Category Archives: Accountability

by | November 10, 2007 · 6:57 pm

What George Fails To Mention Could Fill a Book

From Richard Russell, via the Progressive Dane email list (posted with permission).

The op. ed. referenced can be found here. More on this story on AMPS here.

What George Fails To Mention Could Fill a Book

I used to be one of the “educrats” whom George Lightbourn belittles in his essay “School choice is working and should be expanded”. Now retired, I spent my professional career as an analyst for the Department of Public Instruction. For part of that time, my opposite number at the Department of Administration was a bright, insightful, competent (and, as it turns out, ambitious) young guy named … George Lightbourn. Yes, George fails to mention that he himself got his start as an “educrat”.

But that’s only one of many things that George — now in the pay of the corporate-backed Wisconsin Policy Research Institute think tank — fails to mention.

For instance, he insists that parents should have the right to choose the school their children attend. And so they do. Guaranteed by law. What he fails to mention is that the general public is under absolutely no moral or legal obligation to pay for it.

Even though WPRI now recognizes that parents aren’t doing a particularly good job of choosing schools for their children, George contends that they alone should make the call. Another thing he fails to mention is that raising children is a responsibility shared between parents and society as a whole. It’s the entire culture that insists that kids be immunized, fed, clothed, and schooled (and, in societies more enlightened than ours, provided with health care), and gets downright intolerant of parents who abuse or neglect their kids, or try to use them as cheap labor.

George also fails to mention that public-school choice is a direct competitor against the darling of the neocon movement: PRIVATE-school choice. And, while WPRI was happy to do a study showing the shortcomings of PUBLIC-school choice, the right wing has resisted every effort to subject PRIVATE-school choice to comparable scrutiny.

The reason for this is simple. When Milwaukee’s program was first instituted as a limited experiment, it had an evaluation component. After 5 years, the study (headed by highly respected UW-Milwaukee Education Professor Alex Molnar) had piled up lots of data, the reports were filed, and the private-school kids had done no better than their public-school counterparts. This was a far cry from the glories that had been promised when the “experiment” was begun. The reaction of Gov. Tommy Thompson’s administration? Declare victory, remove the “experimental” tag, expand the program, and eliminate the evaluation! To this day, the private schools are exempt from the kind of accountability that the public schools face on a daily basis.

George advances the corporatist party line that the invisible hand of the market will inevitably cause top-quality schools to bubble up to the top. Quality, quality, quality. That’s all anybody ever looks for in a school, according to the propaganda. The George Lightbourn of a quarter century ago would not have been so naïve as to presume (nor so disingenuous as to pretend) that this is remotely close to reality. I could cite several dozen reasons OTHER than quality that parents use in choosing schools, but just consider a couple of parallel situations: entertainment (vigorous exercise vs. violent video games) and nutrition (a healthy, balanced diet vs. junk food). Those choices are just as free and unfettered as they are with respect to the schools. Do parents invariably choose quality, 100% of the time? The correct answer is another thing George fails to mention.

George also fails to mention that WPRI’s cover has long since been blown. It’s clearly a front for the twin pillars of neoconservatism: corporations and churches. Neither of these institutions is primarily concerned with children as human beings. The former wants their money; the latter wants their souls. They’d be thrilled to see what they derogate as “government schools” close up shop altogether. But they DO foresee a role for government in the final picture: as an endless source of funding.

For the rest of us, their hope is that we’ll end up like George Lightbourn: glossing over the whole truth to focus on the party line, ignoring the big picture for the big bucks.

I suppose it’s POSSIBLE that WPRI could be the source of an honest study on education. It’s also POSSIBLE that the tobacco industry could have done honest research into the health effects of smoking. Sometimes honesty really IS the best policy, if it furthers your agenda. But keen observers will always want to know: Even if what you DID show us is true, what is it you’re NOT telling us? What do you fail to mention?

Now, these folks will undoubtedly counter that we advocates for the public schools have an agenda of our own. And they’re right. We do. It was best stated about a century ago by John Dewey: “What the best and wisest parent wants for his own child, that must the community want for all its children.”

George fails to mention that, too.

Richard S. Russell

The 5 greatest bargains in America:
(1) sunshine
(2) fresh air
(3) clean water
(4) public libraries
(5) public schools

Thomas J. Mertz

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by | November 10, 2007 · 12:17 am

Quote of the Day

We don’t usually venture into higher ed, but the local angle, the applicability to k-12 education and the fact that it comes from one of my favorite education bloggers (and historians of education) inspired this exception:

Wisconsin is essentially drinking the Kool-Aid of poorly-constructed standardized testing as a proxy for accountability.

