Education Links

"There continues to be much bluster out there in ed reformy land that money really isn't all that important - especially for traditional public school districts. That local public schools and districts already have way too much money but use it so inefficiently that any additional dollar would necessarily be wasted. An extension of this line of reasoning is that therefore differences in spending across districts are also inconsequential. It really doesn't matter - the reformy line of thinking goes - if the suburbs around Philly, Chicago or New York dramatically outspend them, as long as some a-contextual, poorly documented and often flat out wrong, blustery statement can be made about a seemingly large aggregate or per pupil spending figure that the average person on the street should simply find offensive. Much of this bluster about the irrelevance of funding is strangely juxtaposed with arguments that inequity of teacher quality and the adequacy of the quality of the teacher workforce are the major threats to our education system. But of course, these threats have little or nothing to do with money? Right? As I've explained previously - equitable distribution of quality teaching requires equitable (not necessarily equal) distribution of resources. Districts serving more needy student populations require smaller classes and more intensive supports if their students are expected to close the gap with their more advantaged peers - or strive for common outcome goals. Even recruiting similarly qualified teachers in higher need settings requires higher, not the same or lower compensation. Districts serving high need populations require a) more staff - more specialized, more diverse and even more of the same (core classroom teacher) staff, of b) at least equal qualifications. That means they need more money (than their more advantaged neighbors) to get the job done. If they so happen to have substantially less money, it's not a matter of simply tradin

"A data analyst who worked for the past several years in the New York City Department of Education wrote the following about Eva Moskowitz's Success Academy charter chain. Most of the data he cites comes from public records maintained by the city or state education departments. His footnotes are at the bottom of the post."

"In the most simplistic portrayal of the education policy landscape, one of the "sides" is a group of people who are referred to as "reformers." Though far from monolithic, these people tend to advocate for test-based accountability, charters/choice, overhauling teacher personnel rules, and other related policies, with a particular focus on high expectations, competition and measurement. They also frequently see themselves as in opposition to teachers' unions. Most of the "reformers" I have met and spoken with are not quite so easy to categorize. They are also thoughtful and open to dialogue, even when we disagree. And, at least in my experience, there is far more common ground than one might expect. Nevertheless, I believe that this "movement" (to whatever degree you can characterize it in those terms) may be doomed to stall out in the long run, not because their ideas are all bad, and certainly not because they lack the political skills and resources to get their policies enacted. Rather, they risk failure for a simple reason: They too often make promises that they cannot keep."

"Beverley Holden Johns, a nationally recognized expert in the field of disabilities, strongly disagrees with Arne Duncan. Duncan wants children with disabilities to be able to perform on the highest level of NAEP tests. She points out that NAEP was not designed for this purpose. Duncan unilaterally changed the requirements of the IDEA act, without Congressional authorization. Having changed NCLB without Congressional authorization, he must think that ignoring the law is routine. In Néw York, we learned how students with disabilities do when they took the Common Core test: 95% failed."

"But the biggest thing to keep in mind about these results is that most of the important lessons cannot be gleaned from the results alone. Perhaps the most important considerations is how teachers and other stakeholders (e.g., principals) respond to the system. For example, do teachers change their classroom practice based on the scores or feedback from observations? Do the ratings and feedback influence teachers' decisions to stay in the profession (or in their school/district)? How do these outcomes vary between districts using different measures or scoring? These are also questions that really matter, and they are not answerable in the short-term, and they certainly cannot be addressed looking at highly aggregate distributions across rating categories and imposing one's pre-existing beliefs on how they should turn out."

"As part of Wal-Mart's back-to-school marketing efforts, the company recently launched a series of teacher appreciation videos, ads, hashtags and discounts. Teachers--who routinely dig deep into their own pockets to pay for supplies and materials for their students--are grateful for appreciation in all its forms. They are understandably less pleased when half-hearted discounts come from a company with a terrible track record for respecting its own employees and are accompanied by a large-scale effort to dismantle our nation's public education system and silence their voice. In fact, teachers are so offended by the so-called education reform agenda promoted by Wal-Mart's owners, the Waltons, that one teacher recently launched a petition calling on his peers not to shop at Wal-Mart this back-to-school season. More than 5,000 teachers have already added their names to his pledge. A closer look at the Walton family's massive investment in "education" paints a clear picture of why teachers are so upset. Since 2000, the Walton Family Foundation has given more than $1 billion to destabilize public education--draining funds from students and closing neighborhood schools, and instead supporting corporate-style education policies in an attempt to bring Wal-Mart's business model to classrooms across the country."

"The New York Times Magazine has a long article about Eva Moskowitz and her chain of charter schools in New York City. The charter chain was originally called Harlem Success Academy, but Moskowitz dropped the word "Harlem" when she decided to open new schools in gentrifying neighborhoods and wanted to attract white and middle-class families. I spent a lot of time on the phone with the author, Daniel Bergner. When he asked why I was critical of Moskowitz, I said that what she does to get high test scores is not a model for public education or even for other charters. The high scores of her students is due to intensive test prep and attrition. She gets her initial group of students by holding a lottery, which in itself is a selection process because the least functional families don't apply. She enrolls small proportions of students with disabilities and English language learners as compared to the neighborhood public school. And as time goes by, many students leave."

