According to leading "education researchers" (sub required), the draft guidelines that the Obama administration has published for federal economic-stimulus money and Title I aid for schools "have no credible basis in research."
The researchers point to two regulatory priorities in particular that are lacking in research evidence: evaluating teachers based on students' standardized test scores and promoting the growth of charter schools.
"One theory of action seems to be that holding teachers more accountable for the gain in their students' test scores will induce them to become better teachers," writes Duke University's Helen Ladd. "At this point, I am not aware of any credible evidence in support of that proposition."
And research on the performance of charter schools has shown that their track record is "highly variable." ....
I wrote an earlier diary, back in June, about the research on charter schools--which came from charter school advocates, actually. I also managed to find an open link to the article, here.
Jeff goes on to say:
The article points out that the Bush administration was famous for insisting that schools adhere to policies and programs that were based on "scientific research" while it promoted an agenda that had nothing "scientific" about it.
Now, the Obama administration is insisting that schools make decisions based on "data that shows what works," while it pursues mandates that have no data to support them.
What's the difference?
The difference is, apparently, that just like Clinton with NAFTA, a Democratic President has much easier time screwing the Democratic base than a Republican would.
A new report, ""Multiple Choice: Charter School Performance in 16 States.""(pdf) (pdf executive summery / pdf press release), from Stanford University's Center for Research on Education Outcomes, or CREDO, finds that charter schools significantly underperform overall compared to the traditional public schools they are supposed to improve on--a major embarrassment that will no doubt be ignored, just as all evidence of privatization and corporatization are ignored, especially since Obama's basketball buddy and Secretary of Education Arne Duncan is a huge charter school booster.
Here's the graphic representation of results:
And the accompanying text:
The Quality Curve results are sobering:
• Of the 2403 charter schools reflected on the curve, 46 percent of charter schools have math gains that are statistically indistinguishable from the average growth among their TPS comparisons.
• Charters whose math growth exceeded their TPS equivalent growth by a significant amount account for 17 percent of the total.
• The remaining group, 37 percent of charter schools, posted math gains that were significantly below what their students would have seen if they enrolled in local traditional public schools instead.
Nore from Democracy Now!, Gerald Bracey and Rethinking Schools on the flip.
Jindal bragged of using Katrina as an opportunity to push charter schools. This is something Naomi Klien discusses in "The Shock Doctrine", but Louisiana Charter schools like Charter Schools elsewhere in the country are a scam!
"When Katrina hit New Orleans, I was two weeks into my senior year at Frederick Douglass Senior High School," said Maria Hernandez. "So far, I've had to start my senior year three times at three different schools in three different cities."
"All of these changes happened within a month's time," she continued, "From Douglass in New Orleans to Telequa High outside of Muscogee, Oklahoma and from Telequa to Union High in Tulsa, Oklahoma. Now after everything is said and done, I miss the high school that was my alma mater. I'm afraid to get my class ring because we might just move again, and I'd be stuck."
Hernandez was one of thousands of people displaced after Hurricane Katrina's violence crushed the Gulf coast August 29, 2005. While at Douglass public high school, she was a member of Students at the Center (SAC). An independent program initiated by Center for Community Change in Washington, D.C., it had been operating in two Orleans Parish public schools since 1996. Hernandez is one of five students and two New Orleans public school teachers whose essays are included in "Dismantling a Community," a short 40-page, excellent booklet published by the Center. In addition to the noteworthy African-American essays, it includes revealing time-lines focusing on the hurried dismantlement of the city's former public school system of 63,000 students (93% African American, 75% low-income) and 117 school buildings, half of them damaged beyond repair. "In the immediate chaos after the storm, many both in and outside New Orleans - people who were not searching for relatives, who had dry shoes and a place to lay their heads - seized on the disaster as an 'opportunity,'" the "Dismantling" booklet noted.
Although the No Child Left Behind education act (NCLB) has virtually expunged "history" via its high stakes testing in other subjects, Katrina's aftermath brought recent and past history onto center stage. Seizing on education "disasters" was one of them. A dictionary definition for "carpetbagger" is "U.S. history; a Northerner who went to the South after the Civil War and became active in Republican politics, esp., as to profiteer from the unsettled social and political conditions of the area during Reconstruction.(2) Any opportunistic or exploitive outsider (1865- 1870)." Welcome to new New Orleans.
I didn't see the debate, but I understand that Obama brought up DC School Chancellor Michelle Rhee as an example of what we should do about eduction.
Rhee is like the Miranda Priestly character in The Devil Wears Prada, arrogant, capricious, and without a single care for anyone's view point but her own.