Sherman Dorn

The context is the University of Wisconsin’s preemptive and premature embrace of an unproven and unwise accountability system.

Thomas J. Mertz

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by | August 21, 2007 · 3:15 pm

The Teacher Voice in Data-Driven Accountability

From Randi Weingarten (President of the United Federation of Teachers, NY), via EdWonk.

Excerpt:

We hear a lot these days about what I call “3-D reform,”—data-driven decision making and about using tests to improve teaching and learning. Sadly, in this respect, too often, testing has replaced instruction; data has replaced professional judgment; compliance has replaced excellence; and so-called leadership has replaced teacher professionalism.

What is really happening is that more than ever there is this industrial techno-centric view of teachers as interchangeable cogs in an education enterprise. This approach rewards their compliance above their creativity, and results in the denigration of teachers and disregard for their contributions to learning.

Consequently, and with good reason, teachers often say they feel they are the targets and not the agents of reform. Their “wisdom of practice” and real world experience with children is discounted or disregarded in policy-making deliberations and decision making.

Teachers’ voices must be an integral part of the conversation; they are on the ground, they know what works, they know what kids need to succeed, and we must attend to their experiences, suggestions and requests.

When faced with dilemmas of public education, the route of “least resistance” and, I might add, of least effectiveness, is the “teacher proof” road. Rather than invest in teachers, and capitalize on their knowledge, policymakers and administrators attempt to create systems that they hope will obviate the need for excellent teachers. They attempt to substitute cook book curricula, step-by-step instructional practices, computer-based instruction and bubble-in testing, instead of rich, student-centered teaching and learning.

Read the full post.

I’ve long counseled “data guided” policy and practice and agree with most of what Ms Weingarten has to say.

Thomas J. Mertz

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by | July 18, 2007 · 9:40 pm

Knowledge,Research, Education and Reform

I was following the links from the latest Carnival of Education today as well as making the rounds of some of my regular online education stops. The theme that hit me today concerned what we know about how to make schools or education work. Below are links, quotes and comments from the posts that got me thinking.

Tim Fredrick at the The Teacher Research Blog had a post on Scientifically-Based Research & Teacher Research. He writes:

And, when I think about it, nothing about teaching reminds me of “science”. Even my best methods, the ones that always work, I find that they don’t always work with every student. Classroom teachers know that not everything works every time with every student. It just doesn’t. Naming methods as based on “scientific research” intimates that they work in every scenario. Just as I get suspicious that the newest diet method is “easy” and “fast,” I get suspicious when educational products work all the time – even most of the time – for everyone – even most teachers….

When will politicians and policy-makers learn that education is not something else? It is not business. It is not medicine. It is something entirely of its own and the person who is most qualified to decide if a method or educational product works is the classroom teacher. Reading the document from NIL was helpful in understanding what is meant by this oft-used term. But, I couldn’t help but get the feeling that the document intimates that knowledge about good teaching is not created by teachers, but rather by “scientists”. This does not sit well with me and it should not sit well with other teachers, as well.

This is pretty close to my position. I understand the value of research but also think that the limitations of research get lost when it moves from the academic community to policy discussions. Some of this is related to Sherman Dorn’s insights on Folk Positivism.

That brings up the issue of tests and accountability. I really like what Dr. Jan had to say on this topic:

In education, we have a tendency to measure not what we want to (need to) measure but what we can measure… it’s a lot like measuring someone’s height because you can’t measure their weight. If a person’s weight is proportionate to their height then measuring their height might be a prediction of their weight; but if not, then what’s the point of measuring their height?

In other words, why are we measuring the stuff we are measuring with standardized and criterion-referenced tests when what we really want to measure is children’s ability to collaboratively problem solve and effectively communicate?

I especially like the formulation of the ends of education as “children’s ability to collaboratively problem solve and effectively communicate.”

Dr. Jan is responding to a post by Greg Farr. Farr is much more sanguine about the state of knowledge than Tim Frederick (or me). He takes a theme from a paraphrase of Dr. Brian McNulty:

“All the research has basically converged. It is all pretty much saying the same thing. WE KNOW WHAT TO DO. The question is, why aren’t we doing it?”

Farr then explores some of the things we do know and outlines his resolve to put this knowledge into practice. I think Farr will find some success and I applaud his his “time to stop talking and start doing” program.

Yet I continue to have misgivings about the way ideas move from research to policy and practice. I believe that the desire for utility (mostly on the part of researchers) and simple answers (mostly on the part of policy makers) blinds many to the limits and tentative nature of (even scientific) research findings. I am much more comfortable with data guided policy than data driven policy and prefer policy makers and practitioners who are cognizant of what research (scientific based and other) and data can tell us and what it can’t.

