| Due to the Great Recession, state and local governments are suffering massive cut-backs, and since education spending is generally their largest single budget item, schools are getting hit especially hard. This need not have been the case if Obama had either (a) asked for a $1.3 trillion stimulus, the size that many economists said was needed back in early 2009, or (b) altered the mix of tax cuts vs. spending through the states. And the blow could certainly have been softened if he had opposed the Snowe/Collins/Nelson/Scrouge "compromise" that cut something like $50 billion in school funding from the stimulus, rather than hailing those piggy-bank robbers for their "leadership." Whether or not it was all planned from the beginning, what's eventually shaped up out of this is that there's a small package of stimulus funds available for states and schools that jump through the federal education reform hoops--the exact nature of which is still being determined, although states that lift restrictions on charter schools will go to the heard of the line.
It's really hard to see this as anything other than a Shock Doctrine-style deal, since it's a way to force cash-starved states and schools to change education policy and practice, regardless of what they might normally and democratically choose to do. And not only that--because the funds are limited, they could make the changes, and still not get a dime for doing so.
That's the big picture surrounding the story that Jeff linked to--the story explaining that the proposed standards being considered have
no empirical support.
Here's how that story began:
Race to Top' Said to Lack Key Science
Scant Evidence for Policies, Researchers Tell Ed. Dept.
By Debra Viadero
Among education researchers, one complaint about the U.S. Department of Education under former President George W. Bush was that it relentlessly promoted "scientific research in education," while at the same time endorsing some policies that lacked solid research evidence.
With recently published draft guidelines for federal economic-stimulus money and Title I aid, critics are beginning to ask whether much has changed under the Obama administration.
"What is extraordinary about these regulations is that they have no credible basis in research. They just happen to be the programs and approaches favored by the people in power," writes Diane Ravitch, a research professor of education at New York University, in her blog, Bridging Differences, which is hosted by edweek.org. She served as the Education Department's assistant secretary for educational research and improvement under President George H.W. Bush.
For their part, department officials are not yet answering the criticism. They did not respond to repeated requests from Education Week to address such complaints.
In comments, Lambert wrote:
Let me guess
The process was completely "open" and "transparent."
And Jeff responded:
What process?
I'm not aware that there ever was any kind of process for how the Ed Department arrived at these guidelines. They just descended from on high. But I guess when you base policy on widely accepted, yet unproven, truisms, you don't even need a process. Much cleaner that way.
As we'll see below, Jeff is absolutely right--the stimulus bill was used to allocate funds via a program that completely circumvented Congressional hearings, which would normally be required for any such undertaking. Classic Shock Doctrine.
There is, at least, a public comment process. That much they couldn't avoid. But reading Helen Ladd's complete comments, which are available here in PDF, it's hard to imagine how these standards could have been adopted in any process that was remotely kosher. Ladd's comments begin:
I am writing to object to the heavy emphasis in the regulations on using student test scores for the formal evaluation of teachers and school principals. While student test scores clearly have a role to play in the overall effort of improving schools, they need to be kept in their place. The regulations you are proposing gives them a pride of place that will lead to little good and is likely to do much harm.
As an academic researcher with experience working with longitudinal data on students, teachers and principals, I have estimated value added models examining the effects of teacher credentials, examined teacher and principal labor markets, and evaluated school-based accountability programs.
Potential for harm
The main problem with the heavy focus of the proposed test-based approach is that it ratchets up the pernicious narrow test-based approach to education represented by No Child Left Behind (NCLB). The approach is narrow in part because the requirement that all students be tested every year means that students can be tested in only a limited number of subjects. The result is a heavy emphasis on the basic skills of math and reading, to the detriment of other skills and orientations that young people need to become effective participants in the global society. Further, the emphasis on test results for individual teachers will exacerbate the well-documented incentives for teachers to focus on narrow test taking skills and drilling. It is time to move beyond this misplaced emphasis on test scores in a few subjects to return to the broader goals of education that have been such an important part of our history.
Any positive effects are likely to be limited at best
Consider the main two arguments underlying the push for test based evaluation of teachers. One theory of action seems to be that holding teachers more accountable for the gains in their students' test scores will induce them to become better teachers. At this point, I am not aware of any credible evidence in support of that proposition. The best direct evidence on that point is likely to emerge next spring from a random-assignment study of performance based pay for teachers by researchers at Vanderbilt financed by the U.S. Department of Education. It seems premature at best to assume that those results will be positive.
Hmmm. Act first, test later. Sounds like the Bush plan for Star Wars deployment. Or perhaps for invading Iraq?
In addition to Ladd, the article notes:
Another expert, Matthew G. Springer, the director of the National Center on Performance Incentives at Vanderbilt University in Nashville, Tenn., confirmed Ms. Ladd's observation. In a 2008 research review he co-wrote on the use of merit-pay programs in education, he found only eight studies on the topic, the most rigorous of which were conducted outside the United States. Some studies yielded positive results; others pointed to possible negative consequences.
Psst. Kid. Wanna buy some used yellowcake uranium?
Policy by fairy tale. Why not?
