NCLB is despised by some parents who blame it for schools "teaching to the test," protested by some on the left for promoting education reform and reviled by Republicans in Congress who say the law represents aggressive federal overreach."

"John King recently resigned as New York state's education commissioner after a tumultuous tenure in which he helped create and implement a controversial education evaluation system and rushed the implementation of the Common Core State Standards and aligned testing. (He is now going to work as a top assistant to U.S. Education Secretary Arne Duncan, who apparently thought the controversy that King created was just fine.)  That evaluation system, known as APPR, required that 20 percent of an educator's evaluation be based on student standardized test scores. Now, New York Schools Chancellor Merryl Tisch wants to make new changes. What are they and why would they take a flawed evaluation system from bad to worse? This post explains."

"Government agencies are falling short in their efforts to reform education, so corporations are stepping in. But will they do more harm than good?"

"Board of Regents Chancellor Merryl Tisch and soon-to-be acting Education Commissioner Elizabeth Berlin offered a host of proposals that would dramatically change education policy in New York state in a 20-page letter released Wednesday."

"There is growing evidence that the corporate-sponsored education reform project is on its last legs. The crazy patchwork of half-assed solutions on offer for the past decade have one by one failed to deliver, and one by one they are falling. Can the edifice survive once its pillars of support have crumbled?"

"A common claim these days, either in political rhetoric or in the context of litigation over the equity and adequacy of state school finance systems is that money simply doesn't matter. The amount of money we put into any school or district is inconsequential to the outcomes children achieve or quality of education they receive. The public schooling system is simply a money black hole! Thus, it matters not how much money we throw at the system generally and it matters not whether some children get more than others. Further, it matters not whether children with greater educational needs have resources comparable to those with lesser needs and greater preexisting advantages. Yes, these arguments are contradicted by the vast body of empirical evidence which finds otherwise! And these arguments are often used to deflect emphasis from disparities in resources across children that are egregious on their face, and often not merely a function of state legislative neglect of state school finance systems, but state legislative actions to drive more public resources to those already more advantaged. And things are only getting worse."

""This is one of the big insights for me. I actually am kind of a pro-market kinda girl. But it doesn't seem to work in a choice environment for education. I've studied competitive markets for much of my career. That's my academic focus for my work. And it's [education] the only industry/sector where the market mechanism just doesn't work. I think it's not helpful to expect parents to be the agents of quality assurance throughout the state. I think there are other supports that are needed. Frankly parents have not been really well educated in the mechanisms of choice.… I think the policy environment really needs to focus on creating much more information and transparency about performance than we've had for the 20 years of the charter school movement. I think we need to have a greater degree of oversight of charter schools, but I also think we have to have some oversight of the overseers.""

"John King is leaving his job as commissioner of New York State schools commissioner to become a senior adviser to U.S. Education Secretary Arne Duncan, with the "roles and responsibilities of the deputy secretary," according to the Education Department, which issued a statement giving King high praise for his work in New York. Some in New York think otherwise. Here's a piece by award-winning Principal Carol Burris of South Side High School in New York, who was named New York's 2013 High School Principal of the Year by the School Administrators Association of New York and the National Association of Secondary School Principals, and in 2010, tapped as the 2010 New York State Outstanding Educator by the School Administrators Association of New York State. Burris has been exposing on this blog King's troubling record in implementing school reform program in New York."

"Zephyr Teachout, the Fordham University law professor who ran against Governor Andrew Cuomo in the recent gubernatorial election, released  a powerful and shocking-but well documented-report on the powerful hedge funds that seek to gain control of education in New York state. They are very, very rich. They have no particular expertise in education, nor are they accountable to anyone. Yet they are attempting to privatize one of the most important public institutions of our society. Teachout's co-author was Mohammad Khan. His contact information is listed below."

"In the charter-school sector, this arrangement is known as a "sweeps" contract because nearly all of a school's public dollars 2013 anywhere from 95 to 100 percent 2013 is "swept" into a charter-management company. The contracts are an example of how the charter schools sometimes cede control of public dollars to private companies that have no legal obligation to act in the best interests of the schools or taxpayers."

"Most of our educational traditions have something to offer, even if they include extremes against which we must be on guard. The latest batch of enthusiasms can all be placed within the context of an old conversation about what and how to teach. Though we need not reject them out of hand, we must at least question the thinking of our current gurus and of the most influential among those who would presume to shape the way we teach here in the States. Indeed, it is our duty to ask how well they advance the chief end of education-at least public education, which is to prepare our youth to take on the responsibilities of citizenship. Everything else is secondary."

"Earlier this year, a paper by Roderick I. Swaab and colleagues received considerable media attention (e.g., see here, here, and here). The research questioned the widely shared belief that bringing together the most talented individuals always produces the best result. The authors looked at various types of sports (e.g., player characteristics and behavior, team performance etc.), and were able to demonstrate that there is such thing as "too much talent," and that having too many superstars can hurt overall team performance, at least when the sport requires cooperation among team members."