Related links:

What Works Clearinghouse
The National Center for Fair & Open Testing
Think Tank Review Project
MMSD Classroom Action Research

Thomas J. Mertz

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by | July 18, 2007 · 2:43 pm

YearlyKos: Education Uprising/ Education for Democracy

As part of the YearlyKos NetRoots Convention (Chicago, August 2-5), TeacherKen has put together a great panel based on the Education Uprising/Education for Democracy ongoing project.

This project has been so rich in ideas and insights that I suggest you read all the material linked to the post on the Education Policy Blog. Here is the basic description:

The design of American education is obsolete, not meeting the needs of our students and our society, and ignores most of what we have learned about education and learning in the past century. This panel will explore a new paradigm, including some specific examples, of how education in America can be reshaped in more productive and democratic fashions.

And a little more in the way of excerpts:

Education Uprising – Education for Democracy

Historically, one of our society’s central problem in improving public schools has been our disagreement over the purposes of public schools. We believe in three central purposes: preparing students to participate in our democratic society, empowering students to learn on their own, and encouraging them to explore their dreams.

A free and adequate public education is a right of every child. Not all children attend public schools, but all Americans must support public education that both fosters democracy and is treated as a right. Public education is a public good. It is a part of the commons for which we are all responsible. We start this brief essay by discussing the nature of education as a public good before we delve into meeting the individual needs of students, the curriculum, instruction, teachers, and accountability.

Education as a Public Good

There are two parts of education as a public good. One is the role of education in developing citizenship—not reflexive obedience but a deliberative and engaged public. If adults need the skills and confidence to debate public policy and act wisely, students need to learn those skills. The other part of public education is the obligation to operate democratically—to provide equal educational opportunities and to operate transparently and accountably.

Subtopics include: Fostering Democracy, Being Treated as a Right, Guaranteeing Equality, Building Relationships, Experimenting with Curricula, Supporting Teachers and Using Assessment.

Sherman Dorn, Mi Corazon and Marion Brady will be joining TeacherKen on the panels.

I doubt I will be able to attend, but I plan to follow along in the cybersphere.

Thomas J. Mertz

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by | July 2, 2007 · 8:55 pm

Lewy Olfson sets the record straight

From the Wisconsin State Journal

Olfson: Schools today have different objectives

by LEWY OLFSON
June 27, 2007

In a guest column headlined “What a difference 100 years makes,” Rick Berg makes a false assumption that an eighth grade test given in 1907 demonstrates that schools today are failing to achieve acceptable levels of learning in their pupils.

The world in 1907 was a very different place from the world today, and schools then had very different objectives from schools today. In 1907, American society needed a small number of highly educated workers and a huge number of unskilled laborers and farmers. Only a fraction of young people went to college.

The test referred to by Berg was designed to weed out those who were not considered suitable for higher education.

Berg doesn’t tell us how many eighth graders actually passed the difficult test he describes. He suggests that the difficult questions in that test were well within the capacity of most students. I seriously doubt that. Moreover, academic failure in 1907 was not a barrier to a young person’s ability to earn a living, nor did it carry any significant social stigma.

Today, graduation, not merely from the eighth grade but from high school, is all but essential if a young person is to achieve even a modest level of financial independence as an adult.

Schools today are attempting to meet the needs of our society as it exists in 2007, just as schools in 1907 were designed to meet the needs of society as it existed then.

Which brings me to my next bone of contention with Berg, his misunderstanding of the principles underlying government-supported mandatory public education. He proposes that the state should give parents vouchers which they would be free to use to buy education wherever they like.

In Berg’s world, schools would flourish or fail depending upon whether or not they offered programs that parents were happy with. But the each-school-has-its-own- system model simply does not reflect the underlying purpose of publicly funded education.

Publicly funded education rests on the premise that we, as a society, have a collective notion of the public good. We have a body of values that we want to inculcate in the next generation.

We have needs, as a society, that we want the next generation to fulfill. If taxpayers, even those of us who have never had children ourselves, are going to pay for the education of other people’s children, we want that education to be in the service of an ideal, an image of a future we can agree with and support.

In a democratic society, we the governed have agreed to finance a system of education for the good of society as a whole, but we don’t write that check without requiring accountability.

That is why we have elected school boards to establish policy and to oversee administration. The school board members are accountable to us, the taxpayers.

In Berg’s model, accountability is an issue between the individual school and its constituent parents. But that is not enough.

I do not intend to suggest that I think the Madison School District is completely successful. And the system can only benefit from the thoughtful suggestions of interested, serious people like Berg. But in this case, I believe his suggestions are misguided and ill-informed.