"Several months ago, the American Statistical Association (ASA) released a statement on the use of value-added models in education policy. I'm a little late getting to this (and might be repeating points that others made at the time), but I wanted to comment on the statement, not only because I think it's useful to have ASA add their perspective to the debate on this issue, but also because their statement seems to have become one of the staple citations for those who oppose the use of these models in teacher evaluations and other policies."

"Over the last decade, teacher evaluation based on value-added models (VAMs) has become central to the public debate over education policy. In this commentary, we critique and deconstruct the arguments proposed by the authors of a highly publicized study that linked teacher value-added models to students' long-run outcomes, Chetty et al. (2014, forthcoming), in their response to the American Statistical Association statement on VAMs. We draw on recent academic literature to support our counter-arguments along main points of contention: causality of VAM estimates, transparency of VAMs, effect of non-random sorting of students on VAM estimates and sensitivity of VAMs to model specification. "

"Rick Hess of the American Enterprise Institute has written a smart article about the selling of Common Core. Its advocates use similar talking points, he says, but the most frequently heard lack evidence. You will hear these five points not only from corporate executives and Chamber of Commerce types, but from all CCSS supporters."

"There was a big to-do recently in New York when new standardized testing results were released and the controversial Success Academies charter chain received very high scores. What, exactly, do the scores really tell us about the schools? Matthew Di Carlo, senior fellow at the non-profit Washington D.C.-based Albert Shanker Institute, explains. This post appeared on the institute's blog."

"This excerpt from the chapter titled, "Twelve Theses on Education's Future in the Age of Neoliberalism and Terrorism," is taken from the book,  Neoliberalism, Education, Terrorism: Contemporary Dialogues, by Jeffrey R. Di Leo, Henry A. Giroux, Kenneth J. Saltman and Sophia A. McClennen and is offered with the kind permission of Paradigm Publishers."

"Eva Moskowitz and Bill de Blasio are two liberal crusaders with profoundly divergent ideas about how the mission of aiding the disempowered should be carried out."

"In a 1988 address, Mr. Shanker outlined an idea for a new kind of public school where teachers could experiment with fresh and innovative ways of reaching students. Mr. Shanker estimated that only one-fifth of American students were well served by traditional classrooms. In charter schools, teachers would be given the opportunity to draw upon their expertise to create high-performing educational laboratories from which the traditional public schools could learn."

"On Thursday, August 21, 2014, United States Secretary of Education Arne Duncan used his "Homeroom" blog to announce victory in his war on schools and teachers. After six years of decrying the inadequacy of education in the United States, Duncan "celebrated that "America's students have posted some unprecedented achievements in the last year." In addition, after battling against teacher tenure and seniority rights, Duncan decided, "we should celebrate America's teachers, principals, and students and their families.""

"What they saw should chill the ardor of the most doctrinaire followers of Milton Friedman. Vouchers began in Milwaukee nearly 25 years ago based on the claim that they would save poor black children from "failing" public schools. Today, Milwaukee should be a national symbol of the failure of vouchers. Yet state after state is endorsing vouchers, egged on by the Friedman Foundation and rightwing think tanks. Let's be clear. Vouchers, charters, and choice have failed the children of Milwaukee. The city ranks near the bottom of all cities tested by the federal NAEP, barely ahead of Detroit. Black children in Milwaukee score behind their peers in most other cities and states. Study after study shows they don't get better test scores than their peers in public schools."

"Ms. Goldstein's book is meticulously fair and disarmingly balanced, serving up historical commentary instead of a searing philippic. A hate-read is nigh impossible. (Trust me, I tried.) While Ms. Goldstein is sympathetic to the unionized public-school teacher, she also thinks the profession is hamstrung by a defensive selfishness, harboring too fine a memory for ancient wounds. The book skips nimbly from history to on-the-ground reporting to policy prescription, never falling on its face. "

"Dallas business interests stacked the school board. Now, a rule change could open the door for wholesale school privatization."

"The media loves the story of miracle schools. Imagine that! A school where 90% or more pass the state tests! Where 100% graduate. Where 100% are accepted into four-year colleges. Michael Klonsky once said to me, miracles happen only in the Bible. When the subject is schools, miracle claims should be carefully investigated."

"Wayne Au, editor of Rethinking Schools and co-editor of Pencils Down: Rethinking High-Stakes Testing and Accountability in Public Schools, writes of the book, Badass Teachers Unite: "In this powerful collection of essays, education activist and historian Mark Naison offers teachers, parents, students and anyone else concerned with the health of public schools in this country some invaluable tools in the fight against corporate education 'reform.' Badass Teachers Unite is a clarion call for all of us to reclaim public education in the name of social justice.""