In her Education Week blog post referenced in the story, Ravitch wrote:
Nationally, the most important event [of the summer] was the release of the federal government's regulations for the "Race to the Top." Those regulations made clear that the Obama administration has fully aligned itself with the edu-entrepreneurs who favor market-based reforms. As I predicted on this blog, President Obama and Education Secretary Arne Duncan are now the spear carriers for the GOP's education policies of choice and accountability. An odd development, don't you think? The Department of Education dangles nearly $5 billion before the states, but only if they agree to remove the caps on charter schools and any restrictions on using student test scores to evaluate teachers.
What is extraordinary about these regulations is that they have no credible basis in research. They just happen to be the programs and approaches favored by the people in power. Under normal circumstances, the Department of Education would need congressional hearings and authorization to launch a program so sweeping and so sharply defined. Instead, they are using the "stimulus" money to impose their preferences, with no hearings and no congressional authorization.
Is any charter school better than any public school? As we learned from the Stanford CREDO study of charters a few months ago, only 17 percent of charter schools are superior to comparable public schools; the rest were either no better or worse. Yet the Obama administration wants to open up the nation's public schools-especially in urban districts-to massive privatization....
This will be an interesting year. But also a very dangerous year for American public education.[Emphasis added]
That was from her first blog post after the summer. More recently, she wrote another post in which she referenced comments on the stimulus proposals from California Attorney General Jerry Brown:
I will quote a few lines, as I think Brown's letter is brilliant. He wrote, "The basic assumption of your draft regulations appears to be that top down, Washington driven standardization is best. This is a 'one size fits all' approach that ignores the vast diversity of our federal system and the creativity inherent in local communities. What we have at stake are the impressionable minds of the children of America. You are not collecting data or devising standards for operating machines or establishing a credit score...In the draft you have circulated, I sense a pervasive technocratic bias and an uncritical faith in the power social science [sic]."
He goes on to write, "You assume we know how to 'turn around all the struggling low performing schools,' when the real answer may lie outside of school. As Oakland mayor, I directly confronted conditions that hindered education, and that were deeply rooted in the social and economic conditions of the community or were embedded in the particular attitudes and situations of the parents. There is insufficient recognition in the draft regulations that inside and outside of school strategies must be interactive and merged."
Boy howdy! The idea that kids' education can be dealt with entirely separately from anything else going on in their lives, or their community is so crazy, so unscientific that you might be tempted to think that only a Republican could believe that. Not so at all.
Of course Republicans want to ignore everything else, since their whole objective is to destroy public education. What's Obama's excuse?
In that same blog post, Ravitch also referred to recent news about the utter failure of Arne Duncan's purported "Chicago Miracle"--his calling card for getting the nod as Secretary of Education. Catalyst Chicago reported:
Chicago high school test scores stall, including those at transformation schools
Posted By Sarah Karp On Tuesday, September 15, 2009
Sometime over the past week, CPS officials quietly posted the 2009 Prairie State and ACT test scores. They didn't hold a press conference or even issue a release, as is the custom. And it is no wonder.
Scores on both exams stagnated this year. And the scores for juniors who have been part of the district's High School Transformation project since their freshmen year were no better, and in some cases worse, than their predecessors.
The district average ACT composite score inched down from 17.3 in 2008 to 17 last year and the percent of students meeting or exceeding state standards on the Prairie State rose ever so slightly, from 27.9 percent to 28.5 percent. The federal No Child Left Behind Act calls for 70 percent of students to meet standards this year.
The results of these exams were supposed to be the first definitive test of High School Transformation, built on a foundation of new, more-rigorous curricula and teacher training.
But the average ACT score for the 13 schools that started teaching the curricula in 2006 remained at 15.5-way below the 20 needed to get into a selective college. (A 14th school-Mose Vines, a small school that was on the Orr campus-was also part of the original group, but the school was absorbed into Orr last year. Orr is now a turnaround school.)
Only two of the transformation schools-Carver Military and Chicago Military in Bronzeville-saw more than a 1 percentage point increase in their ACT score since 2006. But as well, during this time the two schools have implemented a selective admissions process that also changed the caliber of the students entering.
Over the past year, there have been many indications that the $80 million High School Transformation was not the success that officials hoped. The first-year evaluation report pinpointed many implementation problems, such as high absenteeism among students and a need for better-prepared teachers. The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, which gave the district $21 million for the program, not only stopped funding it, but also pulled their support from future evaluation reports.
However, Chief Education Officer Barbara Eason-Watkins has previously said the district is committed to continuing the project, including supporting the curricula. She also said previously that the ACT and PSAE scores showed some promise.
Talk about deja vu all over again! Bush's first Secretary of Education, Rod Paige, got his job on the basis of the "Houston Miracle" a dramatic improvement in school dropout rates that turned out to be non-existent, just like Arne Duncan's "accomplishments" in Chicago now appear to be. The one difference--Paige's "Miracle" was the result of typical Republican fraud. Duncan's seems to have been due to simply accepting standard issue corporate hype as if it were gospel. It's hard to tell, ultimately, which is worse, since Duncan didn't even have to bother with deceit in order to gain an appointment he had done nothing to deserve. |