Olfson, now retired and living in Madison, was an education journalist for 25 years and is the author of a number of books for young people.

Thomas J. Mertz

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by | July 2, 2007 · 8:51 pm

Juile Underwood on NCLB

From the Wisonsin State Journal:

Underwood: Federal schools measure is failing
Federal schools measure is failing
By JULIE UNDERWOOD
June 28, 2007

No one can argue against the idea of holding our public schools accountable for the quality of education provided for our children. No one can dispute that we must do more to ensure that all children receive an excellent education.

But the federal No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB) does little to help either of those goals. When it comes to providing the constructive feedback necessary to help schools improve, the mechanism prescribed by NCLB fails miserably.

This reporting mechanism, the Adequate Yearly Progress (AYP), creates misperceptions that our schools are “failing,” when AYP often has little to do with the quality of schools.

Further, use of the label “failing” demeans the very educators who have dedicated their professional lives to improving schools in the face of complex challenges, many of which are outside the realm of the public schools.

Locally, the recent AYP reports (Wisconsin State Journal, June 13) — which labeled all four of Madison’s public high schools as “failing” despite state data much to the contrary — served only to mislead the public. They join a long and growing list of examples of the inadequacy and punitive nature of this so-called measure.

Under NCLB, a school can be labeled as “failing” for a number of reasons, including many that have nothing to do with actual achievement — for example, simply because fewer than 95 percent of its students within a single demographic subgroup took the test. It’s no wonder that many schools across the nation rate highly on state measures, yet fail to make AYP.

Despite the name, AYP reports do not actually measure “progress.” To measure progress (and get a truer picture of how our schools are doing), we need to look at how the same students perform over time — where they started and where they finished.

The AYP from year to year compares different groups of students. It does not follow a child’s learning from the beginning to the end of the year.

By 2014, NCLB has legislated that 100 percent of the students — including those who have special needs, lack English proficiency, come from disadvantaged circumstances, etc. — must be proficient in reading, math, and science or their schools will receive the dreaded failing grade. How absurd!

By ratcheting up AYP targets for what constitutes “adequate” achievement to unattainable levels and then shaming any school that fails even in one area, NCLB has set the stage to flunk our entire system of public education.

Nothing would delight educators more than to see dramatic increases in student achievement, especially our students from disadvantaged groups. The education community ardently supports high expectations that challenge children to excel.

It is clear that AYP merely masquerades as accountability and adds nothing of value toward the goal of providing the best possible education for all children. Genuine school improvement requires legitimate and meaningful assessments that provide useful feedback for educators and produce a fair and accurate picture for parents, policymakers, and the general public.

Underwood is dean of the UW-Madison School of Education.

Thimas J. Mertz

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by | June 26, 2007 · 1:19 pm

Mayor Dave on the State Finance System

Mayor Dave Cieslewicz knows the primary source of Madison’s school budget woes. Published in Southern Exposure, the newsletter of the South Metropolitan Planning Council and elsewhere.

Thomas J. Mertz

School Funding System Needs Reform
By Mayor Dave Cieslewicz

“The worst choice, except for all of the others.”

This is what comes to my mind when reflecting upon the recent budget challenges that Madison school district leaders, parents and students have faced. After the recent, difficult debate over the issue of school consolidations and other painful budget measures, there can no longer be any doubt that the school funding system is broken beyond repair.

As the school district correctly notes, thanks to this broken system, they are trapped within a spiral of budget shortfalls and cuts to programming. Although they were able to avoid consolidating schools this year, they were nonetheless forced to reduce resources for special education, increase class sizes, and make a number of other cuts that threaten the quality of our public schools. This is a pattern that has been continuing, and worsening, for a number of years.

This is not to be critical of the school board or the administration. I know from experience how difficult these budget decisions can be, and am confident they are making the best decisions they can, given the hand they have been dealt by the state. There are no more easy choices or easy cuts to make. We are well beyond the point where platitudes such as “finding efficiencies” will make the budget balance.

Until we see reform at the state level, we will face these same decisions, and our community with go through the same difficulties, year after year. School district leaders know this, and embarked earlier this year on a campaign to build political support for ending the current, unfair system.

The City of Madison is answering that call, by making school funding reform a central part of our legislative agenda. For starters, the revenue caps must go. I am a strong believer in local government and local accountability. We in Madison are perfectly capable of making local budget decisions and choosing local leaders who reflect our values.

The next step is to create a new system that provides fair and adequate funding for our public schools. I am encouraged that every Madison-area legislator has signed on to a resolution calling for a new system to be in place by July 1, 2009.

The resolution specifies four key components of a new, fair system: it must provide funding based on the actual cost of education, not arbitrary per-pupil formulas; it must provide adequate resources to educate all of our children, regardless of their background; it must provide additional resources for special needs, such as non-English speaking students; and it must be based on a fairer tax base that moves us away from reliance upon the property tax.

These are all important goals. Until we achieve them, the turbulence our community experienced during this year’s school budget will not only happen again, it will get worse. And once again, we will be forced to make “the worst choice, except for all the other ones.”

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by | June 25, 2007 · 1:54 pm

Russ Feingold on NCLB

Contact Senator Feingold, Senator Kohl and Representative Baldwin and let them know what you think!

Thomas J. Mertz

FEINGOLD QUESTIONS ADMINISTRATION’S CONTINUED SUPPORT OF NCLB
Administration’s Top-Down Approach to Education Contradicted by Education Secretary’s Recent Op-Ed
June 22, 2007

Washington, DC – U.S. Senator Russ Feingold (D-WI) is leading a group of Senators in calling into question the Administration’s continued support of the No Child Left Behind law following a recently published op-ed by the Secretary of Education that expressed support for state and local control of education policy. In a letter to the Department of Education Secretary Margaret Spellings, the Senators cited her June 9th Washington Post op-ed, where she said that a move toward a national test would be “unprecedented and unwise” because states and localities have primarily held the leadership role in public education. Feingold and the other Senators questioned why the Department of Education does not extend this same rationale to the No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB) and they urged the Administration to work with Congress to reform key provisions of NCLB during the congressional reauthorization process. The letter was cosigned by Senators Pat Leahy (D-VT), Ben Nelson (D-NE), Debbie Stabenow (D-MI), Claire McCaskill (D-MO) and Maria Cantwell (D-WA).

“NCLB has hamstrung state and local decision-making by establishing a federal accountability system that measures and punishes our students and our schools based on, among other things, annual high-stakes standardized testing,” Feingold said. “This is the wrong approach, and the groundswell of opposition to the NCLB – from parents, educators, and administrators alike – shows just how flawed it is.”

The Administration’s proposal for NCLB reauthorization, released earlier this year, did not embrace enough of the themes Secretary Spellings expressed in her recent op-ed. Under the Department’s recommendations, states would still be required to annually assess students and states and districts would still be required to implement sanctions that may not be working in local schools and districts, including transfer options and supplemental educational services. Feingold opposed NCLB in 2001because he did not believe a federal policy centered on standardized tests was the best approach for Wisconsin students, teachers, and school districts.

“As Secretary Spellings points out, states and local districts are the ones developing the curriculum used in our nation’s schools and they’re the ones paying most of the costs of education,” Feingold said. “I hope Secretary Spellings’ recent op-ed signals a shift away from the Administration’s top-down approach to education and back toward empowering those who are working in the classrooms every day.”

A copy of the letter is available here: http://feingold.senate.gov/pdf/ltr_spellings_062207.pdf

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by | May 13, 2007 · 5:15 pm

Accountability Manifesto

Jim Horn (of Schools Matter, The Education Policy Blog and Monmouth University) thinks it is time turn the tables on the “failing businessmen and politicians” who have been promoting and legislating ill-conceived accountability requirements for our schools and start demanding that they be held accountable for their failures.

Jim has posted an initial list and I think it is a good one.

§ all American citizens will have health insurance coverage that offers equal coverage and facilities for mental and physical health;

§ the federal government will have devised a menu of school integration plans from which school systems across America will choose in order to live up the Supreme Court decision of 53 years ago which declared that separate schools are inherently unequal;

§ American business and government will deliver to the American people a practical plan for full employment in jobs that offer livable wages;

§ All families in America will be offered affordable and quality child care whose cost will be based on income;

§ A minimum wage, workmen’s compensation, and social security withholding will be provided to all workers, both citizens and immigrants. Businesses that do not comply will be forced to close until they do comply.

§ State governments and the federal government will devise a funding structure for public schools that is not dependent upon property taxes.

§ Business and government will take the action required to reduce greenhouse emissions of Americans to a level that will sustain a healthy planet.

§ A national action plan that includes private and public commitments will be offered to rebuild the infrastructure of America, to offer adequate and affordable housing for all Americans, to reenergize the arts, to enhance our parks.

§ Once these things are done, American businessmen and politicians, if they still have the urge to do so, may continue their public school reform initiatives–if they are willing to include the public in each and every step of their reformations. Otherwise, forget it.

I’d add something about a just system of taxation. What else belongs here?

Thomas J. Mertz

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